One of my favourite genres is "alt-hist." Or, to spell it out, Alternate History.…
"A sinister cabal of superior writers."
If India & Pakistan Had Joined Forces Against The British Empire: Alternate History, Part I - Comments Page 2
One of my favourite genres is "alt-hist." Or, to spell it out, Alternate History.…
Article comments
26 - DrPat
There's a review of stories in the 1632 universe here at BlogCritics, but amazingly, no one has reviewed the series itself...
27 - Mary K. Williams
Ashok -
Reading all this makes me realize how I'm sadly lacking in my retention of any history I was taught, either in HS or college. It was all interesting though, but I think that I better stick with 'real' history, before I delve into the alternatives. But evidently, I guess the real history books I might find could be as subjective as the alternative type? *smile*.
BTW, no where in your posts have I seen any 'distaste' for the US. I do like your response about caring enough to critique.
Also, welcome to Blogcritics : )
28 - John Bil
They were one country at the time.
29 - Ashok K. Banker
Victor: now I'm definitely going to look up both Mother of Demons as well as Flint and Drake's Belisarius series!
Dr Pat: Interesting review. Once I've read the full series, I'll write a review myself.
Mary: Thank you for that. Yes, indeed, I wish people would understand that critiquing is not 'dislike'. And a few fanatical extremists do not represent an entire religion, let alone a nation.
John Bil: When I refer to "India" and "Pakistan", I'm referring to the present-day divisions. If I said "India" and "India" I doubt it would make any sense, although it was indeed two sections of Indian people, divided invisibly, just as the CSA and USA were divided in a single land.
30 - Nancy
Is there any kind of website devoted to alternate history fiction, that lists writers, stories, & gives a thumbnail about the storylines? Thanks.
31 - Ashok K. Banker
Nancy, you wrote:
"Is there any kind of website devoted to alternate history fiction, that lists writers, stories, & gives a thumbnail about the storylines? Thanks."
Not that I know of. But I guess the ISFDB (Internet Science Fiction Data Base) would be searchable by genre or category. Although I find them very inaccurate and inefficient in correcting obvious errors. If you find such an Alt-hist website, or anyone else does, I'd love to know about it! Until then, I use Amazon's search by topic and sub-topic function, which is good for novel-length works in print in US editions.
32 - Nancy
Many thanks. Also, DrPat just put out a thread w/listings on quite a few, so that's a good start.
33 - James McNally
Here's a great alt-history site
Also
34 - Stu Shiffman
Just to let you know that Robert Schmunk maintains an excellent ultimate alternate history side at uchronia, where just what you want is available. Highly searchable database. Info on the Sidewise awards (I'm a judge) too!
Stu
35 - Ashok K. Banker
Hey again, Stu, thanks for that link! Now, if only I can find an alt-hist site that ranks authors (like a certain Mr Stirling) according to the level of their racist and political bias... He would rank as 10 of course, on a scale of 1 to 5. :~) Required reading for all White Nazi youth.
36 - SFC Ski
As long as no one mistakes reading alt-history premises for an education in history, the genre is fine. There is another series called "What If?" that does a very good job of writing alt-history as a historian would, rather than as a novelist would.
Revisionist history scares me the most, because it usually takes aout the lessons of the past and encourages the young and ill-informned to repeat them.
37 - Ashok K. Banker
"Revisionist history scares me the most, because it usually takes aout the lessons of the past and encourages the young and ill-informned to repeat them."
Of course, revisionist history is not something anyone likes. But I'm not talking about revisionism at all in the article. I'm talking about applying new archaelogical findings, translations of ancient documents, and other serious historical and histiriological study to understanding the past. SMS seems to think that history is frozen at a certain time in the past--probably at the point of the last edition of Indian history he happened to have read--and worse, is insisting that the history written by obviously biased sources is 'truth'. This is much worse than revisionism--it's a blatant attempt to force incorrect history upon subsequent generations. If history was always correct the first time around, we would still be believing Herodotus that Indians ejaculated 'black sperm' amongst many other patently absurd and ill-informed 'facts'.
To insist that history is fixed and immutable, especially when you're speaking of a history of a certain people (Indian in this case) but was written by a group of invaders and colonisers (the British and Europeans), you're being naive and worse, racist. By that standard, no new history books should be published anywhere, about any aspect of history--because by the standard you're suggesting and SMS is suggesting--all history is already known, already perfect.
I can hardly find words to express the utter disgust I have for such blatant racial discrimination. Revisionism is awful; but racism is the real evil we need to watch out for, and sadly, in his personal views, SMS clearly carries this bugbear and uses his so-called knowledge of 'truth' to browbeat even his fans and reviewers. He should have stopped at writing his excellent entertaining novels; alt-hist is just that, entertaining diversions. History, on the other hand, is best studied by those who are still seeking the truth. Those who claim to know it already, should stick to religious fundamentalism.
