Anyhow, I bought this stupid book because I am contemplating writing a book of historical fiction, and was curious about the technique used by a winning novelist in the category of "historical."

Imagine my surprise that the ONLY historical element to the book ("The Smoke Thief" by Shana Abe) was that the author made no pretense of including anything remotely historical in it, nor bothered to go to the trouble of world-building a fantasy world. The book was set in London of "the real world" but the characters lived in a "secret society." The book was pure fantasy romance, and not a shred of real history in it, other than details such as in the 1700's people rode horses, and England has a town called London.

While the book sufficed for entertaining me while I was too sick to do anything else, it got me wondering: What elements does a novel need to have to be considered "historical"? How important does accuracy in research need to be? At what point does the term "historical" need to be changed to "alternative history" or somesuch?

It makes me shake my head that this book would even have been considered for a category of "historical." So now I'm wondering what the boundaries for that category really are?

Anyone have ideas?

But whatever SHOULD happen, it has long been clear to me that this is not what is required to get historical fiction published. I wish I knew what that took -- maybe an "in" in the publishing industry?

Also, IMHO, alternative history should contain AT LEAST as much research and knowledge as history/historical fiction. Alternative history, done well, should be even harder to write because not only do you know what DID happen, you have to use that to extrapolate what WOULD HAVE HAPPENED if X had been throwin into the mix.

But once again, that does not necessarily seem to be the case in the real world.

Ask model railroad enthusiasts. Model railroading tends to be a historical hobby. People will pick a time period and then research the period heavily to make sure everything is accurate on their model railroads. They have access to billboard images, types of cars, types of signs, products, railroad cars, autos, trucks, all that.
I personally have been of the kind that if it stayed on the tracks, it was good enough.

I suppose I could make an anchor assumption along these lines: In the absence of evidence to the contrary, the story can be assumed to be set in the here-and-now.

There's another dimension in play: the here-and-now itself is moving. A story written in the here-and-now of 1947 would be different from a story written today but set in 1947. (I read an analysis of A. E. VanVogt's "Slan"---a classic SF novel---which reveals that, whatever date it was intended to be set in, the details in the story reveal the world it inhabits is that of the time it was written.)

*****

Ultimately, there is a paradox at the heart of any work of "historical fiction". history is about fact; fiction is not. Yes, you can reasearch all you ilke, and put in as much or as little of that research as you choose; but arguably all "historical fiction" is alternate history, because you're making up things, people, events, etc. that did not exist.

And I suspect that, no matter how hard you research, there will always be the risk of coming up against a reader who knows that one detail you missed. Occupational hazard.

The joy of writing fantasy is that no-one can ever argue whether or not you're "wrong". They may say your world doesn't make sense, but they can't actually say you're wrong.