worlds within by rog phillips

this puppy was published in 1950. that chick on the cover is edona, one of the most beautiful women in the world, which gives you some idea how sad life was in the 1950’s.

multiple planes occupy the same three-dimensional space but are separated by fractions of an inch in the fourth. an undiscovered element opens holes between these planes. this makes not only interdimensional travel possible, but space travel as well. the thrifty astronaut can simply shift his spaceship into another dimension with no pesky gravitational bodies, fly to the corresponding location in that dimension without using a lot of fuel, and zap back to his destination in this one. at one point hero lin carter (!) and edona opt to avoid traveling across the perilous dinosaur-plagued landscape of earth 5 by zapping to earth 3 and taking a bus.

the “white incans” mastered all this hooey eons ago. they ruled the whole world using interdimensional devices to broadcast thoughts from underground. genghis khan, adolph hitler and abraham merritt were just a few of their puppets.

yes, the mighty a. merritt, who would have been dead just 7 years when this was published, did not dream up “the face in the abyss,” it was an historical novel dictated to him without his knowledge by ancient incans using futuristic technology hiding in caverns two miles below the earth’s surface. plane six is occupied by winged serpents made of electricity who are the primordial enemies of the incans of earth 5. the gun that can kill them is hidden somewhere in an pyramid in earth 3. and the less you know about earth 2 the better.

all this dimension jumping and alternate history gets hard to follow. lin carter even moves whole earths from one dimension to another to avoid collision with a runaway planetoid. at the same time, the basic 1950’s love triangle is as easy as pie. will lin end up marrying good, sweet and faithful edona, or the sexy incan spitfire mara?

oh, take a wild guess.