something an awful lot like this happens with interdimensional travel in Pratchett and Baxter’s ‘The Long Earth’. The basic plot driver is humans discovering a way to travel to the different timelines predicted by the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, and every once in a while as you’re bopping across dimensions from Earth to Earth you end up in a dimension or even a series of dimensions where, due to some sort of historical happenstance, Earthn’t.