Babel Clash

It’s almost time to pass the torch to a new pair of author guests.  Thanks, Taylor, you’ve been great!  Want to get in a last what-if post (or a plug for Destroyermen) before you sign off?

Tomorrow, we’ll be joined by Robin Hobb, who has returned to the Rain Wilds in Dragon Keeper and its upcoming sequel Dragon Haven, and Sara Creasy, whose debut novel Song of Scarabaeus is officially available 4/27.  Welcome, ladies!

I posed the question I asked in my last post to a friend of mine and received the response, “I don’t know.  I’ve never thought about ‘what-ifs.’”  I couldn’t help but think, oh my, that’s so sad.  That’s like saying you’ve never been curious about anything at all.  Which is when I realized that he has engaged in “what-ifs.”  He just doesn’t realize or recognize the behavior for what it is.  What if I had a better/faster computer?  What if I was independently wealthy?  What if, what if, what if.  What-ifs are everywhere and in everything. 

I really like Taylor’s point about almost everything written or filmed these days being a variation on a theme.  It’s the idea of the always-already read (or watched).  What if you took the traditional mystery novel and made the protagonist a werewolf?  Bam!  Urban fantasy is born.  What if dirigibles had been around in Victorian England?  Ta da!  Let’s welcome steampunk.  And so on.

Also, since Taylor brought up the idea that ANYTHING can happen, I’ve always been fascinated by the multiverse theory of the universe.  Everything has happened.  I’m not sure it’s true, but it’s a fun (and in a strange way comforting) thought that somewhere out there, every outcome has been explored and every choice made.  In some parallel universe, maybe Franz Ferdinand wasn’t assassinated and WWI was averted.  Maybe somewhere Wilson got his way and the US didn’t support Allied intervention in the Bolshevik intervention.   So how about it?  How do you feel about those what-ifs?

What I really like about “what if” is that it isn’t confined to novels of alternate history.  Like any good subgenre, it’s versatile.  It shows up in one of my favorite new graphic novels, Chew by John Layman.  This one isn’t for those with weak stomachs, but how cool is the idea that the FDA is the most powerful law enforcement agency in the US because poultry has been completely banned due to avian flu outbreaks?

And how many of us can honestly say that we haven’t spent at least a few minutes of our time speculating on what would happen if our favorite (or not so favorite) fictional and historical characters met.  Who would win in a fight - Gandalf or Dumbledore?  Who would win a battle of wits - Einstein or Ben Franklin?  Who’s the better (or worse) military strategist - Alexander the Great or Napoleon?

So, in honor of the curiosity in all of us, what are your favorite “what if” scenarios?  Look no further than the title of this post for one of mine.

I spent my entire college career thinking I would become a historian.  How I ended up working in science fiction & fantasy for a book store, I’m not even sure myself.  What I do know is that I’ve engaged in my fair share of “what if” games.

What if John Adams had never signed the Alien & Sedition Acts?  Would Thomas Jefferson have been elected president in 1800?

What if Caesar Rodney hadn’t made his famous eighty mile ride to Philadelphia to vote for independence?  Would America still be part of the British Empire?  Would we have the metric system?  (Please, let’s switch to the metric system.)

What if Archduke Franz Ferdinand hadn’t been assassinated?  Would we be calling the conflict of the 1930s & 40s WWI?  Would JRR Tolkien still have written Lord of the Rings?

And so on and so on . . .

What I find most interesting about the “what if” game is that it makes me think more critically about the “what did happen.”  As Taylor said, Destroyermen uses real history in a fanciful way to draw attention to “the ordeal of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet at the outbreak of WWII.”  I’m not advocating using alternate history novels to teach history in schools or anything (though the idea could make some history lessons a lot more fun . . .), but I’ll bet there are a few people out there who picked up an alternate history, loved it, and proceeded to find out more about the “real” history.  Why the heck not?

