Deeply amused and not at all surprised....

[lagilman]

My post on using American history in fantasy over at Charlie Stross' blog seems to have evolved in comments into a "the technical aspects of how you'd write an alternate American history where the Indian tribes don't lose" alternating with arguments over the definition of Celtic and related UKcentric socioarcheology, and the only-occasional hitting of my original points.

And I am not at all surprised because, well, there seem to be a lot of literal-minded types who hang out there, and they want to get down to the factual manipulation of details, with emphasis on manipulation.  Because that's tangible and defensible, if you have enough facts and talky-bits.  There's a large section of fandom that loves that kind of worldbuilding, what I refer to, with affection, as th S.M. Stirling school of storytelling.

(I was Steve's editor, and I really do say that with affection, that's not sarcasm or dissing.)

And I have amusement, because with all the theories being thrown around, and all the how-tos and might-haves... none of them have come close to what I'm actually doing.  I'm not sure if they're so focused on Historical Events that they're missing the alternative manipulations or...  well, to presume that what I came up with is so unique would be hubris of the discomforting sort, so I won't say that.  But I am amused.

Comments

[joycemocha.livejournal.com]

Alt history and fantasy using alternate history are two entirely different things, I think.

[lagilman]

They are, and they aren't - it all depends on how you look at things, because if you're saying "up until X point it was all the same and then Y changed..." it's an alternate either way, no matter if you use science or magic to get there...


I refer to SILVER as divergent history, myself...

[joycemocha.livejournal.com]

One reason I've been struggling with the two Weird West stories I've been working on is the whole piece of "up until X point it was all the same and then Y changed...". In both those stories, there's a lot more going on than that. They're more Western fantasy and both are entirely different worlds from each other.

There are a lot of people who want to explore changing that one little piece of alt history, and man, do they want to obsess on it. I suspect that the folks who really geek out about the history are curious about how politics and Big Picture History could have changed down an alternate path.

[lagilman]

Any writer who doesn't have more than the change point happening is... well, they've got a think-piece, not a story. So I'd say you're on the right track. *g*

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

This is why I generally don't comment on anything to do with alternate history. So much investment in fake facts.

[lagilman]

Well, technically, ANY worldbuilding is "fake facts." They're just harder for other people to disagree with. *g*

(where "harder" has never stopped some)

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

This is true. And yet... It's the furphies that get me every time, like those Celts travelling up from Spain.....