What’s the earliest science fiction story in which a person encountered a duplicate of him/herself (or of someone they knew) from a parallel Earth?
Until someone more knowledgeable comes along…
The Science Fiction Encyclopedia notes that
So, anybody got anything earlier than 1962? (Duplicates and parallel worlds certainly predate this individually, but I assume you’re looking for the combination.)
In 1944, Mandrake the Magician met his evil counterpart from the mirror realm.
“You forget I am your counterpart, Mandrake. I am as great a hypnotist as yourself!”
Well, there’s the classic Flash of Two Worlds story from 1961, in which DC Comics established their version of a multiverse of parallel worlds with slight differences, created as a way to explain the distinction between the characters published during World War II and the revamped “silver-age” versions (typically with the same superhero names and general abilities, but differing origins, costumes and secret identities) they started publishing in 1956.
There’s a great number of stories, cartoons and movies about a “Counter-Earth”, orbiting the Sun in exact sync with the Earth so that it is always on the other side of the Sun.
In many of these stories, Counter-Earth is inhabited by humans with similar culture to Earth.
The earliest of the Counter-Earth stories seem to be from the 1920s.
“Sidewise in Time” by Murray Leinster has got that beat by several decades first appearing in 1934. (Still a good read today.)
BTW, the most realistic portrayal of the internet appeared in Leinster’s “A Logic Named Joe” published in 1946. Predicted most aspects of the same but probably not “The Straight Dope”. Check it out if you want to be awestruck.
“Sidewise in Time” sounds like an interesting story that I’d like to read (I love Leinster, and “A Logic Named Joe” is one of my favorites), but the Wiki description doesn’t sound like it involved counterparts of the same people on both Earths.
“Flash of Two Worlds” is what started the conversation. Someone asked me if that was the earliest example of parallel Earth counterparts in fiction. I know it wasn’t, but I couldn’t think of any earlier ones.
I found that, in comics at least, there was an earlier story in Wonder Woman #59 (May 1953) in which Wonder Woman met a mirror-world duplicate of herself.
But so far, it sounds like The Other Waldo Pepper’s Mandrake story is the earliest one that meets the criteria of being about a doppelganger from a parallel Earth.
I would guess that as soon as Sci Fi writers heard the term “Anti Matter” they wrote a story about an “Anti Matter Universe” so when was Anti Matter conceived as a theory?
There’s a story far earlier than any of these.
In the Yoga Vasistha, a Sanskrit text which dates from (according to various estimates) “as early as the sixth or seventh century CE, to as late as the fourteenth century”, you’ll find The Story of Lila.
Lila visits various parallel universes, and universes within universes, with significant differences, and meets another version of herself. The two versions then get together and have further adventures. Actually the story is so intricate and has so many twists and turns, different realities, time compressions, etc. that it’s difficult to summarize. Well worth reading.
“There are countless universes which do not know of one another’s existence.”
Before scientists settled on antimatter, some called it “contraterrene” matter - and SF writers picked up that term.
Trivia: the first mention of a “DC multiverse” (i.e., parallel Earths with alternate versions of the same person) was not “the Flash of Two Earths”. It was actually a Wonder Woman story from 1953.
Don Draper wrote; "Trivia: the first mention of a “DC multiverse” (i.e., parallel Earths with alternate versions of the same person) was not “the Flash of Two Earths”. It was actually a Wonder Woman story from 1953. " If that’s the story I’m thinking of the villain from that one has been retconned into being the Legion foe “The Time Trapper”.
Missed the reference in the OP about people meeting themselves. Maybe a story almost as old would qualify but it’s been a long time since I read it. “The Worlds of If” by Weinbaum, I think it was.
Whoops. Bit of a brain fart there. This is the story I was thinking of.
By DeCamp, not Weinbaum.
Out of curiosity, would IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE count?
(What about Scrooge seeing his possible-future funeral in a world minus Tiny Tim?)
although I hate to call them sci fi weren’t the gor books wrote in the 30s?
^^No. 1970s thru ~1990 or so. Then a couple of sporadic books here and there. The author John Frederick Lange is still living, too.
No I didn’t. From the wikipedia article I linked to: