Fantastic History #9: Name Dropping by Kurt Wilcken

I think one of the first alternate history books I ever read was Poul Anderson’s Operation Chaos, set in a world where 20th century technology was based on a fusion of science and magic. There’s an intriguing passage at the very beginning where the narrator directly addresses the reader:

“You probably do not live in worlds radically foreign to ours, or communication would be impossible…You too must remember Galileo, Newton, Lavoisier, Watt; the chances are that you too are an American. But we have diverged at some point. Have you had an Einstein? And if you did, what did he think about after his early papers on Brownian movement and special relativity?”

That passage has always stuck in my imagination. Although Einstein never comes up again in the story, his mention here establishes a point of similarity between the fantasy world and ours: Einstein existed and was a significant figure in both. And at the same time, his mention suggests that there are differences too, and invites the reader to speculate on what those differences might be.

I will admit to doing a fair amount of “name dropping” in my own creative works–often little more than in-jokes for my own amusement and maybe of those who notice, but sometimes to offer, as Pooh-Bah says, “corroborative detail to give verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.”

My webcomic, Hannibal Tesla Adventure Magazine, is a pulp-era adventure set in an alternate version of 1935 where dirigibles and electric autogyros soar above the skyscrapers of Manhattan and where rockets travel to the moon and beyond. My main characters are Hannibal, a two-fisted scientist in the Doc Savage mold, and Ginger DuPree, a gutsy girl reporter following in the tradition of Lois Lane and Hildy Johnson from His Girl Friday. But I always wanted to give my readers the sense that there were other heroes in this world besides my main protagonists and that there were other adventures happening off-panel.

For this reason, I decided that in my world, Charles Lindbergh would be the first man to walk on the moon, in a rocket built by Charles Goddard. In one adventure where Ginger traveled into space to battle the Cat-Men from Mars, mention is made of “Lindbergh Base” located in Mare Tranquillitatis, (where Apollo 11 landed in our universe). And although this was largely a throw-away reference–like Einstein in the Operation Chaos passage, Lucky Lindy makes no other appearance in the story–the choice was appropriate. I found out in later research that Lindbergh was interested in rocketry, and after he gained celebrity and fortune crossing the Atlantic, he helped Goddard get financial support for his rocket experiments in the desert. You’d think I planned it that way.

These things don’t always work out that conveniently, though. In another story, I had Hannibal traveling into the Himalayas and looking up a Sherpa guide who has worked with him before. “Going to try for Everest again?” the guide asks him. I originally intended to have Hannibal laugh and say, “No, I thought I’d give Sir Edmund a shot at it this year.” But then I wondered, was Edmund Hillary a knight before he climbed Mount Everest, or was he knighted as a consequence of it? Looking the matter up, I found that the knighthood came afterwards; and that Hillary didn’t conquer Everest until 1953, nearly twenty years after my story takes place. With a sigh of regret, I cut the joke.

Sometimes the reference can grow beyond just a casual name-drop. The current story in my webcomic involves Hannibal’s father, the noted inventor Nikola Tesla, and in researching the man I found all sorts of factoids to work into my plot: the “Peace Ray” he tried to invent which he hoped to make war obsolete by disintegrating battleships; his device for operating ships by remote control; his ambitious plan to broadcast electricity like radio waves; the early computer built in the sub-basement of Grand Central Station designed to handle switching for subway cars. Some of these will just be bits of flavor, but some will become important plot points as the story progresses. And sometimes I don’t know myself which will be which.

And sometimes all these bits remain beneath the surface. For the “Cat-Men from Mars” story, the climax involved a battle in space between the invading Martian armada and a fleet of rockets from Earth. I thought it would be cool to have Brigadier General Billy Mitchell in command of the Earth defense fleet. In our timeline, Mitchell was an aviator who served as commander of the US Army’s Air Service in France during WWI. Both during and following the war, he was a vocal and determined advocate of air power, to the annoyance of his superiors, and was ultimately brought before a court-martial for insubordination. He was right about air power, but he was still found insubordinate. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor vindicated his theories and predictions, and today Billy Mitchell is regarded as the Father of the modern U.S. Air Force.

I decided that for my history, Mitchell played the game of military politics a little better and managed to avoid the court-martial. He still annoyed his superiors in the general staff, though, and so got shuffled off to the newly formed U.S. Army Space Corps following the Lindbergh moon landing, which was considered a position of little importance…until the Martians invaded the moon.

