Throwback Thursday: Jack L. Chalker’s Well World Answers the Big Questions in the Weirdest Ways

Sometimes science fiction writers are celebrated for the ideas they bring into the world, rising to fame as their books are dissected and analyzed. Sometimes, despite their amazing ideas, science fiction writers are soon forgotten by all but their die-hard fans—even writers who were relatively popular in their heyday.
As some physicists and philosophers theorize we’re all really living in a computer simulation, Jack L. Chalker’s classic Well World series comes to mind: it asked questions we’re still noodling about with, and explored some pretty mind-blowing ideas—and yet it’s not often spoken of today.
It also includes some squicky ideas. Like all of Chalker’s works, it deals in body horror, sexual politics, and moral punishments that will make you question who’s on the side of good. In the Well World books, first published in the 1970s, he explores these obsessions via one hell of a concept: the universe as the future of humanity knows it is actually a simulation created by an ancient, now-vanished alien race called the Markovians.

Believing they had reached the pinnacle of their evolution, the Markovians created the Well World, a planet with its surface divided into 1560 separate hexagonal environments. They then began designing new forms of life (both carbon-based and otherwise) and engineering environments for them to inhabit with different levels of technology, magic, climate, and other physical rules. Below the surface, the Well World is a massive computer that maintains the universe that’s been superimposed over the “real” (and much smaller) one—but that’s not all it does.
Long ago, the Markovians all (well, all but one) voluntarily entered the “Well of Souls” from which the computer randomly transforms them into one of these engineered lifeforms, then sends them out into the universe to try their luck with evolution a second time. The only one who remained behind was turned into a human, but retained a unique identity with the Well World Computer as its sole caretaker and authority—the only being able to take control of Well World, either to perform maintenance…or shut it down.
A Series of Ideas

Confused? It’s a breathtaking idea, really, considering the era in which it was written: that everything we see is a computer simulation. In later books, computers are built that can manipulate the universe mathematically, essentially creating small-scale Well Worlds that affect reality on a  local level. People still stumble upon the old entrances to the Well World; once they arrive on the planet, they are transformed into one of the new races and trapped there—or at least, most of them are.
These were mind-blowing ideas in the pre-computer, pre-internet ’70s. On the surface, they’re pulpy sci-fi stories in which the premise is used to justify the presence of literally every single genre concept imaginable, from centaurs, to magic spells, to energy-based life forms, to, if one 1980s-era cover is any indication, lizards riding dolphins.
Under the surface, the concept digs into the most fundamental questions of life: why are we all here, what does it all mean, and will we someday figure it out, and be able to control the most primal forces of reality itself? It’s incredibly clever, and when you toss in the great character work—as each person is introduced, fleshed out, and then suddenly transformed into a wholly new alien creature—it quickly becomes one of the most fun SF stories ever imagined.

Finally, there is the character of Nathan Brazil: a small, wizened man, a con artist and a swindler—who also happens to be the Last Markovian, the caretaker of the Well World, and associated with doomsday prophecies throughout the universe.
Brazil is so old he’s actually forgotten who he is, until one of the later books, when he emerges as a figure of unimaginable power. His is one of the most deft characterizations I’ve encountered in high-concept SF—you come to have great affection for the funny little man, and when you realize that he is, in essence, god, you share his amused, terrified shock.
The first five books of Well World form a more or less complete whole; Chalker revisited the story after a break of nearly two decades, but the original quintet stands alone. Anyone looking for deeply imaginative, idea-filled vintage SF, look no further.