Interesting reviews, will try and pick some of these up.
Re: Alt history, I guess if you want an Indian Genghis Khan, you want him to have a cavalry-based army, so you go for the Plains Indians over Tecumseh…
Problem with doing a ‘smallpox comes early’ alt-history is that it’s such a radical change that after the first few decades, you’re effectively writing fantasy. No reason that, without a thriving Spanish Empire to make colonization look like a good idea, that there’s even going to be Pilgrims a few centuries later – the Americas end up more like Africa or Asia, small European trading posts and deals with native nations, full scale colonization only in the nineteenth century… Be fun, but I can understand why writers prefer to stick to more limited and predictable changes.
Re: cultural narratives – I have a vague theory that, being a revolutionary nation, Americans define their nation primarily through struggle; I don’t think there’s a strong concept of what a peacetime America looks like. I think that reinforces some of the issues in American culture – if you identify your society as being in a constant struggle against the forces of darkness and despair, you end up endorsing a very masculine, militarised concept of society. Weakness cannot be tolerated, and even the principles of liberal democracy start to look suspect when you’re engaged in a life or death struggle for supremacy against the British/Indians/Kraut/Commies/Whoever…
I think the decline of American hegemony is the only thing that will let the society work out these issues – assuming it can survive such a decline.
no subject
Re: Alt history, I guess if you want an Indian Genghis Khan, you want him to have a cavalry-based army, so you go for the Plains Indians over Tecumseh…
Problem with doing a ‘smallpox comes early’ alt-history is that it’s such a radical change that after the first few decades, you’re effectively writing fantasy. No reason that, without a thriving Spanish Empire to make colonization look like a good idea, that there’s even going to be Pilgrims a few centuries later – the Americas end up more like Africa or Asia, small European trading posts and deals with native nations, full scale colonization only in the nineteenth century… Be fun, but I can understand why writers prefer to stick to more limited and predictable changes.
Re: cultural narratives – I have a vague theory that, being a revolutionary nation, Americans define their nation primarily through struggle; I don’t think there’s a strong concept of what a peacetime America looks like. I think that reinforces some of the issues in American culture – if you identify your society as being in a constant struggle against the forces of darkness and despair, you end up endorsing a very masculine, militarised concept of society. Weakness cannot be tolerated, and even the principles of liberal democracy start to look suspect when you’re engaged in a life or death struggle for supremacy against the British/Indians/Kraut/Commies/Whoever…
I think the decline of American hegemony is the only thing that will let the society work out these issues – assuming it can survive such a decline.