If you had to give a lecture about Alternate History, what would you lecture about?

There's an upcoming sci-fi\fantasy con where I live that I usually go to. Generally the ides with this con is that there is a general title\theme for each annual conference, and then the participants volunteer to arrange certain activities related to that theme, usually lectures. This year the theme is alternate worlds, so I was thinking about giving a lecture about alternate history, but I can't think of a more specific subject. I was thinking about maybe talking about AH cliches, and why they are implausible, but I find that subject personally to be a bit tiresome for me.

What do you think? Mind you, it has to cover at least 45 minutes.

Butterfly effect.

Plausibility & ASB

I would provide some interesting, perhaps overlooked Points of Divergence and then briefly sketch how things would have been different if events would have happened differently. Perhaps segue from that into classics of the genre, such as For Want of a Nail.

I'd go philosophical : Alternate History and idealisation.

I - Utopia as the root of AH
Introducting the subject by pointing out the immemoriality of idealized situation. "Once upon A time", etc.
Pointing out that the appearance of Uchronia is tied up with the rationalisation of the world, when History cease to be moral to become a science, forcing the marvellous and utopic to take refugee, still in another far time, but an unrealized time.

Using the first known AH books to highlight this (read some short extracts, points illustrations or maps, etc.) :
- Napoléon et la conquête du monde, 1812-1832. Less a wisfhul thinking and a wank, a plaid for the napoleonic political conception that while failed historically, remained legit as well in French politics and introducing it as victorious providing an exemple of this legitimacy
- P.'s Correspondence : A belief in the deep decline of individuals. As people change everyday without noticing, he takes people that died in glory and famed, and make them lives on for we see their fall.
- Uchronie, or the "history how it should have been" in order to prevent untolerance and religious wars.

etc.

II - Alternate History as a mirror.
These different worlds depictions have all one point in common, our world, our reality.; as we wrote them trough smoke.
The most obvious, and caricatural, outcome is the "evil beard" universe a la Star Trek. The role is to point out how, eventually, we are good and how it could be really worse.

Or the reverse, with for exemple the comics Luxley, with Natives invading Europe, inflicting on us the same treatment that we did (only to prevent their own doom). Here, cries of innocence from Europeans takes all their tragic : they are, these ancestor that never been, but our real ancestors weren't.

Idealisation works on both ways, and eventually AH serves as defining ourselves trough time-playing, as many futuristic science-fiction.

There, search for several better known media, and introduce less known AH.

Conclusion being about how, questioning and entertainment aren't opposed (highlight the use of AH tropes in Science-Fiction), but how they participe to each other, as in any good science fiction.

I'd focus a lot on plausibility and butterflies. Not enough people understand these things.

Sabot Cat said:

I would provide some interesting, perhaps overlooked Points of Divergence and then briefly sketch how things would have been different if events would have happened differently. Perhaps segue from that into classics of the genre, such as For Want of a Nail.

Click to expand...

This basically.

Richard Harrow said:

I'd focus a lot on plausibility and butterflies. Not enough people understand these things.

Click to expand...

Or this.

Actually, if the entire conference is on "alternate worlds", I'd probably use that, because chances are most of the audience would know the classics anyway.

I myself would talk about my favorite topic, which is alternate history as an actual thing: a component in a larger multiverse where every tiny decision branches off another reality, the differences between realities building up over time, and no, you aren't going to get President Joe Steel who rules till 1953 and acts exactly like Stalin, and the genre still needs to overcome that immaturity. A lot of thought for AH fans is on alternate history exploding as a genre; that's never going to happen. We'll always be a niche. What I would argue is that our future is getting better at writing it, and getting rid of rubberband history and all of that. That's not necessarily interesting, though, which is the reason that we have Joe Steel who acts exactly like Stalin and rules America till 1953 (Turtledove).

I would give a brief overview of alternate history's greatest hits, and works that I particularly enjoy. I'd talk about the punks (steams, deisel, tesla, atom, bio, ect) and how they play into alternate history. I'd talk about interesting points of divergence and give tips on making fun new alternate histories.

I'd also talk about rule of fun and rule of cool, and all the great stuff they can lead to. Id also emphasize respectfully disagreeing and civil discourse, not just in alternate history but in nerd culture in general.

Depends on the audience.

If you are talking to a Sci-Fi convention group, you might go a little philosophical, but not much. I would focus on 1) Research 2) Butterfly Effect and 3) ASB.

If you ever talk to a more academically inclined audience, you might explore the ramifications of Alternate History from a philosophical or historiographical standpoint. For example, how AH often explores political fantasies of the writer, or even fears. As a history major, I struggle to justify AH as a legitimate academic exercise. I think events and individuals have significance in what did not happen in as much as what did happen.

Good luck, anyway.

A Sci-Fi audience probably knows a little about AH, so I would talk about how the big, spectacular but implausible well-known AH (Nazi victories etc.) contrasts with the more subtle departures that can be more interesting to an audience that knows its history, and thus open their minds to the fact that it's not all swastikas and space bats.

Two things you could include, one would be to look at that Guardian article that was very critical of AH, I can't find it on the guardian website but I am sure we discussed it here at some stage. My memory is that the author disapproved of largely right wing historians (mainly military) re-writing history in their own way and also of the way that it supported great person theories of history.

Also if its a sci fi audience what about an exploration of the concept of the ISOT. For example why do they just occur the once why not repeatedly (as IAINBHX has just suggested for his Manx epic), what happens when the area is displaced to the area it goes to, are we talking parallel worlds or does and ISOT into the past forever change our present.

Just some random thoughts, please ignore or use as you will

Orko said:

There's an upcoming sci-fi\fantasy con where I live that I usually go to. Generally the ides with this con is that there is a general title\theme for each annual conference, and then the participants volunteer to arrange certain activities related to that theme, usually lectures. This year the theme is alternate worlds, so I was thinking about giving a lecture about alternate history, but I can't think of a more specific subject. I was thinking about maybe talking about AH cliches, and why they are implausible, but I find that subject personally to be a bit tiresome for me.

What do you think? Mind you, it has to cover at least 45 minutes.

Click to expand...

So did this already happen?

Confederate victory in the American Civil War, an investigation of the psychological difficulties exhibited by Union fan bois when presented with the possibility.

Talk about the Sea Mammal...