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Alternate History General Discussion

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SpanishSpy said:
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I know this is a serious response to a meme picture, but it actually varies widely how much attention to (real or perceived) plausibility alternate history will get. It depends a lot on the audience (ordinary audiences will generally just accept a lot for the sake of the story), the author (Stirling's gauntlet throwing WRT the Draka did them no favors), and the style (The somewhat true stereotype is that WWII, ACW, or Fulda Gap War AH will get a ton of nitpicking over the smallest military details, while other types don't).
 
Japhy said:
Tfw genre riddled with people who ignore the human element because they can't human well pretends that they can have horny g/b/nbf.
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My fiancé thinks the entire genre is full of losers and hates that I spend anytime on this forum or the Zoo.


She doesn’t understand my need for timelines in a day, decking the shuffle, Star Wars jokes/memes, or successful Jacobite timelines. I will concede that she’s probably right on all the boring ass Byzantine timelines and endless self-insert A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones works. Most boring fanfic possible.
 
TR1996 said:
Plants are a pretty broad group, surely you can find some that are interesting?
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I'm rather practical, so the plants I like to try and keep alive and grow is herbs like sage and basil etc. The sage is growing rather well actually.
Coiler said:
To once again be the serious killjoy, I can totally understand how timeline AH is extremely hard for outsiders to "get".
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Yeah, indeed it's much easier to try and just get people to read novels instead (though would often say try and pitch ones like Yiddish Policemen's Union or SS-GB instead of the likes of Turtledove).
 
Time Enough said:
Yeah, indeed it's much easier to try and just get people to read novels instead (though would often say try and pitch ones like Yiddish Policemen's Union or SS-GB instead of the likes of Turtledove).
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As I’ve said before, Turtledove is a great author for bookish twelve year olds, a classic of the 1980s days where a lot of genre fiction was written at a level we’d recognise as YA today. Which is not a criticism!

But if I wanted to convince someone the genre had meat, yes, Chabon would be the way. Or Deighton and Harris for more adventure-y stuff.
 
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Coiler said:
To once again be the serious killjoy, I can totally understand how timeline AH is extremely hard for outsiders to "get".
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A lot of the content on this forum is list of politicians you're supposed to divine the means of through knowledge of the individuals. It's kind of the modern abstract art of alternate history.

Much easier to direct new readers to more narrative works.
 
I have absolutely no desire for my loved ones to share my hobbies. I don't want to encourage them to participate or understand them and find it baffling that other people do.

The idea of someone I love reading the bullshit I post here or on a football forum just seems like something with lots of down sides and no upsides.

It's much better for them to just be happy for my success when I get a story published or my team wins but blissfully ignorant of the details.

But then I don't often recommend the genre to other people and I don't really care if it grows at all. I feel some professional duty to try and market sea lion press books in some way, I'm thinking of various ideas about how to do that but that's because I like a lot of the authors and want to help them out.

From my perspective as a reader, it doesn't really help me in any way for it to become more popular or accessible. Cos I like what currently exists. I haven't read all the good ah that is currently produced so I don't really need more.

And the more mainstream works appeal to me less than the amateur niche stuff so a more professional scene is likely to be less interesting to me.
 
SenatorChickpea said:
As I’ve said before, Turtledove is a great author for bookish twelve year olds, a classic of the 1980s days where a lot of genre fiction was written at a level we’d recognise as YA today. Which is not a criticism!

But if I wanted to convince someone the genre had meat, yes, Chabon would be the way. Or Deighton and Harris for more adventure-y stuff.
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I’ve noticed there’s a degree of what we might as well call entry-level fiction. To use fantasy as an example, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is brilliant as well as being semi-AH, but it is very hard going. One would be better starting with The Worst Witch, then Harry Potter, then move up to Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. You can’t do it in reverse so easily.

For alternate history, books like The Guns of the South or Island in the Sea of Time are accessible to new readers (or books like WorldWar, which have a cool factor), even though they are technically less meaty than How Few Remain or Hitler Has Won. Books like The Years of Rice and Salt are very deep, but less easy to access unless you already believe the genre has value.

TL:DR, light AH is a gateway to harder and deeper AH.
 
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