The Road to a New Alternate History. Part 2.

[Charles EP M.]

Submitting to SF or even historical fiction anthologies or magazines has produced mixed results, to put it mildly. I've experienced rejections from SF editors saying 'this is more historical fiction that SF and thus not what we're looking for while historical fiction editors will say 'Isn't this sci-fi?'

Wondering now if the sneaky references and pastiches are a reason Kim Newman has had so many AH published, editors go "ah a pastiche of old pulps" and ignore Dr Shade helping Spodes' March on Soder is about 20s Italy happening here. (And Turtledove's first big AH hits had time travel and aliens)

 

[Time Enough]

Wondering now if the sneaky references and pastiches are a reason Kim Newman has had so many AH published, editors go "ah a pastiche of old pulps" and ignore Dr Shade helping Spodes' March on Soder is about 20s Italy happening here. (And Turtledove's first big AH hits had time travel and aliens)

It’s probably why Ian Edington and D’Isreali’s What If War of the Worlds but real, and then mashing up Alternate History with like idk Dan Dare and Thunderbirds has done surprisingly well and is now a 2000ad property.

 

[Charles EP M.]

It’s probably why Ian Edington and D’Isreali’s What If War of the Worlds but real, and then mashing up Alternate History with like idk Dan Dare and Thunderbirds has done surprisingly well and is now a 2000ad property.

See also  Helium being branded as steampunk and not AH (which hey, that's a thing, steampunk and all other retro-futures are AH and do well but have got a different brand)

 

[BBadolato]

So what you guys are telling me is that instead of facing down Heinrich-Lee von Nazistein-Richmond in a grand showdown for the heart and soul of AH over bestsellers, we're both basically genre drifters without a home who would probably be meeting each other in the poor house?

On a serious note if AH really is just seen as a window-dressing excuse bastard unwanted by its mother and father, then how do you build out what is seen as a set piece into a genre of its own? Like do we emphasize the sheer storytelling potential, but what if to bring up @Coiler's point what we are writing is essentially seen as just fanfiction with all the negative baggage that comes with it? How do we get even get a booster seat at the child's table in terms of any kind of genuine respect, before we are even talking about a seat at the table?

Mind you, I've taken a really AH-heavy approach to some fanfiction and it has been a fun exercise because you can take the plot to interesting places and maybe get some fun character interactions out of it.

 

[ChrisNuttall]

I'll come to others comments a bit later when I have more time, but I would take a moment to highlight - as seen in the article itself - almost every other genre has managed to achieve this apparently impossible goal as you've described. The Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) for example has had its share of internal problems over the years, but also has a huge membership and has been instrumental in dealing with relacitrant publishers and other legal issues over the decades.

Obviously that's the Gold Star treatment for such an organisation, but if the Alternate History genre is apparently unable to achieve this then to me that points to only two potential answers:

- It's either too atomised to allow for any form of centralised support organisation to form itself;
- or it isn't actually a genre and therefore lacks the internal coherence to ever become anything more self-defined that would allow a centralised support organisation to form

The horrible cynic in me thinks that their success stemmed, at least in part, from coming into being well before social media. <grin>. It was a lot easier to calm down and consider problems logically, without letting people push you into acting fast, although it didn't always work well - the breendoggle, for example.

AH is a genre, but it draws heavily from others (historical, MIL-SF, fantasy, romance, literary) that it is easy to have the others overshadow the AH. For example, is The Two Georges AH or a detective novel? Is Axis of Time AH or Mil-SF?

Chris

 

[Charles EP M.]

On a serious note if AH really is just seen as a window-dressing excuse bastard unwanted by its mother and father, then how do you build out what is seen as a set piece into a genre of its own?

The three ways to achieve this, orceven just two of them, are likely:

A) Sales - if AH sells consistently, even if niche money, it's up there with extreme horror, whychoose romance etc as something to notice and talk about

B) Literary Achievement/Being Cool - some AH that gets talked up as a big achievement, or is considered well cool by hip people (60s Marvel was big with college kids), or both. Some books, shows, films, and games already have pulled this off, but more of them is good

C) Time - what was once looked down on and seen as bad can become Good Actually if enough fans stay fans & get to write the histories, and the audience grows.

