@ami_angelwings The movie Cloud Atlas and Kim Stanley Robinson's novel "Years of Rice and Salt."
The movie is a series of vignettes over a period of centuries, from the early 19th century to two hundred years from now, where the same actors keep reappearing as interacting characters in each vignette.
The book is an alternate history that begins with over 90% of Europe's population being killed by a more virulent form of the plague, and the stage of world history shifts to competition between the emerging modern powers of the Islamic world and East Asia. It's a series of historical vignettes through the analog 20th century, where each one features two interacting characters who are reincarnations of characters in previous vignettes, and share the same sets of initials.