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Apr. 7th, 2008 10:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsA little while back, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gramarye1971 posted a very good discussion of the problems that she has with AU history, or counterfactual history, and she makes a lot of really excellent points.
But there's one thing that counterfactual history can do that historical fiction (or contemporary fiction, for that matter) can't. Once the initial conceit has been set up, the wonderful thing about AU history - if the author knows what they're doing - is that the history can go on to be changed. Apparently small things can alter the world; any outcome is possible.
Obviously, the same holds true for fantasy or sci-fi, which may be why I enjoy those genres so much. But there's something about a world that's very close to our own, but not quite, that lends the potential for change an immediacy and a relevance that isn't always quite there when the world of the fiction is one entirely removed from our own. I think that's one of the reasons I found Jo Walton's Ha'Penny so difficult to put down, once I'd started it. I liked Farthing, the first book in the series, a lot, but for me, Ha'Penny was even more compelling. Farthing created the universe and then altered the political circumstances of the world as it set it up, but in Ha'Penny the reader knows what's going on as much or more than the characters do, which for me put the focus and the excitement of the book on the potential for change.
. . . and in terms of personal points of interest, it didn't hurt that half the plot of this book focused around an actress whose family was clearly based off the Mitford sisters, who are crazy and fascinating in and of themselves, playing the lead in a really cool gender-switched production of Hamlet.
But aside from that, one of the things I liked best about the book was that instead of letting Inspector Carmichael's story conclude with his fall off the moral pedestal at the end of Farthing, we instead get to see what happens to him after he's been corrupted, and his continuing struggle with his ethics. It would have been very easy to let him drop, just another conscript to the new regime, but instead he remains a fascinating and conflicted character. And despite the fact that the book begins with Viola imprisoned, even up until the end of the book, I really didn't know what Carmichael was going to do at the end and how the plot was going to turn out.
Meanwhile, although with Viola's half of the storyline I wasn't sure I bought some of her changes in opinion, and the Stockholm romance creeped me the hell out (as I think it was meant to), I loved that the issues of artistic integrity vs. political necessity were engaged. Maybe this is just because I wrote a paper on those issues recently (and one specifically Hamlet-related too), but count another one of my buttons pushed. I also really enjoyed the very subtle callbacks to the first book.
Basically, I am now looking forward to the third like crazy.
gramarye1971 posted a very good discussion of the problems that she has with AU history, or counterfactual history, and she makes a lot of really excellent points.But there's one thing that counterfactual history can do that historical fiction (or contemporary fiction, for that matter) can't. Once the initial conceit has been set up, the wonderful thing about AU history - if the author knows what they're doing - is that the history can go on to be changed. Apparently small things can alter the world; any outcome is possible.
Obviously, the same holds true for fantasy or sci-fi, which may be why I enjoy those genres so much. But there's something about a world that's very close to our own, but not quite, that lends the potential for change an immediacy and a relevance that isn't always quite there when the world of the fiction is one entirely removed from our own. I think that's one of the reasons I found Jo Walton's Ha'Penny so difficult to put down, once I'd started it. I liked Farthing, the first book in the series, a lot, but for me, Ha'Penny was even more compelling. Farthing created the universe and then altered the political circumstances of the world as it set it up, but in Ha'Penny the reader knows what's going on as much or more than the characters do, which for me put the focus and the excitement of the book on the potential for change.
. . . and in terms of personal points of interest, it didn't hurt that half the plot of this book focused around an actress whose family was clearly based off the Mitford sisters, who are crazy and fascinating in and of themselves, playing the lead in a really cool gender-switched production of Hamlet.
But aside from that, one of the things I liked best about the book was that instead of letting Inspector Carmichael's story conclude with his fall off the moral pedestal at the end of Farthing, we instead get to see what happens to him after he's been corrupted, and his continuing struggle with his ethics. It would have been very easy to let him drop, just another conscript to the new regime, but instead he remains a fascinating and conflicted character. And despite the fact that the book begins with Viola imprisoned, even up until the end of the book, I really didn't know what Carmichael was going to do at the end and how the plot was going to turn out.
Meanwhile, although with Viola's half of the storyline I wasn't sure I bought some of her changes in opinion, and the Stockholm romance creeped me the hell out (as I think it was meant to), I loved that the issues of artistic integrity vs. political necessity were engaged. Maybe this is just because I wrote a paper on those issues recently (and one specifically Hamlet-related too), but count another one of my buttons pushed. I also really enjoyed the very subtle callbacks to the first book.
Basically, I am now looking forward to the third like crazy.
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Date: 2008-04-07 06:35 pm (UTC)Thanks for linking to the discussion, by the by. As I think I've mentioned, I don't hate all counterfactuals sight unseen, but I do find it difficult to get much real reading enjoyment out of them as a genre. ^^;;
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Date: 2008-04-08 02:00 am (UTC)And definitely! I forgot to comment at the time, but I was really glad you posted it - I remember the conversation a bunch of us had on the matter in NYC, which was incredibly interesting, so. :D