 

[Coiler]

On a serious note if AH really is just seen as a window-dressing excuse bastard unwanted by its mother and father, then how do you build out what is seen as a set piece into a genre of its own?

The word "genre" brings up how I consider AH in two major blocks: "AH as a setting" and "AH as a genre".

The issue with "AH as a setting" is that the setting can be (and sometimes is) changed with varying degrees of difficulty. Like the original book version of Battle Royale was in an AH WW2 Japanese victory. That was so incidental to the main death game story that the movie changed the background without any real issue.

Then you have worse examples like Walt Graggs The Red Line, a 1980s Fuldapocalypse made "contemporary " by changing a few weapon names and creating a contrived setup to shift political geography back to 1988 lines.

I could go on real to hypothetical: There's a submarine novel series against an evil super South Africa that you could probably have finessed the Draka into something like them. Twisting Yiddish Policemans Union into just a murder mystery taking place in an Alaskan town with an abnormally high Jewish population probably wouldn't be good but could be possible. You probably get the idea.

Then you have "AH as a genre " where the divergence and its ripples are the central point. One of best comparisons is actually Larry Bond esque "Big War Thrillers" imo.

Issue is its hard to write and harder to appeal to a large audience. Turtledove is basically the only author I know whose done sustained mass market AH As A Genre and you can undoubtedly see the compromises he's had to make (ie massive softness with historical figures and really blatant parallels) in order to do so.

 

[Charles EP M.]

you can undoubtedly see the compromises he's had to make (ie massive softness with historical figures and really blatant parallels) in order to do so.

The Anno Dracula sequels do this as well because Vampire WW1 is more commercial than Vampire Dogger Bank War. One big diversion in the fifth book, vampires and yokai getting a leased city state in Japan, is basically so the sixth can do the Hong Kong Handover but it's 90s cyberpunk Japan

 

[RyanF]

The Anno Dracula sequels do this as well because Vampire WW1 is more commercial than Vampire Dogger Bank War. One big diversion in the fifth book, vampires and yokai getting a leased city state in Japan, is basically so the sixth can do the Hong Kong Handover but it's 90s cyberpunk Japan

You see that with a lot of historical events becoming vampiric versions in the series. Instead of the Iranian embassy siege, it's the Romanian embassy siege. Instead of the Concert for Bangladesh, it's the Concert for Transylvania. It's still the 'Rivers of Blood' speech, but it's literal.

 

[Charles EP M.]

You see that with a lot of historical events becoming vampiric versions in the series. Instead of the Iranian embassy siege, it's the Romanian embassy siege. Instead of the Concert for Bangladesh, it's the Concert for Transylvania. It's still the 'Rivers of Blood' speech, but it's literal.

Coppola's Dracula but it's Apocalypse Now filming in Transylvania!

 

[AH Layard]

On a serious note if AH really is just seen as a window-dressing excuse bastard unwanted by its mother and father, then how do you build out what is seen as a set piece into a genre of its own? Like do we emphasize the sheer storytelling potential, but what if to bring up @Coiler's point what we are writing is essentially seen as just fanfiction with all the negative baggage that comes with it? How do we get even get a booster seat at the child's table in terms of any kind of genuine respect, before we are even talking about a seat at the table?

I am much less informed and experienced than most here about the genre, but I think countering the perception of AH as fan fiction or wish fulfilment involves stressing the potential of what it can achieve. I don’t think this anywhere near covers it but some initial thoughts:

I recall attending a lecture by the esteemed Richard Evans about ten years ago in which he trashed the genre for all the familiar reasons e.g. encourages extreme ideology through Nazi victory scenarios, and can only focus on high politics rather than society, culture, ideas (clearly needed to read Look to the West!). In this view, AH has no historical value. But while yes it’s fiction and entirely speculative, it involves applying counterfactual reasoning to historical questions and shining a light on these, e.g. how far was R. Churchill’s ‘Tory Democracy’ ever a threat to the Liberals and the labour movement? Part of the value of History as a discipline is understanding that our current society and ideas are contingent on so many prior events and decisions, and there are some lost ideas that we can recuperate.

