This could go in Cafe Society, but it revolves more around the thinking behind fiction, rather than an appreciation of the art itself.
A friend of mine, when she learned for the first time about “Man in the High Castle” (alternate history where the Nazis win and conquer half the U.S.) was outraged at how offensive this premise is. She was infuriated.
“Why would anyone want that to happen? Only a Nazi sympathizer could write that!”
When she was told about Harry Turtledove’s “Guns of the South” (the Confederacy wins the American Civil War) she was just as outraged. “Only people who love slavery could write such a story.”
I think there has to be something wrong with this reasoning. A lot of fiction is dystopian and frightening, often in a “cautionary” sense. Orwell certainly didn’t want neo-fascism to take over the world. Dickens didn’t want poor street kids to live lives of petty crime.
Are horrible concepts in fiction and drama taboo because the consequences, were they real, would be bad? Doesn’t that mean we can only write “My Little Pony” sugar-coated happy-ending utopian fairy tales? How complicit is a writer in the fictional moral horror unleashed by his premises?
Humans love to play “what if,” and I’ve never read more into alternative history than that. Playing what if is a great way to exercise the imagination and explore unintended consequences & such.
I cannot wholly separate myself from my fictional characters. This is why, for instance, I would never write a torture scene or a rape scene. It goes beyond my ability to insulate myself from my creativity.
That’s more how I feel. If a scene depicts something horrible…there ought to be some sense of the horror. I couldn’t write an alternate history where Nazis win…and describe it in pleasant terms, because I’d feel somehow responsible.
That’s why most of us are uncomfortable with things like “The Turner Diaries.” They aren’t merely explorations of hellish scenarios, but celebrations of them.
She’s a sweety! Very intelligent, very caring, and a better writer than I’ll ever be. She just partakes a little, I think, of “politically correct” thinking, i.e., that the messenger is responsible for the content of the message.
If anything, it seems to me most (published) alternate histories tend to be dystopian in nature to drive home the point (implicitly) that our world is the best of all possible worlds.
The author makes the results of #1 seem like a utopia, a perfect place
I’ve read several bits of “libertarian” wank fiction where a libertarian society exists, one where people take care of their own problems mainly and raw capitalism is the primary method of commerce, and of course everything is a utopia with few internal problems. The Freehold books are like this.
Anyways, fiction has interesting characters, and a challenge for these characters to overcome. In Guns of the South, the protagonist is Robert E Lee, and he is eventually forced to turn against the racist rednecks with a time machine who made his victory possible.
Interesting point… The first counter-example to come to mind is “The Two Georges” by Harry Turtledove and Richard Dreyfus. At first blush, a patriotic American will think, “It’s terrible! The U.S. never gained independence.” But the idea that George (Washington) and George (III) made peace instead of war, and America is a loyal and happy part of the British Empire is not dystopian. Almost utopian. (Lovely book! Highest recommendation!)
But I think you’re right: most A.H. is, if not dystopian, at least a presentation of a world that isn’t quite as good as ours. Much of it emphasizes how close run some of civilization’s victories have been. There have been some very close calls with unpleasantness, and A.H. of that sort is precautionary.
That makes sense. That would sound more like cheerleading for the bad guys.
For instance, a story where the South wins the American Civil War…and then immediately frees the slaves, creating a biracial democracy…would ring completely false. It would feel like a wish-fulfillment story, not a serious exploration of “what might have happened.”
Is she the kind of person who doesn’t have much of a dark side (or at least not one that isn’t pretty thoroughly repressed)?
Is she the kind of person who thinks Stephen King must be a wicked, depraved man because otherwise how could he think up all that horror stuff?
Is she a writer of fiction? And if so, is her own writing of the “wish fulfillment” or “uplifting” sort?
Sure, something like an alternate history in which the Nazis won WWII, or the Confederacy won the Civil War, might be wish fulfillment, but to automatically assume so upon hearing the premise makes it seem like she doesn’t understand how fiction works.
Surely this is a subset of Niven’s Law: “There is a technical, literary term for those who mistake the opinions and beliefs of characters in a novel for those of the author. The term is ‘idiot’.”
Yes, many of those stories have deep political messages.
The movie “CSA” where the south wins is big on racial issues.
One of the most interesting, and darn if I can find it now, is a book where England attacks the North and South at the same time, forcing a temporary truce as both Union and Confederate troops fight together. This then leads to Lincoln and Davis sitting down and working out a peace settlement.
Now on top of that, the US decides to invade Ireland and create a new Irish republic so their is a big, anti British theme thru the whole series.
I’d bet this is the case. She writes for how writing maker *her *feel, not to earn a paycheck. And not really to make her audience feel any particular thing.
As such when she sees stories or AH such as in the OP she’s thinking entirely: “How would writing that make the author feel? How would *I *have to feel to choose to write that for my own edification?”
Dan Brown or Dean Koontz sure don’t think that way when they set out to earn more money with yet another formulaic book.
I was at the premiere of that movie where the director (Kevin Willmott), writers, and the cast were all there to show off the semi-finished movie.
Now in most alt history books where the South wins the war ends in a peace treaty and eventually slavery ends. However CSA was totally off this and so I asked him if he had looked at any other books on this subject and he said no, that they had purposefully not read any others. He also made no qualms about the goal of this movie was to push certain political views.
Well to be good alt-history it has to be at least plausible and I felt his CSA timeline (CSA wins because of British intervention at Gettysburg and the CSA conquers the north and slavery becomes nationwide) was just way too off.
Sure, the South conquers the North wouldnt happen. But the South could have won independence, and IMHO, they’d still have slavery today. Look at the film that way, and how commonplace and banal the evil would be. The ads are by far the best part.
She actually does write, and quite well. And it’s stuff with a dark side!
Yeah… That’s kinda why I opened the thread. I was wondering if it’s a commonplace error among highly ideological people. I think there might be an element of “political correctness” involved, where you shouldn’t even mention the existence of bad things. Sort of like religious people who are afraid when someone says “The Devil” out loud. (“Don’t say that! You’re empowering him!”)
Agreed… The “cautionary” element, and certainly the “raising of consciousness” element. I don’t suppose anyone would accuse Margaret Atwood of wanting the world of “The Handmaid’s Tale” to come true. Sometimes, we write what scares us, or offends us, for the exercise of addressing evil face-on.
And no, I think slavery would have ended due to automation and societal pressure. For example in the south there were many poor whites and part of that was there were few jobs open to them.
Then there were issues with cotton production such as soil infertility and the boll weevil which wiped out cotton crops and once cotton was gone there was little need for slaves.