I must say, first of all, that I'm extremely flattered.
Generally, I think it's in bad taste to engage reviews and I really try not to do it. It's too easy to fall into the awkward trap of the comedian explaining why his joke is actually funny. But there are some very engaging thoughts here, so I'll try and make some trenchant observations about choices I made and why I made such choices. I can't pretend to offer any kind of organized order.
First and most intriguing, Spanish Spy raises the issue of transiting a story from one form or media to another. In this case, the shift from online discussion / serial to a completed work. This is actually a fascinating issue, because we see this everywhere.
As has been pointed out - Dickens novels were originally written as serials, we are literally not reading them the way they were meant to be read. Serials actually have a long and storied history, there were a lot of newspaper fiction serials, running literally hundreds of chapters, like a predecessor to soap operas. Most of these are basically obscure now, unless there's some connection - Garrett Serviss 'Thomas Edison Goes to Mars', an unofficial sequel to a plagiarisation of Wells' War of the Worlds, or the saga of Varney the Vampire. My impression is that a lot of this stuff didn't cross over successfully.
But still, there are plenty of examples of transliteration from one medium, means of communication to another - Icelandic sagas meant to be recited get written down. Shakespeare's plays are studied by students in classrooms. The 1930's was a great era for serials - both literary serials, as in the works of Burroughs, or cinematic ones as in Buck Rogers. Success varies - I watched the 12 episode Flash Gordon serial in my living room in one straight binge, and it was pretty exhausting. I believe that the experience would have been much different an episode a shot over 12 weeks without all the accumulated baggage. But then again, Burroughs like Dickens manages to transfer very well from their different kinds of serials to novels. We have all watched movies that you can see were originally stage plays - highly verbose, limited sets, emphasis on certain kinds of interaction. You can see the fingerprints.
There often has to be some level of adaptation - I think we can look at Star Wars and Indiana Jones and see the adaptation of serial adventures and the serial format successfully into a new thing. More directly, there's a lot of book to movie adaptations - Jaws, or television to movie adaptations - Doctor Who. Things are lost, things are added, the flavour changes, the very viewing experience and position of the viewers shifts.
It's an endlessly fascinating area, and one that I tried to wrestle with when writing and then rewriting Axis of Andes. There were some caveats. The original version of Axis on Alternate History was not an evolved discussion. Basically, I knew from the start where I wanted to go, what I wanted to do, what the major beats and conflicts were, even some of my gags and how it was all going to end... more or less. So basically, I started out to write a sort of novel, I had a background writing novels and short stories, and I was adapting my story to the palette I had available. Which may mean later, when I was adapting it to a more convention format, I think it was very much adaptation friendly. It's akin to someone who wants to make a movie, lacks resources, does it as a graphic novel, and eventually, it gets picked up as a movie.
Unlike some alternate histories (I'm not judging) which are flat out explorations, this thing was already a 'novel' in its bones. Maybe that gives some fluidity, I'm not sure. Does this mean it's not authentic within the medium and format it originally emerged in? I'm not sure.
One thing I recall very vividly when adapting it, was being very sensitive to the exclusion of the dialogue. There was an ongoing discussion, and while I could claim my own work, it wasn't proper to include or claim others writing and posts. So literally, I had to strip out conversation and turn it into a monologue. This posed certain challenges. I could do it, because I had a clear idea from the start where I was going and what I was doing. BUT I can see situations where a more collegial or more open ended approach would make adaptation much more difficult.
One issue that I faced when adapting was 'filling in blanks' - the adapting the narrative exposed gaps which had to be filled in. I actually ended up writing a whole lot more. I estimate that as much as 25% may be new material. In some cases these gaps were things I'd always planned or wanted to do, but which ended up getting left behind and abandoned by the online running narrative. In other places, narrative segments were rearranged.
And there was a deliberate (and tedious) decision to switch the narrative to present tense to give it a sense of immediacy, which I hadn't needed when doing the original as a serial in real time. I think that there was a deliberate choice to try and retain the sensibility of the original work through adaptation.
Other issues posed challenges. For me, for both versions, the largest challenge was that I was tilling unplowed ground. If we write about the American Civil War, WWII or even WWI there's a certain universal cultural bedrock we can rely upon, starting with high school history classes, but including movies, television, popular culture etc. South America was much more terra incognita, it's a place on the map that everyone knows, but doesn't know much about. More than that, it's a place without a historical footprint in the minds of readers. So there were a lot of details to fill in. I literally had to build the context, the background, that other alternate history stories could much more take for granted. That in itself shaped how the narrative was structured and what the narrative demanded. Sometimes to me it seemed less a novel than some kind of abstract Jenga.
Perhaps that's actually a good way to describe Alternate Histories of this sort - they often don't fit into conventional novel or story formats, with rising arcs, dramatic plot points, etc. But rather, as a kind of academic Jenga, as interesting and useful in it's own way in exploring the human condition.
