The Alternate Lavender Island. Guest: Tom Anderson

[David Flin]

A new series, featuring an individual being castaway with a selection of AH goods. Unashamedly inspired by Desert Island Discs.

Today, the victim - I mean interviewee - is @Thande , prolific author, major contributor to this blog, chemist, and all-round nice person.

 

[SenatorChickpea]

What a delightful idea. And good picks too.

 

[Alexander Rooksmoor]

Yes, this is a great addition to this site.

Of course, Wilson would love to have been lavendered to the Isles of Scilly which in some ways have an atmosphere of somewhere crossed between 'The Prisoner' and Ruritania.

 

[Thande]

This was a great idea of David's. Here's a link to the article as I think it was missed above: https://www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/the-alternate-lavender-island

 

[David Flin]

This was a great idea of David's. Here's a link to the article as I think it was missed above: https://www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/the-alternate-lavender-island

Oops.

Included now.

 

[Charles EP M.]

Nice stuff.

The "and all this is OTL" note really is a shovk the first time you read it and does indeed undercut "but that can't happen" reactions.

 

[FriendlyGhost]

Great idea for a new blog series and thank you to both @Thande and @David Flin.
I suspect I'm not alone in now thinking about what my choices would be. Interestingly (or not), my first choice would be Thande's second: Sobel's For Want of a Nail, as that's the first book I remember reading which was clearly and definitively AH. Turtledove's World War series, to me, was always more science fiction than AH, though I know it was the gateway for many.

 

[RyanF]

Unashamedly inspired by Desert Island Discs.

Never heard of it.

 

[FriendlyGhost]

Never heard of it.

BBC Radio 4 - Desert Island Discs

Castaway guests share the soundtrack of their lives.

www.bbc.co.uk

Desert Island Discs - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Alexander Rooksmoor]

Never heard of it.

It has been running since 1942. I remember reading a book about the series written by the original presenter Roy Plomley in the early 1980s. It is very much a British institution. I first started listening to Radio 4 in the early 2000s when they had What If? presented by Christoper Andrew being broadcast.

 

[Thande]

I think @Meadow may need to invest in the pro version of XenForo that includes a built-in sarcasm detector function.

 

[Jared]

I think @Meadow may need to invest in the pro version of XenForo that includes a built-in sarcasm detector function.

The problem with the pro version is that it breaks whenever it overloads with Monty Python quotes, so given the general SLP form denizens, the pro version would have about the same life expectancy as the guests at a wedding raided by Sir Lancelot.

 

[RyanF]

I think @Meadow may need to invest in the pro version of XenForo that includes a built-in sarcasm detector function.

I prefer the old fashioned way:

​

Monty Python

Never heard of him.

 

[Well]

Great article; and a great idea for a format!

Worldwar is one of the biggest reasons I got not only into Alternate History, but into history itself. The conceit of the series is simple; in mid-1942, at the height of the Second World War, the world is attacked by an alien conquest fleet with military technology roughly akin to what was modern when the book was written (1994). I always read it as an allegory for Gulf War era, technology-obsessed western militaries potentially coming undone when faced with technologically inferior foes but which had fighting spirit and resistance movements – although based on an interview with Gary Oswald posted here , I don’t think that was Turtledove’s intention. Regardless, Worldwar is not only a thought-provoking bit of blockbuster film AH, but one which also does a pretty good job of showing just how global WW2 got.

I've not read Worldwar, and I think I'd have How Few Remain (pretending it was a one-shot) in my five. I think I've ignored it up until now because the premise sounds so pulpy, but might have to give it a read. Is it a coincidence that Turtledove's ASB works (Worldwar, Guns of the South) seem to be better regarded than his 'true' alternate history material?

I did not actually read For Want of a Nail until quite recently, as it is not particularly easy to obtain. However, it had a huge, indirect impact on my own writing. I sometimes feel slightly embarrassed that some readers attribute the ‘scrapbook style’ of alternate history work to me, as I use it in Look to the West; most of that series consists of excerpts from in-universe history books, works of historical fiction and the like, rather than a traditional narrative. However, I did not create this style. I’ll talk about my direct inspiration later on, but for now, I think the true progenitor of it is For Want of a Nail. Robert Sobel was a serious, published historian (mostly of the history of business) and to write a book like this in 1973, when counterfactuals often get a snooty dismissal from alleged proper historians even today, is a remarkable creative decision.

