Alternate History General Discussion

[Japhy]

I don't get the appeal of ISOTs. Like, at all.

 

[Jared]

I don't get the appeal of ISOTs. Like, at all.

Likewise. I read the original ISOT series (though it took several goes to finish the third volume). Since then, I’ve bounced off every one I’ve tried to read, Ring of Fire included.

Same applies to self-inserts, “you wake up as” and so forth. Just can’t get into them.

 

[Talwar]

I can enjoy (and have written) an ISOT that is more about people grappling with a disruptive black swan event rather than a case of wish fulfillment.

Self-inserts are a harder sell for me.

 

[Jared]

Thank you, I was quite pleased when I got into a four-way tie for fourth place with it.

This community used to have excellent writing be common-place.

There’s still excellent writing, but the level of participation in the vignette contests has dropped considerably.

Im wondering whether there would be some interest in a contest for longer stories - say 5000-17000 words, short stories and novelette length rather than vignette and flash fiction length. Some over a suitable time period, perhaps 3-4 months.

Does require considerably more investment of writers’ time, of course, but on the other hand it does give more potentially saleable product if writers want to try onselling it.

 

[Lilitou]

I don't get the appeal of ISOTs. Like, at all.

Likewise. I read the original ISOT series (though it took several goes to finish the third volume). Since then, I’ve bounced off every one I’ve tried to read, Ring of Fire included.

Same applies to self-inserts, “you wake up as” and so forth. Just can’t get into them.

I was honestly much the same until I read @iainbhx's Azureverse. I don't know if I enjoyed it because its a good ISOT or because its a good deconstruction of ISOTs and their tropes, though.

 

[Thande]

I was honestly much the same until I read @iainbhx's Azureverse. I don't know if I enjoyed it because its a good ISOT or because its a good deconstruction of ISOTs and their tropes, though.

Both - the level of research and the fact that characters aren't cardboard stereotypes. "What would polarising free-marketeer Mrs Thatcher do if the country was transported to 1730" - er, she'd form a National Government with Labour and reinstitute rationing, because that's what any PM who isn't completely mad would do in such a crisis.

 

[iainbhx]

I aim to please. Of course, it was never meant to grow into the monster it became.

One day I might produce “Shuffling the ISOTs” - where each PM from say 1945 deals with a 250 year displacement. Of course, the challenges are different each time. 1945, I fear, would end in tragedy.

 

[OwenM]

I can enjoy (and have written) an ISOT that is more about people grappling with a disruptive black swan event rather than a case of wish fulfillment.

Self-inserts are a harder sell for me.

Yeah I would say as a general rule ISOTs are better the more focus is on the reactions of the wourld outside the ISOTed area/people to new ideas and the history that would have been rather than the people from the future getting to change things as they like.

 

[ChrisNuttall]

Both - the level of research and the fact that characters aren't cardboard stereotypes. "What would polarising free-marketeer Mrs Thatcher do if the country was transported to 1730" - er, she'd form a National Government with Labour and reinstitute rationing, because that's what any PM who isn't completely mad would do in such a crisis.

Thatcher wasn't stupid. In 1730, the odds of a female PM would be about the same as the world turning into a disc. Everything she knew about politics would be wrong ... And i've probably just given this more thought than it deserves.

Personally, I've always liked the interaction between future concepts and the past.

 

[Lilitou]

Yeah I would say as a general rule ISOTs are better the more focus is on the reactions of the wourld outside the ISOTed area/people to new ideas and the history that would have been rather than the people from the future getting to change things as they like.

I can't remember the name now, but there's also a good ISOT where a serviceman is sent back to medieval Iceland and pretty much every ISOT trope is deconstructed, with him dying without really changing much; essentially how it's most likely to actually go if one person got ISOTed.

 

[OwenM]

I can't remember the name now, but there's also a good ISOT where a serviceman is sent back to medieval Iceland and pretty much every ISOT trope is deconstructed, with him dying without really changing much; essentially how it's most likely to actually go if one person got ISOTed.

