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Does anybody know of any alternate history stories that investigate what may have happened to English and French societies if Joan of Arc had never had any visions/madness and led France to victory?
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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Never heard of any, but it's an interesting concept. Are you interested in other Joan of Arc alternate history stories, or just that one?
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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Yeah, "The Undiscovered" is one of my favorite short stories, I think. I like his short stuff better than his novels though, I have to say. There is a certain "shave and a haircut" quality to the endings of a lot of his books.
Nonetheless, The Wild Blue and the Grey is well worth reading. The world it sets up is an interesting one, and Faulkner makes for an interesting character. His Journey to Fusang is entertaining as well, if on the light side. It's interesting to read it along with Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt. Talk about wildly different takes, with wildly different tones, on the same premise.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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quote: Are you interested in other Joan of Arc alternate history stories, or just that one?
Last night as I lay in bed, I tried to imagine how history, especially the history of the United States, would have been different if Joan had never had any visions/madness. Could England and France have become united for enought time to form a single national identity? Would English be the language spoken in Paris? Could Henry VIII have gotten away with declaring himself head of the Church of England? Would the combined country have remained catholic? Could this have prevented the Puritans from gaining such momentum in England? How would the political and religious landscape of early America changed if there had been no Puritan colonies in New England? Would I enjoy writing a story exploring these questions?
Then I said to myself "This is such an obvious what if question -- the odds are very high that somebody else has already written a story about this."
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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I don't really that that it's a particularly obvious what-if. Certainly the scenario that you spin from it is interesting, and one I haven't seen anyone do. If you were to write it, I'd happily read it.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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quote:Originally posted by krynn: hmm, i had a few What If comics when i was younger... does that count as alt history?!?
Some of them. Ones that were based on points of divergence, like "What if Peter Parker had stopped that guy before he killed Uncle Ben", and "What if the FF had let Spidey join the team" would count. But stuff like "What if the cosmic rays had made Sue the Thing instead of Ben" probably wouldn't.
This geek moment has been brought to you by Marvel Comics. "We're number two, and we can't get used to it."
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote: If you were to write it, I'd happily read it.
In all honesty, it's little more than a pipe dream. I don't have nearly the knowledge of history that I'd neeed to be able to write something like this. It would take a long time for me to do enough research.
Maybe this is nothing more than a project that keeps me busy so that I don't have to try (and fail) to learn how to write fiction. Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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"Barbet, Pierre: The Joan-of-Arc Replay DAW, 1978 (287) 1st US ed, near F. Scientists create alternate Earth to see what would happen if Joan led an army of liberation. Translated from the French.$ 7.00"
Posts: 218 | Registered: Mar 2005
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"In the third book in his Alternate Generals anthology series, he collects short stories of alternate military history whose speculative scenarios range from Joan of Arc escaping martyrdom and leading France to victory in medieval Europe to the Vietnam War ending in 1987 with the U.S. eking out victory."
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Here is a sci fi novel by Mary Gentle(I loved her "Golden Witchbreed") which seems to be a Joan of Arc-is character.
"Just as the reader gets ready to reassign the book to time travel SF, Gentle inserts--in what are purported to be excerpts from a 21st-century scholar's e-mail conversation with his publisher--hints that perhaps the novel belongs in the alternate history category. By now Ash and her army are embroiled in war and politics up to their fluted breastplates (armor, like all the historical detail, is minutely and accurately described), and if swords and poleaxes were not enough, she now faces golems and the Carthaginian army. Amazingly, Gentle makes this impossible mix believable, and by the end of the novel it is apparent that this is the beginning of a most interesting series."
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I just read those books by Mary Gentle, and they were pretty darn good. I found them when I was desperately seeking for the title/author to "Golden Witchbreed," and could only recall tantalizing hints . . . GW was a good read, too.
Posts: 5609 | Registered: Jan 2003
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Silverberg wrote a series where historical characters were virtualy reincarnated. That's the only Joan of Arc I've read.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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Shan, Is Golden Witchbreed still in print? The second book was...Golden Lght? No, ANCIENT Light. I did not like it as much as the first, but it was good.
I think I may go and find those books. Thanks!
Posts: 10890 | Registered: May 2003
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Sara Douglass' Crucible Trilogy probably doesn't fit neatly into the category as you've outlined it, (Not being primarily about Joan of Arc), but is alt/hist/ fantasy set during the reign of Richard II and with Joan of Arc featuring as a significant character, and drawing a lot of 'real' history into a fictional context.
Douglass is an excellent writer, and I can't recommend this trilogy enough, if you are interested in fiction set in that particular era.
Posts: 466 | Registered: Sep 2003
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