Alternative History

Powieść historyczna, fikcja literacka oparta na prawdziwych wydarzenia z czasu II wojny światowej. Historia zamachu na Adolfa Hitlera z 8 listopada 1939 roku przeprowadzona w Monachium przez stolarza Georga Elsera. Alternatywna wersja wydarzeń - Janus - Dwie twarze Heinricha Himmlera.

Jesień 2016 roku upłynęła młodzieży z kutnowskich szkół pod znakiem walki o tron. Dokładnie tak, gdyż właśnie „Walka o Tron 1733” to tytuł dużego projektu edukacyjnego realizowanego wspólnie przez Fundację Budzenie Pasji i Muzeum Regionalne w Kutnie, którego pomysłodawcą był niżej podpisany. Projekt oparty był na metodzie larp, którą będę chciał poniżej przedstawić i poniekąd zarekomendować. Doświadczenia realizacji kilku podobnych projektów, w których wzięło w latach 2012-2016 ok. 1700 uczniów, skłaniają mnie do sformułowania kilku zasad (wcale nie żelaznych!), które powinno się uwzględnić tworząc a następnie przeprowadzając taki projekt dla młodzieży.

Martin Cruz Smith (Gorky Park, 1981) is rarely acknowledged as a native American author concerned with the global implications of colonialism, race, and native sovereignty.  His virtually unknown first novel, however, The Indians Won (1970), imagines an alternate America in which an Indian Nation established in the 1870s stretches from Canada to Mexico.  The novel explores how nation-building occurs and what a native nation peopled by modern native citizens might look like.  It maps colonization and forms of native resistance, factual and imagined, through a process of trickster memsis-- subversive and deliberate self-reflexivity that anticipates the playful irony of Viznor’s trickster hermeneutics, in which native peoples continuously engage in cultural play as a means of resistance, reinvention, and affirmation of presence over absence. The Indians Won transforms Western notions of nationhood, citizenship, and sovereignty into a distinctively native form of nationalism.

American fiction since 2000 has successfully resisted neat classification by displaying hybridity and versatility that move beyond the postmodern paradigm. This paper starts from Irmtraud Huber's claim that a turn from deconstruction to reconstruction in recent American fiction has been achieved through the use of the fantastic mode, and from Andrew Hoberek's statement that popular genres have been conferred full literary status in American fiction after postmodernism. It then focuses on the peculiar blend of alternative history, political thriller and noir detective story in Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union (2007), and on Chabon's use of genre to explore the ways in which the shifting of geopolitical boundaries turns individuals and groups into victims or winners of territorial rearrangements.

Bilimkurguyu Anlamak; son yıllarda edebiyat, sinema ve popüler kültürde ön plana çıkan bilimkurgu türüne dair Türkçe yayımlanmış akademik içerikli kitapların sınırlı sayıda olmasından yola çıkarak alandaki boşluğu doldurmak ve Türkçeye bilimkurgu eleştirisi bağlamında önemli bir eser kazandırmak amacıyla ortaya çıkarılmıştır. Bilimkurguyu alt türler temelinde ele alan bu kitap, bilimkurgunun kısa tarihçesi ile başlayıp türün ütopya/distopya kavramları ile olan ilişkisinden zaman yolculuğuna, siberpunktan yeni dalga akımına, alternatif tarihten uzay operasına kadar pek çok alt türü ayrıntılı biçimde ve eleştirel bir bakış açısıyla irdelemektedir. Böylece bilimkurguyu sadece sınıflandırmakla kalmayıp bilimkurgunun alt türlerine yakından bakma ve türlerin doğasını daha iyi keşfedebilme imkânı sunmaktadır. Okurları yerli bilimkurgu incelemeleriyle de buluşturan kitap, bilimkurgu hakkında süregelen tabu ve ön yargıları ortadan kaldırma niyetinin yanı sıra türün derinliğini sosyal bilimlerin penceresinden ve metin merkezli eleştiriler ışığında gözler önüne sermektedir.

