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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Fantastic Histories: Pros and Cons

  
 
Ex
11:03 / 04.05.04
I've been reading quite a bit of fiction recently which draws on historical settings but constructs new worlds. The Garth Nix books have a kingdom which is more or less early 20th Century England (the next-door kingdom, a short hop over a big wall, is a land of magic and necromancy). He uses the contrast nicely, generating a lot of angst by having the Edwardian boarding-school characters mashed up by the forces of an evil which the little cricket-playing tousle-haired chaps really don't understand.

A cluster of Joan Aiken's books - the Wolves sequence - are set in an alternate Britain in which King James, rather than King George, succeeds to the throne. This is central to the plot in several of them - Hanoverians attempt to restore pretenders to the throne.

Playing both sides is Philip Pullman. His Sally Lockhart books seem to my untrained eye to be some rigorously researched Victorian historical fiction - for example, his heroine is influenced by changes in the Married Women's Property Act. His approach shifts to a more 'invented' world in His Dark Materials.

And most recently, I picked up a book in the WHSmiths sale in which the protagonist travelled to a mystical city "based on Venice".
Now, even though I have enjoyed Nix very much and Pullman quite substantially, my immediate thought was that the writer was very lazy. Setting the whole book in a city a bit like Venice circumvents both the need to invent somewhere as good as Venice, or to portray Venice accurately.
The I wondered if I was having some kind of creative self-censoring moment, as I'm wondering about whether to try writing historical fiction or historic-ish fantasy.
Then I read the first ten pages and thought - no, it's really quite terrible.

But alternative-Venice aside, what do people think about 'real' historical settings versus more loose 'borrowings' from historical settings? (And does anyone have a snappy name for the latter?) My thoughts so far have included: the amount of research involved; the possible additional resonance of using 'real' historical figures; whether fantasy tends to undermine any social observation or criticism you want to make; what the approach of the reader is and how that might help or hinder one.
I'd be interested in people's reading experiences and preferences.
 
 
Axolotl
11:19 / 04.05.04
I quite like the idea of alternate/fantastical historical settings. A very good writer to check out if you are into these is Kim Newman, especially the "Anno Dracula" series. It is very pulpy, mixing history with fictional characters and plenty of pop culture references, but it is good rip roaring stuff. The basic premise is what would have happened if Dracula hadn't been defeated by Van Helsing et al, and carries on from there. Tom Holland is also worth checking out.
I feel "historical fantasies" can work quite well giving the reader an immediate idea of the fictional world, without having to set up every single detail of day to day life. For example we all know how the victorians dressed so it can help you visualise characters. It also allows the author to play with these settings, and in the case of Kim Newman, introduce all kind of in-jokes and sly references.
On the other hand it can just be lazy writing, escaping the need for any in depth research or well thought out creations.
 
 
Ex
13:33 / 05.05.04
I adored Anno Dracula. A cracking premise - Dracula marries the widowed Queen Victoria. That was the kind of thing I was thinking of in terms of historical figures having resonance; everyone has an image of Viccy, and seeing her sitting on the floor of the throneroom next to the Prince of Darkness was a treat.
And then the novel used a fabulous approach, copying Dickensian social investigation (I thought), with vampirism as a social problem among the poor of London. Charities starting up for recently-turned clueless homeless vampires and the like.
In all, a good use of historical bobbles.

all kind of in-jokes and sly references.

Yes, it brings in something else, which I hadn't thought of - using fictional characters from previous eras (as in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen). That can be even more resonant, I think; if you're writing in a particular genre or tradition, especially, you can expect your audience to be conversant with other texts from that genre, in a way that they may not be aware of historical information (battles, legal breakthroughs, medical snippets...). Newman stuffs the text with so many borrowed vampires that I for one felt terribly smug when spotting them, and felt that the work was more important somehow because it related to all these famous characters. When the protagonist runs into Mina Harker in a pageboy's outfit at court, I felt as though I'd found an old friend. I suppose good historical fiction will do the same - give the reader a sense that something crucial, relevant, real is happening...
Not very coherent at present, but will think more.

Never tried Tom Holland, but will dig him out.
 
 
Axolotl
15:20 / 05.05.04
I'm assuming you've read the other Anno Dracula books, there's Bloody Red Baron, set in a WWI where Dracula has sided with the Kaiser which pits a vampiric Biggles against the Baron Richthofen. Then there's Dracula Cha Cha Cha, which takes off all those 50's/60's movies like Blow Up, Roman Holiday, La Dolce Vita etc with added vampiric goodness.
I believe there is another one in the works, or maybe it has been published. They are also very good, though not quite as good as Anno Dracula imho.
I think Neal Stephenson does a similar thing in Quicksilver - doesn't D'Artagnan turn up in cameos? Though I could be making that up.
 
 
A fall of geckos
15:37 / 05.05.04
I've just read Kim Stanley Robinson's Years of Rice and Salt which follows a sweeping history of the world after the Black Death wipes out of 99% of Europe. I thought was a genuinely well plotted novel managing to cover about 700 years of alternative history.

One of the aspects of this book which made it interesting is that the author attempts to use the characters to debate the nature of history, and the roles we play in it. This doesn't entirely work (and in some ways the book falls down in these areas), but it still provides a fascinating examination of the form.

