Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1222132 in Books
• Published on: 2001-01-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 130 pages

Customer Reviews

repetitions
This is no more than a collection of essays on a small sample of sf alternate histories. It's repetitive, sometimes inaccurate in detail, and tries to shoehorn all the stories into a literary-theoretical taxonomy. There are occasional insights (repeated), and it's pleasant to be reminded of a few plots. But it's philosophically confused and misses some of the major texts.

Fine as far as it goes...
There's been recent interest in the field of Alternate History (AH) for a while now, with books and articles by Gavriel Rosenfeld, Catherine Gallagher on this particular topic, and existing critical consideration of the subject by Paul Alkon, Paul Ricoeur and others; not to mention the much more extensive literature on the historian's version of AH: Counterfactual History.

And a problem with Hellekson's book is that it conflates the two terms simply because they share the technical device of imagining a different historical trajectory following from a 'nexus point' (Hellekson's term) or Point of Departure: imagining something from received history turning out differently. But the use of this device by historians and novelists is applied very differntly, to produce very different analysis in response to different problems and questions. Also on terms, Hellekson conflates 'uchronia', 'allohistory', 'parallel worlds' literature all under the AH umbrella - even tho' Paul Alkon (whose work she refers to repeatedly) has a much more specific use of 'uchronia'. The book rests on the assumption that there is an AH genre, when I think it's much more interesting to look at how different disciplines and writers take this 'Point of Departure' to depart in very different directions.

Still, it presents a collection of the more interesting AH texts, and the application of Hayden White's schematisations of history makes sense.