Category: Week 10 Questions – SciFi/Alt-History

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

Alternative history has been regarded as a subgenre of literary fiction, science fiction, or historical fiction, with a series of fiction genres starting from the assumption”What if humanity’s history had evolved differently from previous facts?” Alternative history is mainly intertwined so closely that it cannot be discussed apart from intersecting time, time splitting that it is distinguished in many ways: alternative history, postmodern alternative history and uchronie genres.

Mountfort (2016) distinguishes the three genres with Philip K dick’s The Man in the High Castle, published in 1962 in research. High Castle is one of the most well-known of all alternative histories and is one of the most popular themes in the whole field of history. Also, The Man in the High Castle was inspired by I Ching, an ancient Chinese literary device also known primarily as the text of divination, or the Book of Changes. In the novel, it transcends the philosophical complexities of the story, given that the Nazi win World War II. However, many opinions are divided depending on whether they are viewed from a diachronic or synchronic perspective. 

“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”(Mountfort,2016).

First of all, alternative history usually has the straightest and diachronic view of time. A diachronic perspective can be understood as the concept of time from one point to another, which varies with the changes of the times. Also, unchronie has a synchronic view of time, which can be understood by the concept of a single point in time associated with the same era. In fact, many academic sources study High Castle as a formative example of alternative history, but mostly as a novel of a diachronic genre. However, “Dick’s notion of history is certainly synchronic rather than diachronic, in the terms of Jameson’s analysis, both in his evocation of a web of interrelationships and in his sense that the profusion of possible realities could radically undermine our sense of the real”(Mountfort,2016). 

This is linked to the concept of “synchronicity” that Carl Jung and other scholars have tried to explain. “Ransom describes Jung’s synchronicity concept as “related to that associated by Jameson and Alkon with the postmodern”. he defined synchronicity both as an “acausal connecting principle” and as “meaningful coincidence” or “cross-connection”.”(Mountfort,2016). It shows that the work is linked to the Postmodern Alternate History time view. From this, we can see that the three genres of alternative history are distinguished by whether we have a diachronic or a synchronic view, and these are dependent on how we accept stories.

References

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

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

Alternate history, postmodern alternate history, and uchronie genres all fall under the specific literary, fictional genre, that involves the concepts of parallel worlds and timelines. The alternate history genre can be seen as an overarching genre which involves narratives where one or multiple historical events may occur differently. The uchronie genres, derived from a French term, includes an ‘alternative history,’ where a story occurs in a similar world to ours until a specific event is altered to what we believe is true. In Mountfort’s (2016) research, subgenres of the uchronie genres are identified, and there appears to be three different variations such as ‘pure uchronie,’ involving a singular alternative world, ‘plural uchronia,’ consisting the existence of an alternative world in parallel, and ‘infinite uchronia,’ where there is the possibility of many or infinite parallel worlds.

In addition, the term uchronie mostly emphasizes a less causal or ‘diachronic’ form of history, but rather a ‘synchronic’ one. Mountfort (2016) explains the relevance of Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle (TMITHC), as one of the most critically acclaimed, and a prime expample of the uchronie or alternative history genre. TMITHC was primarily inspired by the I Ching, which is an ancient, Chinese literary device also known as a text of divination, or the ‘Book of Changes.’ Dick’s novel inspires the use of this in it’s main plot, and figuratively uses it and gives the reader a sophisticated postmodern fiction that examines the extremities of the text and the world in which it occurs. In fact, many academic sources have studies TMINHC as a formative example of alternate history, but specifically as a novel of the uchronie genre. However, Dick uses a more synchronic view of history than diachronic in TMINHC.

Moreover, other scholars such as Carl Jung have also tried to explain theories behind the concept of ‘synchronicity,’ which is a major element in the alternative history genre, as it involves the altering of certain events in history. Jung describes synchronicity as something related with the ‘postmodern,’ which was objectively true, but a distinct factor of Jung’s understandings were that he was concerned with the simultaneities between the objective events of the genre and the related subjective states (which often had a psychological or spiritual quality to them). Jung addressed synchronicity as an ‘acausal connecting principle,’ and as a ‘meaningful coincidence.’ Where, the critical disjunctions found in the linear timeline is a factor of the uchronie genre.

