By: Deborah J. Ross

Deborah J. Ross — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 18:57:58 +0000

Both Louise Marley and Connie Willis explore -- obliquely to the plot -- the question of whether the past is immutable. Assuming the ability to go back in time, does the very presence of the observer create an alternate time line? Can you change a certain amount of "unimportant" events? Will the fixedness of history prevent you from changing any pivotal event? Or if if you do, will history "right itself" or will you return to a vastly different present time? Are events and experiences the same thing, or can you change the experience of a historical character without altering what he or she does? I'm having fun looking at these questions as I prepare a review of Marley's The Brahms Deception. (By one of those amazing coincidences, when I read the book, I was learning my first Brahms piano piece, the Waltz in A Flat.)

I don't regard Kate Elliot's Spiritwalker books as alternate history so much as taking history-as-we-know-it, sending it in a different direction, and throwing in some very -- excuse the pun -- cool magic. it's fun to spot what her world and our own have in common, where their histories diverged, but that isn't enough to sustain several novels, which is why it works so much better as nifty background.

Deborah J. Ross

By: Paul (@princejvstin)

Paul (@princejvstin) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 20:54:11 +0000

I don't think, having read two of them, that the Spiritwalker books really are alternate history, although the author is playing in an overlapping playground. If it is an AH, then its one where magic has always existed, and there are Troodons, and the ice age...so, really, its a fantasia of history.

That said, they are most excellent books but I hope readers of SF Signal have seen my reviews of them both!

Comments on: [GUEST POST] Louise Marley on Alternate History and Historical Fiction in Science Fiction and Fantasy

By: Deborah J. Ross

By: Paul (@princejvstin)