Brane and brane, what is "brane?!"

Been sick and staying in reading. Somehow found myself reading fanfics. Several fanfics. Set in the same universe. And reading them simultaneously.

So I'm basically flipping back and forth between multiple alternate worlds, having to adjust with each page with an, "Right, this is the one where they don't have brooms yet, but she's older and he's a girl. Or is this the one where everyone is a pony?"

In want-of-a-nail fashion a unique narrative spins away from every jonbar hinge, each step of the plot creating a new set of potential universes and discarding a previous. This is true of every book; every path not taken leaves a wondering horse. Reading a dozen simultaneous branches at once just emphasizes the process.

Being fanfic, every work must be a traceable variation on a single cantus firmus, that Earth One of the original work. And being fanfic, parallel evolution features more frequently than one might expect; the plot drifts back to that invisible melody like a long jazz solo winding up -- if only to hit certain well-known and well-beloved moments of the original in an exercise fanfic commentators have called doing the Stations of the Cross.

As with alternate history, there may be clockwork airships overhead and a sea monster in the Thames but there will always be a Queen Victoria. (One is tempted to say there will always be airships, but that's another issue.)



And that's my insight today. Historical fiction shares with fanfiction and serialized fiction the mingled joys of the surprising and the familiar. 

You come to an episode of Buffy to be in the company of Wills, Xander, Cordy, Mr. Giles, and of course the Buffmeister again. You delight in the familiar, even as you expect to be shown something new and exciting as well. In a well-written series even the familiar ground will become more detailed over time, with season delivering a little more backstory, a little more character development, a little more nuance.

And this is why there is a Sorting Hat song in hundreds, thousands of fan-written stories. Even if the song itself is unique. The cantus firmus is not the song, it is the singing hat. (And I'm really looking forward to the story where Harry is sorted in Hufflepuff and the 'puffs get to demonstrate that Nice is not Weak but anyhow.)

When a reader decides to open a book set in a historical period, they frequently (but not always) expect to find something familiar. Readers drawn to history know history. And specialize. If they opened your book on the life of Seti I then they probably know something about Ancient Egypt.

That reader also expects to find something new. They want to learn -- or, at least, be surprised. This may be why Alternate History works so well. It is the familiar pieces, but re-arranged for freshness; Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combination, as the Vulcans would say.




Well, the second is going to be easy. The moment your book says, "Here's some Sea People, here's the siege of Wilusa," then you are writing an original take, one single splintered mirror of a reality largely lost to history. There isn't a consensus of historical opinion to diverge from, not here.

Which makes the first the more useful question for now. What are the touchstones for the Late Bronze Age? What familiar places is the reader hoping to see?