- Location
- UK
As far as New Alternate History is concerned, well, we've had New Labour and New Atheism. My answer to new AH would be the same as to the other two. What's wrong with the old ones?
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The Road to a New Alternate History. Part 1.
- Thread starter David Flin
- Start date
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Firstly I do think comparing a call for New Alternate History to a political movement and an atheist movement feels reductive. New Wave Science Fiction is probably a better analogy in this situation.As far as New Alternate History is concerned, well, we've had New Labour and New Atheism. My answer to new AH would be the same as to the other two. What's wrong with the old ones?
Secondly, akin to New Wave of Science Fiction, the position that @Skinny87 is posisiting towards alternate history is that it has ossified towards the dominant stories being those showcasing Confederate and Nazi Victories. Whilst this isn’t to say there all the stories that appear in Alternate History but there is certainly an overwhelming amount for genre which it’s having trouble getting rid of and has a habit of being used by figures of far right persuasion to showcase there agendas. @Skinny87 is trying to promote trying to embrace more diverse cultures and varied styles within the community and stories.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
As far as New Alternate History is concerned, well, we've had New Labour and New Atheism. My answer to new AH would be the same as to the other two. What's wrong with the old ones?
well to add to what @Time Enough has said, fortunately there's an entire article laying out my thoughts on the subject, which in turn begins by linking to two other articles that raise their author's concerns about the state of the genre - so my recommendation would be to start there
however as a bonus, I can confirm that I have never photoshopped a pair of frantic-looking eyes onto a picture of Adolf Hitler, in line with the infamous New Labour, New Danger poster
- Location
- Visiting BWBs.
however as a bonus, I can confirm that I have never photoshopped a pair of frantic-looking eyes onto a picture of Adolf Hitler, in line with the infamous New Labour, New Danger poster
Yet.
I have something of a problem with ‘New AH’, that term alone sounds like we are ceding AH as something that belongs to Neo-Confederates and Neo-Nazis. But if I'm being honest and very blunt I think the solution of just making new Non-American Civil War and non-World War II AH and calling it fixed sounds a little insulting to me.
Now don't get me wrong I get the point is to fight back against the fascist tendencies that grip the genre, but I feel ‘just make different AH and make it accessible to everyone’ as a solution is both really underselling the difficulty of writing ‘different’ AH and the definition of it being ‘different’ as in not Civil War or WW2 AH is fundamentally a very low bar.
The first thing we should probably talk about is this definition of different. Subject matter alone cannot work as a good definition for something that is ‘different’. In the most technical sense if you have two narrative timelines with similar enough styles but one is on World War II or the American Civil War, and the other is not. To call one ‘New’ AH and the other ‘Old’ would be absurd almost as if one wishes to apply historiographical definitions to a living breathing genre. I’ve written AH for nearly ten or so years or at least I’ve tried to I would not look at any of my stuff and call it 'old', 'different', or 'new' AH for me it’s AH and will always be AH. Its content or premise might be 'different' but I would make no distinction from the format to dare claim it's some kind of new style.
Another problem with the definition for me is that it might do very little to mitigate the problem of what is a Euro and American-centric genre. Even taking away the Civil War and WW 2 you are still stuck with the possibility of the vast majority of stories being set in different eras of European or American history or perspectives, which ties into my second issue.
My second issue is coming from a very personal experience. ‘Different’ AH almost sounds like something that is novel or unusual as if you're browsing through a store and you find something quirky. That kind of implication seriously underestimates both what is meant by different and the struggles that one has to go through in writing about periods and premises that are rarely touched upon in the popular imagination. I don't know if anyone else here has that kind of firsthand experience so I'm going to offer mine.