‫این کتاب ترجمه ای است از:
Rudolf, Germar, “Holocaust Skepticism: 20 Questions and Answers about Holocaust Revisionism”, Castle Hill Publishers, United States, 2018
گرمار رودلف در این اثر خود رایج ترین پرسش هایی را که در مورد بازنگری در هولوکاست برای عموم مردم پیش می آید، یک به یک پاسخ داده ، اصول بنیادین پژوهش های علمی را به مخاطب یادآوری می کند و تصویری کلی از شرایط تاریخ نگاری در مورد هولوکاست پیش چشم مخاطب به تصویر می کشد.

Osim što je povijest grada Zagreba prilično slabo istražena, ona je i pomalo paradoksalna. Unatoč činjenici da tragovi organiziranog načina života sežu u prapovijest, Zagreb svoje ime zapisuje tek pola tisućljeća nakon dolaska Slavena, pa se stječe dojam kako njegova povijest započinje tek osnivanjem biskupije u 11. stoljeću. Međutim, tajna povijest Zagreba ne nalazi se zapisana na nekom prašnjavom pergamentu, niti se skriva u nekom šutljivom arheološkom nalazu; ona je u obliku skrivenog naslijeđa pohranjena u samom genetskom kodu Zagreba – u njegovom identitetu. Skrivena povijest Zagreba zapisana je kodiranim jezikom astrologije, metafizike i svete geometrije u najranijim elementima zagrebačkog identiteta. Već malo pažljiviji pogled u zagrebačke legende, tradicije, ostatke arhitekture i urbanog krajolika, pokazati će suštinsku povezanost drevnih Zagrepčana sa nebom, sa zvijezdama, pri čemu se utjecaj sazviježđa Orion i zvijezde Sirius nameće kao presudan. Štoviše, ova nebeska tijela utkana su u samu bit zagrebačkog identiteta, a ono što zapanjuje – utkana su na isti onaj način, na koji su Orion i Sirius utkani u identitet drevnih Egipćana. Bilo da se radi o njihovoj inkarnaciji u mitologiju ili se njihov značaj otkriva u astronomskim značajkama arhitekture i urbanog krajolika, sličnost između staroegipatske tradicije i tradicije drevnih Zagrepčana naprosto je zapanjujuća. Iako okvir ovog članka neće biti prikladan za diskusiju o naravi same povezanosti, brojnost primjera koji iz te povezanosti proizlaze, skladno se uklapaju u poznate teorije o zajedničkom korijenu duhovnih i znanstvenih nasada drevnih civilizacija. Premda se uz ove teorije vežu brojne kontroverze, one nude logična objašnjenja za inače neobjašnjive sličnosti u arhitekturi, mitologiji i simbolizmu drevnih civilizacija koje nikada nisu bile u međusobnom kontaktu. Članak koji slijedi opisat će brojne primjere implementacije astroloških kodova i simbola u zagrebački identitet. Dotaći ćemo se naziva i toponima u drevnom krajoliku, otkriti ćemo astrološke motive u najpoznatijoj legendi o postanku Zagreba te vidjeti na koje sve načine topografija zagrebačkog krajolika interpretira samu legendu. Napokon, vidjet ćemo da je identitet drevnog Zagreba 'ispisan' istim rukopisom i putem istih onih astroloških kodova koji se otkrivaju u identitetu drevnih Egipćana.

The various genres of speculative fiction elaborate models for aesthetic "re-enchantment" of the world, in which the role of programmatically irrational and fantastic elements ranges from the uncanny menace to the aesthetic ideal. While in the Western fiction the literary tropes of time travel, monsters or sorcery function as the elements of the unreal " secondary world " and thus construct a distance between the fantastic and the mundane, contemporary Russophone authors exploit the generic conventions of fantasy or science fiction in order to suggest a continuity between fiction and reality. Focusing on geopolitical and social modeling in post-Soviet speculative fiction, the paper claims that the images of the Other, the archaic communal structures and the transformations of historical time provide here an aesthetic ground for a large patriotic consensus of a community united by common resentment.

Article 1:-
An introduction to the article provided by the "ISKCON News", where the first part of the article was published on 2nd December, 2014: "Researchers find interesting similarities between ancient Indian and Egyptian culture. Was there a real connection or are these similarities only coincidences?"