Phyrephox - I think Stevenson's Baroque Cycle books are pretty much historical fiction (except for the Enoch Root character) in that they don't crossover with other fiction. The D'Artagnan he refers to is Charles de Batz-Castelmore - Count d'Artagnan, the basis for the D'Artagnan of Dumas. Charles de Batz-Castelmore was a real historical figure - captain of musketeers and "gentleman of the king" whatever that means...
 
 
Axolotl
11:19 / 06.05.04
Cheers for that Gekko, it did strike me as somewhat strange that Stephenson slotted an enitirely fictional character into a well researched historical novel.
As for the "Years of Rice & Salt", I read that a while ago, and dredging my memory banks I remember it being an interesting book, though I'm drawing a blank on details. Alternate histories are a bit different to historical fantasies imho, though I suppose it would depend on the particular type of alternate history, as there is definite crossover between the two genres.
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
11:53 / 07.05.04
Just a quick nod to steampunk, which is a relevant genre - The Difference Engine being the book that seems most appropriate for this thread (and a book which I enjoyed, though I wasn't reading with any critical purpose in mind).

On Pullman's Sally Lockhart series - I thought an interesting facet was the way in which at least two of the books pilfer plotlines from Victorian novels. The Ruby in the Smoke has strong similarities (I felt) to The Moonstone, and The Tin Princess seems to be based on The Prisoner of Zenda (a fine book).

Another book you might find interesting, Ex, is The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray by Chris Wooding, which is set in a London of vaguely Victorian type but with evil beings stalking the streets, hunters, contraptions, etc. It's YA, of course.

I think a good example of what a fictional historical setting can do is T. H. White's The Once and Future King, in which he uses a fantasy of 'Merrie England' to bring out the nuances in Malory's Morte Darthur - it enables him to tell his story without being too tied to either historical or textual accuracy or the demands of his understanding of the Arthurian cycle as essentially tragic. It also allows him to stick in lots of fascinating detail in a sort of hyper-real way... argh, not expressing myself well at all here. The book - it's like one of those Pre-Raphaelite paintings (by Holman Hunt et al) where every leaf and petal is painted in finicky detail with the most glowing illuminated colours. Or like the Luttrell Psalter.

I think he almost certainly did a lot of research, but he does wear it very lightly (unlike Neal Stephenson) and I think that is key to his success.
 
 
bjacques
13:11 / 03.06.04
D'Artagnan died in the 1673 Siege of Maastricht. I'm nearly finished with The Confusion, and I like it a lot. It's interesting that it and Luther Blissett's Q both involve me detailed international banking transactions. I suppose now's a good time as any to try to demystify the global flow of money.


An alternate-history novel worth seeking out is Kingsley Amis's The Alteration, about an English choirboy up for the chop because he has the most beautiful voice in all of Christendom. England in 1975 is Catholic, as is the rest of Europe, Martin Luther having cut a deal and become Pope Germanicus I in the 1520s, while the man who would have been Henry VIII is better known as an unsuccessful usurper. The United States, independent since 1848 (following a key battle that had cost the life of General Edgar Poe), are decidedly Protestant but relations are good.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
13:01 / 05.06.04
Tolkien's books don't give you much of an idea how Minas Tirith or Edoras were run, or even a clear idea of what they looked like, but you'd know a hell of a lot about their language, so a knowledge of architecture doesn't necessarily have to be physical.
 
 
grant
14:28 / 07.12.06
I have a question about alternate histories: Has anyone ever written a WWII alternate history novel in which Germany lost the war, but Japan won?

Writing a goofy tabloid story about Pearl Harbor ghosts right now, and the thought struck me....
 
 
Benny the Ball
14:32 / 07.12.06
Not sure about that, there is the P K Dick 'Man in the High Tower' which features the Japan side of the US with the Axis winning, but I can't think of one that shows Germany losing. I think most writers are kind of drawn to the idea of Nazi's winning when it comes to alternative histories.
 
 
Dusto
17:18 / 07.12.06
Re: the original post here, I think such borrowings as a city "based on Venice" can work just fine, but I think it's bad form to just come out and say "this city is based on Venice," as that sentence alone does too much work in too sloppy a way. Far better to use Venice as a starting point and let readers come to the conclusion "Hey, this imaginary city actually reminds me of Venice in many ways."

Tangential aside: I was very surprised by how little A Game of Thrones, with its Starks and Lannisters, borrows from the War of the Roses, with its Yorks and Lancasters.
 
 
Princess
18:33 / 08.12.06
Is the story-Venice we're talking about from Jeanette Winterson's "The Passion"? If so, I'm afraid that I thought it rocked. Winterson uses many historical personages as characters, and makes them entirely fantastical. She has Napoleon eat about a thousand chickens.
I think it works because Winterson spends so much time pointing out how "unreal" all second hand accounts are. The innacuracy of her story is an important part of her meaning.
If someone had just researched Venice badly though, I can see why that would be annoying.
 
 
grant
19:18 / 08.12.06
I was thinking of a history in which the European theater went just the way we remember, but in which the U.S. never dropped the bomb on Japanese cities. And possibly something happened in 1945 to change the course of things (like Japan figuring out the bomb first, maybe, or some other, yet undreamed-of technology).
 
  
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