My preferred wheelhouse is the Sengoku era of Japan, and the Three Kingdoms Era of China periods that are 'known' in popular consensus but you can find few stories on them, with Shogun by James Clavell being perhaps the most popular conventional story on it. When I started to write A Storm Over Okehazama it was a story based on a very simple but radical premise, what If Oda Nobunaga one of the Three Unifers of Japan died early in his career, and his opponent Imagwa Yoshimoto succeeded in his stead? Writing this story on AH.com was for a long time seeing nothing but back to back to back posts all done by me because few people would engage with it. Yes, I managed to eventually get a base of people who read my work but it took time and effort. Just a story because is different from the 'norm' (whatever that is) does not guarantee an audience, at least for as much as you can surely guarantee one for more familiar premises that aren't WW II or the ACW
When I write, I write because I want to tell a story about a period I adore, to the point I actively try to fight against presenting it stereotypically and wrote A Storm Over Okehazama to show just how brutal the period was. I’m just some Italian-American fool, who doesn’t speak Japanese or Chinese and believes at times what I write might not even all that good so I don’t consider myself any kind of standard-bearer here for anyone else who writes 'outside the norm'. I still would hate for my work to only be appreciated for the fact it is ‘different’ or exotic. I know this isn't your goal but I feel framing the new way forward (if there even needs to be a new way forward) through difference could depreciate a work’s value into, "oh at least it is not common" then the story that the work tries to tell.
Again I don’t think your heart is in the wrong place, I think maybe there needs to be a better approach that tries to address the pitfall of AH inherently being a wish-fulfilling genre, and those wishes being expressed being those by the far right. However New AH, gives me implications I'm willing to go and reject outright at worst, and at best feels more like at an unneeded term. But I guess if we had to workshop solutions, I feel more of a push must be made to look at the diversity of the genre without coming off as giving up by writing off AH as the domain of reactionaries.
Now don't get me wrong I get the point is to fight back against the fascist tendencies that grip the genre, but I feel ‘just make different AH and make it accessible to everyone’ as a solution is both really underselling the difficulty of writing ‘different’ AH and the definition of it being ‘different’ as in not Civil War or WW2 AH is fundamentally a very low bar.
The first thing we should probably talk about is this definition of different. Subject matter alone cannot work as a good definition for something that is ‘different’. In the most technical sense if you have two narrative timelines with similar enough styles but one is on World War II or the American Civil War, and the other is not. To call one ‘New’ AH and the other ‘Old’ would be absurd almost as if one wishes to apply historiographical definitions to a living breathing genre. I’ve written AH for nearly ten or so years or at least I’ve tried to I would not look at any of my stuff and call it 'old', 'different', or 'new' AH for me it’s AH and will always be AH. Its content or premise might be 'different' but I would make no distinction from the format to dare claim it's some kind of new style.
Another problem with the definition for me is that it might do very little to mitigate the problem of what is a Euro and American-centric genre. Even taking away the Civil War and WW 2 you are still stuck with the possibility of the vast majority of stories being set in different eras of European or American history or perspectives, which ties into my second issue.
My second issue is coming from a very personal experience. ‘Different’ AH almost sounds like something that is novel or unusual as if you're browsing through a store and you find something quirky. That kind of implication seriously underestimates both what is meant by different and the struggles that one has to go through in writing about periods and premises that are rarely touched upon in the popular imagination. I don't know if anyone else here has that kind of firsthand experience so I'm going to offer mine.
My preferred wheelhouse is the Sengoku era of Japan, and the Three Kingdoms Era of China periods that are 'known' in popular consensus but you can find few stories on them, with Shogun by James Clavell being perhaps the most popular conventional story on it. When I started to write A Storm Over Okehazama it was a story based on a very simple but radical premise, what If Oda Nobunaga one of the Three Unifers of Japan died early in his career, and his opponent Imagwa Yoshimoto succeeded in his stead? Writing this story on AH.com was for a long time seeing nothing but back to back to back posts all done by me because few people would engage with it. Yes, I managed to eventually get a base of people who read my work but it took time and effort. Just a story because is different from the 'norm' (whatever that is) does not guarantee an audience, at least for as much as you can surely guarantee one for more familiar premises that aren't WW II or the ACW
When I write, I write because I want to tell a story about a period I adore, to the point I actively try to fight against presenting it stereotypically and wrote A Storm Over Okehazama to show just how brutal the period was. I’m just some Italian-American fool, who doesn’t speak Japanese or Chinese and believes at times what I write might not even all that good so I don’t consider myself any kind of standard-bearer here for anyone else who writes 'outside the norm'. I still would hate for my work to only be appreciated for the fact it is ‘different’ or exotic. I know this isn't your goal but I feel framing the new way forward (if there even needs to be a new way forward) through difference could depreciate a work’s value into, "oh at least it is not common" then the story that the work tries to tell.
