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Alternate History General Discussion

I, for one, enjoy promoting the genre so we get writers with new spins on the genre so I can read new and interesting alternate history - it's why I'm so intent on banging the drum for Arturo Serrano - he's the most original author in the genre I've seen in a decade.

Regarding loved ones - the big issue is that I don't consider my parents 'loved ones' and as such I loathe the idea of them getting involved with this (I have an even more hostile gut reaction to the idea of them getting involved with my dancing). A cousin may get a better response.

I have one IRL friend who's into AH, and he has an account here he's never used, and I'm trying to bug him into being more active.
 
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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 may be wrong but I think we get the list-of-politicians format from narrative works, which would use politicians and other well-known people to imply worldbuilding. The big difference is the narrative 'lighter' works will use people that a wider audience will have heard of and stuff for nerds can go into deeper material.

Give it a few years and that can change though! The Dark Future pulps for Games Workshop said the President was Oliver North, which in the early 90s is referencing the very recent Iran-Contra scandal and implying things about the dark corrupt late-90s dystopia - all for a target audience of 20-something game players. Now, if you reprinted the book, that same demographic wouldn't get the joke but if it was aimed at AH wonks like us...
 
Mrs. T is quite supportive of my writing in principle and has enjoyed my past creations (such as the novella in @Hendryk 's book). She'll talk through plot or character questions if I pose them to her, provide critical feedback if I put a draft in front of her, and encourage me to seek out markets.

On the other hand, she's not interested in participating here or at the other place (though she did give a play-by-post D&D game a brief try) and I'm totally fine with that.
 


Why is that not ok though?

Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy opens with the entire world being destroyed which kills billions of people, most of whom aren't white. And we spend absolutely no time to explore that, we instead follow our white english protagonist as he bounces around the galaxy as the presumably last human alive.

And that's an exaggerated example but it's to an extent what all post apocalyptic fiction does. It uses tragedies as background and doesn't/can't explore the pain of every one to be written out.

I think fiction not only can mention tragedies without dwelling on them, but depending on the story being written should do that. Sometimes the story isn't the tragedy, it's the personal story within the greater events.

I mean certainly Arturo Serrano has background tragedies in his novel that never get shown as to what they mean to the people on the ground.

I don't innately think it's a wrong thing and I am always wary of attempts to add more limits to creativity by ruling out ways of telling stories entirely. Hard cans and cannots are not useful for writing, I feel, so much of whether things work or not is based on vibes.
 
Why is that not ok though?

Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy opens with the entire world being destroyed which kills billions of people, most of whom aren't white. And we spend absolutely no time to explore that, we instead follow our white english protagonist as he bounces around the galaxy as the presumably last human alive.

And that's an exaggerated example but it's to an extent what all post apocalyptic fiction does. It uses tragedies as background and doesn't/can't explore the pain of every one to be written out.

I think fiction not only can mention tragedies without dwelling on them, but depending on the story being written should do that. Sometimes the story isn't the tragedy, it's the personal story within the greater events.

I mean certainly Arturo Serrano has background tragedies in his novel that never get shown as to what they mean to the people on the ground.

I don't innately think it's a wrong thing and I am always wary of attempts to add more limits to creativity by ruling out ways of telling stories entirely. Hard cans and cannots are not useful for writing, I feel, so much of whether things work or not is based on vibes.
You make fair points - what my gut tells me is that we must never be flippant about historical tragedy, which I think is Serrano's problem with the meme.
 
Why is that not ok though?

Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy opens with the entire world being destroyed which kills billions of people, most of whom aren't white. And we spend absolutely no time to explore that, we instead follow our white english protagonist as he bounces around the galaxy as the presumably last human alive.

And that's an exaggerated example but it's to an extent what all post apocalyptic fiction does. It uses tragedies as background and doesn't/can't explore the pain of every one to be written out.

I think fiction not only can mention tragedies without dwelling on them, but depending on the story being written should do that. Sometimes the story isn't the tragedy, it's the personal story within the greater events.

I mean certainly Arturo Serrano has background tragedies in his novel that never get shown as to what they mean to the people on the ground.

I don't innately think it's a wrong thing and I am always wary of attempts to add more limits to creativity by ruling out ways of telling stories entirely. Hard cans and cannots are not useful for writing, I feel, so much of whether things work or not is based on vibes.

