Friday Sept. 1, 2000 - 11:30 a.m.
Alternate History: Changing the real world
Hyatt Grand Ballroom B
Teresa Nielson Hayden - History junkie, consulting editor at Tor, edits other people's alternate histories.
Richard Garfinkle - Celestial Matters, alternate history author.
Steven Barnes (M) - Working on a novel in which Islam is the dominant religion.
Robert Charles Wilson - author of Darwinia, Hugo finalist, rewrote history of 20th century.
Harry Harrison - well-known author.
Barnes: What are the basic rules?
Wilson: It's not a single sub-genre. As SF people, we are intellectual otters. We can't see a large body of knowledge without wanting to play in it. You can bend the rules, but don't break them unintentionally. It is a vast open field.
Garfinkle: Don't mess with personalities of history without justification. The rules are what the readers accept.
Harrison: It has only been called Alternate History recently, but is essentially a "what if" story. You won't see much good work because it requires hard work and most writers are very, very lazy. To get things right, you have to do a lot of research. You have to like the study of history to like writing alternate histories. Alternate History buffs will jump on any mistakes you make.
Hayden: Never get guns and ammunition wrong. Cultivate friendships with a few gun nuts and run stuff past them. Don't make historical differences unintentionally. It shouldn't sound like things are moving only with the irresistible will of the author. Character, plot, etc. have to figure into it. AH's where there are major changes in the US and the rest of the world does not change with it are not logical. Respect the moral earnestness of human beings. The world worked out the way it has through great effort. It all does matter morally and earnestly. In AH it is hard to write about a world which no one knows about.
Harrison: In rebel in Time, they go back to the civil war with weapons technology. Knowledge of weapons helps.
Barnes: AH is a form of SF, what-if, etc. I can change one thing and everything must follow logically.
Fatherland with Rutger Hauer was a good alternate history movie.
Garfinkle: The assumption of the transmission of great civilizations from Greece to Rome to N. Europe to the US is not necessarily valid. Find ways to play with it.
Barnes: Inshala, African-based story where the Africans bring white slaves to the US.
G: History requires distance and perspective. Messing with recent events is different.
Harrison: Watch the North Wind Rise by Robert Graves. Good book in which women control religion.
From Audience: A collection of essays titles "What If" pose a number of neat turning points.
Harrison: European nations were eager for the world wars in order to pull their neighbors down and be dominant. The only way Russian history could be changed was by a bloody revolution. Russia had to have a complete upheaval. A constitutional monarchy wouldn't work.
Hayden: People didn't understand how that kind of government could work, and they still don't.
Harrison: It would take an awful lot of change for Germany to have lost immediately. The other European nations had poor armies.
Garfinkle: Find the weak points. If you want to make big changes, it is easier to get your readers to accept it if you start with a small change.
Harrison: Even if it's been done, maybe you can do it over again and do it better.
Hayden: A book titled Guns, Germs and Steel has many interesting ideas.
Wilson: The black hole of research. Everyone's knowledge is an approximation. We each have our own biases. When do I have enough to proceed with my own literature?
Barnes: Do enough research to have a good picture, then write and weasel around what you don't know.
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