Again I don’t think your heart is in the wrong place, I think maybe there needs to be a better approach that tries to address the pitfall of AH inherently being a wish-fulfilling genre, and those wishes being expressed being those by the far right. However New AH, gives me implications I'm willing to go and reject outright at worst, and at best feels more like at an unneeded term. But I guess if we had to workshop solutions, I feel more of a push must be made to look at the diversity of the genre without coming off as giving up by writing off AH as the domain of reactionaries.
- Location
- UK
I don't think so - Mew Wave Science Fiction was about importing different literary approaches, much more than it was a change of topic.Firstly I do think comparing a call for New Alternate History to a political movement and an atheist movement feels reductive. New Wave Science Fiction is probably a better analogy in this situation.
Well, I was being slightly flippant, but my basic point remains, that calling it, whatever 'it' is, New is not enough. You have multiple hurdles to get over for that to be effective. "New" has to be more than a marketing rebrand. The New stuff has to be written. It has to be published and, it has to be read. None of those are really controllable.Secondly, akin to New Wave of Science Fiction, the position that @Skinny87 is posisiting towards alternate history is that it has ossified towards the dominant stories being those showcasing Confederate and Nazi Victories. Whilst this isn’t to say there all the stories that appear in Alternate History but there is certainly an overwhelming amount for genre which it’s having trouble getting rid of and has a habit of being used by figures of far right persuasion to showcase there agendas. @Skinny87 is trying to promote trying to embrace more diverse cultures and varied styles within the community and stories.
More to the point, there is a growth of right wing and authoritarian attitudes across the world, not just in the west. The appearance of those ideas in AH is a symptom of that. The Nazi Confederate wing uses AH in furtherance of their ideas. The problem is not rooted in AH or the choice of POD, so rooting a response in AH is missing the point.
Encouraging different subjects and POD is worth doing, but for its own sake. AH surely doesn't need a rebrand to do that.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Well I whilst I know that wasn’t entirely the point of @Skinny87 piece, I wouldn’t mind more experimentation for form, prose and style. I don’t know, I could see an Alternate History story done using cut-up technique as being an intriguing way of telling a story.I don't think so - Mew Wave Science Fiction was about importing different literary approaches, much more than it was a change of topic.
More experimentation in stories would also be good, I know Alternate History Romance has appeared a few times before etc.
I will say that Alternate History has certainly attracted certain types of audiences since its existence, Newt Gingrich is probably the most famous example Pre-Charlottesville but there’s been many others. And whilst it’s not alternate history’s fault per se, I do think that serious examination of how it’s been utilised should be discussed and encouraged.More to the point, there is a growth of right wing and authoritarian attitudes across the world, not just in the west. The appearance of those ideas in AH is a symptom of that. The Nazi Confederate wing uses AH in furtherance of their ideas. The problem is not rooted in AH or the choice of POD, so rooting a response in AH is missing the point.
True, and maybe calling forth for something ‘new’ in such terms was a bit bold.Encouraging different subjects and POD is worth doing, but for its own sake. AH surely doesn't need a rebrand to do that.
But well, we do need to talk about these things, even if messy and complicated.
Well I whilst I know that wasn’t entirely the point of @Skinny87 piece, I wouldn’t mind more experimentation for form, prose and style. I don’t know, I could see an Alternate History story done using cut-up technique as being an intriguing way of telling a story.
More experimentation in stories would also be good, I know Alternate History Romance has appeared a few times before etc.
I feel there's a lot of different stylistic approaches already - though not the full New Wave - but less long-form experiments in subgenre. SLP has two romances, horror is shortform, no big sports dramas out there AFAIK, the main AH crime I can think of is Very Organised Crime by Polythemus on our Writing forum You can find things like AH Romances but, as Coiler and others have noted, often not marketed as AH.
