The Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History

The Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History
Author: Jack Dann
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 185
Release: 2023-07-13
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1350351385

A comprehensive guide to the speculative sub-genre of alternate history fiction, this book maps the unique terrain of this vibrant mode of storytelling and then explains how to write it. First giving a concise conceptual overview and the critical tools to differentiate the different forms of counterfactual fiction, Jack Dann lays out the 'tricks of the trade' such 'Heinleining', how to create recognizable 'divergent points' and how to employ paratextual elements and 'layering' to overcome readers' unfamiliarity with invented counterfactual events and cultures. Alongside this, Dann takes you step-by-step through a complete short story to demonstrate, line-by-line, how alternative history fiction works. As well as Dann's exacting methodology for writing professional quality alternate history stories, this book also features a live-on-the-page Q&A with some of the most esteemed alternate history writers working today, including Kim Stanley Robinson, John Birmingham and Lisa Goldstein among many others, who will detail their own particular hacks, theories, processes, methods and strategies. Combining extensive and deep knowledge of the field with accessible writing advice, this is the ultimate guidebook to the broad and complex sub-genre of counterfactual and alterative history fiction.

The Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History

The Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History
Author: Jack Dann
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 185
Release: 2023-07-13
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1350351377

A comprehensive guide to the speculative sub-genre of alternate history fiction, this book maps the unique terrain of this vibrant mode of storytelling and then explains how to write it. First giving a concise conceptual overview and the critical tools to differentiate the different forms of counterfactual fiction, Jack Dann lays out the 'tricks of the trade' such 'Heinleining', how to create recognizable 'divergent points' and how to employ paratextual elements and 'layering' to overcome readers' unfamiliarity with invented counterfactual events and cultures. Alongside this, Dann takes you step-by-step through a complete short story to demonstrate, line-by-line, how alternative history fiction works. As well as Dann's exacting methodology for writing professional quality alternate history stories, this book also features a live-on-the-page Q&A with some of the most esteemed alternate history writers working today, including Kim Stanley Robinson, John Birmingham and Lisa Goldstein among many others, who will detail their own particular hacks, theories, processes, methods and strategies. Combining extensive and deep knowledge of the field with accessible writing advice, this is the ultimate guidebook to the broad and complex sub-genre of counterfactual and alterative history fiction.

The Alternate History

The Alternate History
Author: Karen Hellekson
Publisher: Kent State University Press
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2001
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780873386838

What would the world be like is history had taken a different course? Science fiction literature has long contemplated this question, and this text analyzes alternate history science fiction through a variety of historical models. It raises questions of narrative, writers, temporality and time.

Sideways in Time

Sideways in Time
Author: Glyn Morgan
Publisher: Liverpool Science Fiction Text
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2019-09-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1789620139

Alternate history is a genre of fiction that, although connected to science fiction, has its own rich history and lineage. With its roots in the writings of ancient Rome, alternate history matured into something close to its current form in the essays and novels of the nineteenth century. In more recent years a number of highly acclaimed novels have been published as alternate histories, by authors ranging from bestselling science fiction writers to Pulitzer prize-winning literary icons. The popularity of the genre is reflected in its success on television, where original concepts have been developed alongside adaptations of classic texts such as Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle. This collection of essays, by both leading scholars in the field and rising stars, seeks to redress an imbalance between the importance and quality of alternate history texts and the available critical scholarship on the genre. The essays acknowledge the long and distinctive history of alternate history whilst also revelling in its vitality, adaptability, and contemporary relevance.

The Novel: An Alternative History

The Novel: An Alternative History
Author: Steven Moore
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 705
Release: 2013-09-17
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1441133364

Encyclopedic in scope and heroically audacious, The Novel: An Alternative History is the first attempt in over a century to tell the complete story of our most popular literary form. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the novel did not originate in 18th-century England, nor even with Don Quixote, but is coeval with civilization itself. After a pugnacious introduction, in which Moore defends innovative, demanding novelists against their conservative critics, the book relaxes into a world tour of the pre-modern novel, beginning in ancient Egypt and ending in 16th-century China, with many exotic ports-of-call: Greek romances; Roman satires; medieval Sanskrit novels narrated by parrots; Byzantine erotic thrillers; 5000-page Arabian adventure novels; Icelandic sagas; delicate Persian novels in verse; Japanese war stories; even Mayan graphic novels. Throughout, Moore celebrates the innovators in fiction, tracing a continuum between these pre-modern experimentalists and their postmodern progeny. Irreverent, iconoclastic, informative, entertaining-The Novel: An Alternative History is a landmark in literary criticism that will encourage readers to rethink the novel.

