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Alternate History General Discussion

I always find some stories where what is obviously the favored ideology of the author dominating the world, or at least doing better, to be kind of sad. It’s like their beliefs have been so beaten down in the real world they have to cope by imagining a world where things went the way they wanted.

Anyways, something I do like in timelines is a look into the popular culture of the society they are in. Like if a socialist Britain emerged in the 1900s or a Republican Britain in the 1800s, you would bet there would be a lot more literature on the Levellers or Robert Owen than King James or Queen Elizabeth.
 
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Christian said:
I always find some stories where what is obviously the favored ideology of the author dominating the world, or at least doing better, to be kind of sad. It’s like their beliefs have been so beaten down in the real world they have to cope by imagining a world where things went the way they wanted.
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George Orwell, you're dead! Stop posting!
 
Christian said:
I always find some stories where what is obviously the favored ideology of the author dominating the world, or at least doing better, to be kind of sad. It’s like their beliefs have been so beaten down in the real world they have to cope by imagining a world where things went the way they wanted.

Anyways, something I do like in timelines is a look into the popular culture of the society they are in. Like if a socialist Britain emerged in the 1900s or a Republican Britain in the 1800s, you would bet there would be a lot more literature on the Levellers or Robert Owen than King James or Queen Elizabeth.
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One thing I’ve been thinking about is, if Britain didn’t have a queen during such a large swathe of the nineteenth century (either with or without a monarchy), would Elizabeth Tudor be remembered as a feminist hero? That way, having a female head of state, representing national opposition to foreign invasion, would seem a vindication of women in power - rather than it being just a reflection of its present/recent history.
 
Christian said:
I always find some stories where what is obviously the favored ideology of the author dominating the world, or at least doing better, to be kind of sad. It’s like their beliefs have been so beaten down in the real world they have to cope by imagining a world where things went the way they wanted.
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If you can't make the world better and you can't make the world worse, there's not really much you can do with Alternate History.
 
Avian Overlord said:
If you can't make the world better and you can't make the world worse, there's not really much you can do with Alternate History.
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I think this is why I try to not insert what I really believe in my stories. If you do, you run the risk of turning it into a masturbatory power fantasy mourning about what could have been. Plus, it runs into the issue of “End of History” nonsense where it is utterly dominant and there is no tension at all.

My preference is to try and look at a different world. Maybe it’s better, but it is very different.

Though enough of cynicism. Anyone have some good recent alternate history stories to recommend? I think I’ve been getting really into that Democrat Trump in the other site. So ridiculous you can tell the writer has a lot of fun making all those Trump gaffs but on the other side.
 
Avian Overlord said:
If you can't make the world better and you can't make the world worse, there's not really much you can do with Alternate History.
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You can make the world different, without making it better or worse. Or you could tell a story on a scale which is not the entire world.

Or more fundamentally, the problem isn't about whether the world is better or worse, it's a stylistic one about how it's being made obvious that the author's thumb is on the scales. It's a question of how things are written more than whether the world is better or worse.
 
Jared said:
You can make the world different, without making it better or worse. Or you could tell a story on a scale which is not the entire world.

Or more fundamentally, the problem isn't about whether the world is better or worse, it's a stylistic one about how it's being made obvious that the author's thumb is on the scales. It's a question of how things are written more than whether the world is better or worse.
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Whether or not it's better or worse depends on the views of the reader compared to whatever occurs in the TL.

And for me usually I prefer when I am not 100% aware of whom the author is pushing the scale down for (tho im fairly sure almost every author does so, just to varying levels of obvious)
 
Christian said:
Anyways, something I do like in timelines is a look into the popular culture of the society they are in. Like if a socialist Britain emerged in the 1900s or a Republican Britain in the 1800s, you would bet there would be a lot more literature on the Levellers or Robert Owen than King James or Queen Elizabeth.
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This is always fascinating - in part because it means the author has put a lot more effort into worldbuilding than just the politics. Malê Rising and Unreformed Kingdom are good examples of this.


Jared said:
it's a stylistic one about how it's being made obvious that the author's thumb is on the scales
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I suppose there's two ways it can go with the genre - the focus can be the POD, and then see what happens, which requires no thumb, but is rather random - or the focus is the emergence of a different society/country, which needs at least some thumbing of the scales to get history into the space the author wants to write about. Gordon Banks is a good example of this, the author himself said:

anthonyjwells said:
The second was to try and get a plausible far-right Britain. As people have said, all the choices were deliberately stacked to lead to a far-right takeover. It wasn't a story where I had a POD and pondered what the most likely outcome was, it was whether I could get the cards to fall in a way that produced a plausible path to a far-right government. The thought behind it was along the lines of the Michael Rosen poem - the "Fascism arrives as your friend" one - to do a Nazi-ish British that wasn't in your face jackboots from the start, but that would gradually devolve in that direction out of the operation of our existing political system going very wrong. I wanted to try a scenario where the far-right (and those voting for them) didn't think they were the baddies, but were doing things that they thought were necessary in the face or terrorism or whatever, and where an inch-by-inch slide towards an authoritarian government was at least sort of plausible.
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Yülia said:
Whether or not it's better or worse depends on the views of the reader compared to whatever occurs in the TL.

And for me usually I prefer when I am not 100% aware of whom the author is pushing the scale down for (tho im fairly sure almost every author does so, just to varying levels of obvious)
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True that the writer can push the scale.

But that does not mean that they agree that their push is one they would agree with. A good writer like a good debator can take up views they disagree with.
 
Mark said:
True that the writer can push the scale.

But that does not mean that they agree that their push is one they would agree with. A good writer like a good debator can take up views they disagree with.
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That good writer would be pushing the scale in a way that doesnt make it obvious that they're agreeing with.

The difference between a TL where the Confederates survive the civil war and a TL were the Confederates take DC, win the war, Complete all their Golden Circle Dreams, never abolish Slavery and stay as a premiere power of the world without any domestic problems.

The former is a good writer pushing the scale for the story, the other is a writer blatantly making their preferences known and exceptionally successful beyond any reason.
 
Yülia said:
That good writer would be pushing the scale in a way that doesnt make it obvious that they're agreeing with.

The difference between a TL where the Confederates survive the civil war and a TL were the Confederates take DC, win the war, Complete all their Golden Circle Dreams, never abolish Slavery and stay as a premiere power of the world without any domestic problems.

The former is a good writer pushing the scale for the story, the other is a writer blatantly making their preferences known and exceptionally successful beyond any reason.
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Yes and no.
For realistic AH yes
For ASB and ISOT then not necessarily e.g. Guns of the South
 
There is a disappointing lack of timelines where the greatest monarch in the British Isles is named Arthur and they throw in a bunch of weirdly placed Arthurian mythic references.

Really disappointed in you Brits! Do better!

Or, or, a Prime Minister or Queen named Gwen or Guin. I’m not picky.
 
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