Interview: Nicholas Sumner

[Gary Oswald]

Discuss this interview with @Nick Sumner here

 

[Thande]

FTR I hadn't heard it called 'bricolage' before either, but I'm going to steal that too to make my writing sound more pretentious

Drake's Drum is really a good example of how to tell a compelling AH scenario/story with mass appeal (WW2! battleships!) without sacrificing too much on the altar of crash boom bang Michael Bay.

Some of the moments that stuck with me:

- Doing the 'Nazis send the Jews to Madagascar instead of doing the Holocaust, so that's all right then' trope popular with clean Wehrmacht apologists, only to then cut to a visceral description of the horrors of what that would actually have been like.
- Covering 1930s British politics as 'footnote, Mosley in Labour, go and read EdT's book, it's great, I'm not going to do an inferior attempt at it here'. Refreshing approach.
- (If I am remembering this part correctly) The idea that you do the Indian partition during the 'peace of Amiens', and India goes neutral but Pakistan remains a British ally and sends troops to the second phase of the war. That's really not the kind of thing you usually see in 20th century AH, it just feels like the sort of slightly unpredictable event that real life is full of.
- In the third book, when it feels like things are maybe going a little too easily for the Allies, we have the moral dilemma that the US and UK have liberated the Caucasus, but the Soviets demand on having it back (and taking revenge on anyone there they don't like) in order to stay in the war.
- The opening scene of the third book with Khrushchev in Iceland.
- An end for Hitler that is different from OTL but sounds plausible and not derivative.

The Indian Rebellion of 1857 is really an underdone area for AH so looking forward to that new one as well.

 

[Arthur_Phuxache]

@Nick Sumner, a writer after my own heart.

 

[Charles EP M.]

The photoshopped "check out the cool alt-tech" is a pretty good marketing idea

 

[RyanF]

B R I C O L A G E

 

[SpanishSpy]

FTR I hadn't heard it called 'bricolage' before either, but I'm going to steal that too to make my writing sound more pretentious

B R I C O L A G E

I'm going to be a pretentious twit and note that I may have been the first person to apply the word 'bricolage' to AH.

 

[Gary Oswald]

I'm going to be a pretentious twit and note that I may have been the first person to apply the word 'bricolage' to AH.

I doubt you're the very first but it's certainly where I got it from, and I've used it a shit load of times since, without anyone noticing previously.

 

[RyanF]

I'm going to be a pretentious twit and note that I may have been the first person to apply the word 'bricolage' to AH.

There's no need for supercilious vituperation over bricolage.

 

[Hendryk]

Bricolage actually sounds kind of pejorative in French. When used figuratively, it implies a degree of shoddiness.

 

[Nick Sumner]

There's no need for supercilious vituperation over bricolage.

Three words that don't get enough air-time in a single sentence!