Greetings from Amazon.com Delivers Science Fiction and Fantasy Harry Turtledove is the undisputed king of alternate history fiction. October is Alternate History Month, and we're celebrating by featuring works by notable authors in the genre. In Turtledove's Worldwar series, aliens landing on Earth during World War II change the course of history. In the Great War series, he looks at the outcome of the American Civil War, but with a difference: a slave rebellion in the Confederacy aided by the British was successful, and the South seceded from the Union. To write good alternate history, an author must be obsessively detail-oriented, or astute readers will pick up on historical errors. Harry Turtledove knows good research makes for good books. In this exclusive article, he talks about the devil in the details of alternate history. You can find titles by Harry Turtledove at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/external-search/?keyword=harry+turtledove&tag=entertainmentsit ****** Making It Feel Real by Harry Turtledove A reviewer said of "How Few Remain," "The reader comes away from this book somehow feeling that a historical period that never was has been accurately portrayed." That trompe l'oeil effect is exactly what I try to create. Making it work takes a good deal of research. I don't want anything in my work to seem off-kilter, except what I twist on purpose. Getting as many of the details right as I can is important in helping my readers suspend disbelief. Knowing, say, what the washroom of an 1880s Pullman car was like helps bring the created world to life for them. Research also illuminates character and lets me use or adapt incidents that have the unmistakable feel of authenticity because they really happened. Nobody could invent the Fourth Crusade or the three lost cigars that led to the Battle of Antietam. Learning about such things, combining them in new and interesting ways, is a big part of what I do. This kind of research gives my world a lived-in feel. It makes the reader believe the pieces of my creation don't disappear when my characters aren't looking directly at them. All this, of course, entails a lot of reading. When I use one paragraph of a book I've read to give me a couple of lines' worth of telling detail, I think, Okay, that one's paid for itself. But till I do the reading, I don't--and can't--know which paragraph I'll need. Case in point: one of my viewpoint characters in the Worldwar books is a German panzer officer. Naturally, I read several panzer officers' memoirs. One of them let me know that a particular gaudy decoration, the German Cross in gold, was known to the troops as "Hitler's Fried Egg." So far as I know, that's the only thing I took from that book, but I used it in a way that shed light on my character's personality. That memoir paid for itself. When I don't know something and can't find out by myself, I often can find someone who does. This came in very handy for me when I was writing "The Guns of the South," which involves time-traveling South African racists giving the Confederacy large numbers of AK-47s. My knowledge of firearms comes from books. But I have a friend who was an LRRP during the Vietnam War; he owns a Type 56 rifle, the Chinese copy of the AK. I asked him if he would let me bring my video camera down to his place while he walked me through handling and field-stripping the weapon. He was kind enough to say yes. It's not a rifle he uses frequently, and at one point he had trouble reassembling it. That was probably the most valuable part of the walk-through for me, because it told me where my Confederates would also be likely to have trouble. The ordinary counts too. No one can write convincingly about falling in--or out of--love, working in an office, or broiling a steak without having done it. Characters don't come only from historical figures, either. They'd better not, anyhow. They're made up of bits and pieces of people a writer has known through the years--and of bits and pieces of the writer too. A retentive memory is a handy thing to have. So is what I think of as a built-in story-detector light. I got the idea for "The Guns of the South," for instance, when my friend and colleague Judith Tarr (we're currently the coauthors of "Household Gods") complained in a letter that the cover art for an upcoming book of hers was as anachronistic as Robert E. Lee holding an Uzi. I looked at that line and thought, I can do something with that, and I did. Getting from the idea to the story that illuminates it is the hard part. Fortunately, for me at least, it's also far and away the most enjoyable. Featured in this e-mail: "How Few Remain" by Harry Turtledove http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345416619/entertainmentsit "The Guns of the South" by Harry Turtledove http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345413660/entertainmentsit "Household Gods" by Judith Tarr and Harry Turtledove http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0312864876/entertainmentsit ****** Give the Perfect Gift -- Get the Perfect Gift Does Aunt Ida send polka CDs when you'd prefer pop? Create an Amazon.com Wish List and save everyone the agony of the unwanted gift. Wish list
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