The Side-Step Trilogy Books in Order

The Side-Step Trilogy is Orson Scott Card's young adult science-fiction series about a teenager who can move his consciousness between parallel versions of himself. Laz has grown used to an unusual kind of escape: when events take an unwelcome turn, another reality may offer a different outcome. The opening novel, Wakers, places him in circumstances where that familiar advantage no longer gives him a simple way forward.

Laz wakes in a cloning facility on an Earth that appears to have been abandoned. Around him are the bodies of other clones, leaving him to conclude that the person he understands himself to be may also be a copy. His memories describe a populated world with an ordinary life in it. The place he has awakened offers no easy explanation for the difference. Before he can plan a future, he needs to work out what has happened to his present.

This time, changing worlds isn't an easy answer.

The premise gives the survival story two closely connected problems. Laz must deal with the practical dangers of an empty, damaged setting while investigating the reason for his own existence there. Someone must have created the clones, and something must account for his awakening. Finding food or shelter cannot resolve those questions, but answering them is difficult when basic survival already demands attention. His ability is still important, yet knowing that alternate realities exist doesn't tell him which possibilities are available or safe.

Another clone, a girl who remains asleep, creates a further dilemma. Waking her could give Laz a companion and possibly help him understand the facility. It could also bring someone into a dangerous situation she has no way to avoid. The decision makes the loneliness of his predicament more complicated. He wants help and answers, but he must consider whether obtaining them would impose his own troubles on another person.

The series uses its parallel-world framework to explore identity as well as adventure. Laz's memories connect him to a life that may belong to another version of himself, while his surroundings force him to act as the person now facing them. Questions about what makes someone the same individual become immediate rather than abstract. A copy can remember, fear, choose and form attachments, so the mystery of his origins has consequences for how he understands his responsibilities.

Start with Wakers for the cloning-facility mystery and the introduction to side-stepping. The continuing series includes Reawakening, which develops the parallel-world premise further. The tone combines a survival puzzle with young adult speculative fiction about the self. Its central interest is what happens when a teenager accustomed to changing the conditions around him encounters a world that requires him to understand those conditions first. Laz's search is for a way to survive, but also for an explanation of who has been left there to do the surviving.