One of my favourite genres is "alt-hist." Or, to spell it out, Alternate History.
It's often considered a sub-genre of Science Fiction (SF), or as some people prefer to call it, Speculative Fiction. That's because most of the early alternate history stories were first published under the SF genre, the theory being, I guess, that SF readers were more open to such flights of imagination.
What is alternate history? In case you don't know already, it's historical fiction with a key fact changed. That's a very broad and general, um, generalization. But it's close enough.
Imagine, for instance, a novel set in the American South, around the time of the Civil War. The South is fighting a losing battle. Suddenly, a mysterious group of people appear and offer the Southern generals a strange, wonderous new kind of weapon: an automatic gun. Compared to the weapons currently in use, this amazing device can rip any Civil War army to shreds. And these mystery people are offering to supply as many automatic guns as the Southern army requires, in order to help them win the war.
This is the basic story of Guns of the South, the most popular, most widely-known Alternate History novel in recent times. Published almost fifteen years ago, it became a massive bestseller, and its author, a struggling fantasy and science fiction writer named Harry Turtledove, has since gone on to write several series of Alternate History novels.
So many that Turtledove is now considered to be the "master" of Alternate History.
Now, as you must have observed, the automatic weapons in Guns of the South come from the future. So it's also a time-travel novel, in a sense. That's common in many Alternate History novels. They mix some element of SF, or Fantasy. But the primary thrust is always on the historical retelling.
They say SF is the "What If" genre—as in, most SF novels ask the question, "What if...", and then follow that idea through to its logical, even not-so-logical, quite incredible, but scientifically possible conclusion.
By that measure, Alternate History is the genre of "What might have happened if..."
So, for instance, we could postulate a world wherein India and Pakistan were never Partitioned, and instead the people of both lands united to oust the British invaders in a bloody war, just like the American War of Independence.
(Just as an aside, notice how the British are quite willing to call the American War of Secession, as it was once known, a war of "Independence," but will turn purple and blue and other colours when you try to call our own Indian War of Independence by the same name? "It was a bloody mutiny," they rail and rant, "because India was a colony of the British Empire." Well, my dear Onion Jack, so was America, wasn't it? Yet they called it a War of Independence. So, accept it and deal with it, move on, okay?)
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - RJ
FWIW, Stirling is about as pro-USA as you can get. So I'm not sure why you included him in your Amazon links, given your overt distaste for the USA...
2 - gypsyman
Welcome aboard Ashok, see you found your way onto the site.
3 - Warren
I think part of the reason AH is so Ameri-centric is that American readers are a huge market. That said, I enjoyed the Peshawar Lancers, simply because I'd been studying that time period on my own. Bottom line is probably that the publishers are afraid of anything not at least Anglo-centric.
There have been some short stories that are fairly diverse in focus, though. That might be why I like the Alternate Generals series that Turtledove is editing so much.
4 - Aaman
woohoo - we have Mr Banker as a blogcritic - much welcome.
Turtledove has a story featuring Mahatma Gandhi standing up to the British and some variances on what really happened.
History, unfortunately is written by the victors. veni, vidi, and all that jazz about vices
5 - Ashok K. Banker
Hey Rob, all of you,
I'm really fond of S.M. Stirling's work. He's one of my two 'top' faves in the alt-hist genre and one of the three parts of this series will focus just on his work. Unlike the goons who hate the USA itself, I actually admire and love a great many things about the country--and because I care about it, I feel I have the right to criticize the things about it that are distasteful. Its legacy of slavery, of infighting, of electing bad adminstrations (sound familiar?)...For that matter, here in India we believe that in a democracy we have the right to criticize our government and bureaucracy--hell, even our film stars! You only critique someone or something that you care about, those you hate you turn away from and ignore staunchly.
But I'm used to people confusing my criticism for 'hatred'. It usually shines a light into that person's heart. I already know what's in my heart, and hatred is not the word for it. As a great man once said, tolerate all things...except intolerance.
Thanks for commenting though!
Ashok
6 - Abulfazl Mahmud
Dear Ashok Banker,
Nice idea that but with one flaw. How can you expect Mr. M.K. Gandhi who fought with Zulus on behalf of the British change sides and fight his ex-employers (even forgetting that he was a recruiter for the British in India too on return from Africa)? Jinnah of course had no such handicap(but then he was too constitutional. The Alt history will have to be too too Alt to sound convincing.