I have mixed feelings. (To be honest, the tweet rubbed me the wrong way even though I don’t know how to explain why.)

The smaller issue is that any sort of change in the timeline would upset the lives of uncountable numbers of people (really, how many genres are there where this wouldn’t be true?) A timeline listing events, or even an essay exploring possibilities, wouldn’t be able to discuss the impact on the population in anything other than numbers (if that.) A novelist does have a certain responsibility to at least try to show the effects, but it really depends on the book. There’s no way THGTTG could depict every last person killed in the first chapter – how could anyone even grasp something so big?

The larger issue is that writing a timeline or a novel or whatever does not cause real-world harm. We cannot rewrite the past with the stroke of a pen (not in the real world, at least; the best we can do is rewrite the historical records.) It is true that a Nazi or Confederate Victory timeline would result in far more people dying and/or being enslaved – even a timeline where their respective wars last a year or two more – but those people are not real. No sane person can possibly argue, for example, that outlining what would happen if London got nuked is the same as actually nuking the city. No one is being harmed by alternate histories and realistically, if you don’t like a certain kind of AH, don’t read it.

The biggest issue is that people do not have any sort of veto power over what AH other people write. If you’re bored of CSA victories (or whatever), don’t read them. If someone writes a timeline in which a CSA victory is portrayed as an unambiguously good thing, you’ll get further by pointing out everything wrong with this scenario than lashing out at the author. (The irony of the Black Witch review that sparked the controversy was that many of the points it made were actually good ones, but that was lost in the hysteria.) I can understand and accept an argument that runs ‘transgenders have more of an insight into being trans than non-transgenders’ but not one that states ‘non-transgenders shouldn’t write about transgenders.’

Chris
 
Just found out that Dave Putnams "epic" The Gamekeeper's Night Dog (It was TEST MARKETED with readers who DIDN'T HAVE DOGS) had two sequels.

Ah yes, the ultimate weapon Britain so foolishly neglected, [checks notes] killer dogs. That lynchpin of modern warfare, [checks notes again] killer dogs. That famous war-winning supertactic, [checks notes for a third time] packs of murderous bulldogs? Really? Really?
 
Ah yes, the ultimate weapon Britain so foolishly neglected, [checks notes] killer dogs. That lynchpin of modern warfare, [checks notes again] killer dogs. That famous war-winning supertactic, [checks notes for a third time] packs of murderous bulldogs? Really? Really?

It reminds of a lot of Romanian AH novels honestly.

Incidentally,there’s a series out there where WW2 starts in 1938 with the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact being more early and official and against [checks notes] Japan because one of Hitler’s occultists who he made a General told him to and he was like “yeah ok,sure” and Codreanu busts out of jail to meat HIMMLER personally in Caracal,with HIMMLER literally coming there with a fuck off zeppelin and full on SS uniform and thinking that people won’t know he’s Himmler if he says he’s Bimmler and he and the lads all wears fake mustaches.

They just wait awkwardly for Codreanu to show [since it would take a couple of hours-maybe more-for him to show up] and eat mititei,sausages and polenta with cheese. Himmler gets bored a little while some of his men play with a ball.

In other novels Rommel gets whacked in Bechet while going in a zeppelin to fight birds.
 
Why is that not ok though?

Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy opens with the entire world being destroyed which kills billions of people, most of whom aren't white. And we spend absolutely no time to explore that, we instead follow our white english protagonist as he bounces around the galaxy as the presumably last human alive.

And that's an exaggerated example but it's to an extent what all post apocalyptic fiction does. It uses tragedies as background and doesn't/can't explore the pain of every one to be written out.

I think fiction not only can mention tragedies without dwelling on them, but depending on the story being written should do that. Sometimes the story isn't the tragedy, it's the personal story within the greater events.

I mean certainly Arturo Serrano has background tragedies in his novel that never get shown as to what they mean to the people on the ground.

I don't innately think it's a wrong thing and I am always wary of attempts to add more limits to creativity by ruling out ways of telling stories entirely. Hard cans and cannots are not useful for writing, I feel, so much of whether things work or not is based on vibes.

I feel like the tweet is too broadly-worded, but the meme is certainly stupid, juvenile and crass. 'lol I made a scenario where people in the global south die a lot; here's a meme of leaders of the richest country laughing at that'.

