Writers who could write AH
- Thread starter Plumber
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Edgar Rice Burroughs would have been a natural for alternate history. Of course most of the time when he was writing there were still plenty of nooks in the solar system where it wasn't possible to prove there weren't lost cities and lost races. The filling in of knowledge about Africa and South America, along with our realization that Mars and Venus weren't human friendly pushed a lot of writing toward alternate history and gave a boost to fantasy over science fiction.
Arthur Dent, author of most of the Doc Savage stories, could have written a good alternate history story or two if he had wanted to.
Long train-wreck of thought: Does anyone remember the Richard Blade series? Pen name of the author was Jeffrey Lord. It was an adult pulp adventure series where a British agent--very Bond-like--went into a different dimension almost every book and rather graphically got the girl(s), destroyed the bad guys, etc. There had to have been over thirty of the books. I liked them at the time, but then I was barely old enough to have given up Hardy Boys, so I have no idea how good they actually were.
Arthur Dent, author of most of the Doc Savage stories, could have written a good alternate history story or two if he had wanted to.
Long train-wreck of thought: Does anyone remember the Richard Blade series? Pen name of the author was Jeffrey Lord. It was an adult pulp adventure series where a British agent--very Bond-like--went into a different dimension almost every book and rather graphically got the girl(s), destroyed the bad guys, etc. There had to have been over thirty of the books. I liked them at the time, but then I was barely old enough to have given up Hardy Boys, so I have no idea how good they actually were.
God, yes. I remember getting so damn angry whilst reading the Stars and Stripes books. The British are universally stupid and unlucky and the Americans are universally brilliant and lucky. Very poor writing indeed.
Ian Fleming could be neat as an AH writer.
Of course, there is a timeline on this site which has James Bond in a TL where the Nazis are still live and kicking, and it's rather good! (Maybe Fleming could have written something similar )
Of course, there is a timeline on this site which has James Bond in a TL where the Nazis are still live and kicking, and it's rather good! (Maybe Fleming could have written something similar
)Any of the great 19th century historical novelists could have pulled it off. Tolstoy, Scott, Thackeray, Cooper, etc. Mark Twain would have turned it into a farce or a satire. Washington Irving would have handled it with a deft touch. Disraeli would have tried it, but would probably have produced an overly extravagant scenario. H.G. Wells did write an alternate history novel, the unfairly neglected Men Without Gods, in which he was the first to use paratime travel as a literary trope. Robert Louis Stevenson, with his profound grasp of politics and his knowledge of engineering and of Scottish history (and later, of Samoan oral history and politics), could have done it well. Probably Kipling too. Of mostly 20th century writers I'd say Margaret Atwood, Marge Piercy, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, Alexei Tolstoy, Dmitri Merejkowski, John Le Carre, Robert Graves, Somerset Maugham, George Orwell, and Aldous Huxley all would be, or would have been, good at it.
Among today's popular writers I'd like especially to see Laurie King (creator of the Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes series) try her hand at it. I'd also like to see s-f writer John Birmingham move beyond ASB scenarios and attempt a realistic POD alternate history.
Among 20th century political figures, Winston Churchill wrote a very clever alternate history short story about the U.S. Civil War, and I'd guess Teddy Roosevelt and Eisenhower had the ability to devise elaborate alternate histories of modern wars. Any of these three would probably have needed a co-author to add characters and dialogue. Trotsky could have done it without a collaborator.
Among pre-19th century writers, it would have been wonderful to have an alternate history of the English Civil War written from exile in Holland by Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673), Duchess of Newcastle, and her husband, who was the top royalist general and also a person of literary ability. The Duchess wrote the first explicit alternate world yarn (with a portal between that world and ours), which her husband praised in a notable sonnet, so they would have easily taken to the idea of alternate history if given a model.
Among today's popular writers I'd like especially to see Laurie King (creator of the Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes series) try her hand at it. I'd also like to see s-f writer John Birmingham move beyond ASB scenarios and attempt a realistic POD alternate history.
Among 20th century political figures, Winston Churchill wrote a very clever alternate history short story about the U.S. Civil War, and I'd guess Teddy Roosevelt and Eisenhower had the ability to devise elaborate alternate histories of modern wars. Any of these three would probably have needed a co-author to add characters and dialogue. Trotsky could have done it without a collaborator.
Among pre-19th century writers, it would have been wonderful to have an alternate history of the English Civil War written from exile in Holland by Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673), Duchess of Newcastle, and her husband, who was the top royalist general and also a person of literary ability. The Duchess wrote the first explicit alternate world yarn (with a portal between that world and ours), which her husband praised in a notable sonnet, so they would have easily taken to the idea of alternate history if given a model.
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In fact, he did so. At least once that I can think of. He wrote a story about a world in which the USA had refused to join WW1 and used their navy to completely seal off the Western Hemisphere. Many years later, one of their ships rediscovers Europe as a land of stone- or bronze-age barbarism created by the chemical and biological warfare unleashed there. I do not remember the name of the story though; it's been a long time.
EDIT: Found it - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_Thirty
On Edgar Rice Burroughs and AH: I'll have to check, but I think Beyond Thirty was written during World War I and was at the time a future history. I'm happy with the concept of old future histories becoming sort of honorary alternate histories once the future has come without them happening, but they aren't really quite the same thing. I do remember trying to come up with a viable point of divergence that could lead to a Beyond Thirty-style collapse of Europe, but I couldn't do it. If the US stays out, I'm guessing negotiated peace in 1917.
John Buchan was into the supernatural and hidden history i.e. Dr Johnson and the Jacobites. Thomas Hardy on a more personal level i.e. alternater endings in oner story. Wells arguably wrote a parallel world story