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The Multi-Faceted Nature of AH
- Thread starter David Flin
- Start date
AH, the ultimate "I know when I see it" genre
The uncommercial aspect is depressing when both Marvel and DC have been putting the multiverse into shows and films, enough normal people grasp the concept with ease, but I guess the difference is there's a specific character to hook it onto. "What if things were different for Spider-Man"
The uncommercial aspect is depressing when both Marvel and DC have been putting the multiverse into shows and films, enough normal people grasp the concept with ease, but I guess the difference is there's a specific character to hook it onto. "What if things were different for Spider-Man"
As if to prove your point outside of AH circles I've seen Inglorious Basterds described more as a form of "revisionist" history (albeit in the sense of improving on what really happened instead of proper historical revisionism) rather than AH. Of course you could argue that hindsight gives AH this tendency as well but that might be for a different article.
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- Location
- Over the rainbow
That reminds me of a joke in The Eyre Affair where it's suggested that the death of Nelson at Trafalgar was due to French revisionists trying to influence history.
- Location
- North Alabama
Even then, some people don't take it to straight away. Michael Shannon talked in interviews around The Flash about his initial confusion being asked to reprise Zod because "I think I died in Man of Steel. Are they sure they got the right guy?'" Something that was only rectified when someone actually explained what the multiverse was to him that would make that possible (and getting some blessing from Zach Snyder, as well, apparently). I've had non-comic fan friends and family occasionally ask me about films or especially the animated adaptations trying to figure out how things fit together, only to explain that they're standalone.
It can be hard to see sometimes because we're on the inside looking out, but I'm not entirely sure that AH has quite penetrated as far as we sometimes think it has.
It is interesting you say that. If you manage to get to the level on Amazon for AH (it is rather buried in Sci-Fi), there are a number of books in the top 100 that do not appear to have anything to do with AH.
I wonder how much of it is gaming the Amazon system to try and get a 'Best Seller' label.
A case in point - one of them has two other categories:
- Erotic Bisexual Fiction
- Bisexual Romance eBooks
Oh yeah, wouldn't be surprised if half the glut is down to pisstaking by indie publishers
I mean, people have been gaming the bestseller lists long before the internet (Scientologists were/are infamous in strategically timed orders of Hubbard novels)
Talwar
Well-Known Sword
- Pronouns
- he/him
Be right back, finishing up my alternate history biography of a South African mining engineer, Jackhammers, Pumps, and Shafts: The Hot, Hard Life of Magnus Sachs.
Of course.
However, it might be more difficult if AH was a more defined genre that made it harder to so obviously game.
- Location
- UK
It happens everywhere. Etsy, when I sold there, was full of people spamming every category imaginable. They never seemed to grasp that they were actually reducing their visibility by pissing off potential customers.
I think alternate history exists as a genre, and as a setting, and all points in between. Works like Meet the New Boss or Free and Happy Land or A Greater Britain are alternate history as genre, where the different history is the theme, then we have Agent Lavender or Fight and be Right or Azure where it's about how OTL characters live and act in the changed setting that are the main part of the narrative. There's works where alternate history is a setting, but for many like SSGB or Fatherland the key plot points come from the alternate history.
Then there's works where it is so far from OTL that the world is barely more recognizable than in science fiction, even though the POD is recognizable- such as Times Without Number or Aztec Century, Lands of Red and Gold or Look to the West.
I suppose at the end of the day I enjoy all versions because it's creating new worlds, but not so strange as to not have moments of joy in recognizing something
Then there's works where it is so far from OTL that the world is barely more recognizable than in science fiction, even though the POD is recognizable- such as Times Without Number or Aztec Century, Lands of Red and Gold or Look to the West.
I suppose at the end of the day I enjoy all versions because it's creating new worlds, but not so strange as to not have moments of joy in recognizing something
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A Danish-Jewish mining engineer on the Rand? I'd read that.
Sachs and local councillor Koos de Lange-Kok examining recently established grass as dust control on a slimes dam in 1952. Sachs and de Lange-Kok would maintain a correspondence for many years after Sachs left Quaggafontein
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