Do people prefer their alternate history fiction more grounded. Or more fantastical?
Grounded Vs Fantastical
- Thread starter Bojeffries
- Start date
I prefer more grounded, sometimes a little fantastical if it’s in the interest of getting a scenario going (as in someone making a decision that they may not realistically go through with).
In my mind, it's all about expectations.
I like TLs that try for maximum historical accuracy, the ones that aim for true counterfactuals, where you explore economic, cultural, and geopolitical aspects of a TL, especially longterm drifts. These are full of careful research, and do their best to be true counterfactuals, not merely pulp exercises that the genre is as a whole tainted with.
On the other hand, the TL that I reread most often is World of the Semi-Great Revolution (I ought to do a formal review at some point), which is not a peice of hard Althist - in fact, its soft enough to spread on toast, but it's FUN! watching the world go off the rails into crazy town and that's what really matters.
Both are good, but what I dislike is one being sold as another.
I prefer more grounded in how the story progresses.
But fantastical in how the senerio happened is okay.
Like a realist telling of an alternate history where Irish saints found their way to the Americas.
But fantastical in how the senerio happened is okay.
Like a realist telling of an alternate history where Irish saints found their way to the Americas.
It all depends on the intent of the author. Fantastical timelines are fine, but if you have a hard timeline and make a hard turn towards fantasy that could be a bit of a problem.
Unless you are quite explicit that it hard turn is your original intent.
Unless you are quite explicit that it hard turn is your original intent.
I like some of the harder stuff on here but I have a fondness for the fantastical in the books I buy, less the ones that clearly demonstrate projection/no research/&c and more in the PKD-vein of worlds coming apart at the seams that still demonstrate a lot of research but deploy it to either critique the current status quo or use parallelism to cast historical figures in new or amusing ways to someone who knows what's going on.