- Location
- UK
A big chunk of the one I'm writing now, so big in fact it may end up as a separate novel, is a police procedural. The setting is ASB based, but after that, I'm trying to handle everything as realistically as possible.I feel there's a lot of different stylistic approaches already - though not the full New Wave - but less long-form experiments in subgenre. SLP has two romances, horror is shortform, no big sports dramas out there AFAIK, the main AH crime I can think of is Very Organised Crime by Polythemus on our Writing forum You can find things like AH Romances but, as Coiler and others have noted, often not marketed as AH.
My brutally honest opinions on this controversy:And whilst it’s not alternate history’s fault per se, I do think that serious examination of how it’s been utilised should be discussed and encouraged.
- Of course it's going to attract political wish fulfillment fantasies! AH, as Livy demonstrated, has been doing this for thousands of years. It's just by its very nature the same way WW2 historical fiction will always attract Wehraboos (and worse).
- I must admit to getting annoyed by a lot of this kind of hand-wringing.
- Which is not to say there aren't very valid concerns. It just sometimes gets excessive.
- Location
- Over the rainbow
People were complaining about anglophone AH being dominated by WW2 and the American Civil War when I first got into online AH around 2000.
People are still complaining about anglophone AH being dominated by WW2 and the American Civil War in 2023.
People will probably still be complaining about anglophone AH being dominated by WW2 and the American Civil War in 2046.
Write what AH you want. Read what AH you want. (I do, and very little of it is even vaguely adjacent to those topics.) Encourage those you engage with to diversify their AH reading past those two topics. (I do.)
But don’t expect the two most popular anglophone AH topics to change. (I don’t.)
People are still complaining about anglophone AH being dominated by WW2 and the American Civil War in 2023.
People will probably still be complaining about anglophone AH being dominated by WW2 and the American Civil War in 2046.
Write what AH you want. Read what AH you want. (I do, and very little of it is even vaguely adjacent to those topics.) Encourage those you engage with to diversify their AH reading past those two topics. (I do.)
But don’t expect the two most popular anglophone AH topics to change. (I don’t.)
ChrisNuttall
Well-known member
Much of what I wanted to say when I read the article has already been said, but there’s one point that needs to be addressed – the elephant in the room.
We are all AH geeks. Most of us on this forum are deeply invested in the AH community, even if we have different ideas about its direction or even if it HAS a direction. The vast majority of potential readers are not. The vast majority of readers are drawn into the topic through books that have wide appeal, because they are easily accessible. Those books are generally the ones set in well-known eras – WW2, the US Civil War, the US Revolution – because the writer doesn’t have to do anything like as much work to build up the background, or the ones that draw a connection between our world and theirs through time travel so there are modern characters we can understand easily (Guns of the South, ISOT, Ring of Fire, etc).
The more you have to know about a period to understand what’s going on, the harder the author has to work to drag you into the universe – everyone (at least in the US) knows about Dixie, they know much less about Hong Xiuquan, or the Angevin Empire – and the harder it is to keep the reader invested until the payoff. It’s much harder to give an infodump without making it blatantly obvious – that’s why time travel helps populise history because you can then give the infodump – and the further that period is from us, in time, the harder it is to understand the people who lived there. To us, Henry the Young King was a fool who rebelled against his father; to the people of that time, his rebellion was understandable even if it was not justified (and many believed it was).
I’m not saying these books can’t be successful, but they demand much more from their readers and it is hard to get the reader invested unless they’re already invested in AH.
The only real exceptions to this, I think, are works produced by very well-known authors, such as The Years of Rice and Salt. Kim Stanley Robinson was already famous and very well respected when he wrote it, and that gave the book a boost. Turtledove is the master of published AH because he is easily the most famous author known for AH – SM Stirling is the only one who comes close to him, at least when it comes to raw sales.
The secondary problem here is …
I’m not sure how to say this very well, so please bear with me.
The original essay reminded me of a lot of activism I’ve seen over the last couple of decades, both in the real world and online. It suggests a certain degree of elitism, as mentioned above, but it also hints that there’s something wrong with enjoying supposedly problematic works. I can easily see the problems in a great many books and series, such as the original James Bond novels, yet I can still enjoy them. It does not help, not in the long run, to make people feel vaguely guilty about reading and enjoying such works – people don’t like being hectored, openly or otherwise, and it always backfires. It’s easy to point out the problems with the current state of affairs, but trying to do something about it too forcibly is very likely to provoke a backlash.
