• Hi Guest!

    The costs of running this forum are covered by Sea Lion Press. If you'd like to help support the company and the forum, visit patreon.com/sealionpress

Alternate History General Discussion

EdT's early timelines are great examples of marrying the faux-history textbooks with strong central characters.

It helps, frankly, that EdT is a wittier and more able writer than most authors who try the scrapbook approach. And the peril is that you can slip into Great Man history quite easily- Randolph Churchill and Oswald Mosley were fascinating figures, but I doubt either of them could have changed the world so seismically as those stories suggest. That might be unfair to hold against a work of fiction, of course.

Still, Fight and Be Right especially is a brilliant example of how you can do the globe-spanning history that chases tangents and odd details, so long as there's a really clear through line for the main plot.
 
EdT's early timelines are great examples of marrying the faux-history textbooks with strong central characters.

It helps, frankly, that EdT is a wittier and more able writer than most authors who try the scrapbook approach. And the peril is that you can slip into Great Man history quite easily- Randolph Churchill and Oswald Mosley were fascinating figures, but I doubt either of them could have changed the world so seismically as those stories suggest. That might be unfair to hold against a work of fiction, of course.

Still, Fight and Be Right especially is a brilliant example of how you can do the globe-spanning history that chases tangents and odd details, so long as there's a really clear through line for the main plot.
I was going to mention that Fight and Be Right is an excellent example of a faux historical story which has strong characters. EdT was kind of the gold standard for that form of story telling from what I’ve seen.

On another note I was also considering recently what I think in my opinion is the best Mainstream Alternate History novel and it seems to point to Yiddish Policemen’s Union. A interesting alternate world, a good POD alongside an actual good array of characters and a well done mystery story that’s compelling and uses it’s alternate world to help tell it.
 
On another note I was also considering recently what I think in my opinion is the best Mainstream Alternate History novel and it seems to point to Yiddish Policemen’s Union. A interesting alternate world, a good POD alongside an actual good array of characters and a well done mystery story that’s compelling and uses it’s alternate world to help tell it.

Michael Chabon writes books whose content very much appeals to me but I always bounce off his style and can't get absorbed in it. I've never finished one of his books.
 
I liked FABR a lot but neither Churchill ever really felt like a real person to me, they were more like, avatars of historical forces. Maybe it was the format. Bearfish did it best cause you get to see the massive impacts of a pretty simple POD decades on from the perspective of ordinary people.
 
Bearfish did it best cause you get to see the massive impacts of a pretty simple POD decades on from the perspective of ordinary people.

Bearfish remains my very favourite AH I've ever read.

Which rather shows that talent means you can break all the general rules cos there's no plot, no through line, no central character, just a really interesting scenario explored with wit and skill.
 
Michael Chabon writes books whose content very much appeals to me but I always bounce off his style and can't get absorbed in it. I've never finished one of his books.
I think Yiddish Policemen’s Union works better because the main character isn’t your typical Chabon character and flourishes help ground the character more (like a fear of the dark).

But it’s understandable, he’s one of those writers who’s style can alienate like Ballard etc.
 
I’m currently writing an alternate history story which is quite local and is mainly centred around the perspective of David, a Gay stoner activist who works in a bookshop, with appearances from other folks to allow a sense of the wider world.

Whilst there is brief mentions of the wider world beyond Britain it’s mainly Nottinghamshire focused, as an effort to do something more, low key.
This is the most on-brand idea I've ever seen you write about. Like, this is what I'd think about if someone were to ask me what the quintessential Time Enough idea would be.
 
This is the most on-brand idea I've ever seen you write about. Like, this is what I'd think about if someone were to ask me what the quintessential Time Enough idea would be.
You can read it here, it’s very me (and so is the List that inspired it).

But it also an attempt by me to do political alternate history that isn’t about the big titans constantly.
 
EdT's early timelines are great examples of marrying the faux-history textbooks with strong central characters.