I had worked up a nice little backstory for Mitchell, but little came of it. By the time I got to that part of the story, I was nearing the climax and really wanted to finish things up. I didn’t want to impede the plot further by introducing a new character, so Billy Mitchell wound up appearing in only a single panel, and that one was so small that I couldn’t really draw a good likeness of him. In the end, the reader had no way of knowing that he was anyone significant, or that someday there would be a spaceport in Milwaukee named after him. But I did.

I suppose in that case my appropriation of a historical figure amounts to little more than an obscure and highly-indulgent in-joke. Still, I think that such name-dropping serves a valid purpose. It establishes points of similarity which anchor the fictional world to the real one, as well as benchmarks which give a sense of how they differ.

At least that’s my excuse.

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In his secret identity, Kurt Wilcken is a Ninja Cartoonist. He attended Iowa State University, where he drew political cartoons for the Iowa State Daily and sold photocopied comics out of his backpack. He went on to write and draw comics for Innovation, Antarctic Press and Radio Comix. He has illustrated children’s books and occasionally blogs about subjects ranging from science fiction to comic books to weird Bible stories. He currently publishes a Pulp-Era adventure comic, HANNIBAL TESLA ADVENTURE MAGAZINE, on his website.

Fantastic History #8: Researching Recent History by Dan Stout

Researching Recent History

I should begin with a confession: As a writer, I don’t have much in common with any self-assured, elbow-patched master of the craft. Instead, I chase after topics like a puppy chases lightning bugs, leaping at every new flash, spinning mad circles in the summer twilight before collapsing exhausted onto a soft carpet of a freshly-mowed lawn.

In other words, I suffer from a short attention span and an inclination to naps.

These traits helped shape the creation of my debut novel. TITANSHADE is a murder mystery set in an alternate world with 1970s technology. This setting immediately appealed to my inner puppy because A) it blends the familiar with the unknown in fun and flashing-light ways, and B) I thought it would make my life easier, leaving more time for naps.

So I dove into the novel headfirst, chasing the flashing lights and assuming I’d have to do minimal research. After all, there’s no shortage of information about the 70s, and hey– I’ve even got first-hand knowledge! How hard could it be, right?

I think you see where this is going.

Halfway through the first draft, I realized my catastrophic miscalculation. Yes, I’d experienced the 70s… as a kindergartener. My expertise was limited to juice boxes and show-and-tell, not the inner workings of a homicide investigation. Even worse, when I finally started my research, I found that very few sources addressed the day-in, day-out drudgery suitable for noir fiction. In order to make any headway, I knew I had to find a different approach.

Death at the Disco

Let’s take a simple example: a patron has been found dead at a popular nightclub. Our goal in this scene is to create a vivid sense of setting and to convey the forensic science of the investigation.

Just like today, nightclubs in the 70s ranged from high-end to grungy. (The cocaine-fueled decadence of Studio 54 was worlds away from the intentional squalor of CBGB, for example.) Because we’re writing fantasy, we also need to reveal the rules and norms of the world in a way that seems natural. We need to find small details, short asides that feel like background flavor to the reader, but actually do the heavy lifting of world-building. And when it comes to recent history, these are the kind of details it can be surprisingly hard to turn up.

There’s no shortage of articles about the discos and dance halls of the 70s, but almost all of them were written decades after the fact. Retrospective articles are fine for some things – want to know when Studio 54 opened its doors? Easy! – but it can be a mistake to rely on them for a true feel of what life was like at that place, in that time.

We run into the same issue portraying the forensic team investigating the crime. Hop online and you’ll find a wealth of resources about forensics. But almost all of them showcase current technology and theories. It seems the 1970s fall into that narrow range of post-computer, but pre-Internet, a period of time for which surprisingly few archives are available online.

From the Horse’s Mouth

The most direct method to learn about recent history is to talk to the people who lived it. Reach out to family members or friends of friends to see who might be willing to share their story with you. These people are treasures, rich sources of history and experience. But they can sometimes put a spin on their experiences or find that their recollections have become clouded over time. Memories are great, but even better are contemporary accounts.

Contemporary accounts are less tainted by nostalgia and tend to be focused on the level of comfort and short-term concerns. Conveniently, that’s what most fictional characters are interested in, as well.

One of the most effective methods I’ve found is to track down the technical manuals and travel guides from the era. Travel guides are covered in more detail in Fantastic History #3, and are great resources often filled with the small details that can bring a setting to life, such as the real cost of daily items, or tips on how not to get pick-pocketed.