I think we need to write more accessible novels and stories, set in other timelines; novels, at least at first, that don’t dig that deep into the roots of the alternate world. (1901 by Conroy works very well, at least as an entry-level book.) Those novels should welcome new readers and invite them to partake of the entrée, if you will pardon my romantic soul, to encourage them to drink deeper of the wine of AH. We should – we must – resist the temptation to backbite; we must offer criticism calmly and reasonably, focused on the work in question rather than the person who wrote it; we must always look for ways to improve the work, or build on it, or even take the basic idea in a very different direction. Believe me, the moment someone feels personally insulted is the moment they close their ears to anything else you may want to say.
It’s obvious that a lot of early AH had problems. Some was based on ideas that have been disproven (no, Sealion was never a realistic option), or discredited (no, the Lost Cause was never anything more than a myth), or simply flights of fancy (no, the Nazis could not invade the United States). But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t learn from them, and then build on them.
As the essays cited in the original post noted, The Guns of the South has problems. But it is also very popular, not because Robert E. Lee is dressed in leather pants but because it is magnificently accessible. You don’t really need to know more than the very basic details of the ACW to understand what is going on, and if you know more about history and ‘modern’ political movements you can put the pieces of the AWB puzzle together before the characters do. The trick is not to put down the people who acknowledge its flaws and still enjoy it, and admire Turtledove for writing it, but to learn from it – a ‘new’ Alternate History must develop books as accessible as GOTS, an easy thing to say but not so easy to do.
Right now, us AH geeks are very much in the minority. If we want to change that, we need to find ways to appeal to the majority. We might start, for example, with a novel series based on Thande’s Look to the West; the novel would serve, hopefully, as a gateway to the more detailed works. Or we might put our heads together and work out a universe of change, perhaps stemming from the Angevin Empire, and then develop entry novels for that universe.
<Shrug>
Just my 1000odd words <grin>.
Chris
We are all AH geeks. Most of us on this forum are deeply invested in the AH community, even if we have different ideas about its direction or even if it HAS a direction. The vast majority of potential readers are not. The vast majority of readers are drawn into the topic through books that have wide appeal, because they are easily accessible. Those books are generally the ones set in well-known eras – WW2, the US Civil War, the US Revolution – because the writer doesn’t have to do anything like as much work to build up the background, or the ones that draw a connection between our world and theirs through time travel so there are modern characters we can understand easily (Guns of the South, ISOT, Ring of Fire, etc).
The more you have to know about a period to understand what’s going on, the harder the author has to work to drag you into the universe – everyone (at least in the US) knows about Dixie, they know much less about Hong Xiuquan, or the Angevin Empire – and the harder it is to keep the reader invested until the payoff. It’s much harder to give an infodump without making it blatantly obvious – that’s why time travel helps populise history because you can then give the infodump – and the further that period is from us, in time, the harder it is to understand the people who lived there. To us, Henry the Young King was a fool who rebelled against his father; to the people of that time, his rebellion was understandable even if it was not justified (and many believed it was).
I’m not saying these books can’t be successful, but they demand much more from their readers and it is hard to get the reader invested unless they’re already invested in AH.
The only real exceptions to this, I think, are works produced by very well-known authors, such as The Years of Rice and Salt. Kim Stanley Robinson was already famous and very well respected when he wrote it, and that gave the book a boost. Turtledove is the master of published AH because he is easily the most famous author known for AH – SM Stirling is the only one who comes close to him, at least when it comes to raw sales.
The secondary problem here is …
I’m not sure how to say this very well, so please bear with me.
The original essay reminded me of a lot of activism I’ve seen over the last couple of decades, both in the real world and online. It suggests a certain degree of elitism, as mentioned above, but it also hints that there’s something wrong with enjoying supposedly problematic works. I can easily see the problems in a great many books and series, such as the original James Bond novels, yet I can still enjoy them. It does not help, not in the long run, to make people feel vaguely guilty about reading and enjoying such works – people don’t like being hectored, openly or otherwise, and it always backfires. It’s easy to point out the problems with the current state of affairs, but trying to do something about it too forcibly is very likely to provoke a backlash.
