Hello friends & fans!
This is a brief introduction to one of my sci-fi novels, “Mirror, Mirror” – a story of opposites, a tale of two conflicting simultaneous versions of reality coming into contact and interacting with each other. It’s also a look at mirror universes and alternate realities, and an indulgence of speculatory ‘what ifs’ and ‘what might have beens’. Two people who are uncannily alike yet separated by different realities, dimensions and times – suddenly and unexpectedly find themselves exchanged somehow, and have to adapt and cope with the life, circumstances and environment of the other.
The story starts off with Charlie Branson, who is unhappy with his lot in life, which is to pretend to be the captain of a luxury deep space passenger cruise ship – and which is really just a very expensive, extremely realistic earthbound simulator set. His job is to pretend to be the captain of the ship, to complete the illusion of a functioning space liner cruising the simulated cosmos for weeks at a time while the wealthy passengers lap it all up. It’s 2025 and starships don’t exist yet – the starship Freedom is a kind of closed hotel pretending to be a space ship…
Charlie Branson is unhappy because its so wonderful pretending to be a success that he can almost forget his train-wreck of a life that preceded this particular job, and spends all his time portraying himself as a playboy and ladies man living it up as a real starship captain – and wishing it could all just be real! For Charlie, it becomes something almost like a prayer!
Meanwhile, in a rather different alternative reality, a man called Andy Niksn – who looks uncannily like Charlie – is unhappy as well, but for very different reasons. Here it’s 2773 and Andy really is the captain of an interstellar cruise liner called Freedom! He isn’t as in love with his job as Charlie – and he’s in an uncomfortable relationship with one of his colleagues – one that Charlie always had the hots for – and to make matters worse, his best friend has been killed in an accident, leaving him in a deeply miserable state. Andy longs for simpler, happier times.
Fortunately for Charlie and Andy, someone overhears their thoughts – a very interesting couple of someones: the curiously named Frangelasti Anjulaxna Zorbin and his wife, Listrucia – Listy for short. They’re a couple of traveling aliens with the ability to exist across different dimensions simultaneously – which might go some way to explaining how they managed to be having dinner with both Charlie and Andy at the Captain’s table aboard two totally different versions of the Freedom at precisely the same time!
The next morning, Charlie and Andy wake up in opposite realities… Charlie in Andy’s world of 2773, and Andy in Charlie’s reality of the mid 2020’s. “Mirror, Mirror” explores how they cope and fight to understand what has happened, and how to relate to the people they encounter there, who seem strange and yet so very familiar – especially those who happened to be dead in one reality and alive in the other. The story is given extra emotional depth by the main characters interactions and relationships with their colleagues – which are thrown into complete disarray when they are transplanted between realities.
“Mirror, Mirror” was born out of the merger of two earlier novellas: “Duck Blind” and “The Next Room”. Both were completely original works I wrote consecutively through December 2019 and January 2020, and released in eBook form as novellas in February 2020. Both were released in their original form as novellas on the same day – in keeping with the synchronous theme of both stories. The reason why they were merged into one book is because of their relationship to each other – each story is a mirror opposite of the other and I didn’t feel they would really have as much impact on their own without the reader being able to compare one to the other. Since their merger and release as “Mirror, Mirror” therefore, the earlier novellas are no longer in print.
How did they come about? Well, once I’d written “Duck Blind”, which describes the misadventures of Charlie Branson – a man from 2025 who suddenly finds himself aboard a real space cruise ship in 2773 and being mistaken for the Captain of the ship, Andy Niksn – I immediately pondered what might have happened to Andy Niksn, being a real space captain from 2773 who wakes up aboard a giant space-ship simulator hotel on Earth in 2025! I plunged straight into writing “The Next Room” which focused on that more mundane reality – which wasn’t quite so mundane as it turned out, after all! In both stories I explored the relationships and experiences of the other mirror-opposites of the characters in each story, which led to a number of awkward moments for the characters!
Both “Duck Blind” and “The Next Room” together tell both sides of the same story from the perspective of a different set of the same group of characters in different dimensions and times! Together, or read in sequence, they’re a story of opposites and similarities – and it was quite a challenge to complete – and the end result is one I’m immensely proud of!
In 2021, both stories were published together in one book called “Mirror, Mirror“, published through Moon Books Publishing. After the unfortunate death in 2022 of Brandon Mullins who embodied MBP, “Mirror, Mirror” was taken down and then republished independently later the same year.
“Mirror, Mirror by Christina Engela is a science fiction fantasy that would have fitted perfectly into the old TV show The Twilght Zone if it were still around today. It’s the story of two men in two different dimensions, who are unknowingly swapped. One is Charlie, an actor, playing the role of the captain of a commercial space liner. The supposed starship that he is on is only a simulator, built to give paying customers the experience of flying around out in space. The man Charlie gets swapped with is named Andy, and he is a real captain of a real spaceship that transports tourists around the solar system. Andy and Charlie retain their memories and minds as they each wake up in the body of the other man in a strange new reality. In essence, the book is two stories in one as we watch both men struggle to make sense of what has happened to them.
Mirror, Mirror is clever, quirky, intelligent, and frankly a lot of fun to read. The author purposely allowed the two stories to mirror each other with almost identical story arcs for both men, and the technique works extremely well. Seeing the men go through similar traumatic experiences and handle them in their own unique way is very entertaining. This is less of a science fiction story and more of a study of life choices and how they can affect a person over time. The author, Christina Engela, has a whimsical way of telling her story that makes an otherwise out-of-this-world plot feel very relatable and human. I highly recommend Mirror, Mirror to anyone who likes a well-told “what if” story with lots of heart. FIVE STARS.” – Reviewed by Scott Cahan for Readers’ Favorite, January 31, 2022.
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All material copyright © Christina Engela, 2021.