Axis, I think was something of a hybrid. As I said, I had a novel, or novel structure in mind - beginning, accumulating tension, protagonists and antagonists, epiphany/catharsis, climax, resolution, denouement. Thinking back to the way I approached Bear Cavalry, that's a self contained work, but I don't think it inherently incoporated literary structure. That's why I had to lens it through a framing device. An evolved product like Green Antarctica Ice and Mice, would be much more difficult to adapt in a satisfying way.
One thing with Axis and how it got written, perhaps as a result of the need to build the background and lay foundations which could not be taken for granted, was that the countries themselves became characters. They literally had pasts which drove their presents, internal dynamics which drove external dynamics, relationships. Axis was very much the story of nations as characters, collective characters, but characters nevertheless. This interested me a great deal.
Some things didn't interest me. You'll see no romantic subplots as in Michael Bay's Pearl Harbour. I thought early on employing a Studs Terkel narrative structure - a whole bunch of voices and vignettes. There are interludes like that, personal narratives of this or that individual, excepts from fictional books and histories, even a chapter that's essentially ripped out newspaper headlines - a technique borrowed from 1940's film noir. But these were serving the narrative thread, not dominating it. But it seemed to me that other formats, allowing individual narratives and voices to dominate distracted from what I wanted to do.
I'm not sure it was always successful. I remember after making the shift to present tense narrative uniformly, struggling with sections that were supposed to be excerpts from books, or character interactions. I felt making everything present tense gave things an immediacy, but then I had to struggle with the flattening effect of uniform use, or the jarring effect of switching tenses.
There was always the question of the voice, the appropriate tone. I struggled with 'pants shitting' because that's definitely not how historians write. Ultimately, I went with it, as true to the overall voice, the sensibility of the writing. Academic writing is often dry and careful, sometimes the excitement, the immediacy, the drama of life, its comedy and tragedy gets leached out. I would find this sometimes in reading histories, you're reading the recitation of facts and events, and then there's this epiphany where suddenly I'm struck by the sheer randomness of something, how it must have felt to those people actually experiencing it, without knowledge of future or context and how starkly shocking it must have been.
Ultimately, when you do something like this, you sit there and you have to constantly make decisions, which become chains of decision, following and binding, shaping you. And at this point, I come close to being the Comedian explaining how his unfunny joke is actually hilarious.
But it's actually a subject that interests me. If you look me up on Amazon, you'll find I did a series of books about the Canadian space opera, LEXX, which really is a wonderful exercise in surrealism, with an absolutely bizarre production history. And there I was absolutely obsessed with dissecting the creative process, how things come to be, how decisions got made, and how these decisions shaped events. I did nonfiction books on Doctor Who which explored intersections of culture and technology.
And now that I think of it, I went drilling down into these same issues with my Doctor Who alternate histories - The New Doctor, and A Change of Life. What drives creative choices, and once choices get made, where do they lead? With The New Doctor, I riffed off a real life incident, to chronicle a series where an ad hoc, underfunded, inexperienced crew got a license to the show, and try desperately to produce something while melting down off camera. With change of life, I used a series of real world unauthorized video productions from the 80's to chronicle a series which is driven by events off screen.
Yes, yes, I'm obviously shamelessly self promoting here. But I think they're all relevant points for discussion, and they're all terrific books which might interest readers here. Guys, i wouldn't peddle shit to you, I promise. Or peddle stuff so completely unrelated to interests or discussions that it's naked shilling.
So anyway, I don't think I'm being the Comedian trying to justify an unfunny joke. I'm just a guy who is fascinated with these issues and process. But I could be wrong. I should probably bring this to a close. I don't think I've embarrassed myself yet, but that may mean I should quite while I'm ahead.
I should probably wrap this up though. Let me offer a thought.
I think one of the driving forces for an artist or a writer, is not just finding expression for art, but finding a venue, seeking out a potential audience. I think that's why I hung with the alternate history forum. Here's a chance to do creative things and find an audience.
But alternate history forum is a live venue. You've got an audience only so long as you're in process.
Axis of Andes as a process or timeline was finished years ago. The audience had moved on. If I was lucky, once every year or every other year, someone would stumble across it and give it a few likes. Part of my motivation for moving it to a new medium, apart from money (not a big consideration, but yeah, it's in there) and adapting it to a new form and format was to chase an audience. It worked, I moved from a reader every now and then, to a handful of readers every month, and even reviews. I feel like the work is more alive now, than it was, because I engage. Even the financial side, minimal as it is, is a form of validation.
Ultimately, I think art is not a thing in and of itself, but a form of communication, and we're driven by a need to find someone to communicate with.
Anyway, some thoughts.
Den....
PS: To Spanish Spy, thank you for your thoughts. I hope you do not take this response amiss. And thank you for your review.