MC inherits property and finds a portal in the barn that leads to an alternate earth that is identical geographically, but there are no humans. He and a group of friends haul in supplies to build a warehouse and set up caches of fuel in order to reach Colorado to mine gold. Sound familiar to anyone?
Could be the never written sequel to S.M. Sterling's "Conquistador".
From Conquistador:
Oakland, 1946. Ex-soldier John Rolfe, newly back from the Pacific, has made a fabulous discovery: a portal to an alternate America where Europeans have never set foot—and the only other humans in sight are a band of very curios Indians. Able to return at will to the modern world, Rolfe summons the only people with whom he is willing to share his discovery: his war buddies. And he tells them to bring their families....
In 2009 the portal was destroyed. Trying to reopen it they finally succeed, but when the newly created portal opens:
A long boom swung through the gate, with sensors on its end. And a television pickup; it was keyed to a large flatscreen placed where they could all look at it.
The screen flickered, then settled to a clear image. It was raining there, too; as well it might, in midwinter along the Californian coast.
"But where is the Gate complex on FirtSide?" he asked himself; all he could see was long grass....
Rolfe began to laugh; coughed, recovered, laughed again.
Because in the grass was a dead animal, huge and shaggy, almoust certainly a giant sloth. Paws braced on it, the sabertooth bared its foot-long fangs and screamed, flattening its ears and bristling its orange-and-black-striped fur.
[End of Conquistador]
I waited for a sequel, but nothing.
Could be he came across the story you are seeking and decided to not write a sequel to Conquistador.
HM.
(edited Typo)
Did the MC have a way to move the portal between dimensions? and did he trade with the 'humans' on the other side in the dimensions where there were humans? I seem to recall a version similar where he traded pocket calculators for some rare minerals or some-such.
ETA: I know this story is NOT a dead-tree book as I haven't picked one up in years.
If that's not the same story, does anyone know which one I am referring to?
This is a dead tree book called Wildside by Steven Gould.
from Amazon:
"Forget the lottery. Teenager Charlie Newell has just discovered something that will make him and his friends billionaires. What if a world existed in which no humans ever evolved? No cities. No pollution. No laws. A fantastic world filled with unimaginable riches in which everything—everything—was yours just for the taking?
Charlie has found that world. And he plans to use it to make him and his friends rich. There is a problem: How do you keep something this big a secret?"
He raised money by selling Passenger Pigeons to zoos. They also had problems with sabertooth lions and dire wolves. He inherited he farm from his uncle. His Mother was - odd.
Good Hunting, Steve
That's the one I was looking for, thanks!
I was almost certain it was something I'd read here at SOL, but not the first time I've been wrong, LOL.
hi its also a bit like Sea-Life's Worlds of light story
https://storiesonline.net/s/48877/the-light-behind-the-world
a good read and has a few books I recommend the first 6 lol
https://archive.org/details/wildside0000stev
This book was produced in EPUB format by the Internet Archive.
The book pages were scanned and converted to EPUB format automatically. This process relies on optical character recognition, and is somewhat susceptible to errors.
