The "inventions that failed" idea sounds interesting, but seems to me to be a sub-category of alt history -- as in, stories which elicit a sense of alternate potential. I could dig up a few examples, but one that sticks in my mind is from McSweeneys about 4 years ago detailing the life-work of a man who developed an entirely different technology for moving pictures, based on paint, contemporaneously with the Lumiere bros. The technology fails, of course, and the story pretends to be about why, but only as a conceit -- it's really a story about obsession, I think.
So I think that's an interesting angle on alternate history. Alternate * potential* history, if you will. We chatted earler about a "bible", and I'm generally opposed to a bible for an open-submission anthology. (I think it filters the pool too tightly.) But w.r.t. alt-history, it might be good to be able to give people examples, or point to essays on the qualities of the genre, because it's hard for people to wrap their minds around sometimes. Examples should include pop-cultural references, too -- say, *Sliders*, any number of comic book treatments, *Yiddish Policeman's Union*, of course, stuff people other than us will have heard of. Alternate folklore... I think that's a great idea, but not for an R-SPEC anthology, at least not at this phase of our development. I could see that being a fascinating aspect of an alt history story, for sure, and I could see it as a way of approaching what I've called an "alternate reality" tale, where there's something fundamentally different about how things work that's sometimes difficult to source down. (Will McIntosh's "Midnight Indigo" is a good example; "Hell Is The Absence Of God" would be another.) I think alternate (or forgotten or hidden) folklore is also a great idea for a novel and maybe for an *invited* anthology, but as theme for a whole *open*anthology, I think it would be difficult to win a lot of good submissions. (FWIW, a lot of stories I can imagine of this sort would qualify as alt-history in my book.) W.r.t to what qualifies as alt history, we'll doubtless have many discussions, but I would argue for an inclusive criteria set. In part, because I don't think the term is really well-defined. An interesting selection of stories could serve to illustrate different ways that people define it. For example, Alicia talks about pivotal events -- evaporate the lake, assassinate Kennedy on Lyell Ave, whatever; you could also imagine changing one or more *rules* (that was how *Sliders* typically worked, for example): what if people could fly, or we had a functioning Methane economy, or women had beards and men didn't, etc. Probably my single favorite Gibson story, "The Gernsback Continuum", uneasily straddles the boundaries between alternate-reality, alternate-history and something else as it presents (possibly delusional) glimpses into a version of the present that people * imagined* for us 50 or 60 years previously. I'd want to be able to include something like that, if it popped up. (And of course any near-future SF ends up becoming alternate history after a while. E.g., we should be seeing Deliverators whizzing between Burbclaves to deliver their Cosa Nostra brand pizzas right about now, I think. [/*Snow Crash*]) On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 11:05 PM, Alicia Henn <[email protected]> wrote: > > At the R-SPEC meeting tonight (in which Craig lead a great discussion > of the short fiction nominated for the Hugo Award), I asked the > assembled people for more ideas for a second antho project. > The one idea that has gained significant traction is doing alternate > Rochesters, that is, stories set in a Rochester that is different > because of a significant event that didn't happen (say - maybe there > was no Kodak here, or trucks don't take over freight transportation so > trains and boats still carry our stuff) or because of something > different that did happen (an asteroid hit Lake Ontario in 1972 and > vaporized it). Basically, "What if--- in Rochester?" > Kim suggested two other ideas - perhaps an antho with stories that > center around an alternate folklore of the area or one about > inventions that had failed. > > What do you think guys? Any other ideas out there? > > Alicia > > > > > > -- eric scoles ([email protected]) --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