I think we need to write more accessible novels and stories, set in other timelines; novels, at least at first, that don’t dig that deep into the roots of the alternate world. (1901 by Conroy works very well, at least as an entry-level book.) Those novels should welcome new readers and invite them to partake of the entrée, if you will pardon my romantic soul, to encourage them to drink deeper of the wine of AH. We should – we must – resist the temptation to backbite; we must offer criticism calmly and reasonably, focused on the work in question rather than the person who wrote it; we must always look for ways to improve the work, or build on it, or even take the basic idea in a very different direction. Believe me, the moment someone feels personally insulted is the moment they close their ears to anything else you may want to say.
It’s obvious that a lot of early AH had problems. Some was based on ideas that have been disproven (no, Sealion was never a realistic option), or discredited (no, the Lost Cause was never anything more than a myth), or simply flights of fancy (no, the Nazis could not invade the United States). But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t learn from them, and then build on them.
As the essays cited in the original post noted, The Guns of the South has problems. But it is also very popular, not because Robert E. Lee is dressed in leather pants but because it is magnificently accessible. You don’t really need to know more than the very basic details of the ACW to understand what is going on, and if you know more about history and ‘modern’ political movements you can put the pieces of the AWB puzzle together before the characters do. The trick is not to put down the people who acknowledge its flaws and still enjoy it, and admire Turtledove for writing it, but to learn from it – a ‘new’ Alternate History must develop books as accessible as GOTS, an easy thing to say but not so easy to do.
Right now, us AH geeks are very much in the minority. If we want to change that, we need to find ways to appeal to the majority. We might start, for example, with a novel series based on Thande’s Look to the West; the novel would serve, hopefully, as a gateway to the more detailed works. Or we might put our heads together and work out a universe of change, perhaps stemming from the Angevin Empire, and then develop entry novels for that universe.
<Shrug>
Just my 1000odd words <grin>.
Chris
Talwar
Well-Known Sword
- Pronouns
- he/him
Random thoughts:
-WW2 and the American Civil War are, to (Anglo-centric, anyway) AH, what the DCEU and Marvel are to superheroes, or Star Wars and Star Trek to Sci-Fi, or LOTR/ASOIAF to fantasy: Tentpole franchises that have high brand recognition and extensive canon/extended universes to draw on for new products. They're easier starting points for the content producers, the content marketers, and the content consumers. They are the airport novels of the genre: You grab it as you're running to Gate 45 and you know what you're getting.
-I don't quite know what to make of arguments that Nazi/Confederate victory scenarios validate their respective causes.
-I do think that there's a large audience for reading about Nazis, in particular, getting the shit kicked out of them. They're the low-hanging fruit of antagonists. As a bonus, there's no significant commercial Nazi market that publishers want to avoid offending for fear of losing sales.
-It's probably the same reason so many ISOT scenarios begin with the ritual baby-seal-clubbing of German and/or Japanese navies during one of the world wars.
-Before a certain point - I want to say the Napoleanic Wars as a western benchmark, because it's well known, kind of industrial and gun-centric - historical AH might as well be fantasy so far as the average publisher or consumer is concerned. It's quaint weapons and quaint beliefs and quaint societal structures and even quaint stuff that might seem like magic to the common character of the time. The average reader probably doesn't know anything more about the setting than the author tells them. And fantasy is pretty popular stuff.
-And actually historical AH is pretty popular, too, judging from all the violent, sexy shows on HBO and so on. "Based on real events", sure, plenty of it is totally made up, it's AH. But it's driven by stuff consumers are into: Murder, sex, scheming, shenanigans, larger-than-life characters, with just enough coherent world-building in the background to have the stuff in the foreground make sense. We can do that. Do we do that? Do we market that we do that?
Anyway, interesting discussion, looking forward to more.
-WW2 and the American Civil War are, to (Anglo-centric, anyway) AH, what the DCEU and Marvel are to superheroes, or Star Wars and Star Trek to Sci-Fi, or LOTR/ASOIAF to fantasy: Tentpole franchises that have high brand recognition and extensive canon/extended universes to draw on for new products. They're easier starting points for the content producers, the content marketers, and the content consumers. They are the airport novels of the genre: You grab it as you're running to Gate 45 and you know what you're getting.
