Comments on: There Will Be Warheads

By: Diatryma

Diatryma — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 19:04:03 +0000

Julie Czerneda edited an anthology called ReVisions about alternate history based on techonology. Germ theory at the time of the Black Death, AIDS in Victorian England, and so on. I liked quite a few of the stories.
There’s also “Voice of Steel” by… um. Forgetting. But I loved the story in Scifiction, and it was my introduction to steampunk, though not called that.

By: Constance

Constance — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 00:49:33 +0000

Wasn’t that what GF meant? That alt history was so many subjects and approaches, yet these fellows only saw it as fiction that involved war? That’s what I took from his post, anyway!

So he vented then, about the blinders this group wore, coz, you know, it was so annoying that they didn’t want to consider anything but war.

Love, C.

By: Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Patrick Nielsen Hayden — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 20:09:03 +0000

Goodness! You were on a panel with some nitwits who read and write alternate history. Therefore, alternate history is a “pseudo-subgenre” that has “devolved,” and needs to be “reined in,” or perhaps “bludgeoned.”

From where I sit, “alternate history” also contains books like Jo Walton’s FARTHING and HA’PENNY, which are (1) not about war and (2) not by a guy. But what do I know? Obviously your reasoning is superior to my mere Earth logic.

By: Eleanor Lang

Eleanor Lang — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 16:48:29 +0000

Thoughtful, and well-put, Greg. As someone who once worked for a publisher that thought all profits could be bolstered with a good (or crappy) alt-history novel, I can say that you hit all the bits that always bothered me. You did leave out one of my favorite works in the sub-genre, Pavane, but it’s pretty obscure.

It sounds to me like some of your co-panelists were unfamiliar with the basic defination of alternate history: a key element of factually recorded history must be different and must change the world as we know it today.

By: S.C. Butler

S.C. Butler — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 01:29:27 +0000

Sounds to me like your co-panelists were confusing alternate history with secret history when they decided to encompass JKRowling et al. If the altered history fits within the framework of what we know as ‘history’, then it’s secret history.

Or ’shadow history’, as Kage Baker migh call it.

By: Constance

Constance — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 20:16:12 +0000

War is so much easier to write than, say, a plausible scenario by which we get out of the catastrophic cycle of violence-consumption into a sustainable, humane, progressive cycle.

War doesn’t need anywhere near as much imagination — or even historical information.

Love, C.

By: Cheryl

Cheryl — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 18:42:33 +0000

Isn’t this just another example of how history is presented to us? Look at the typical output from the History Channel, for example: one war documentary after another. I don’t think that A/H writers are particularly at fault, they are part of a much wider malaise.

P.S. Shadowbridge rocks!

By: Alma Alexander

Alma Alexander — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 18:22:34 +0000

At least you didn’t get blogged down in terminology - a similar panel I was on couldn’t even make up its mind about what alternate history was - as compared to, say, historical fantasy or slipstream or the new weird or whatever else was flung around on that day - it was a fascinating panel on what makes us name things the way we do but it was emphatically not a panel on alternate history…

That said, if I had been on your panel I would have bludgeoned your fellow panelists with a blunt object. War might well be one of the defining issues of the human race - we’ve fought enough of them to prove that - but all wars are the same, in the end. People die. What makes a book interesting is what happens to the people who live.

Dammit.

Bludgeon those panelists with something. Or lock them in a virtual reality room with some version of Nintendo and let them annihilate themselves.

Writing is so much more than a cloak for mass murder and destruction.