7 - Ashok K. Banker
Dear Abulfazi Mahmud,
That's why it's called Alternate History, not History. You're assuming that Gandhi's past history would remain exactly the same - why should that be so? Change one major event, or two, in his past and he might never have sided with the British in the first place - or he might not have become the British apologist that he is criticized for being today, or...well, anything is possible, provided you alter the one or two significant events that caused him to become the person he became eventually.
Incidentally, I've been working for years on a story involving Gandhi and the Indian Independence struggle, and like yourself, I've wrestled with similar questions - in the end, I realized, the key was his African years, and only there can one get to grips with the 'real' Gandhi, not just the movie-Gandhi the west knows. I think you know what I'm referring to here. It's a tough challenge, but someday, I hope to come up with a very interesting, if not powerful, story which would be convincing to knowledgeable persons such as yourself as well as entertaining alt-history!
Ashok
8 - S.M. Stirling
Ah... before commenting on alternate histories, one should do a little research.
Eg., one of the people above apparently believes that the British somehow "engineered" the partition of India in 1947 for purposes of their own.
This is so bizzare that one really doesn't know where to start, but hey, I'll give it a try.
Short form: after 1945, the exhausted British simply wanted to withdraw from India as rapidly as possible, preferably without the whole subcontinent descending into chaos in the interim.
The Muslim League demanded a "Pakistan", as they had with increasing vehemence from the 1930's, when it became obvious that the days of the Angrezi Raj were numbered.
Congress, of course, disagreed. Congress had majority support in British India as a whole, including that of a minority of Muslims, but by 1945-46 the League had a majority of Muslims behind it, particularly in the areas that became West and East Pakistan.
Communal fighting was spreading uncontrollably and the Indian Army itself was increasingly unreliable and split on religious lines as independence neared. British troops were a dwindling asset, as the British demobilized and public opinion at home would not allow a prolonged deployment.
Congress did not have the power, and the British had neither the power nor the inclination, to force the continuation of the unitary state of the Raj. Attempting to do so would obviously mean independence would be accompanied by a civil war of enormous dimensions.
Hence, Partition -- which the British saw as the least bad solution practical in the timeframe available, and which the Congress leaders grudgingly accepted because they had no choice.
The major reason Congress accepted it, apart from the fact that the country was dissolving in bloody chaos, was that the British told them if they refused they'd simply evacuate and leave the locals to deal with the situation as they saw fit.
9 - S.M. Stirling
Oh, and the "Indian Mutiny" is generally referred to as the "Indian Mutiny" because that's what it was -- a mutiny by some elements of the Bengal Army.
A number of disaffected civilians in the Ganges Valley and surroundings then joined in -- the Rani of Jhansi, for example, who disliked the decision of the EIC to disallow the sucession of her adopted son to the throne. So did other groups which had suffered recently; the landowners of Oudh, and so forth.
The Bombay and Madras armies remained loyal to the British, and most of the civilian population remained neutral -- that is, tried to stay out of the way, as peasants usually do, on the general principle that a mouse is wise not to get involved in a fight between a buffalo and a tiger.
Most of the troops who put down the revolt were themselves Indian - or Nepalese, to be sure.
The only people who thought in terms of "India" as a unit in 1857 were the British and a few Westernized hangers-on. The loyalties of the population were to religion, caste, to the various dynasties, or at most to a region.
It was the British who created a unified "India", by building railways and educating an elite with a common language (English) and group consciousness. Even so, it never really took with the Muslims, hence Partition. Incidentally, a believing Muslim usually has severe difficulty in really accepting the legitimacy of a non-Muslim government and legal system.
10 - Ashok K. Banker
Mr Stirling? It's an honour to have you here. It's strange too, because Part II of this series is about your books!
Coming to your comment, though, I'm not sure which 'someone' you're referring to. I couldn't find anything in my article nor in the comments that suggested the person believed the British 'engineered' Partition. Your recounting the generally accepted western/British view of Partition is also welcome, but it is quite predictably the western/British view of Partition. It's not so much that it's wrong as that it takes a somewhat simplistic view of what really happened. One would arrive at similarly disparate conclusions if one were to read say, Southern accounts of the American Civil War, and Yankee accounts of the same; or, as is happening now, Scottish accounts of their own history, and British accounts of the same. Ditto, North Korean viewpoints, and South Korean viewpoints--or, more pertinently, Iraqui viewpoints of the last couple of years and American viewpoints.
I'm sure Saddam Hussein and George Bush, Jr, would have very different accounts of the recent invasion of Iraq by US forces, just as they did about Iraq's invasion of Kuwait a decade and a half ago!
