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twelveroundsfan -> Help me find a novel I once read. (11/10/2007 1:49:17 AM)
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There's a science fiction novel I read about six years ago that I can't seem to find again. It's been driving me crazy. Fragments of it occasionally show up in my dreams. These dreams always seem to be especially vivid, and significant in a way I can't quite pinpoint. For a reason I don't understand, this particular book sparked a deep obsession in my subconscious.
Of course I've already tried Googling all of this six ways from Sunday. Apparently the book is not very well known, or the improbable phrases I'm about to mention certainly would have turned it up.
Here's what I remember: the plot revolves around the idea of parallel universes. In the first chapter, or at least very early on, there's a house with paint cans in the basement. The cans are labelled according to color, but the color names are words that don't exist in our world, at least not as color names. "Abelard", or a very similar word, is one example. A team of people in chemical-resistant suits storms the house and burns it to the ground. It turns out there's some sort of "seepage" occurring across dimensions, and their job is to stop it by destroying anything infected with signs of another dimension. We're left to wonder what their motive might be.
Much later on, there are the "stairs to nowhere"--a flight of stairs which bizarrely leads up to a ceiling and simply ends. Somehow or other, a group of children eventually find a way to climb the stairs past the ceiling. When the people responsible for the destruction of anything otherworldly learn that kids are moving freely between worlds, they begin aggressively trying to stop them. As I recall, the plot hinges on this conflict.
There's also an emphasis on degrees of difference between dimensions. You can step from this dimension into another one, and you can step from that one into yet another, and each one is just a degree more bizarre than the last. The progression is theoretically infinite, but in reality you can't stray too far from home because the laws of physics become slightly different with each step. Before you know it, you've stepped into a universe where you simply can't function physically. Buildings are thousands of feet high, or gravity sucks you straight onto your face--you get the idea.
That's all I've got. Anything ring a bell?
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