-I don't quite know what to make of arguments that Nazi/Confederate victory scenarios validate their respective causes.
-I do think that there's a large audience for reading about Nazis, in particular, getting the shit kicked out of them. They're the low-hanging fruit of antagonists. As a bonus, there's no significant commercial Nazi market that publishers want to avoid offending for fear of losing sales.
-It's probably the same reason so many ISOT scenarios begin with the ritual baby-seal-clubbing of German and/or Japanese navies during one of the world wars.
-Before a certain point - I want to say the Napoleanic Wars as a western benchmark, because it's well known, kind of industrial and gun-centric - historical AH might as well be fantasy so far as the average publisher or consumer is concerned. It's quaint weapons and quaint beliefs and quaint societal structures and even quaint stuff that might seem like magic to the common character of the time. The average reader probably doesn't know anything more about the setting than the author tells them. And fantasy is pretty popular stuff.
-And actually historical AH is pretty popular, too, judging from all the violent, sexy shows on HBO and so on. "Based on real events", sure, plenty of it is totally made up, it's AH. But it's driven by stuff consumers are into: Murder, sex, scheming, shenanigans, larger-than-life characters, with just enough coherent world-building in the background to have the stuff in the foreground make sense. We can do that. Do we do that? Do we market that we do that?
Anyway, interesting discussion, looking forward to more.
The original essay reminded me of a lot of activism I’ve seen over the last couple of decades, both in the real world and online. It suggests a certain degree of elitism, as mentioned above, but it also hints that there’s something wrong with enjoying supposedly problematic works. I can easily see the problems in a great many books and series, such as the original James Bond novels, yet I can still enjoy them. It does not help, not in the long run, to make people feel vaguely guilty about reading and enjoying such works – people don’t like being hectored, openly or otherwise, and it always backfires. It’s easy to point out the problems with the current state of affairs, but trying to do something about it too forcibly is very likely to provoke a backlash.
Are you the Chris Nuttall that ended the Twilight of the Gods series with an afterword about the 2016 US Presidential Election? Apologies if not but either way the person writing a piece of literature will always have a worldview and whether they feel the need to broadcast it or not it will end up on the page. Taking a critical eye to these things is always going to be important and to try to avoid making people question their own biases and worldviews via a self-critical eye is only going to encourage a fundamentally incurious and uncreative approach to media. It's a lack of curiousity which enables Wehraboos to blindly regurgitate the Clean Wehrmacht myth and for the modern far-right to valorise Joachim Peiper and deny the Holocaust.
Personally I can't say I agree with the motivations behind the concept for 'New Alternate History' but Skinny always has interesting things to say and this is no exception. No-one should be afraid of a bit of a critical theory and if you value accessibility then being open to other worldviews and interrogating your own is vital.
ChrisNuttall
Well-known member
Are you the Chris Nuttall that ended the Twilight of the Gods series with an afterword about the 2016 US Presidential Election? Apologies if not but either way the person writing a piece of literature will always have a worldview and whether they feel the need to broadcast it or not it will end up on the page. Taking a critical eye to these things is always going to be important and to try to avoid making people question their own biases and worldviews via a self-critical eye is only going to encourage a fundamentally incurious and uncreative approach to media. It's a lack of curiousity which enables Wehraboos to blindly regurgitate the Clean Wehrmacht myth and for the modern far-right to valorise Joachim Peiper and deny the Holocaust.
Personally I can't say I agree with the motivations behind the concept for 'New Alternate History' but Skinny always has interesting things to say and this is no exception. No-one should be afraid of a bit of a critical theory and if you value accessibility then being open to other worldviews and interrogating your own is vital.
The point I'm trying to make is not that you shouldn't criticize anything - there are plenty of valid cliques to be made, for example, of GOTS. I've made them myself. The point is that criticizing a book in a manner that makes someone feel guilty for enjoying it, or insulting them directly or indirectly (or they think they're being insulted even if that isn't the intention), is just going to make them mad.
Chris