Michael Moorcock in New Statesman

[Max Wilcox]

        And this is probably the letter in full (I haven't read the published
version - unless its been edited - probably not this time)...

Max Wilcox





        In Toby Mundy's review of Dermot Healy's excellent sounding Sudden Times
(15 Nov.), he mentions that 'some physicists now think that the entire
cosmos comprises millions of such universes and have coined the term
multiverse to describe these spaces that co-exist but are subject to
alternative laws'.
Flattering as it is to have this conception adopted by physicists, I think
it worth pointing out that I coined the term 'multiverse'
to describe exactly that notion in 1961 in a story called  The Sundered
Worlds published in Science Fiction Adventures magazine.  This is accepted
as the first time the word was used to describe the idea and is well
documented (cf  Clute's Encyclopaedia of SF) and discussed. I talk about it
in the introduction to the Penguin edition of the book published in 1992.
I've since developed the idea in more sophisticated literary fiction.
Others, including William James and John Cowper Powys had also invented the
term (see OED), but to describe different ideas and so it never entered the
common vocabulary.     My use of the term became popular mainly via sf
readers and RPG players,  many of whom doubtless grew up to become
physicists...
Sincerely,
Michael Moorcock,
Circle Squared Ranch,
Lost Pines, Texas.