When I was a kid, I watched a lot of 'Twilight Zone.' My mother was obsessed with the show, as it was a staple of her childhood - and thus she made it one of ours, too.

While many alternate reality stories ask, 'What might have been?' parallel universe stories literalize the war between good and evil that plays inside each of us every day. It's what makes this type of story so perfect for many fantasy tales: we're all just a coin flip away from being entirely different people.

Writers of all things speculative have played in alternate and parallel worlds for a long time - everyone from Stephen King to Philip Pullman to Tanith Lee - and it's an obsession that likely isn't going away any time soon.

Kameron Hurley Quotes