Occurs to me that real history books on real people will have strong central 'characters' too, and often real weirdos - something I like in the LTTW's, where you'll get mad scientists and rebel vigilantes and demented overlords and cross-kingdom romance in the middle of the more normal political figures because sometimes that absolutely happens. So that happening with the faux-histories only makes sense, and should just happen more especially when you have real people who were really weird to work with. (The Moscow Option does this too)
 
Occurs to me that real history books on real people will have strong central 'characters' too, and often real weirdos - something I like in the LTTW's, where you'll get mad scientists and rebel vigilantes and demented overlords and cross-kingdom romance in the middle of the more normal political figures because sometimes that absolutely happens. So that happening with the faux-histories only makes sense, and should just happen more especially when you have real people who were really weird to work with. (The Moscow Option does this too)

Andrew Gordon's The Rules of the Game is a great example of military history that centers around personalities. It has the dashing rebel Beatty, the cautious but likeable Jellicoe, and the Organization Man Evan-Thomas (whose career it goes into a lot, and arguably too much detail on). And it does this while also going into gargantuan technical detail.
 
With today being World UFO Day, it seems a good time to mention you can still pick my book on the 1990s AH-UFO TV series Dark Skies , described by the show’s co-creator Bryce Zabel as “the perfect complement to the series itself.” You can still pick it up from Obverse Books here.
 
With today being World UFO Day, it seems a good time to mention you can still pick my book on the 1990s AH-UFO TV series Dark Skies , described by the show’s co-creator Bryce Zabel as “the perfect complement to the series itself.” You can still pick it up from Obverse Books here.

wait

hang on

firstly I need to get a copy of this

secondly, Bryce Zybel the guy who now writes AH?
 
With today being World UFO Day, it seems a good time to mention you can still pick my book on the 1990s AH-UFO TV series Dark Skies , described by the show’s co-creator Bryce Zabel as “the perfect complement to the series itself.” You can still pick it up from Obverse Books here.

I can testify to purchasing this being a sound decision.
 
There's just so much you can do with boxing (or MMA, or wrestling/grappling, or any other individual combat sport). Both because of the "cultural window" for lack of a better word that it brings and because organizational differences would mean more than in other sports.

(IOTL, one of, and perhaps the biggest reason for the decline of boxing in popular culture is the glut of "alphabet belts" by various independent sanctioning groups. "Championships" have become diluted and confusing as a result)
 
I keep thinking there's got to be an AH story to be told via a wrestling show - the structure and rules, the audience, who's wrestling and where they're from, the gimmicks* - and all it lacks is little things like The Plot and Characters.

* The old tired trope of the Foreign Heel Who Is Foreign is steeped in pop-history and stereotypes, for example, all of which could be different.
 
I keep thinking there's got to be an AH story to be told via a wrestling show - the structure and rules, the audience, who's wrestling and where they're from, the gimmicks* - and all it lacks is little things like The Plot and Characters.

* The old tired trope of the Foreign Heel Who Is Foreign is steeped in pop-history and stereotypes, for example, all of which could be different.
I have a dumb idea based around this that is basically “Victory Road 2012 but with Octavian Ticu and Constantin Tutu” in a scenario where Ticu remained a boxer and the April 2009 protests turned hot and Russia invaded and both Ticu and Tutu had to emigrate and uh,idk,remained involved in sports til someone in TNA notices them and,like,signs them up to the company,with their match at Victory Road 12 being a culmination of the storyline where they have a feud surrounding national identity-Ticu as the Romanian Unionist and Tutu as the hardcore Moldovinist/Russophile.
 
I have a dumb idea based around this that is basically “Victory Road 2012 but with Octavian Ticu and Constantin Tutu” in a scenario where Ticu remained a boxer and the April 2009 protests turned hot and Russia invaded and both Ticu and Tutu had to emigrate and uh,idk,remained involved in sports til someone in TNA notices them and,like,signs them up to the company,with their match at Victory Road 12 being a culmination of the storyline where they have a feud surrounding national identity-Ticu as the Romanian Unionist and Tutu as the hardcore Moldovinist/Russophile.
What a dystopia- TNA making a storyline that doesn’t suck or involve Hulk Hogan.
 
Back
Top