Alt History/Historical Fantasy

[iamafish]

I'm currently listening back through the podcastle archive and have managed to make it to 114 - Wolves till the World Goes Down (awesome by the way). Obviously I'm not even 1/3rd of the way through the archive, but so far I've not come across much Alternative History apart from some steampunk, The Whistling Room (which wasn't historical when it was written) and some Westerns.

My question then is two fold. The first: can anyone recommend any Alternative History Podcastle episodes? I'm a big fan of Historical Fiction in general, especially ones with a fantasy twist on them, so i'd love to hear them. The older the history the better - I'm into Greek and Roman history mostly, but most other stuff suits me too.

The second question is more interesting. Why is Alternative History seemingly neglected? It seems that fantasy is either set in a completely different world, loosely based on our own, or set in the present. People often take Norse, Greek, American, etc mythology and traditions and set them in modernity. Why is this seemingly preferred to setting stories in the past and placing traditions in the culture in which they originated?

[danooli]

Your second question IS interesting, and one I can't begin to answer.  I do agree with your take on alt history though.  I love it.

Have you read The Native Star by M.K Hobson yet?  It's REALLY good alt history set in the latter part of the 19th century.  There's a Podcastle giant episode written by her as well that is set in the same time period (and has one cross over character from the book if I recall correctly.)  It's PodCastle 121, Giant Episode: The Warlock and the Man of the Word http://podcastle.org/2010/09/07/podcastle-121-giant-episode-the-warlock-and-the-man-of-the-word/  great stuff!

[Scattercat]

Answer: Because writing alternate history requires a strong and thorough knowledge of the historical period in which you intend to write.  If you don't have such knowledge - and Lord knows most people don't - then there's a strong intimidation factor in attempting to write with it.  You can either do a ton of research or try to fake it and take the bad reviews that will inevitably arise.  Most authors want to avoid bad reviews.  It takes much less time to pick up on the flavor of a particular time period, and thus you can write a story set in another world with a vaguely medieval or vaguely Renaissance or vaguely Victorian vibe without much issue, giving you the excuse of "It's not our world" as a response to "But that's not the way it happened!"  If one bothers to actually put in the hours of research, one is much more likely to be working on a really substantial project, a novel or novella, rather than a short story.  Thus, the only people who would tend to write alt-history short stories are people who either happen to have an extensive knowledge of a given historical time period due to other consequences or the rare person who does such research as a side hobby anyway.  Both of those are likely rarer than the norm.

[DKT]

Answer: Because writing alternate history requires a strong and thorough knowledge of the historical period in which you intend to write.  If you don't have such knowledge - and Lord knows most people don't - then there's a strong intimidation factor in attempting to write with it.  You can either do a ton of research or try to fake it and take the bad reviews that will inevitably arise.  Most authors want to avoid bad reviews.  It takes much less time to pick up on the flavor of a particular time period, and thus you can write a story set in another world with a vaguely medieval or vaguely Renaissance or vaguely Victorian vibe without much issue, giving you the excuse of "It's not our world" as a response to "But that's not the way it happened!"  If one bothers to actually put in the hours of research, one is much more likely to be working on a really substantial project, a novel or novella, rather than a short story.  Thus, the only people who would tend to write alt-history short stories are people who either happen to have an extensive knowledge of a given historical time period due to other consequences or the rare person who does such research as a side hobby anyway.  Both of those are likely rarer than the norm.

Scattercat has a lot of it right.

It's also worth noting that when we get history/alt. history in the slush, it gets evaluated by our own history archivist and librarian: Ann Leckie. She's extremely knowledgable, and if someone's history isn't researched well, she'll note it, even if she passes it up to us. And it goes without saying, we don't want to run poorly researched stuff.

That said, I think you're going to enjoy going through the archives, because there are a lot of PodCastle episodes that might feel more historical/alt. historical to you. Here's some just from the past year:

Vainamoinen and the Singing Fish
And Their Lips Rang With the Sun
Hooves and the Hovel of Abdel Jameela
Love Among the Talus
Biographical Notes to "a Discourse on the nature of Causality, with Airplanes," by Benjamin Rosenbaum
Narrative of a Beast's Life
The Narcomancer

There's also some more European Medieval type fantasies like "The Dog King," "Three Days and Nights in Lord Darkdrake's Hall," "Attar of Roses," and "The Queen's Triplets." I'm not sure how "The Mermaid's Tea Party" fits in there, but it probably should somewhere. And that's just in the last year

Anyway - cool to hear you're going through the archives. Hope you enjoy it, and please let us know what you think

[eytanz]

I'm afraid the following:

And Their Lips Rang With the Sun
Love Among the Talus
Biographical Notes to "a Discourse on the nature of Causality, with Airplanes," by Benjamin Rosenbaum
Narrative of a Beast's Life
The Narcomancer

All fall afoul of iamafish's definition of alt. history in that they explicitly don't take place in our world.

That said, they're all well worth listening to - in fact, that list includes some of my favourite PC stories - but they aren't what he's asking for...

[DKT]

Really? I read it as Historical Fiction with a fantasy twist in it. If so, apologies to iamafish.

eytanz is right in that they're all pretty awesome, though. If I do say so myself 

[eytanz]

Really? I read it as Historical Fiction with a fantasy twist in it. If so, apologies to iamafish.

Well, yes, but then he goes on to refine what he means in his last paragraph.

[iamafish]

the first one on your list is the only podcastle I currently have downloaded that I've not yet listened to, so I'll get to that soon too. I'm also going through the escape pod and Pseudopod archive at the same time, so It's pretty slow going!

I'm pretty open minded with regards to what defines alt history (i mean it's alternative, so there's lots of room for imagination). I'll check out the ones you suggested Dave.

As for research, I can understand that point. I've been doing some of my own alt history of late and been spending a fair amount of time on Wikipedia (crap source I know, but I'm studying history at uni, so I've got a fairly decent grasp of a lot of what I'm writing about anyway, the research is just checking some facts and getting a feel for some grey areas). I guess people who study history tend not to write fiction, because it's fairly easy to research the specific details if you know what you're looking for.

Also I'm now terrified of Ann Leckie Good to see that you do check the research though.

@danooli The Warlock and the Man of the World is the western i made vague reference to in the OP. I really did enjoy that story.

[iamafish]

hey Dave, you didn't mention that there was some nice historical fiction coming up right this week! To Ride beyond the Wide World's End is exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for (although i didn't much like the story, see the comment thread for why).

Vainamoinen and the Singing Fish was awesome by the way. I shall look out for the other episodes as and when I get to them, And Their Lips Rang With the Sun is downloaded and second in line of Pod Castles to listen to

[danooli]

@danooli The Warlock and the Man of the World is the western i made vague reference to in the OP. I really did enjoy that story.

whoops!  that's not even the one i was thinking about!  LOL  I was thinking about "Bright Waters" by John Brown http://podcastle.org/2009/04/08/pc047-giant-episode-bright-waters/

[DKT]

hey Dave, you didn't mention that there was some nice historical fiction coming up right this week!

 

We have more coming up soon - though the next few are American history. So stay tuned!