Random Quest

by John Wyndham

Genres: Time Travel

About the author

John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris was the son of a barrister. After trying a number of careers, including farming, law, commercial art and advertising, he started writing short stories in 1925. After serving in the civil Service and the Army during the war, he went back to writing. Adopting the name John Wyndham, he started writing a form of science fiction that he called 'logical fantasy'. As well as The Day of the Triffids, he wrote The Kraken Wakes, The Chrysalids, The Midwich Cuckoos (filmed as Village of the Damned) and The Seeds of Time.

Reviews

[Cecily]

I've reviewed this story in the collection Consider Her Ways and Others.
See my review HERE.

[Nisha Sadasivan]

referenced from "Hyperspace". Mr. Michio Kaku doesn't allow you to read his book and finish it in peace.

He simply has to reference other interesting works, and until you've read them, you're never at ease.

"Random Quest" by John Wyndham is a short and engaging take on parallel universe and alternative history.

[Forked Radish]

Ottilie idiotic. If randomness rules there would be no trunk to branch from viz. Darwinism is a puerile paradox. Also, Heisenberg’s indeterminacy (the original non-paradoxical term) principle (which is fundamentally wrong) has nothing to do with randomness. Additionally, randomness and probability are unrelated. In other words, there is a phenogram and a genealogical tree, but no phylogenic tree. The phenogram is all branches with no bole, trunk, or roots; therefore branching is impossible. You can’t walk on water, unless it’s ice, but then it isn’t water and forks can’t fork because they are already (by definition) forked. To clarify, this world is nothing but forking so there is no trunk to fork off of! 😮‍💨 But the alienist said essentially the same thing, so I’ll raise my rating to four stars.

[Cheryl]

In Consider Her Ways and Others

[Fraser Sherman]

Having seen both film versions, finally read this (in the Vintage Anthology of Science Fiction, if anyone's curious). Very much what I call "drawing room science fiction," where the character sit around and discuss the amazing implications of the story premise. Specifically, one character got sucked into a parallel world, fell in love with his counterpart's wife, got sucked back and now wants to find the wife's counterpart here. The 1971 film Quest for Love added a lot more melodrama and tragedy to the story and I'd recommend it over the print version.