In some of my earlier posts I used the term ‘alternate
history’ rather loosely. As a technical term, AH revolves “around the basic
premise that some event in the past did not occur as we know it did, and thus
the present has changed” (Hellekson, 2000, 247). It’s usually considered a
science fiction genre, and, as Hellekson also points out “concerns itself with
plausible relationships” (247). It also has, as Amy Ransom points out a
“scientifical approach to mimesis”(Ransom, 2010, 260). Draconic intervention in the Napoleonic Wars –
as in Naomi Novik’s books – doesn’t fit.
Magic, mythology and anything else outside the mundane world
– except sometimes time travel – are outside the bounds of the genre.
AH extrapolates forward from a changed event, or series of
events – a Nazi victory in World War II or victory by the South in the American
Civil War are the most common divergences. Books like Novik’s extrapolate
backwards from the present, asking what would have had to be historically
different for the present to be altered. That they employ ‘the fantastic’ to do
it doesn’t necessarily make the process less logical. As I said in my earlier
post about Novik’s books, dragons make European militaries comparable with
those of the rest of the world, resulting in much altered attempts at
imperialism particularly in Africa, South America, and Australia. If AH asks
‘what if,’ Novik’s question is a ‘what would’ have altered the history of
western expansionism around the globe.
Books that intertwine history with fantasy elements in
various ratios and combinations are often, not very imaginatively, labelled
Historical Fantasy – although this is more a term used by publishers and
audiences than scholars. Novik’s Temeraire
is currently at the top of the Goodreads Popular Historical Fantasy list, ahead
of Susanna Clarke’s Jonathon Strange and
Mr Norrell, and Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The
Mists of Avalon. Guy Gavriel Kay features in the top 20, as does Diana
Gabaldon, Cassandra Clare and George R.R. Martin. Historical Fantasy is really
only useful as a very broad term – there are major differences between these
works. Jo Walton’s article "What is historical fantasy?" on Tor.com is
indicative of its very broad application as well (Walton, 2009).
Moreover, scholars of fantasy don’t tend to define it, although they use it.
There’s no definition in John Clute and John Grant’s The Encyclopedia of Fantasy for example (Clute & Grant, 1999).
Ransom offers Historical Fantasy as a term for works like
Kay’s The Lions of Al-Rassan (which
she invokes as an example) or Novik’s which differ from AH in that “more than
one event and the plausible extrapolation of its consequences must be altered;
rather everything must change” (275).
I’d suggest that Historical Fantasy is a very problematic term to adopt from a
critical standpoint because it is already used so widely, and in such varied
ways, by publishers and audiences. John Clute lamented the tendency of
publishers to mis-use ‘Epic Fantasy,’ saying that the term “has lost its
usefulness” (Clute & Grant, 1999, 319), and this sort of problem is
endemic in fantasy criticism – even in the difficulties of defining ‘fantasy’
itself. For Historical Fantasy to be critically useful, it would need to be
disentangled from commercial and popular usage.
I would suggest that Alternate World has more potential to
be useful in delineating fantasy which engages with (by altering) a specific
aspect of the real world’s past, often although not always with the intent of
critiquing both that past and the present. In the kinds of works I’m thinking
of, something about the world is different – whether its sentient dragons or
real magic or myriad other options – and this changes the course of history as we know it. This draws on the
critical history of the term. Clute, drawing on Brian Stableford in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
offers this in his definition: “an alternate world is an account of our world
as it might otherwise have been” (21). Clute excludes works like Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula because they intervene in
and “violate” history, although as I haven’t read the book I’m not sure if I’d
agree on that distinction (more on this at a later date). Alternate World
resonates with AH in productive ways: it invokes the thought experiment
questions that underpin AH, suggesting that an Alternate World is more than mere revisionism or
nostalgia, and it can be used to separate out some of what it lumped together
under the banner of Historical Fantasy.
Clute, J., &
Grant, J. (1999). The Encyclopedia of Fantasy. London: Orbit.
Hellekson, K. (2000).
Toward a Taxonomy of the Alternate History Genre, Extrapolation: A Journal
of Science Fiction and Fantasy, 41(3), 247–256.
Ransom, A. J. (2010).
Warping Time: Alternate Histories, Historical Fantasy, and the Postmodern
uchronie quebecoise. Extrapolation: A Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy,
51(2), 258–280.
Walton, J. (2009).
What is historical fantasy? Tor.com. Retrieved August 2, 2012, from
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2009/07/what-is-historical-fantasy-anyway
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