(Probably Found) Help finding old book - mini-verse idea

[Jpac]

Good day everyone.

I am trying to remember the author and/or title of a book I started to read back in mid-80s. My father was a big Sci-fi buff and he let me read it for a book report. I would ask him but he passed away back in early 90s so I ask for your help in helping try to identify it in some way so I may go back and read again someday.


The details I remember from the book was it started in the mountains with a small government research facility. Inside the research facility they had somehow (can't remember) made a mini universe with galaxies and all the goodies like our universe but born anew. Time goes by faster in this "mini-verse" then in the world of the researchers. I recall the researchers trying to obtain new technologies from the different races in the "mini-verse".

How the researchers did this was using some item to focus on a galaxy in the mini-verse and it would switch the minds of the particular researcher and a inhabitant within that galaxy. The researcher would know the language and mannerism of the body he/she took over seemingly innately. In the regular world the researchers body now in control of the person from the mini-verse would be sedated and confined till the process was finished and they would return to their own bodies.

This is where it gets extremely foggy to me 20 years and 3 kids I cant remember everything.

I recall 1 of the researchers attempting to stop the stuff from happening as it was causing some huge conflict. I could be wrong but I believe it went along the lines of the mini universe was becoming unstable and going to expand right over the researchers.


I hope some of this information is helpful in finding this book/author for what I have remembered has stuck with me this long I would love to go back and revisit it. Thank you for any advise or help in doing so.

Jp

 

[Metryq]

Horton hears a who?

The story sounds vaguely like Robert L. Forward's Dragon's Egg and Starquake where scientists studying a neutron star watch a new form of tiny life evolve and develop a civilization, all at a greatly accelerated rate. The Cheela are primitive at first, then surpass their human observers in technology.

Of course, the mini-verse idea also sounds like one of the Simpsons Halloween stories, "The Genesis Tub." I don't know if there was ever a Twilight Zone episode of this sort (the Simpsons are always spoofing cult classics), but there was a very similar story in one of the Twilight Zone comic books.

And then there are stories like James P. Hogan's Paths to Otherwhere where scientists learn to jump between the multi-verses. If I'm remembering correctly, the jumps were made by switching consciousness with an alter-ego from another universe.

 

[PaulMmn]

I think there was a Roger Zelazny novelette with a similar plot-- only there was no swapping of minds... He just had a large 'tank' with a civilization of teensy-weensy inhabitants...
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There was also a hint of this plot in the 2nd "Men in Black" movie-- a locker in Grand Central Station had a civilization tucked inside. And there was a 2nd civilization in a locker as well, but you'll have to see the movie!
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--Paul E Musselman

 

[J-Sun]

I think there was a Roger Zelazny novelette with a similar plot-- only there was no swapping of minds... He just had a large 'tank' with a civilization of teensy-weensy inhabitants...

Zelazny could have done it, too, but I don't recall it and it sounds like you're thinking of Sturgeon's "Microcosmic God".

 

[PaulMmn]

J-Sun-- Yes, could be / probably is from Sturgeon's Row.... -PEM

 

[D_Davis]

Yes, it does sound like "Microcosmic God."

Also reminds me of this, which I recently purchased but haven't read yet:

 

[Jpac]

Thank you for the ideas I will be looking into these asap. Several of them look as if they may be in the right ballpark. I will post if one of those are the one I am searching for.

 

[antiloquax]

I've just read "Microcosmic God" and the OP's description doesn't sound like that. In the Sturgeon story the creatures are just housed in a big laboratory on an island - no galaxies or anything. I am interested in this type of story and want to read the Robert L. Forward books.
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