"There's another you out there"

Imagine one day you're sitting down, business as usual, doing some homework with the TV murmuring softly in the background. It's tuned into the local news channel - and suddenly you hear a peculiar news story. Scientists have confirmed that another planet has come out from behind the sun. But it's not just any planet - it's Earth. Another Earth.

It's the strangest kind of science fiction - the extraterrestrials? They're us. Another planet of us.
It sounds crazy, but deliciously appealing (at least to me, the sci-fi geek). It's the plot of one of my all-time favorite movies. Now, I won't give any of the plot away as it contains spoilers, but I will assure you that it is chock full of journeys.


As I re-watched this movie the other day, I really started to analyze it. The main character, Rhoda, goes through a huge life-changing experience throughout the film - it's simply a fantastic story. But what really got me thinking, scientific improbabilities aside, was how curious the idea of another world sounded. Not twins, not clones, but US. Not another parallel universe, but two Earths in the same universe.

 I know comic books have been using the multi-earth genre for ages, but seeing it in a recent film really got to me. The possibilities! The perils! The curiosities! Is there another me? What could I even say to myself? It would change the whole shape of our lives. This movie really impacted me in a way I never thought it would. For months I was stuck on the idea of another me. I even wrote a couple of short stories about the journeys my characters would experience: the physical journey of actually visiting the second earth and the internal journey about the reaction of meeting oneself. The mind reels...

If you're interested, here's the trailer for the film. Slight spoilers ahead!