Sci (Fantasy) Friday #9: Alt-history

Alt-history? Is that some political thing like Alt-Right?

🤦‍♂️ No. It stands for “alternate history.” Basically history in your story was just grooving along until it hit a “pothole,” a Point of Divergence, and the course of history was knocked down a different path.

Such as, “What would happen if the Achaemenid Persians never found the path that allowed them to surround the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae?”

We know that those Spartans died, but the rest of the Greeks unified after the Athenian fleet wrecked the Persian fleet at Salamis, which made it harder to support the massive Persian army. If there was no victory for the Persians at Thermopylae, the Persian King would have focused on other ways to beat the Greeks. Perhaps Xerxes would have moved a large part of his army by ship to Athens? Or Sparta? Maybe Xerxes would have been cast out of the throne by a relative? Maybe the Greek city-states in what’s now Turkey would have broken free? Would there be a need for Philip of Macedon and his son, Alexander, to conquer Persia? Where else would a dynamic leader like Alexander turn? Would there have been a Rome after Alexander’s army smashed the Italian peninsula? Would he have faced the Carthaginians or left them alone? Would he have chased the Gauls around their lands before Julius Caesar?

You can go crazy chasing all the spaghetti-paths causes by one change to history.

“Why, yes, I have a Bachelor’s Degree in History. How did you know?” 😁

Reader: “Anyway, where is your feline-muse, Matt?”

I showed her the costumes for the movie “300,” and … well … my stitches come out next week. 🐈‍⬛ 🤦‍♂️ So you get a photo of books.

Photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash

Reader: “What the crap, Matt?”

This is what so many people think of when they hear that dreaded word “history.” Old, dry books hidden in some ancient library. However, I blame the retched history teachers in public schools for that. If there is a group of people, in general, who can take something meant to be as enjoyable as ice cream and turn it into a product with the taste, and consistency, of cardboard that’s sat in the rain for a week, it’s public school teachers. Mind you, there are still good ones out there, but you really have to dig to find them.

Some background

Anyway, I went to LibertyCon last year, my first literary convention, ever, where I met a lot of cool authors, whose books I’d enjoyed before taking a shot at being a writer, myself.

One of these was Dr. James Young. I’d read two of his books years earlier, but he hadn’t written any in that series in a while. Back then, the book that really drew my interest, Pandora’s Memories, had a Grumman Wildcat chasing German bombers on the cover. I’ve always been fascinated with early WW2 aircraft since buying a copy of Martin Caidin’s “The Ragged Rugged Warriors” as a teen. And Dr. Young’s stories resonated with Caidin’s work. Plus, he had believable, fascinating characters.

I was sitting in the crafting room talking with random people (I wasn’t wearing my glasses, so I couldn’t read name tags), and I had a fascinating conversation with Ms. Emma from the Writer Dojo and “James,” who I didn’t know was Dr. Young. 🤦‍♂️ Note to self: Wear glasses at Conventions. I learned who he was at an Independent Publishing Panel and had a great conversation with him afterwards. I found out he’d written two more books in the “Usurper’s War” series. Of course, I bought both books that weekend. 😁

Anyway, I’ve always been interested in alt-history books. One of my favorites, prior to the “Usurper’s War,” was Harry Harrison’s “Stars and Stripes” series, where England decided to attack the Union Army in the American Civil War and managed to attack a Confederate town. That led to a combined army attacking the British raiders. Some folks don’t think it’s possible, but I enjoyed it. 🤷‍♂️

That’s the tricky part about alt-history books. The Point of Divergency may be believable, but the outcomes may not be. There are always armchair historians, who will speak with conviction while lacking a majority of the facts: “This would never happen.” “Not all Native American tribes would attack the Colonists.” “Dragoons would never use tomahawks.” 🤦‍♂️ The first writer’s curse is those few gadflies, who are determined to get others to write something the gadflies would write if they had the determination to master the craft or the time to write in a specific genre. The second writer’s curse is time. There is never enough time to write all the great story ideas we have, so we must pick and choose the ones most likely to reach the highest number of readers. 😔

Another challenge with alt-history is dialogue. If it’s accurate, less people will understand it. “What the heck does this word mean?” If they’re running to the ebook reader’s dictionary for every page, that book will end up being walled. There is a high selling author, who write historically correct dialogue that is such a huge challenge that I have to stop and reread paragraphs over and over. They’re beautiful words, but I fall right out of the story.

I wanted to love this author’s story, but I had to delete the sample and move on to another writer.

Why do I care?

I’ve been reading history long before I chose that degree in college. One of the first books I bought at a book fair was “Hannibal and the Enemies of Rome” by Peter Connolly. Connolly’s beautiful illustrations brought ancient history to life for me. He’s also written books about the Trojan War, the Roman Army, and one omnibus book, “Greece and Rome at War.” These books still have pride of place on my bookshelf. Only one other artist drew me deeper into history. Angus McBride. Sadly, both of these artists have passed.

Anyway, I’ve read a wide range of history: ancient history, Japanese history, military history in general, both World Wars, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. With every move, I found myself studying the history of the land and people. And that background has affected my writing style. “Discovery writer”? Oh, no. I could never do that. I learned to write from high school and college expository essay crafting, so I have to start with an outline when I write anything. Greeting card messages? To Do lists? Yup. I’m going to write an outline. 🤷‍♂️ It is what it is.

Where am I going with this?

Raconteur Press has two anthologies for alt-history stories coming out this year. And I am “giving it a shot” though I’ve never written one before.

The first one is “Hooves, Sabers & Tracks,” which is focused on cavalry and alt-history. More importantly, the guest editor is Dr. James Young. If you think I started researching a story for that one in November, you’d be on target.

I wanted to write a story that took place during the American War for Independence, but the Point of Divergence gave me fits until I found the event and the historic personality around which much of the war’s outcome revolved. Here’s a hint: Casimir Pulaski. If you don’t know who he is, you’re not alone. I knew about him because there was a highway in my home state named for the hero.

I researched the Continental Dragoons and a certain region of the future United States. What was helpful was a book by the comic book artist/author Timothy Truman, “Straight Up to See the Sky.”

I won’t give much more in the way of spoilers, but I will say it was a lot of fun to … “Research!” *author’s voice blasting from the speakers with reverb set to 11*

The other alt-history anthology is set in WW2, and I’ve got my idea for that from all the movies and books about bomber aircraft I’ve read. That one still needs a lot more “percolating” before it will be ready, but I have until July for that one.

Anyway, back to my “Hooves” short story, I’m plotting scenes and discovering characters in between writing Steampunk, Mecha, Cat SF, GameLit, and Weird West short stories. So many great ideas from my love of history. It’s been an awesome winter, which is not something you hear often. 😉

And that’s about all I’ll inflict on y’all this week. 😁 I’ll see all y’all next week when we talk about another genre/trope of SF.