It takes a particular kind of skill and research to produce a world or scenario that seems credible and plausible while using your creativity and imagination to tell a compelling story. For science fiction this is true but with plausibility linked to scientific possibility, AH is more similar to historical fiction - but instead of extrapolating/embellishing between known points, it’s taking a known point and everything before and extrapolating forward.

 

[ChrisNuttall]

It would be nice if we could guarantee an alternate history book being a bestseller, but any author worthy of the name will tell you that the success or failure of any particular book is very rarely guaranteed unless you happen to be a very big name indeed. JK Rowling, for example. It would certainly help if they was a great deal of buzz around any book when it was launched, but even that is not guaranteed. For example, I have sold over 26364 copies of The Invasion Of 1950 without that much promotion, but other books that got more promotion did not do so well.

Even if we did get an AH bestseller, there would be no guarantee that it would spread to other books and authors.

I like the idea of a magazine, but frankly the chances of making any profit would be very limited. I used to run an online alternate history newsletter and it was very hard to keep contributors contributing for more than a few months, if that; it was a nightmare to get feedback and debate even when that was about the only incentive I could offer my writers. It might be possible to start something on Substack, with paid memberships, but there would be issues that would need to be overcome. For example, I would like to write a serial, but I would also want to have republication rights and that could easily prove problematic.

Any Writers Association for AH would have to offer something to its authors. What would most authors actually want? Critique is always helpful, particular from people who understand writing; there would be something was said for a critique group that discussed plot outlines before the book was actually written, then provided everything from development feedback to line editing. So would sharing samples of each other’s writing - I’ve had some success exchanging samples with other writers, creating some cross pollination - or helping to boost each other’s book.

It would take some time before we could match SFWA, assuming we ever could. We do not have the resources to hire lawyers (etc, etc) and even services like editing and cover design can cost a pretty penny - a decent editor can be quite expensive, unless you want to rely on beta readers and they aren’t always reliable. It would probably be better to start small and work our way up - if we set membership dues fairly low, at least at first, it would let us experiment with promotions and other efforts that might benefit us all. We would also need to find a way to avoid mean girl behaviour - SFWA is large enough to avoid the worst consequences of such behaviour, although this is hotly disputed, but we will be nowhere near that large at least at first. I suspect the only way to avoid it is to rotate leadership and keep firmly focused on our core function, rather than letting ourselves be distracted by the outside world. Our membership may have an opinion on anything from pineapple on pizza to modern politics, but the association itself should be strictly neutral.

Thoughts?

Chris

 

[Charles EP M.]

A key thing for any association would likely be allowing AH creators to know of publishers, reviewers etc to tap and scammers to avoid

 

[IanBertram]

A key thing for any association would likely be allowing AH creators to know of publishers, reviewers etc to tap and scammers to avoid

and agents if you have aspirations for the mainstream market.

 

[IanBertram]

This blog post by Charles Stross is sort of tangentially related, in that part of it is about how SF is perceived by others, but it's worth the read anyway (including the comments - he has a very low proportion of trolls, and they don't last long)

We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus - Charlie's Diary

 

[Charles EP M.]

He brings up Campbell and psychic powers which I learned about earlier this year and it gobsmacked me: psi-power is a scifi trope, despite really being magic, because one editor of one magazine believed in it and would give you money if you wrote about it

 

[IanBertram]

He brings up Campbell and psychic powers which I learned about earlier this year and it gobsmacked me: psi-power is a scifi trope, despite really being magic, because one editor of one magazine believed in it and would give you money if you wrote about it

Not just Psi - I remember a story in Analog about reincarnation too. If I remember correctly, it was about the search for a specific person who had just died. The idea was that without intervention, the former personality would go mad and in effect become a new child.

 

[Hendryk]

Who could be the André Breton analog who might write a Alternate History Manifesto? Short of providing a definitive definition of the genre, it would at least get the conversation started beyond our niche community.