Sobel might be the originator of the style, but it's changed quite a bit since him. I think the whole of FWOAN is a single ersatz textbook, with in-universe footnotes referencing books that don't exist (I think I read somewhere it's Sobel satirizing academic history of the period). The result is an extraordinary work of verisimilitude, but it's not exactly reader-friendly; there's no hope of using the footnotes to quickly ascertain what's OTL and what's been changed, and where the inspiration has come from - to 'show my working', as EdT puts it. From your later comments, is Jared the originator of the style as we currently know it?

Secondly, the story [Fight and Be Right] cuts back and forth between the 1880s and the 1930s, and does an excellent job at pulling the rug out from under your assumptions about where it’s going.

I completely agree with FaBR being on your list of five. I was struck by this sentence; is it just referring to the prologue and epilogue being set in the 1930s? I think in the final published form, everything else is in chronological order. If I recall correctly, the original thread did this because EdT was working on a lot of supplementary material that ended up being collated in World Of. If that's what you're referring to, it's a fun meta-example of Thomas's own observation that what actually happened is often not what everyone remembers happening!

 

[Thande]

I've not read Worldwar, and I think I'd have How Few Remain (pretending it was a one-shot) in my five. I think I've ignored it up until now because the premise sounds so pulpy, but might have to give it a read. Is it a coincidence that Turtledove's ASB works (Worldwar, Guns of the South) seem to be better regarded than his 'true' alternate history material?

I think that's generally true, also his short-form stuff is usually better regarded than the longer books. While I like Worldwar, as I said it starts to go downhill from the fourth book and the sequels, though somewhat interesting, don't live up to the original.

Sobel might be the originator of the style, but it's changed quite a bit since him. I think the whole of FWOAN is a single ersatz textbook, with in-universe footnotes referencing books that don't exist (I think I read somewhere it's Sobel satirizing academic history of the period). The result is an extraordinary work of verisimilitude, but it's exactly reader-friendly; there's no hope of using the footnotes to quickly ascertain what's OTL and what's been changed, and where the inspiration has come from - to 'show my working', as EdT puts it. From your later comments, is Jared the originator of the style as we currently know it?

Good point, and yes I think it's Jared in that case.

I completely agree with FaBR being on your list of five. I was struck by this sentence; is it just referring to the prologue and epilogue being set in the 1930s? I think in the final published form, everything else is in chronological order. If I recall correctly, the original thread did this because EdT was working on a lot of supplementary material that ended up being collated in World Of. If that's what you're referring to, it's a fun meta-example of Thomas's own observation that what actually happened is often not what everyone remembers happening!

I probably phrased that imprecisely, I was referring to the prologue and epilogue. (Also with A Greater Britain as I said in the text). I actually didn't like how the supplementary material implicitly spoiled the ending to someone reading the thread at the time, although it was a memorable moment when one scanned the page of flags from 1940 and then the slow dawning realisation "Wait...where's the Union Jack?"

Come to think of it, one could do the same idea with a time traveller in OTL looking for the Russian tricolour during the Cold War (or the Soviet flag if going from the Cold War to today).

 

[Jared]

I think that's generally true, also his short-form stuff is usually better regarded than the longer books. While I like Worldwar, as I said it starts to go downhill from the fourth book and the sequels, though somewhat interesting, don't live up to the original.

My take on Worldwar was that it was a good duology stretched to four books, and the sequels were better in the head than on the page.

Good point, and yes I think it's Jared in that case.

When I started Decades of Darkness I wasn't consciously emulating anything, and certainly hadn't read Sobel at the time, but there were other timelines floating around at that point which had various kinds of narrative structures. I may have been one of the earlier ones to do the faux history book style on soc.history.what-if, but I don't think I was the absolute first. I'd think of it as more of an evolution of previous forms rather than a straight invention of it.