In our example of a murder that takes place in a disco, we’re better off looking beyond the mainstream, and finding sources that were targeted to a niche market. Fanzines and gossip columns described the activity in the clubs with more relish than would ever appear in a traditional newspaper column. Often viewed as ephemera, these sources were only rarely saved. Finding them requires scouring second-hand bookstores and haunting university library book sales.

For topics like forensic procedures, the best source is often contemporary technical instruction. Especially valuable are texts geared to the general public or introductory texts intended for trainees in the field. Some of these manuals are available in digital form, but the vast majority are not. Back to the second-hand stores! (I wish I could make that sound like work, but it’s way too much fun.)

A much easier resource to locate is contemporary photos. These images give a glimpse into the sights (and implied sounds and smells) we might encounter in any given setting. Ranging from snapshots to artistic explorations, photos have been preserved more frequently than paper items. Collections are readily available online, covering everything from Chicago nightclubs to life on the NYPD.

Putting it Together

Getting the period-specific details right is only part of the equation. A fantasy setting gives us some leeway; as long as things “feel” like the late 70s, the readers will be along for the ride. A bigger issue is the possible ramifications that magic and other technologies might have on the historical setting. These need to be thought through as much as possible, their “what if?” blending with our research to create an immersive experience.

It’s not always easy to focus your inner writerly puppy, but the hard work pays off. Discovering first-hand accounts and sliding into the mindset of an era allows us to highlight the wonder and strangeness of the times, while also giving readers enough essential information to follow the narrative. So if you’ve got a story set in a recent historical era, go ahead and do the work. Talk to people who lived it, dig up original sources, and plunge into the images and stories that informed life in that place and time. There’ll be plenty of time to chase lightning bugs when you’re done.

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Dan Stout lives in Columbus, Ohio, where he writes about fever dreams and half-glimpsed shapes in the shadows. His fiction draws on travels throughout Europe, Asia, and the Pacific Rim as well as an employment history spanning everything from subpoena server to assistant well driller. Dan’s stories have appeared in publications such as The Saturday Evening Post, Nature, and Mad Scientist Journal. His debut novel Titanshade releases in March 2019 from DAW Books. To say hello, visit him at DanStout.com.

June 2018 Update

Hey guys! June was pretty good. I had a lovely month of vacation, which started promptly at the beginning of the month, and I buckled down to some serious book writing. I am happy to report that The Pawn of Isis is now in the hands of Curiosity Quills, awaiting its final fate. Hopefully I will have news on that front soon.

This month was great for local book appearances. M&M Book Stores in Cedar Rapids has begun sponsoring local authors, so Beth Hudson and I hung out there on June 9th. A whole bunch of authors from the Shohola Press Abandoned Places Anthology–Chris Bauer, Doug Engstrom, Ransom Noble, Shannon Ryan and myself–spent June 30th at Beaverdale Books, where we read from the anthology, met a lot of people, and had a generally great time. On the whole, a pretty good month.

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In case you hadn’t noticed in the navigation line, I’ve started a new part of this blog called Fantastic History, where awesome guests come in to write articles about writing history and fantasy at the same time. If you are a fan of this genre, as I am, you may well recognize some of the names. Definitely read some of their work.

I should also mention the podcast I’m part of–The Unreliable Narrators–just posted its 150th show. Congrats and a shout out to my friends Chris Cornell, Chia Evers, and George Galuschak. We are a great team. Also a shout out to all our wonderful guests for 150 shows.

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What’s coming up in July? A lot of stuff. First of all, I will be at Convergence from July 5th until July 8th. If you’re in Minneapolis that weekend, I will be there too! Then, after I take a quick duck into the hospital for some outpatient surgery, Bryon and I are off to Washington D.C. to take in the Hatsune Miku North American Expo. Not only is it fun, but it is also research for a future writing project. Finally, I’ll be back in Marion, Ia for the I.O.W.A. (Imagine Other Worlds with Authors) event. Looks like a busy, traveling July.

Writing-wise, I still plan to have my first draft of Abigail Rath Versus Mad Science ready to go for beta readers before I head back to Kirkwood in August. I’ve also started playing with ideas for a serial entitled Samuel and Amanda for the moment, and have begun laying the groundwork for The Wisdom of Thoth, (Klaereon Scroll Series #3). AND I plan to put out a self-published collection of shorts. Those of you who have been keen for some of the stories I’ve been reading in public over the years should have some soon.

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Have a great July, and I’ll see you again in August.