Unpacking the popularity and metaphor of the multiverse in media and popular culture, this book explores how the concept of alternate realities and parallel worlds has portaled into the mainstream.

Edited by leading media and popular culture scholar Paul Booth, this collection explores the many different manifestations of the multiverse across different genres, media, fan-created works, and cultural theory. Each chapter delves into different aspects of the multiverse, including its use as a metaphor, as a scientific reality, and as a media-industry strategy. Addressing the multiplicity of multiversal meanings through multiple perspectives and with an eye towards engagement with contemporary cultural issues, the chapters also examine various distinctions and contradictions, in order to provide a strong basis for further thinking, writing and research on the concept of the multiverse. Chapters in this collection tell the story of the multiverse in multiple realities: creative nonfiction, academic essay, poetry, video, and audio essay.

A compelling read for students, researchers and scholars of media and cultural studies, film and media culture, popular culture, comics studies, game studies, literary studies, and beyond.

About the Author

Paul Booth is Professor at DePaul University, USA, where he teaches media and popular culture. He is the author or editor of fifteen books, including Board Games as Media (2021), A Fan Studies Primer (with Rebecca Williams, 2021), and Adventures Across Space and Time: A Doctor Who Reader (with Matt Hills, Joy Piedmont, and Tansy Rayner Roberts, 2023).

Reviews

"This timely and far-reaching collection explores the concept of the multiverse and its impact on contemporary media from a rich mix of multidisciplinary perspectives. Essential reading." - Henry Jenkins, Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism, Cinematic Arts and Education, University of Southern California, USA

"Spanning across time periods and media formats, this insightful collection proposes varied and multifaceted perspectives on the growing area of scholarship focused on the concept of the multiverse. Offering different, yet interconnected, approaches and critical angles, Booth and his contributors successfully show that visions of the multiverse sit at the centre of our transnational storytelling practices. This is essential reading for students, scholars, and multiverse enthusiasts alike." - Lorna Piatti-Farnell, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies and Director of the Popular Culture Research Centre, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand

"In Entering the Multiverse, Paul Booth and company demonstrate how the multiverse is itself multiversal, tracing the history of the idea over more than a century or two, and its development as a concept, theory, form, trope, and cultural metaphor. With almost three dozen essays, each examining various aspects and dimensions of the multiverse's cultural roles, Booth's book is an excellent examination of a popular and timely topic." - Mark J. P. Wolf, Professor, Communication Department, Concordia University Wisconsin, USA

"There are few concepts in contemporary pop culture as unruly and intriguing as the multiverse. This fascinating multi-genre anthology, traveling from Jorge Luis Borges to Pokemon, and from Marvel comics to K-pop, unpacks and complicates what the multiverse can be, what the multiverse reveals. Because the multiplicitous multiverse is, today, our modern myth." - Carmelo Esterrich, Professor of Humanities and Cultural Studies, Columbia College Chicago, USA

Book Information
ISBN 9781032770130
Author Paul Booth
Format Hardback
Page Count 350
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd