Concordism or Multiple Worlds? How to handle the Different Docs

Like many action characters, Doc Savage has gone through several different "incarnations" in different media and spawned several pastiche variations. The Doc Savage of the Marvel Comics Universe was quite different from the Doc Savage of the DC Comic Universe. The Doc Savage of Phil Farmer's "Apocalyptic Life" is somewhat different from that of the Super Sagas. The Millennium Comics Doc Savage is different from that of the Dark Horse Comics.

And the Pastiches! Phil Farmer has created Doc Wildman, Doc Caliban, Doc Ravage, and Doc Fauvre. Mike Black has his excellent Doc Atlas stories. Tim Byrd has his exciting Doc Wilde series. There are the Doc Ardan stories by Guy d'Armen (adapted by J-M. & R. Lofficier) and Win Eckert. Glen Cook creaed his fantasy homage to Doc Savage known as Rider. Aaron Alston has his fantasy-based Doc Sidhe stories. E. Hoffmann Price created his Doc Brandon. And we can't forget Doc Brass from Planetary. We even had a Doc Richards pastiche from the Fantastic Four! And then there were lesser known homages like Doc Garbage, Doc Sausage, Doc Sovage, Doc Frankenstein, and Doc Royal.

So what gives? Do we need to harmonize all of these disparate Docs into one timeline (a lá the post-crisis DC universe) or should we accept that all these different Docs inhabit different universes (a lá the pre-crisis DC universe and the Batman /Planetary crossover)?

Some of the Wold Newton devotees have elected to go with the former. I for one prefer the latter. I think it is more exciting to contemplate a whole series of different Docs than to try to force fit all the wild (and often contradictory) story lines into one complete narrative.

(For those interested, there are several good Wold Newton sites including The Wold Newton Pages & The Secret History of Wold Newton, on http://www.pjfarmer.com/ , The Wold Newton Chronicles , The French Wold Newton Pages, Yet Another Wold Newton Site, Jess Nevin's Wold Newton Page, and many others.)

This also allows each creative mind to develop his or her own "Doc" whole and entire. And to be honest, that may the way things really are if the Many-Worlds Theory of Quantum Physics is true.

One solution to the Quantum State Vector equation implies that at each decision node when reality could proceed in 2 or more different directions, EVERY possibility is actualized "somewhere" so that an infinite number of possible universes comes into existence. This means that all imaginable realities actually exist "somewhere". EVERY possibility without exception! So there really could be a universe with a Superman, or a Fantastic Four, or a Doc Ravage, or a Doc Sidhe.

I have problems with this Many-Worlds Theory. It requires that at each decision point the universe splits off and spawns slightly different clones of itself. This is a major violation of the Law of Conservation of Mass and Energy. If at every instant the entire universe duplicates itself, we should be able to document violations of the conservations laws routinely. There should also be some quantum tunneling effects in certain high-energy states which we just do not see. One of the great contributions to Quantum Physics by Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman was his "Sum over Histories" theory. It replaces the classical notion of a single, unique history for a system with a sum, or functional integral, over an infinity of possible histories to compute a quantum amplitude. Essentially, all the possible outcomes cancel each other out until only one remains ,and it is that one which is actualized.

This means that each possible world has a semblance of existence and influences the ultimate result of reality, but in the end, only one real world truly "exists" in the sense of having real mass and energy. Thus the Conservation Laws are maintained, but the "Many-Worlds" also have a form of existence in a purely conceptual way.

So human imagination does not just "make things up". It explores the conceptual possibilities which actually do "exist" in some way and which have contributed to the way the "real" universe is.

So "somewhere" there is a Doc Caliban and a DC Universe Doc Savage who are complete and consistent persons in and of themselves separate from the Doc Savage of the Super Sagas. They are real alternatives to the Super Saga Doc and do not need to be force-fitted together into the same timeline.