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"Alternative History Fiction" Is the Tackiest Genre
"Novelists trafficking in the present would do well to abandon their lingering prejudices against historical fiction as something ready-made and second-rate," claims Thomas Mallon in today's New Yorker, making the case for the highs and lows of "alternative-history fiction," which is my least favorite genre of all time. I hate it so much! (And that's coming from someone who'll read books with like, wizards and garbage.) It most often contains all the boringness of actual history with the lazy sort of ingenuity of a writer with a desperate trick. Do writers, Mallon suggests (and he is more appreciative) turn sometimes to the genre because of fiction's current lack of cultural oomph?
– But my riveting upcoming alternative-history fiction e-book on the Knights Templar and the Illuminati INCLUDES wizards and garbage, Choire!
The Man in the High Castle is the only alternative history book you ever need to read. What it lacks in wizards and garbage, it makes up for in Nazis!
ETA: To correct my earlier description of "wizards in garbage," which I almost kept.
@antarcticastartshere I love that one. Also Robert Harris in general (esp. Pompeii and Fatherland.) Also An Instance of the Fingerpost.
@antarcticastartshere I did read an alternate history I liked – The Burning Mountain. The story opened at the Trinity test site in 1945, but instead of an earth-shattering atomic boom… lightning struck the tower, which collapsed, and the bomb was destroyed by the fall. The nuclear weapon program was set back by some considerable number of months, and Truman decides he can't wait – he orders Operation Olympic (the invasion of Kyushu) to go ahead. The rest of the book is the story of a small unit fighting that battle.
Really an entertaining read. Normally I share Choire's distaste for the genre, but this was quite good.
@antarcticastartshere I did love "The Man in the High Castle." It almost sent me off to read more of what became that genre and then I ABORTED ABORTED RAN AWAY (back to hard scifi lol).
@Choire Sicha Have you read any of Connie Willis's stuff? Time travel! But sort of historical fictiony!
@Choire Sicha Just read more Phillip K. Dick instead.
OH GOD YES HISTORY IS SO BORING UGH ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
@jolie I hate it! I really do hate reading history. School ruined it for me. I can't remember numbers. (That's why I don't know anyone's phone number.) Oh God maybe I should be diagnosed with something.
@Choire Sicha I think your first problem is that all the time you thought you were in history class, you were actually taking math?
@jolie Seriously, I talk to so many people who think history is about memorizing facts and dates. History is all about the grand narratives and varieties of human existence, people! It's like fiction, but it really happened!
@Sean Lai: I heard Robert Massie talking about his new biography of Catherine the Great and remembered why I love history so much:
1) It reminds you that everything is connected and has an impact on everything else.
2) You really can't make that shit up.
@Bittersweet 3) HORSE FUCKING
@jolie I think 3 is an example of 2.
I'll comment on this as soon as I return from a reimagining of the Civil War in which I am part of a co-ed Confederate battalion of mixed-race polyamorists.
@C_Webb Just think what re-enactors could do with that story.
We'll always have A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
In a world that includes "paranormal romance," I can't buy the headline.
@Smitros "Teen paranormal romance" is located next to "New teen paranormal romance."
@dntsqzthchrmn Don't forget "New teen Christian paranormal romance."
@Smitros THIS IS A FAIR POINT.
@Choire Sicha In all fairness, though, the competition for "tackiest genre" is pretty stiff.
@Smitros "pretty stiff"
@Bus Driver Stu Benedict Mike Judge may have to consider the lost years of Beavis and Butthead, some of which were lived through me.
@Smitros "lovely bones"
YOU'LL PRY MY WHAT IF THE NAZIS-WON-WORLD-WAR-II-OR-THE-SOUTH-WON-THE-CIVIL-WAR-OR-TIME-TRAVELlING-AFRIKAANERS-HELPED-THE-NAZIS-AND-THE-SOUTH NOVELS FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS
Also: Biblical speculative fiction!
@jfruh But what if Jesus was an EXECUTIONER'S son?
@jfruh yeah uh KURT VONNEGUT WILL SEE YOU IN HIS OFFICE NOW.
I would totally read a book about a garbageman with magical powers.
@migraineheadache Does the animated Dilbert count?
@migraineheadache I don't know what that is, but I would totally read Dilbert if it was set somewhere along the lines of Elizabethan London or Studio 54-era Manhattan.
I read a lot of alternative history, but I'll freely admit that 95% of it is crap — noticeably worse than the mere 90% crap rate in most other genres.
What gets me is how people can find current fiction interesting but historical fiction boring. Or how people can find life interesting but history boring, for that matter. History is just yesterday's life, after all.
@Non-Anonymous This is totally fair.
I read David Foster Wallace with two bookmarks!
@Matt one stayed tucked in the foreword for months.
They don't even have policemen one.
Totally, dude, what we need more of is memoirs by people who aren't even 30 yet.
They are all exclusives because they happened to us.
CARPE DIEM BABY
@Brad Nelson We met at your book-release party, don't you remember?
Brad Nelson signed my copy of Nic's eggnog recipe at Housing Works once.
I love my Kindle, but there's just something about the feel of a real book, you know?
FIXXXER
Reading!
Man. Books, you know? So good!
"da da da da da da da. da da da da" — marianne faithfull
Journalism is also good. Nothing like some good, quality journalism.
Do you think they make journalism in book form? I would read that!
I was in a focus group once. We pretty much decided that we liked our journalism with more pictures and diagrams.
and then some dude wrote about us in this book which I occasionally re-read snips of on the toilet.
DEVIL'S DANCE
@Matt Coal Miner's Digg(er): The Coal Stryker Guide to Journalism in Book Form
did you know that 99% of journalists absolutely hate the subjects that they write about? The more you know.
@Art Yucko Well, at least when they've finished writing. (Down with the 1%!)
But where do you place Neal Stephenson's "Baroque Cycle," Choire?
Also? What about Alternative Steampunk Histories With Zombies (such as "Boneshaker")?
Not steampunk. Cyberpunk.
@Matt Have we read the same Boneshaker?
People are still publishing books? Good for them!
Are they though?
@Matt ___ ____ ___ ____ __ ___ ___
Katt Kardashian?
OOH IT TEARS ME AND I BLEED YEAHHH
Your least favorite genre of all time IN THIS UNIVERSE, at least.
whoa. agreed.
Well, everyone knows Custer died at Little Bighorn. What this book presupposes is… maybe he didn't?
I fucking love N.Scott Momaday.
@MattP (whispered) Wiiild cat. P-keehww P-keehww
But what of "Alternative Present Fiction"
Only if there are boobs and big-ass laser guns on the cover.
golf snap, blubblub.
How about the fiction that dead authors would write if they were still alive? Would that also be alternative history fiction? Or am I doing this wrong?
C'mon Choire, don't tell me you don't think the Mirror Universe Spock is hawt.
@DMcK Ironically, there's a whole book and several short stories about the Mirror Universe in which MirrorSpock is a central character. And they're actually very good, if you're a nerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrd like me.
Harry Turtledove will now beat you about the head with one of his thousand-page books about how the world would have been if Nazi Confederates had won the Sino-Japanese War, Choire. Just as soon as he gets done cranking out the one he started last night (so next Tuesday).
Anyway, the problem with this subgenre is it is totally dominated by Nazis and Confederates. Most just don't get creative enough with their divergence points.