WEEK 10 SCIFI/ALT HISTORY

Week 10 SCIFI/ALT HISTORY  

What distinctions are there between alternate history, postmodern alternate history and uchronie genres? 

This is an over-simplification of the science behind parallel worlds. Fortunately, you don’t have to be a physicist studying the quantum level to understand that particles at the sub-atomic level can act as particles and waves (Clark, 2020). The two major schools of Interpretation of quantum physics is “The Copenhagen Interpretation” and “The Many Worlds Interpretation.” 

According to The Copenhagen Interpretation by Niels Bohr, all quantum particles exist in all its possible states at once and is called its wave function. The state of an object existing in all its possible states at once is called its superposition. Observation breaks an object’s superposition and essentially forces the object to choose one state from its wave function and give away its probable position. (Clark, 2020). 

The Many Worlds Interpretation by Hugh Everett agreed with Niels Bohr except when we measure a quantum object it does not force it into one comprehensible state or another instead it causes an actual split in the universe. The universe is literally duplicated, splitting into one universe for each possible outcome from the measurement and are totally separate from each other (Clark, 2020).  

Stories in an alternate history revolve around the basic premise that some event in the past did not occur as we know it did, and thus the present has changed. The alternate history as a genre speculates about such topics as the nature of time and linearity, the past link to the present, the present link to the future, and the role of individuals in the construction of history making. Alternate histories question the nature of history and causality; they question accepted notions of time and space; they rupture linear movement; and they make readers rethink their world and how it has become what it is. 

We experience time to run in one direction and history follows in terms of human affairs (Mountford, 2020). The alternate history, postmodern alternate history and uchronie is a subgenre of sci-fi, history or literary fiction that concerns itself with history’s turning out differently than what we know to be true – the what if? – scenario or Many World Interpretation.  Synchronic is concerned with change at a specific point in time in contrast to Diachronic which is change across time. 

Phillip K. Dicks The Man in the High Castle (1962) is a landmark example of the uchronie or alternate history genre (Mountford, 2020). Here Dick creates a world in which Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan have won World War II and these two superpowers carve up the world between themselves. The story is set in 1962, 15 years after Germany and Japan have won WWII, Dick explores what the Pacific West Coast of the United States would be like if occupied by the Japanese, the Atlantic East Coast by the Germans and the Rocky Mountain States in-between as a quasi-free neutral buffer zone.    

Dick uses the “I Ching” or “Book of Changes” extensively as an oracle to develop and divine outcomes for his book as well as helping characters within the story to determine their next course of action (Mountfort, 2016). The work is, therefore, clearly based on a cyclical rather than linear notion of time, in that archetypes of key, formative events or situations are seen to repeat themselves through recurrent patterns of change. Thus, the view of history and time implicit in the I Ching is not only cyclical but synchronistic (Mountford, 2020). 

Amy Ransom argues that critics discussing alternate history (AH) have often neglected to distinguish among the more conventional forms, which are underpinned by a linear, causal, or “diachronic” view of time, and the more “synchronic” view implicit in the French term for the genre, uchronie. She posits the alternative phrase “postmodern alternate history” (Mountford, 2020). The distinctions between each term requires some understanding of how things change over time. 

REFERENCES  

Clark, J. (2020). Do Parallel Universes Really Exist? Retrieved from https://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/everyday-myths/parallel-universe.htm 

Mountfort, P. (2016). The I Ching and Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle. SF-TH Inc. 

Mountfort, P. (2020). Week 10: The Man in the High Castle, uchronie and the I Ching. PowerPoint Part 1 and 2.