I completely agree with what you say, but I've definitely seen the above kind of attitude around the fandom before. But, I also think it's mostly from the kind of people who would post primarily on Reddit. Don't think I would say it was wholly mainstream.

I think playing around with writing placed in horrible settings, either globally or locally, is fine, but doing that with more sensitivity than the meme displays is probably for the best.
 
Got the same concept (person discovers door in old house that connects to other parrallel worlds) and two very different takes.

1) a whimsical Coraline-esque tale of a 12 year old moving to a new village she hates, is ignored by her parents, meets her parallel self who seems to have it all. Goes on adventures in parallel worlds while being chased by dimensional policemen

2) A 28 year old trans woman is left a house by her surprisingly tolerant grandmother and discovers the door under the stairs leads to other worlds. Several of which are incredibly, inhabited by other versions of herself including one where she never transitioned. A n analysis of what helps and makes people come out. Possibly tied in with a big scifi adventure as eeeevil timelines discover the portal

 
Got the same concept (person discovers door in old house that connects to other parrallel worlds) and two very different takes.
So I enjoy both concepts so I want to ponder them a bit more.
1) a whimsical Coraline-esque tale of a 12 year old moving to a new village she hates, is ignored by her parents, meets her parallel self who seems to have it all. Goes on adventures in parallel worlds while being chased by dimensional policemen
I do like this one, though it would probably have to be more creepy and scary if it’s to be like Coraline. An interesting pondering (and to add a bit of creepniess) is that the dimensional policeman probably don’t look human and likely reminiscent of shifting shattered masses in a humanoid state as they shift between every possible version of themselves at once. Maybe like classic fairy folklore, the Alternate self wants to trap the main character in there own world due themselves have a chaotic nature and need to bring chaos or something.
2) A 28 year old trans woman is left a house by her surprisingly tolerant grandmother and discovers the door under the stairs leads to other worlds. Several of which are incredibly, inhabited by other versions of herself including one where she never transitioned. A n analysis of what helps and makes people come out. Possibly tied in with a big scifi adventure as eeeevil timelines discover the portal
Amusingly I’ve pondered similar ideas to this (every LGBT+ person who like ScFi probably has a Alternate Universe story up there sleeve). Maybe the evil self wants to destroy all Alternate selfs out of a Selfish belief that they should be the only version out there ot something.

Both sound excellent, so I’m not really much help here.
 
So I enjoy both concepts so I want to ponder them a bit more.

I do like this one, though it would probably have to be more creepy and scary if it’s to be like Coraline. An interesting pondering (and to add a bit of creepniess) is that the dimensional policeman probably don’t look human and likely reminiscent of shifting shattered masses in a humanoid state as they shift between every possible version of themselves at once. Maybe like classic fairy folklore, the Alternate self wants to trap the main character in there own world due themselves have a chaotic nature and need to bring chaos or something.

Amusingly I’ve pondered similar ideas to this (every LGBT+ person who like ScFi probably has a Alternate Universe story up there sleeve). Maybe the evil self wants to destroy all Alternate selfs out of a Selfish belief that they should be the only version out there ot something.

Both sound excellent, so I’m not really much help here.

This feedback is really good.

I've got option 1) outlined and while I like it, the limited scale of the book (And not wanting to overcomplicate it) I dont explore the AH concept that much .

2) perhaps appeals to me more as a) Emily is older so I can explore more how her life has turned out b) the audience is older so I can perhaps explore the concept of alternate history more, for example Rose (the first parallel she meets) has a world that diverges in 2000, but there could be much more divergent worlds.

By comparison option 1) is from a much softer AH world. The equivalent of Rose, Em, is from a "United Republic" in a world that hints at Napoleon won in the early 19th century (but Britain is under a President Windsor :p) but Em and her parents all still exist, despite a PoD of around 1800
 
Tricky question, that. Like, I can't possibly imagine writing the latter myself, but I'm not trans.

I do think both would be fascinating to read.

Write what I know :D and AH (or at least SLP) has a disproportionately high number of trans women :p

It also gives me a way out of having Emilys 1 to intinity. They were all born Sam but all chose different names when they came out. (They eventually meet a Sam)
 
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