38 - Dave Nalle
>>Hey again, Stu, thanks for that link! Now, if only I can find an alt-hist site that ranks authors (like a certain Mr Stirling) according to the level of their racist and political bias... He would rank as 10 of course, on a scale of 1 to 5. :~) Required reading for all White Nazi youth.<<
Stirling? Are you kidding? You are, right? His Drakka series paints a very, very negative picture of a racist society and his more recent work has African Americans as pivotal characters in every book.
Dave
39 - Ashok K. Banker
"His Drakka series paints a very, very negative picture of a racist society and his more recent work has African Americans as pivotal characters in every book."
Actually, if you read the comment above by Stu Shiffman, he points out, and I concur, that virtually all of Stirling's work deals with such characters. Which itself begs the question, as I've stated above too, aren't there interesting plots that don't require racism? What does it mean when multiple works by the same author repeat this theme ad nauseum? And he does seem to relish the racism, even the perverse sexuality of those characters, doesn't he?
But to me, what makes it halfway serious (and yes, I was only half-joking when I made that comment) is SMS's own thinking as revealed in his comments (also above) which are so fundementalist in their outlook (he talks about 'truth' in absolute terms and refers to me snidely me as a turban-wearing 'outsider' and totally misreads my discussion of new historical research--which is not the same as 'revisionism', please! Based on this somewhat limited evidence, I'm strongly inclined to think he likes his racist societies a little more than he should. I'm happy to be proven wrong though, because I really do like his work a lot and think he's a terrific writer. Not that that means he's a terrific human being.
Just as it's dangerous to mistake a fictional character's views for those of his author's, it's also dangerous to mistake an author's views for those of his creation. I don't know SMS personally, apart from several posts by him on various newsgroups on the internet, and the above comments, but he seems hostile and all-knowing and extremely intolerant towards non-American readers, which forces me to only one conclusion about him.
As I said, I'm happy to be proven wrong about him, and will still reading his work.
40 - Ashok K. Banker
"African Americans as pivotal characters in every book."
How could African Americans _not_ be pivotal characters in every book, their being pivotal to American society and development, progress, etc? Yet I don't recall a single book where they, or any other ethnic American group was represented as the main protagonist in the story. SMS's characters are uniformly and unabashedly American above all, and only incidentally African American, or otherwise. In that sense, to a non-American reader, they come across as types representing different facets of Americana rather than unique examples of their ethnic groups. Sort of like a McBurger with a Curry sauce, as against a real Chicken Masala.
41 - Steve Wilson
I just found this thread and it's to bad stirling dropped off it. Hmmm... I think I can point out the exact moment he decided to leave:
"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."
I was suprised to see a personal attack since they are forbade right below the "Add tour comment" link. I sucks when a good discussion is derailed by someone who has become frustrated by thier inability to change someone's opinion. Just because some disagree's with you does not mean they are a bad person.
Calling someone a racist is the last resort in a losing arguement and is an indicator of a seroius character flaw.
42 - Ashok Banker
You're absolutely right, Steve.
It sucked when Stirling simply dropped all those loosely bandied terms--"outsider", "turban", "dhoti", and of course that clincher, "Truth is truth". It sucks even more when an author of fiction claims the higher moral ground simply because his study of history seems to have ended at x year, as if any further studies of history beyond that point were irrelevant and 'false'.
It was a shock to be addressed in such racial terms by an author of Stirling's stature. I still enjoy his books, but he clearly can't sustain an argument or tolerate any point of view that doesn't agree wholly with his own.
His personal attacks on me are close to being libellious, since, as I pointed out, just because I come from a country where people wear turbans and dhotis doesn't make us 'outsiders'. If anything, when speaking of Indian history, it would be Stirling himself who ought to be considered an outsider.
So it's really Stirling who threw the first (and last) stone accusing me of racism--that term 'outsider' is a potent one. And I agree with you on that indicating a serious character flaw. As for his personal attack on me exceeding permissible bounds, that's for the powers that be at Blog Critics to decide. But thanks anyway for chipping!
43 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Ashok,
A long time ago (in a country far far away) I had a book called the the "World of IF" or something like that, dealing with alternative histories - also one of my favorite genres. I'm surprised that you didn't mention the original short story story that started the genre - "Timequake."
44 - Ashok Banker
Ruvy, my article wasn't meant to be covering all alternate history, just a selection of alt-hist novels I liked a lot. As you can see, I didn't include several major works like Pavane, because I was focussing more on my favourites. And I didn't cover any short stories at all...but I'm not so sure that "Timequake" was the "original" short story that "started" the genre.