Ashok
11 - Andrew
I do not really understand how anything logical can come from the India / Pakistan thread. It has no factual links at all.
12 - S.M. Stirling
As for the American Revolution/War of Independence, it's important to remember two things:
a) it wasn't a social revolution; it was led by the same families that ran the place before 1776, all of them of British (and mostly English) extraction; and
b) it wasn't "anticolonial" in the modern sense.
It was a white-settler revolt, rather like Rhodesian UDI(*), except that the settler rebels won.
In fact, one of the major causes of 1776 was (rather feeble) British attempts to protect the native tribes' lands from settler expansion.
Having learned this lesson, note that the British made no attempt to stop the settlers in Australia from virtually exterminating the aboriginies in the course of the 19th century -- an important reason why there was never any Australian Revolution.
(*) the American and Rhodesian revolts were similar even to both being led by wealthy owners of tobacco plantations, George Washington and Ian Smith respectively, who'd previously fought as members of the British armed forces.
13 - Ashok K. Banker
Sigh. I'm afraid you're still referring to the same antiquated history books. For what it's worth, sir, history is not stagnant. For a long time, yes, the British view of Indian history did prevail, but in the past sixty years, there have been a number of serious attempts to re-examine the period of British rule in India (or 'invasion' as some of us Indians prefer to call it) and a great deal of it has been done by British and European authors themselves, admitting to the blatant biases and inaccuracies of their predecessors.
There are a number of excellent books that could provide you with more uptodate information on the Indian struggle for Independence, of which the Mutiny itself (by British army regulars) was only a small part. It's convenient to ignore the rest of the revolutionary movement in India - and contrary to your misinformation, India was a holistic concept several thousand years ago, albeit under different names, Aryavarta, Jambudwipa, later Hindustan and now Bharat-varsha - and relegate it to a footnote in British Raj history. The truth is much more complex and less easily reduced to a few sentences.
Perhaps if you were to study history from the point of view of the people whose history you're studying, you might find it illuminating. There are nuances not easily explained by rote recitation of past primary sources. You're a brilliant storyteller, and your facts are quite proper and in order--but they're all set down according to a certain admittedly one-sided point of view, and are incomplete and dangerously over-simplified. I doubt you would be as accepting and trusting of that point of view if it pertained to your own country's history, and was written by an outsider claiming perfect knowledge.
In short, the "history" you refer to stands in certain texts, you hardly need to reiterate it or justify it. But we will tell our side of the story too, whether you like it or not.
Ashok
14 - Ashok K. Banker
S.M. Stirling wrote:
>It was a white-settler revolt, rather like Rhodesian >UDI(*), except that the settler rebels won.
This reminds me, back when The Peshawar Lancers was published by Roc, I recall reading somewhere on an SFF Net newsgroup, I think, that you were working on an alt-hist book or series set in Africa about the Boer wars. I later noticed the plot strand in Conquistador. Was that the book? Or are you still planning another series? I guess it's possible that the person was only speculating, but since you're here, I thought, hey, why not ask!
And I hope you'll check back soon, when the second part of this series goes up--it's all about your books. I'm sure you'll have lots to comment on with that article!
15 - S.M. Stirling
>but it is quite predictably the western/British view of Partition.
-- shrug. I'm also predicably wedded to the oblate-spheroid view of the shape of the earth.
INC types in the 1930's-40's tended to refuse to believe that Partition was the result of indigenous factors and instead tried to blame some nefarious foreign/British plot because they were deeply attached to an ideology of India as a potential secular "nation-state".
(Irish nationalists have had similar problems vs. a vs. Ulster.)
Time out for laughter and applause: the secular nation-state is a very specifically Western concept.
Even in Western Europe it was never a very tight fit with the actual facts, an ideological construct rather than an objective reality. The further you get from its Anglo-French hearth-zone, the weirder attempts to shoehorn people into that mold get.
As late as the 1930's, when asked their nationality peasants in remote parts of Europe (like the Carpathians) often looked at the officials with bewilderment and replied: "We are locals" or "we are from hereabouts" or "we are Christians". The question was meaningless to them.
Some people think the world is flat; that doesn't mean that one should take their views into consideration vs. a vs. the oblate-spheroid school of thought.
>I'm sure Saddam Hussein and George Bush, Jr, would have very different accounts of the recent invasion of Iraq by US forces, just as they did about Iraq's invasion of Kuwait a decade and a half ago!
-- all viewpoints are not born equal.