Overall, alternate history, postmodern alternate history, and uchronie genres all involve the existence of an alternate world, where although it is similar to our world, events may occur differently to what we believe. The major distinguishing features between these three concepts is whether they involve a more synchronic or diachronic narrative to them.

4. How does Dick use the I Ching and how did his views on the oracle and its role in the novel shift over time?

According to Mountfort (2020) Dick used the I Ching as an oracle to help him write his novel, the answers he got was a key element when he wrote the story. The main characters use of the I Ching acts as the novels central plot element and Dick used the I Ching obsessively when he wrote the book (Mountfort, 2016). Dick (n.d.) said himself that he used the I Ching because several of his characters used it. When one of the characters asked a question, he’d throw the coinsand and write the hexagram lines they got. This resulted in twelve I Ching results that highlights the central concerns of the novels main characters. It connects characters who never meet, but their actions still affect each other in specific ways (Mountfort, 2016).
Mountfort (2016) writes that Dick’s obsession with using the I Ching helped setting up a “powerful metafictional dynamic” between Dick and his protagonists. Although Dick uses the oracle to help him in his writing, Mountfort (2016) mentions that Paul Williams wrote an useful analysis of the most important points where the I Ching is used in the text, Williams doesn’t believe that the plot were gained mainly through I Ching reading, but that it were used only when the characters used it in the story.
Mountfort (2016) writes on that the I Ching added a philosophical base for the story in the “synchronistic notion of simultaneity or “meaningful coincidence” that is contrary to classical western views of causality” and he argues that the I Ching is a device that unifies stylistic and philosophical levels of the book.
As for Dick’s relationship with the I Ching it seems to have had its ups and downs. Dick was never satisfied with the ending of his novel ad he blamed the I Ching for not providing him with a satisfying ending, he wrote that he would have liked it to have a “stronger, better ending”. Dick actually came to a point where he believed that the oracle had misled and betrayed him on purpose, although this conflict with the I Ching didn’t last very long (Mountfort, 2016).
The oracle shifted from being a key element to his writing to becoming the villain in a way, considering how Dick thought the I Ching had given him an unsatisfying ending in purpose.  

Sources:

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.

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

Alternate histories are a science fiction genre that is centered around the premise that some events we are familiar with did not have the same outcome as our world, the result being an entirely different world (Hellekson, 2000, p. 248). Alternate histories may also include other science fiction elements like time travel or parallel worlds that act as their own alternate histories that exist alongside each other. There are several approaches to alternate histories that can be distinguished from one another, these are the alternate history, postmodern alternate history, and uchronie.

Alternate history is the most straight forward genre of alternate histories, as the main distinction between this genre and others of alternate histories is that it has a much more linear and diachronic view of time. A diachronic view of time is a single string of events throughout history, a singular line that encompasses all of history. Applying this to alternate history the line might be altered somewhere along the line which affects everything after so it can be easily changed.

On the other hand, there is the postmodern alternate history, and the distinction between this and other genres of alternate histories according to Ramson (2010, p. 263) is “the postmodern alternate history tends to foreground historical chaos.” The genre of postmodern alternate history was suggested by Paul Alkon and later Amy Ramson, foregrounding historical chaos means placing a highly chaotic and important moment of history at the front of the text and will typically the reason for the alternate history of a text. Postmodern alternate history also predominately uses a synchronic view of time. Philip K Dick’s The Man in the High Castle (1962) is an alternate history novel that could be considered postmodern alternate history. This is because Dick’s view of history is more synchronic than diachronic and the text foregrounds WWII, using one of the most common themes of the genre, the Nazi’s winning WWII.

Finally, there is uchronie which is the French term used for the alternate histories genre and the key distinction of this genre is that it “emphasizes less a causal or diachronic notion of history and more a synchronic or polyphonous one” (Mountfort, 2016, p. 288). This synchronic view of history is one that suggests events that occur throughout history are their moments in history as oppose to the diachronic view which was a single string of linear events. These individual moments may coexist alongside each other and they are all a part of a piece. It shares some similarities to the many worlds theory, which posits that all outcomes of quantum measurements did happen in another world or universe.

References

Dick, P. (1962). The Man in the High Castle. London: Penguin.

Hellekson, K. (2000). Towards a Taxonomy of the Alternate History Genre. Extrapolation.

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

Ransom, A. (2010). Warping Time: Alternate History, Historical Fantasy, and the Postmodern Uchronie Québécoise. Extrapolation.