Thoughts about alternate History by a historian

hipper

Banned
Hi folks

the very eminent Historian Martin Van Creveld on his blog post of October 12th gave some thoughts on the principles of Alternative history I think he has just about cracked it in terms of giving us some very decent rules about how to write a good alternative History story. its worth a read

Ill post his main points below



on his Blog http://www.martin-van-creveld.com/
  1. Counterfactual history must be plausible, i.e it must not introduce all kinds of things that are a priori impossible. For example, the question what would have happened if Hitler and not the US had built the first nuclear weapons is a plausible one, given that, as late as the summer of 1939, German nuclear research led the world. An attempt to answer it can result in some interesting answers that will shed light both on the Fuehrer and on the role the weapons in question have played and are playing in international relations. However, asking what would have happened if Napoleon, or Genghis Khan, had had them does not make sense and should be discouraged.
  2. Counterfactual history should only go so far and no further. That is because, in human affairs, few if any events have one cause only. Trying to trace the immediate chain of events that might have resulted from one counterfactual event is hard enough. Pushing this more than a very few steps forward will, in the words of Winston Churchill (at a time when, as Lord of the Admiralty, he was responsible for guessing what future naval warfare would be like), cause thought “to diverge too fast.” The outcome is likely to be pure fiction with no link to reality at all. Let me provide another example of this. Many years ago I had a student, an American, who wanted to do a paper on the consequences following from the invention of print. This being Israel, he said that, without print, there would never have been a kibbutz. He was right, of course; yet writing a paper on the topic did not make sense. The reason why it made no sense was because, between Guttenberg and the kibbutzim, there were too many intermediate steps far more relevant to the topic than print was. I told him to limit his inquiry to the years before 1550. What came of it, if anything, I cannot recall.
  3. This warning also has an obverse side. The more plausible a counterfactual narrative, the less it will deviate from what actually happened. As it does so, it may very well turn into an exercise in futility. What is the point of writing counterfactual history that is only marginally different from that which actually took place? On second thought, perhaps this is what I did in the piece I posted last week, perhaps not. Let the reader be the judge of that.

Cheers Hipper
 
Point 3 presupposes that OTL is plausible. There are, I would suggest, any number of points where what actually happened was pretty unlikely.
 
Point 3 presupposes that OTL is plausible. There are, I would suggest, any number of points where what actually happened was pretty unlikely.

That is true, but while OTL is not constrained by believability, any TL is. Therefore TLs must be plausible.
 
That is true, but while OTL is not constrained by believability, any TL is. Therefore TLs must be plausible.

The more plausible a counterfactual narrative, the less it will deviate from what actually happened.

That was the point I was addressing. In those cases where OTL is not plausible, a plausible counterfactual narrative will, by definition, deviate from what actually happened.
 
Plausability and likelyhood are different things though and we ened to keep in mind the idea of Reality Is Unrealistic. World is a messy and nutty place.

Also, Occam's Razor.

I'm debating to start a thread here on a No-9/11 world (I know there's a good deal), but rather than change something historically on how a past politician could have taken out Bin Laden, I'm thinking he was just felled by disease among with other groups that crippled the organization.
 
Plausability and likelyhood are different things though and we ened to keep in mind the idea of Reality Is Unrealistic. World is a messy and nutty place.

Also, Occam's Razor.

I'm debating to start a thread here on a No-9/11 world (I know there's a good deal), but rather than change something historically on how a past politician could have taken out Bin Laden, I'm thinking he was just felled by disease among with other groups that crippled the organization.

Even further than that, Corporal Hitler is killed by a bullet while serving on the Western Front during WWI. Both plausible and realistic. What the world looks like because of that I have no idea, but just throwing it out there.
 
First one must concede there is not science to alternate history, it is not simply a process where parts interchange or pieces mix in predictable ways, there simply is no actual "right" answer. We merely argue how things might be given the influences of events, the guideposts are what actually happened, and to pretend to be anything more than fiction one is limited to possible, plausible and probable. For me the immediate steps past a point of departure can be alternate history, the further one moves in time the more speculative it becomes and once you get o some future point you are fiction flavored by enough familiar to feel real.

For example I wanted to ponder a world 50 years after the Great War in which it ended stalemated, the theme I want to explore is a multi-lateral world rather than the bifurcated one, so in 1966 or 1967 or 1968 what does a Great Power world look like with a few more surviving Empires, a revolutionary Russia, Dollars and Pounds competing, colonialism not uprooted, technology both stunted and pursued differently, and so on. I know the world I want so I pull at thread to see if they can get me there. Many darlings kill killed. Many assumptions need to be challenged and one sees both grand possibility and depressing reality, not all changes are for the better and if they are they might look unrealistic. I accept that in the billions of details I must ultimately take literary license in choices. Doing so lets me delve into history in ways I had not. Thus I keep it as similar to how we know things as I can. When I discuss it I try to discuss the chain I followed and admit where I made the choice. Like science you still need to show your math, even if certain variables are merely accepted to be so.
 
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