16 - Ashok K. Banker
S.M. Stirling wrote:
>-- all viewpoints are not born equal.
And that's what makes this oblate-spheroid we live on such an interesting place! Vive la difference.
17 - Ashok K. Banker
BTW, Part II is already up. Please proceed in an orderly fashion and somebody remember to bring the beverages.
18 - S.M. Stirling
>There are a number of excellent books that could provide you with more uptodate information on the Indian struggle for Independence
-- Yeah, and there have been earnest, labored attempts to 'prove' that the Vedic Aryans weren't intrusive in India, either.
Nobody but the practitioners really takes that sort of nationalist-revisionist crap seriously.
Sorry.
And really, it's a bit sad to see outsiders taking up that sort of integralist-nationalist distortion when the West at last has outgrown it.
Chauvinism doesn't become more sensible because you put it in a turban or dhoti.
>It's convenient to ignore the rest of the revolutionary movement in India
-- for who? Nobody I've ever read did so. The campaign against Curzon's partition of Bengal was a revolutionary movement, so were the Punjabi disturbances early in WWI, and they had connections.
What happened in 1857 wasn't and didn't, except by retrospective annexation.
>and contrary to your misinformation, India was a holistic concept several thousand years ago, albeit under different names, Aryavarta
-- ah, the "land of the Aryans"... You are aware that at that period everyone from what's now Kurdistan to Bengal (and including huge chunks of Central Asia) referred to themselves as "Aryans"?
>but they're all set down according to a certain admittedly one-sided point of view
-- admitted by who?
>But we will tell our side of the story too, whether you like it or not.
-- shrug. Truth is truth, and truth is One.
19 - Ashok K. Banker
S.M. Stirling wrote:
>-- shrug. Truth is truth, and truth is One.
And facts and truth are not the same thing. You have to live in a place to truly know truth, not merely study it from histories written by invading foreigners.
>Chauvinism doesn't become more sensible >because you put it in a turban or dhoti.
And this is true racism. For the record though, I neither wear a turban nor a dhoti. And I don't judge historians or novelists based on their skin colour, nationality, race, religion, or choice of clothes. Surprised that you do.
An opinion is as valuable whether the person voicing it is wearing a turban, a fez or top hat...And I respect that enough to thank you for your comments. If you really are that knowledgeable about history, though, why are you writing Fiction?
And since you are writing Fiction, why do you presume to be an expert not only on Facts, but on Truth? What gives you the last word? And that too, on Indian history?
In the end, I'm going to smile and walk away remembering your fine novels, excellent pieces of entertainment all--and fiction, most definitely, by your own admittance--and suggest we leave the Truth-Seeking to those better qualified to do so!
Om Shanti Om, Mr Stirling!
20 - DrPat
It's likely that this "S.M. Stirling" is not the one whose books you've enjoyed, Ashok.
Great response, though...
21 - RJ
Oh, I know SMS (kinda, sorta). And he is highly active on the Internet.
I am almost certain that this is really him.
22 - Ashok K. Banker
"Outsider", "chauvinist", "crap", "dhoti", "turban"...
Yup, it's S.M. Stirling, aka Steve Stirling, all right, no doubt about it. Now I know why he sounded so famiiar--he's the living embodiment of "Walker" from his Nantucket novels, the quintessential American hero, out to s(l)ave the world...from itself.
23 - Victor Plenty
This is why Eric Flint's alternate history work impresses me so much more than most of the other people working in the subgenre. Flint brings out the best elements of the American character without such disdain for other cultures and races, and acknowledges the dark sides of American history without giving up on its bright potential.
24 - Ashok K. Banker
Victor,
I haven't read as much of Eric Flint's work as I would have liked, but having heard (read) your comment, I'm definitely going to look it up more seriously. Thanks for the recommendation!
25 - Victor Plenty
Glad to help. While you're checking into Flint's more widely read work, such as the 1632 series, don't overlook his first novel, Mother of Demons. It doesn't strictly fit the definition of alternate history, but still explores many evocative themes from history in the context of its setting on a distant planet in the far future.
I'd also be very interested in your take on the Belisarius series which Flint is co-authoring with David Drake, and which certainly fits into the alternate history genre.
Drake and Flint's portrayal of India's culture and history seems fairly accurate and sympathetic, to my limited knowledge. The villains of that storyline are mostly Indian, yet they also draw many of their heroes and their more sympathetic antagonists from the Indian setting. And they don't fail to find plenty of villains in the Byzantine Roman culture of their main protagonist.