The Time Traveler's Guide

The Time Traveler's Guide
Author: Simon Rose
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Total Pages: 92
Release: 2016-10-25
Genre:
ISBN: 9781539749349

The Time Traveler's Guide examines the writing of time travel stories and historical fiction. Books always transport us to other places, especially stories involving time travel or those set in different historical eras. The book examines the definition of time travel and historical fiction, the creation of time machines, methods and devices, selecting historical eras and settings, and creating characters and crafting dialogue. The book also explores common issues with time travel stories, and the importance of research, plausibility, description, and plot, along with writing about time travel into the future, alternate history, and parallel universes. The Time Traveler's Guide is an excellent resource for those writing time travel or historical fiction stories for both children and adults. "This is a unique book, overall, and I recommend it to writers and those interested in methods of time travel in general." "The Time Traveler's Guide is a great resource for any writer wanting to improve their craft."

The Writer's Guide to Creating a Science Fiction Universe

The Writer's Guide to Creating a Science Fiction Universe
Author: George Ochoa
Publisher: Writer's Digest Books
Total Pages: 324
Release: 1993
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780898795363

To hold the interest of knowledgeable sci-fi readers, a writer the genre must stay within certain fuzzy boundaries of scientific belief. This volume provides some of the scientific detail that will make a writer's adventures compelling and consistent with current views of the universe. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Speculative Fiction

Speculative Fiction
Author: Benjamin Warner
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2025-08-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1350408492

In a time defined by uncertainty, change and inequality, speculative fiction is fast-becoming the genre of the 21st century. Straddling genres such as fantasy, science fiction, dystopia, alternative history and horror, this book is a comprehensive introduction to the art of writing in this imaginative, fluid and inclusive mode. An all-in-one textbook combining a craft guide with an extensive, diverse anthology, it explores the multiplicity of influences that speculative fiction has consumed and incorporated, digs into the techniques specific to speculative writing and gives writers exercises and prompts to begin their own works. In addition, Speculative Fiction features: - Annotated stories to showcase speculative techniques in practice - Interviews with authors about their use of subversion of speculative craft in their work - Detailed exploration of techniques from estrangement and world-building to creating characters, plots and conflict in a specifically speculative mode - Exercises engineered to allow readers to master the technique under discussion - 'Reader response' sections from speculative writing students with critical feedback - A whole chapter on writing novels, the primary genre for speculative fiction - Chapters on finding a speculative writing community and workshopping writing within the genre Featuring the works of such authors as George Saunders, Helen Oyeyemi, Nalo Hopkinson, Sofia Samatar, Vandana Singh and many more, this book gives writers the resources to write boldly, differently and freely as they embrace stories that defy, undermine and subvert reality to welcome hitherto censored or silenced voices, visions and points of view.

Fictional History

Fictional History
Author: Source Wikipedia
Publisher: University-Press.org
Total Pages: 58
Release: 2013-09
Genre:
ISBN: 9781230649375

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 56. Chapters: Alternate history, Future history, Counterfactual history, Sidewise Award for Alternate History, List of alternate history fiction, Femizonia, CoDominium, Alliance-Union universe, History of Arda, The Shape of Things to Come, Last and First Men, Revelation Space universe, Noon Universe, The Psychotechnic League, Alien space bats, Instrumentality of Mankind, Paradox, The State, Rise of the Ogre, Uchronia: The Alternate History List, Jonbar Hinge, Wythnos yng Nghymru Fydd, Pax Germanica, The Third Millennium: A History of the World AD 2000-3000, Point of divergence. Excerpt: Fantasy Fiction Horror Fiction Science Fiction Other Alternate history or alternative history is a genre of fiction consisting of stories that are set in worlds in which history has diverged from the actual history of the world. It can be variously seen as a sub-genre of literary fiction, science fiction, and historical fiction; different alternate history works may use tropes from any or all of these genres. It is sometimes abbreviated AH. Another occasionally used term for the genre is "allohistory" (literally "other history"). Since the 1950s, this type of fiction has to a large extent merged with science fictional tropes involving cross-time travel between alternate histories or psychic awareness of the existence of "our" universe by the people in another; or ordinary voyaging uptime (into the past) or downtime (into the future) that results in history splitting into two or more time-lines. Cross-time, time-splitting and alternate history themes have become so closely interwoven that it is impossible to discuss them fully apart from one another. "Alternate History" looks at "what if" scenarios from some of history's most pivotal turning points and presents a completely different version, sometimes based on science and fact, but often based...