A recent post in The Economist magazine congratulated Francis Spufford whose Cahokia Jazz won this year’s long-form class of the Sidewise Awards for Alternate History. The Economist went on to state: “The what-if genre of fiction is growing fast, with work of startling quality and originality. [Cahokia Jazz is] A noir thriller that takes place in the 1920s, it imagines an America in which the native population had not been nearly wiped out by smallpox.”
I read on: “Tweaking history is surely as much fun as a novelist can have: losers become winners, and not quite everything changes.”
Well, we know this: Robert Harris paved the way for me with Fatherland, published 1992. Consider also Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America published in 2004; Kingsley Amis’s The Alteration came out in 1976; Keith Roberts’ Pavane in 1968; Philip K Dick’s The Man in the High Castle in 1962.
And it goes back further…
In 1490, Joanot Martorell wrote Tirant lo Blanch about a knight who succeeds in fighting off the invading Ottoman armies of Mehmet II and saves Constantinople from Islamic conquest. He wrote this when the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 was still a traumatic memory for Christian Europe.
Roman historian Livy speculated that the Romans would have eventually beaten Alexander the Great if he’d lived longer and turned west to attack them (Book IX, sections 17-19 Ab urbe condita libri (The History of Rome, Titus Livius).
So what’s the attraction?
Imagining a changed moment in the past can spur the imagination like nothing else. What if the Spanish Armada successfully invaded and conquered England? What if William of Normandy had failed in 1066? What if Napoleon had won at Waterloo in 1815? What if President X had been elected instead of President Y? We could go on for ever… And if we’re worried about the present, how comforting is it to escape to a different present? Of course, it could be a worse one. 🙁
Similar to any story written in any genre, there must be a purpose to an alternative history story. It can’t be “Look at this new world I’ve invented, aren’t I clever?” It needs a strong story. As a reader of fiction I want a story to entertain, inform me and encourage me to think. That’s what writers are supposed to deliver to the reader.
As with any genre there are ‘da rulz’ when writing althist stories:
– the event that turned history from the path we know – the point of divergence – must be in the past.
– the new timeline follows a different path forever – there is no going back (Sorry, no time travel 🙂 )
– stories should show the ramifications of the divergence and how the new reality functions.
Building a different, plausible and consistent world that functions is challenging, but also rewarding. From my experience of writing the Roma Nova series, there is as much heavy research to be carried out as for any historical novel. Yes, you can imagine a new world, but you need to show the path how it developed from when it split from the timeline we know. A good general knowledge of history and the way societies develop is essential.
The other key is good characterisation. The people in the story should be as clever, fallible, scared or motivated in the same ways we are. However, they’re living in a different environment and the two should be woven together. We’re all products of the world we grew up in and so are they.
And the world of Roma Nova?
I’ve loved developing Karen into Carina on her path to self-discovery where she plays an integral part in the Roma Nova story through four books. Writing her grandmother Aurelia as a younger woman in the 1960s and 1980s (also in four books) gave me a wonderful research challenge, but also the opportunity to give a backstory to such a complex character.
When I first started the series with INCEPTIO published in 2013, I had worked out a historically logical progression from AD 395 to the present. Well, in my head at least. 😉 I knew what Roma Nova looked like, worked out its economy, laws and social set-up. Ten years and eight books later, my fans demanded I write the origin story so I had to double down and go back to the 4th century. JULIA PRIMA and EXSILIUM are the result. I obviously had to enhance the sketchy stories lurking in the back of my head – each of these latest two novels is over 90,000 words – but it was both challenging and fascinating.
I’m always pleased when alternative history fiction is highlighted as in The Economist article as it tends to be the Cinderella of historical fiction. Yet good alternative history stories give us a rich environment in which to develop our storytelling and let our imaginations soar in a historical and futuristic framework. Bliss!
Like all speculative fiction and a fair bit of historical fiction, “althist” may well reflect concerns of the time when it’s written. But above all it allows us to explore unthinkable, frightening or utopian worlds from the safety of our favourite reading chair.
Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers – INCEPTIO, CARINA (novella), PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO, AURELIA, NEXUS (novella), INSURRECTIO and RETALIO, and ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories. Audiobooks are available for four of the series. Double Identity, a contemporary conspiracy, starts a new series of thrillers. JULIA PRIMA, Roma Nova story set in the late 4th century, starts the Foundation stories. The sequel, EXSILIUM, is now out.
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