Sunday 18 June 2017

Alternative Literature

(Neil Gaiman's Library of Dreams in The Sandman.)

I have said this before in different words. I happen to think that this blog is worth reading but I take no credit for that. Retired, I have leisure to read, reread and reflect. I would be nowhere without:

Poul Anderson;

several literary traditions that he represents (I will not list the names yet again, at least not this time);

his successors, notably SM Stirling whom so far I prefer "in his own write" rather than in collaboration, although I have not read everything yet.

If, on the one hand, humanity did exist but, on the other hand, none of these literary traditions or individual authors existed, then this would only be because several millennia of history had diverged, thus generating an entirely different literaure which someone else would at this moment be appreciating. (Hello, across the timelines, if you exist.)

SM Stirling explored this idea. What was it that Kipling wrote in the timeline of the Fall? (See here.) And, in that timeline, the Sherlock Holmes series was an alternative history.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I don't mind you repeating some of your "lists"! So, go ahead with such lists if you wish!

I have enjoyed several of the collaborations Stirling had with other authors, such as Jerry Pournelle and David Drake. I hope you will sometime give Drake/Stirling's THE GENERAL series a chance.

Yes, if somehow OUR timeline had changed in the past so that history turned out very differently, we would have different authors, traditions, literatures, etc. And in THE PESHAWAR LANCERS we see hauntingly familiar writers like Kipling and Doyle. And, Poul Anderson even gives us the names of two "fictional" pulp novels in ENSIGN FLANDRY.

Sean