- Location
- In a van, down by the river.
Review posted on amazon.uk and Goodreads. Probably need a bit of time to 'propagate.'
I mourn the fact that The Bloody Man is now almost guaranteed never to be completed. I wanted to see Nicholas "Damnation" Barbon in the Commonwealth, damn it.
Why is it never going to be finished?
It's been six years since Ed last wrote any AH, published any ah or even posted on an ah forum. I can't blame anyone for assuming he's no longer interested.
Iirc, even the idea that the tale would stop, as there was nothing more to be told, rather than going to the present day, was relatively revolutionary.Fight and Be Right would be interesting for a Post Mortem at some point, because I think a lot of the good stuff from Online Alternate History can find it’s origin points there.
Not particularly. Other timelines had announced stops before the present day, including my own Decades of Darkness. It's been long enough that I don't rightly recall whether DoD actually finished before FabR, but its nominated end-point was announced years before that, and DoD wasn't the first timeline to do so either.Iirc, even the idea that the tale would stop, as there was nothing more to be told, rather than going to the present day, was relatively revolutionary.
It seems that I did not, in fact, recall correctly. I wonder where I got that idea from?Not particularly. Other timelines had announced stops before the present day, including my own Decades of Darkness. It's been long enough that I don't rightly recall whether DoD actually finished before FabR, but its nominated end-point was announced years before that, and DoD wasn't the first timeline to do so either.
There’s still not many of them that pull it off, to be fair.It seems that I did not, in fact, recall correctly. I wonder where I got that idea from?
Ed by contrast was more interested in looking at the immediate consequences of different historical decisions as a drama in themselves, giving an epilogue fifty years later to suggest the ballooning corrolaries impacting from that, and then leave it there; he argued that going further takes you into a realm closer to fantasy, as the world is so different it's no longer 'history, but'. I agree with this, but feel that's paradoxically the most interesting part; a setting which is so radically different to ours, yet places and references to history and culture beyond a certain point are recognisable to us, so it's not like a fantasy world lacking any connection to us at all. In fact it's arguably the opposite of allegorical fantasy.
Hah, indeed, we couldn't let a discussion of this go without that!Of course, in EdT's case taking it up to the present would mean you'd gradually lose one of the great charms of his writing- the bizarre plot twist and strange character that a footnote informs you is 'Per OTL.'
Or, until the author loses interest, as is most common, for whatever reason.Yeah, I still get quite caught out when a timeline goes "and now we're done" when there's still X number of years before the present day. "Carry on until RIGHT NOW" feels very much the online default
Of course, in EdT's case taking it up to the present would mean you'd gradually lose one of the great charms of his writing- the bizarre plot twist and strange character that a footnote informs you is 'Per OTL.'