Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM

Problematic Aspects of Alternate History
- some often overlooked considerations . . . . . . .

Usually long-term lines of alternate history affect only a few things :-

1. Balance of power

2. Geographical extent of empires etc

3. Systems of governance

4. Spread of religion

5. Different 'world' systems - e.g. colonial , imperial , native rule

Despite any such changes several things are usually presumed to be the same :-

i. Architecture , the development of cities , recognisably contemporary urban set-ups

ii. Technology , the development of electronic , digital , computing , telecoms etc

iii. Science , the development of a scientific over-view which is analogous to ours and includes the integral interelationship between nuclear physics , quantum mechanics and astrophysics

iv. Economy , often viewed in the primitive/modern agrarian/industrial divide , with the systems postulated being those we know with all the pros and cons we are familiar with

Part of the problem is that Alternate History by drawing on the past is constrained by our real factual knowledge of developments in all these areas. We start from a position of knowing the successes and failures of many things, and believe that such lines of development are inevitable , and the only differences are those of extent , spread and timing.

Science Fiction on the other hand starts from a perspective of new, strange and different things, weaving the past in afterwards to explain these. New ideas have no history bolted to their theoretical development, and can be moulded to create entirely new societies and technologies.

What cannot be changed is established scientific fact. Alternate History which attempts to make heavier-than-air travel impossible , wireless telegraphy unworkable, nuclear fission unthinkable , loses all claim to be Alternate History and become mere fantasy.

However , what is acceptable is the development of a scientific line of thought that either does not ever lead to such devices being contemplated as feasible or approaches them from inoperable directions.

This contrast may appear illogical , but underlying it is the fact that 'science' is not an immutable body of facts but a collection of loosely-linked current theories/understandings based upon a system which works for the moment but will later be outdated by new and apparently cohesive overviews which will of course later be superceded themselves. Scientific development is not so much adding to existing knowledge by extending current theories into new areas but rather by warping existing theories, changing them to fit a new development and accommodate new lines of investigation.

What I am proposing here is that different historical paths in politics, religion, imperial scope and geographical domination, linguistic dominance, and the needs and requirements of wars of different natures lead to different twists and turns in the path of scientific development so that a body of knowledge even roughly analogous to our own could be reached by a completely different path, with different basic assumptions , equations, and a wholly different conceptual overview.

Such a corpus of scientific facts with theories that may be wildly different from those we know but yet fit the facts and 'work' to the extent that the majority of what we understand as facts and what we know to be feasible is included , but things we may view as obvious have been side-lined due to theories about them which do not work at all.

Consider for example the fact that a huge amount of scientific facts are going to be uncovered in the next couple of centuries but it is not impossible that they could have been reached earlier in the sequence by an entirely different route.

What needs to be understood about 'science' is that it is NOT a defined line of definite discoveries , each one dependent upon the previous but instead a coalition of understandings forced into an overview that seems to meet the facts but which is never held to be the ultimate structure.

The result of this is that long-term Alternate Histories could , and maybe should, incorporate a vastly different scientific overview. The general result of this would be that whilst most of what we see as contemporary science is accommodated by the alternate history there WOULD be differences , and not just those of WHEN things were invented but of WHAT is possible - some things we take for granted may still be seen as science fiction whilst some things we cannot see how to get to success with may be decades-old technology. Take nuclear fusion as an example of the latter ; it presumably is possible and if it was approached from a vastly different direction with different underlying assumptions might have been as achievable sixty years ago as nuclear fission , whereas something like digital televisual communications may not even be a pipedream as the basic groundwork for the understanding of what it means and how it works has not been incorporated into the scientific corpus.

Also consider the fact that a long-term Alternate History effects developments over a number of centuries so theoretically delays or swifter success could be perhaps up to a century in arrears or in advance. In terms of contemporaneous Alternate History consider what this means - things invented between 1900 and now may not exist whereas things to come in the next 100 years may already be in existence. All that is needed to explain this is some kind of alternate scientific over-view .

One curious side-effect of this is that Alternate Histories which at first to be fantasy such as the excellent 'Trolley-World' actually can be explained by a divergent scientific over-view. Things which are possible but do not exist in this alternate history can be understood to have been the victims of a scientific theory that does not yet know how to approach their feasibility , whereas things which seem impossible but are seen as possible are likewise explained by a variant scientific development which has reached these before our ultimate descendants come across how to achieve it because the path of the scientific theories lead that way. The question is whether or not the author of Trolley-World understands this or fell into the trap of 'impossibilising' things he didn't want to use and 'possibilising' science fiction elements without giving any thought to the alternate history of the development of science ?

Another problem with medium to long term alternate histories is the authors wish to include recognisable known characters. There is virtually NO justification for this if the development from the point-of-divergence is anywhere approaching a century , absolutely none if it is of a longer duration. The authors either fail to understand the chaotic and random nature of personal relations, or ignore it in the interests of producing something amusing - comedy not alternate history. Too many factors affect who surivives, who prospers, who moves where, and who marries whom, not to mention when children are conceived and what their genetic backgrounds are.

