The Road to a New Alternate History. Part 4

[David Flin]

Comment here on this article by @Skinny87

 

[Coiler]

I know I've been the sourpuss who keeps saying "alternate history can't grow larger than it is". Oh well. My thoughts on this installment:

• The question of utopian AH being tiny compared to dystopia has come up before. My answer as to why has been a simple and sympathetic "because it makes for a more interesting conflict".
• Similarly, AH in particular would likely have (and has had) it's utopias being dominated by shallow political wish fulfillment. If the pop AH paradigm was utopian, we'd be complaining about how boring and naive (or worse) it almost always was.
• I feel obligated to point out that Rice and Salt, arguably the most successful highbrow AH, still has the spectacular (word choice intended) "Europe gets wiped out" POD.

 

[Charles EP M.]

The counter to the dark thrill of stuff blowing up - other than stuff blowing up because the goodies in this timeline just took down the baddies early - would probably be the thrill of Look At This Cool Shit. Space stations, impressive buildings we don't have, fashion etc.

Having written that, the TV version of Noughts and Crosses does a lot of 'positive' spectacle with its African inspired architecture & fashion and the big opulent parties by a dark-skinned black upper-middle class. But that uses it in pursuit of making a semi-dystopia*, as the flipside is oppression for a majority and it's meant to leave you uncomfortable whether you're black or white. But damn if the wardrobe dept didn't deserve Baftas.

* Albion is a dystopia in the same way apartheid South Africa was. The rest of the world doesn't seem better or worse overall, it's just a place

 

[Pete U]

I think part of the challenge for creating an awe-inspiring utopia is it's much harder for people to agree on what a utopia looks like. Most people can agree on a dystopia, and the visuals are 'easy'. But a current time utopia? What works for one may well not work for another

 

[RyanF]

In some respects, what might be considered spectacle is as subjective as what might be considered utopia.

To bring in another example from film: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow opens with a zeppelin mooring itself to the top of the Empire State Building. Is that spectacle? I certainly think so, there's a famous landmark being used in an unfamiliar (yet recognisable) way. Others might shrug their shoulders, nonplussed at why it should conjure giddiness. In the same way they might shrug their shoulders at, for instance, the Thames Estuary chock full of hovercraft serving Maplin Sands airport as supersonic aircraft take off into the air. I can't understand why, but they might!

I don't know that utopias are the counter to the outright dystopic AH that permeates both mainstream and the depths of self-published fash. I'm sure many of the latter would probably contend they are writing utopias, which comes back to subjectivity. Years ago, for the utopia vignette challenge I struggled to come up with ideas until I settled on doing someone else's utopia that I'd personally hate despite, objectively, not being many magnitudes worse than our own.

Thinking of speculative (using the term advisedly, bear with me) works purely in terms of dystopia vs. utopia feels reductive. A binary good/bad, us/them, Rangers/Celtic, Ringo/rest of The Beatles way of thinking. How many science fiction dystopia novels can you remember? Now, how many science fiction utopia novels? I can think of a couple, but off the top of my head as far as famous works go think the dystopias outnumber 3/1. With that in mind, how many science fiction novels can you think of which are neither complete dystopias or utopias? Stop whenever you like!

That's where I think the real opportunity would lie, getting away from thinking of worlds as better or worse than our own but merely different. Some things might be worse, some might actually be better. That opens up a lot more story telling possibilities than either grimdark Nazi/Confederate Alliance dominates the globe or utopic unlimited rice pudding for all. Characters can have myriad motivations rather than just "I like this"/"I don't". You can maybe get your spectacle far easier too. You see a reporter standing outside Buckingham Palace, nothing out of the ordinary there, but they're telling their audience that the conversion of the building into affordable flats has finally been completed in time for the 20th anniversary of the abdication. Some might default consider that better than OTL, some might consider it worse; but it's a spectacle that people can understand whether they like it or not.

 

[Talwar]

That's where I think the real opportunity would lie, getting away from thinking of worlds as better or worse than our own but merely different. Some things might be worse, some might actually be better. That opens up a lot more story telling possibilities than either grimdark Nazi/Confederate Alliance dominates the globe or utopic unlimited rice pudding for all. Characters can have myriad motivations rather than just "I like this"/"I don't". You can maybe get your spectacle far easier too. You see a reporter standing outside Buckingham Palace, nothing out of the ordinary there, but they're telling their audience that the conversion of the building into affordable flats has finally been completed in time for the 20th anniversary of the abdication. Some might default consider that better than OTL, some might consider it worse; but it's a spectacle that people can understand whether they like it or not.

Not In My Buckingham Palace.

 

[Charles EP M.]

You can maybe get your spectacle far easier too. You see a reporter standing outside Buckingham Palace, nothing out of the ordinary there, but they're telling their audience that the conversion of the building into affordable flats has finally been completed in time for the 20th anniversary of the abdication. Some might default consider that better than OTL, some might consider it worse; but it's a spectacle that people can understand whether they like it or not.

Buckingham Palace Station on the Republic Line.

 

[Talwar]

Dystopia may be like obscenity in that we know it when we see it; but I reckon utopia is much more difficult to recognize. It's not a threat, we're not biologically trained to be alert for it. Rather than being spectacular, utopia can be subtle or banal.

A bunch of kids from different backgrounds and cultures playing together seems kind of mundane, really, but can be shorthand for "these kids are in a world where they've got enough to eat, they're vaccinated against diseases, they don't have to worry about bullying or racism."

A couple guys fishing on a river can be shorthand for, "These people have proper work-life balance, they've got a decent friendship or romantic relationship, their environment's in good condition, they're not hiding from random artillery strikes."

Which is awesome, but not eye-popping.

 

[Hendryk]

Dystopia may be like obscenity in that we know it when we see it; but I reckon utopia is much more difficult to recognize. It's not a threat, we're not biologically trained to be alert for it. Rather than being spectacular, utopia can be subtle or banal.

A bunch of kids from different backgrounds and cultures playing together seems kind of mundane, really, but can be shorthand for "these kids are in a world where they've got enough to eat, they're vaccinated against diseases, they don't have to worry about bullying or racism."

A couple guys fishing on a river can be shorthand for, "These people have proper work-life balance, they've got a decent friendship or romantic relationship, their environment's in good condition, they're not hiding from random artillery strikes."

Which is awesome, but not eye-popping.

This is pretty much how The Years of Rice and Salt ends, with an old man chilling and teaching a class of multicultural students. Intentionally anticlimactic, but meant to convey that after a cataclysmic war, people are once again able to enjoy the small pleasures of life.