Good science fiction needs good science as well as good fiction.
In my first novel, When Comes Such Another, the reality distortion comes from the presence of Whu, a creature from a parallel universe. Within close proximity of him, the normal gravitational rules of our world don’t apply. Stuff tilts, like the house in the illustration on the book’s cover. These gravitational perturbations are proportional to the level of discord, the lack of harmony, among those near him. The perturbations reveal the discord between the characters, often in amusing ways.
Is this really possible? Science fiction requires some suspension of belief by the reader, but the portrayal of an alternate reality must be, to some extent, plausible. Could this actually happen? In those tales set in the future, the implicit assumption is that science has advanced far enough to enable intergalactic time travel and encounters with alien life.
For stories set in the present day, the futuristic science might come from other universes (for example in the movie E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial) or from new discoveries here on earth (e.g. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein). In both cases of present day settings, the plausibility requirement is especially high. So, in writing my novel, I felt obligated to supply some scientific justification to support the suspension of belief.
That scientific justification is described in the Physics section of the book’s website. Using ordinary English, I explain what is happening. Then I postulate (for those with a mathematical background) some equations that extend today’s understanding of gravity. In my physics-based formulation, space-time becomes crenellated, and when the manifold warps, it becomes possible to jump from one point to another in time. That’s how Whu travels from one universe to another.
Hey, I spent a lot of my life as a theoretical physicist, and this theory leads to some fun scenes in the book. There’s a chapter on the book’s website where the heroine deals with the gravitational changes. Have a read and tell me what you think.