For example if we diverged in 1914 and avoided the First World War countless millions of people of all nationalities would live who did not - not just those killed by warfare in all its forms , but by the Flu epidemic afterwards and the civil wars in many countries , and probably other conditions we cannot easily foresee - e.g. a natural disaster in the immediate aftermath may have claimed a vastly increased number of victims because no organisations were in any position to intervene.

People who would have married didn't, children who would have been born were not, people who would have met never had the chance, but the converse is also true ! People who did marry, did produce children, did move into an area where they met someone who decided their future would not have gone down this path - with many others, different circumstances, and different immediate-term developments , the effects on the long term can be enormous . . .

The effects of alternate history on the identity of the people who inhabit its pages depend largely upon how deeply a nation is affected by these interpersonal relationships. For example a country which keeps out of historic events and is not largely affected by international events may well see an almost exact replication of reality in its alternate history until such a point as external events impinge heavily upon it. Mongolia is unlikely to be affected in any serious way by there having been no First World War so the generations coming to maturity in the 1940s will be composed of roughly the same personalities as in reality.

As soon as a country is hit by divergent timelines the interpersonal relationships begin to warp and change to an increasingly serious extent. By at the very most twenty years afterwards nobody who would have been born in our reality can hope to have been created except by the most amazing of coincidences, some sort of huge body-chemistry issue if the people involved would have come into contact (e.g. being upper class and attending the same ultimate university), or have been so extremely remote that their coming together is unaffected - but so also is their usually non-existent effect on domestic history , let alone that of the world as a whole.

The speed of this process depends upon the size of the initial change. It may be a linear relationship but is not an equal one - if drawn upon a graph the line would be steep indicating that as time progresses the effects become more and more noticeable. If the initial change is massive the line of change would reflect this by showing a swift sweep off the chart. If the initial change is smaller the line of the graph would sweep slowly at first then accelerate upwards as the cumulative effects and combined inter-relationship effects massive changes in the longer term - e.g. twenty percent of marriage/childbirth changes would be perhaps double that in the next generation , with additions perhaps up to another twenty percent from longer-term effects on pre-existing individuals , and shortly these figures would mean very very very few of the partnerships and children we know twenty to forty years after an event would have any chance whatsoever of coming into being.

Of course these longer-term effects do not only affect the identity of people. They have implications as to the companies of the economy, the growth and failure of enterprises, and the mergers, buyouts and partnerships between enterprises. Fancy Metro-Colombia and Paramount-Meyer as major movie studios - different background circumstances (perhaps no First World War , or no American involvement) might produce this , or may produce Metro-Meyer-Bloggs and Goldwyn-United , or whatever !

All sorts of companies, from entertainment to defence industries, would be affected - for example remove the First World War and what happens to Alvis Motor Company in Coventry ? In the 1930s it became a military supplier and dropped its civilian production wing. Who is to say that twenty years of peaceful production would not have left Alvis in a stronger civilian position and maybe left someone we all know as successful in this era (Rover, Austin or Triumph) as being required to downsize their operation or even vanish. And no doubt new-comers into the market would exists , or would propser , who never did in our reality. An example of unlikely reality would be the Swan Motor Company , manufacturers of motorbikes, who actually emerged as the Jaguar car company. Maybe a Lion or Ajax would emerge from a similiar venture we have never heard of , either because it never happened or because it was in our reality still-born.

And if you look at longer-term Alternate Hisatory over centuries you can apply the same criteria to cities, both in their names and in their location. New England would be an excellent example. Assume perhaps that the Britain that colonised the place was built upon a Scottish-Irish centrism (and we could all come up with possibilities to explain this, even perhaps a Muslim conquest of Europe in the tenth century). Such a Britain would be weaker internationally in most cases and thus their North American colonies would be smaller and more compact. The names of cities would reflect the background of the ruling class - how about Chicago called Connaught , Buffalo called Bute or Philadelphia called Oban ? And how about an international border on the Potomac, with no major cities in that area but estates of the ultra-rich upon the river ? No Washington DC, no conurbations in that area . . . These are only a few ideas but you can see how the principle applies to a much greater range of events . . .

Often in Alternate History I come across someone's 'what if ?' predicated upon a change which is not at all likely even though the possible consequences are fascinating. Nevertheless joining in such a discussion seems to be a fraud because it seems to be 'alternate fantasy' rather than history. However, a small change a decade or two beforehand could lead to little short-term change but lay the foundations for the major change being discussed because the foundations for the counter-argument have been blown away although the immediate circumstances do not seem to have changed at all. However, to be viable as alternate history this needs to be considered beforehand and mentioned upfront - true , more research may be necessary and more cogent argumentation required but that is all to the benefit of Alternate History if it is to be seen as a serious discussion of possibilities . . . (and my History degree depends to a large degreee upon my exploration of Alternate History - what was possible from certain divergent points and what could have been achievable if one brief abrupt event had not intervened - e.g. the sudden death of England's King Edward IV ; admittedly keeping him alive beyond 1482 presents a massive challenge for realism in Alternate History !)

Problematic Aspects of Alternate History - some often overlooked considerations . . . . . . .

Problematic Aspects of Alternate History
- some often overlooked considerations . . . . . . .