IO9's 10 worst mistakes that authors make in alternate history. I 100% disagree with #10. How arbitrary is that? Write your own fanfiction and leave the author alone.
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Literary Buffistas 3: Don't Parse the Blurb, Dear.
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§ ita § - Feb 14, 2012 9:34:17 am PST #17777 of 28261
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.
Frankenbuddha - Feb 14, 2012 9:40:13 am PST #17778 of 28261
"We are the Goon Squad and we're coming to town...Beep! Beep!" - David Bowie, "Fashion"
#1 or #10?
§ ita § - Feb 14, 2012 9:41:53 am PST #17779 of 28261
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.
#10.
Der.
::edits surreptitiously::
Consuela - Feb 14, 2012 9:44:14 am PST #17780 of 28261
We are Buffistas. This isn't our first apocalypse. -- Pix
#10, the first one: I agree with ita. There's no need to bring it to the present. Look at Temeraire, after all.
Jessica - Feb 14, 2012 9:47:43 am PST #17781 of 28261
And then Ortus came and said "It's Ortin' time" and they all Orted off into the sunset
Write your own fanfiction and leave the author alone.
I feel that way about most of these, actually.
[eta: It's a list of "things that made some fans made that one time", which is a pretty huge leap away from "worst mistakes" authors must avoid. Avoid these 10 and your fans will get mad about some other list of things. Doesn't mean it's a bad book.]
§ ita § - Feb 14, 2012 9:53:49 am PST #17782 of 28261
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.
I think many of them are good things to take into consideration when making sure your story is tight, things likely to pop up with this trope.
Showing the 2012-or-whatever version of the alternate timeline strikes me as entirely arbitrary. So what if you wonder? What does that have to do with the plot and the characters of every single alternate history story ever?
Ginger - Feb 14, 2012 10:07:27 am PST #17783 of 28261
"It didn't taste good. It tasted soooo horrible. It tasted like....a vodka martini." - Matilda
The only one of those that I think is absolutely true is "don't explain too much." The more a writer explains what happened, the more chance there is of my thinking, "That couldn't happen."
Also, calling Stirling's books alternate history doesn't gibe with my definition. In his books, something big and unlikely happens right around the present and he writes about what happens afterwards. I'd call that more post-apocalyptic than alternate. I am prejudiced against any author who changes the laws of physics altogether, though. My mind is willing to go along with one or two violations, like flying dragons, but not wholesale rewriting of physics and chemistry.
Jessica - Feb 14, 2012 10:17:12 am PST #17784 of 28261
And then Ortus came and said "It's Ortin' time" and they all Orted off into the sunset
The only one of those that I think is absolutely true is "don't explain too much."
I agree but I don't think it's limited to historical AUs. Too much exposition can ruin almost any book.
meara - Feb 14, 2012 10:20:41 am PST #17785 of 28261
alling Stirling's books alternate history doesn't gibe with my definition. In his books, something big and unlikely happens right around the present and he writes about what happens afterwards.
Yeah, though for some of the later Island in the Sea of Time books, it is more alternate history (for the Dies the Fire series, NSM-very post-apocalypse, which is why I like them!)
Ginger - Feb 14, 2012 10:22:08 am PST #17786 of 28261
"It didn't taste good. It tasted soooo horrible. It tasted like....a vodka martini." - Matilda
Too much exposition can ruin almost any book.
Very true, but I think it's more glaring in sf. Say "warp drive" and I'm good. Try to come up with a complicated reason why FTL works, and you start to lose me.