Hi Terry!
First, I appreciate the invitation to join you and everybody on this forum, and I look forward to visiting with Steve. He’s a great guy, and one of my personal, favorite authors. I’m relatively new at this, and to have somebody like Steve “blurb” my first book, “Into the Storm” was a great and unexpected honor–but I’ve told him all that . . .
I’ll see if I can assemble a few thoughts–it IS the allergy season! The topic you proposed, “Why Revise?” reminds me of a wonderful class I took in college, taught by a great friend, Dr. Pat Zelman, concerning the History of History. We used to engage in lively discussions about how history is recorded, written about, and ultimately, interpreted. That’s right, even when using primary sources, there is usually more than one version of “history.” Unless you’re all alone when you stump your toe, there’s going to be more than one account of the event, and even if you’re by yourself, it’s human nature to make up scenarios that don’t leave you looking so silly. Instead of reporting: “I was bumbling along in terrain I knew nothing about, thinking about my gal back home and trying to light a smoke–far more concerned with the mosquitoes trying to crawl in my ears than with what I was supposed to be doing–when I tripped over an orange lawn tractor,” one might be more inclined to recount: “Scout was uneventful. Encountered slight resistance. Sustained minor injury.”
Often, the second, more concise version is more attractive to historians because, without all the literary babbling, it SEEMS more plausible. It’s also wrong, and leads to an entirely wrong conclusion.
I’m not here to bash “serious” historians, I’m one myself, but I must also admit—as I did to Pat Zelman so long ago, that I enjoy the “literary” historians, such as Bernard DeVoto and Alan Eckert who manage to create an atmosphere, a context for history that brings it to life—and thereby makes it more relevant. I sometimes suspect that the “dry recitation of facts” school of history is the result of a diabolical plot to make kids hate it in school.
As I wrote in a little essay once, that appears on my website, I’ve been engaged in “serious” history all my life, either teaching it, advising on it for documentaries and movies, experimenting with it (ballistically), and sometimes even living it a little. When the idea for the “Destroyermen” series popped in my head—on a movie set, oddly enough—I saw an opportunity to use hard history in a fanciful, exhilarating way, that would not only please me, but might draw attention to a true, historic event that has been largely, sadly, overlooked; the ordeal of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet at the outbreak of WWII.
I have to diverge slightly from the topic here, because “Destroyermen: Into the Storm, Crusade, Maelstrom, and the upcoming Distant Thunders,” might fit in the “Alternate History” genre, but only in the sense that I added a few characters and ships to some actual, initial events. Beyond that, I “revise” nothing, but merely take those vessels and people, typical of those present at that desperate time, and plunge them into a different, well, “revised” world, where they must succeed or fail based on the character, equipment, attitudes, collective knowledge, and prevailing culture of early 1942.
You may have noticed that I “stumped my toe” on “revised” there, because the world they find is Earth. It’s an “alternate” Earth, but its history has been diverging from our own for about 65 million years—since the KT extinction event, that never happened there. That world does have a history, but it’s been little influenced by ours. There have been ice ages and other extinction events that drove evolution in an entirely different direction, but the geography is somewhat similar. Beyond that, little is familiar to the Destroyermen who end up there. Ultimately, they “revise” no history that we’re familiar with “here,” but the ways in which they, the people with their worldview aboard those dilapidated ships cope with their situation and the beings they meet is the true heart of the ongoing story.
Back to the topic. To “revise” something implies that one is attempting to perfect or bring something up-to-date. Improve it. Sometimes, in history, that is a good thing, if you’re “revisiting” something to discover an omission of fact. To do so with an agenda is a terrible disservice; a mistake often made by politicians or fools in an attempt to justify their actions or support untenable arguments. If any writers of “alternate history” do that, I’ve certainly not read them. Good writers of “alternate history” are engaging in what I consider a glorious, time-honored game of intellectual play called “what if?” The very best will leave you nodding and thinking “sure, it could have happened like that.” I believe that anyone with the least interest in history has probably done it – whether they’ll admit it or not – and that’s probably why so many people like it. My first serious attempt to participate in the game occurred in college when I wrote a “history” paper exploring how history might have changed had Gen. Albert Sidney Johnson not been killed at the Battle of Shiloh. There he was, riding around like a dope, bleeding to death all day, with a tourniquet in his kit. Through unassailable logic, I proved that had he only stopped for a moment, noticed his wound and bound it up, the outcome of the battle would certainly have been altered, and maybe even that of the entire war as well.
I got a . . . poor grade . . . and a pointed lecture that “serious” historians do not engage in “what if.” Blah.
I’m fascinated by just about everyone’s versions of “alternate history/universe/reality” and I’ll never quit enjoying the “game.”

Well, Glenda & Celine, I have thoroughly enjoyed your posts (and your books!), but it’s about time for us to wrap up.  Any last thoughts (or plugs for your respective series) before we hand things over to some alternate historians?

Tomorrow, we’ll be joined by S.M. Stirling and Taylor Anderson.  Welcome,  guys!