The Man Who Came Early, IIRC.
I think it's a 50s one.

 

[Thande]

Thatcher wasn't stupid. In 1730, the odds of a female PM would be about the same as the world turning into a disc. Everything she knew about politics would be wrong ... And i've probably just given this more thought than it deserves.

Personally, I've always liked the interaction between future concepts and the past.

My other favourite thing in the Azureverse is where Paddy Ashdown meets Ben Franklin and they have a long discussion in which Ashdown tries to explain to Franklin how things are different, and the moment of realisation is Franklin saying something like "Oh, there's a Tory government? No wonder things have gone to pot."

How many countries in the world are there where you can go back 250 years and people still recognise the political terminology as current?

 

[Gary Oswald]

The Man Who Came Early, IIRC.
I think it's a 50s one.

Poul Anderson is the best (sometimes anyway).

I love 'the Last Crusade' for similar reasons except if 'The Man Who Came Early' is about the lead constantly rolling 0s, 'Last Crusade' has them constantly rolling 6s and both are super entertaining.

 

[Von Callay]

I can't remember the name now, but there's also a good ISOT where a serviceman is sent back to medieval Iceland and pretty much every ISOT trope is deconstructed, with him dying without really changing much; essentially how it's most likely to actually go if one person got ISOTed.

@OwenM is right, it's "The Man Who Came Early" by Poul Anderson. A US military policeman stationed on Iceland in 1956 is kicked a thousand years back in time, and it does not go well for him.

It's a dark and sobering story about what an alien place the past really is, but it's also a story that I don't know how much point there would be in telling again.

 

[OwenM]

@OwenM is right, it's "The Man Who Came Early" by Poul Anderson. A US military policeman stationed on Iceland in 1956 is kicked a thousand years back in time, and it does not go well for him.

It's a dark and sobering story about what an alien place the past really is, but it's also a story that I don't know how much point there would be in telling again.

To the extent there is I think it would be to do with the different ways different parts of the past would find modern society alien.

 

[Von Callay]

To the extent there is I think it would be to do with the different ways different parts of the past would find modern society alien.

Certainly, but it wouldn't be quite the same. You could write "The Woman Who Came Early" and it would probably be even darker and nastier than this, but it doesn't quite hit the same point. You go into the Anderson story thinking Gerald Roberts, a man with a thousand years advantage on history, ought to be a short time removed from making himself King of Iceland launching fleets of steamships to discover the New World, because he legitimately does have a lot of valuable, powerful knowledge they don't. Exploring how actually fucked he is subverts that expectation, especially if you've already read Lest Darkness Fall.

I don't have the same sense of needing to be disillusioned about how much worse it might go if the story was instead about Jennifer Roberts.

 

[Thande]

I always wanted to see a time travel story where stereotypically very conservative or old-fashioned people from past eras, reactionary monarchs and the like, wholeheartedly embrace our era's values, because any other change pales into insignificance if it comes together with knowing they won't lose half their children to infant mortality.

 

[ChrisNuttall]

I always wanted to see a time travel story where stereotypically very conservative or old-fashioned people from past eras, reactionary monarchs and the like, wholeheartedly embrace our era's values, because any other change pales into insignificance if it comes together with knowing they won't lose half their children to infant mortality.

That would be a fun story to do. How realistic, on the other hand, I don't know.

Chris

 

[Lilitou]

I always wanted to see a time travel story where stereotypically very conservative or old-fashioned people from past eras, reactionary monarchs and the like, wholeheartedly embrace our era's values, because any other change pales into insignificance if it comes together with knowing they won't lose half their children to infant mortality.

This is touched on in Azureverse too ofc, what with Frederick William I

 

[Qaz_plm]

That would be a fun story to do. How realistic, on the other hand, I don't know.

Chris

Ah yes realism the most important thing way it comes to stories where places are magically sent back to the past