Therefore, we present in the book, in a way resulting from our research interests, answers to the question about the ways and mechanisms of including the past into the present by a community. We do it by analyzing the way in which time lapse and change of conditions have been modifying  these mechanisms and how they were inspiring people to search for new solutions which were supposed to serve adjusting the past to the current needs of a community. We are analyzing and interpreting various ways of making past present and of “embodying” it in the present, including as specific ones as transforming and modifying historical knowledge in fantasy literature and alternative history (the chapter: From Andrzej Kmicic to Witcher. Alternative History and Historical Fantasy in Poland at the Turn of the 20th and 21st Centuries).
Being aware of historical variability of the content of cultural and social symbolism, we are reflecting on its new meanings and functions which are ascribed to it by contemporary participants of mass culture, including users of the new media functioning mostly in the digital environment.

Die Textur von fleckigem Antikleder, durch Berührung polierte Messingbeschläge, bizarre dampfbetriebene Apparaturen, eine Fusion von viktorianischer Industrialisierung und futuristischer Technologie: Was sich in den späten 1980er Jahren zunächst in der Literatur und nach und nach in den anderen narrativen Medien, in Mode und Subkultur etablierte, hatte zu Beginn nicht einmal einen Namen. Dabei ließen sich die Wurzeln dieser dezidierten Retro-Science-Fiction lange zurückverfolgen, bis zurück zur Geburt der wissenschaftlichen Utopie selbst: zu Jules Verne, Herbert George Wells und Mary Wollenscroft Shelley. Im 19. Jahrhundert schrieben sie von der Reise in unbekannte Sphären, von der Zeitreise oder der Erschaffung eines künstlichen Menschen, ohne dass sie dabei ein spezielles Genre bedienen mussten. Und selbst als Fritz Lang 1927 seine dampfdurchwirkte Großproduktion METROPOLIS in die Kinos brachte, war noch kein Namen für das Genre gefunden.
Heute hat dieses Phänomen einer rückwärtsgewandten, ‚antimodernen’ Science Fiction einen Namen und ein Programm: Steampunk. Steampunk selbst gleicht einer stilistischen Zeitreise. Der Stil kombiniert die Mode und Architektur der viktorianischen Ära Englands und Amerikas mit Elementen des Kolonialismus’, der frühen Industrialisierung und der langsam aufkommenden Technologien: Dampfkraft, aber auch Elektrizität. Nur von Ferne ahnte man die Existenz einer noch größeren Kraftquelle, der Atomkraft, wie Jules Verne in seinem Roman Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (1870) andeutete – wiederum ohne das Phänomen benennen zu können. Steampunk gehört zu der ‚spekulativen Geschichtsschreibung’ (Was wäre wenn...?) und berichtet von der fiktiven Vergangenheit der Zukunft. Erzählende Werke des Steampunk in Literatur, Film und Game können somit per se als Zeitreise betrachtet werden und faszinieren nicht zuletzt aus diesem Grund ein Publikum unterschiedlichster Generationen. Aus den literarischen und filmischen Fiktionen hatte sich bis nach 2000 ein spezifischer Kleidungsstil entwickelt, der auf Steampunk-Conventions, in Musikvideoclips und burlesken Bühnenshows (das Karnevaleske ist dort ebenfalls bereits angelegt) und eigenen Internetportalen Verbreitung findet.

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I present absolutions against Marxist hegemony and dehumanization, moving back into symbiosis with nature through mutual-anarchistic Tesla-village societies in a loosely organized effort supported by the smartest and bravest patriots on the world stage, UBUNTU, New Earth Nation, all whom are my dear friends, but who dare not touch me, as I am a targeted Buddha in Norwegian Nazi captivity as a response to being adopted by messianic Christians in 2012. I have an amazing portfolio as an expert drawer/painter, writer, poet, photographer and singer, and I am not lying.

Versione estesa dell' articolo "Ningishzidda and Ishkur / Quetzalcoatl and Viracocha" del marzo 2010. La versione attuale é estratta dal libro "Il fenomeno Nibiru vol.1: le conferme" seconda edizione ed é compaesa la prima volta come articolo il 10 maggio 2012

The Roma working class trope has a long genealogy in Romanian lands and it can be observed in Romanian historiography. It had a crucial role in negatively stereotyping both Roma and the working class, mainly as a Gadje (non-Roma) reaction to vast social changes that could affect the existing ethnic power relations. A pre-capitalist utopian perspective on capitalism appears in the writings of the nineteenth century Romanian intellectuals where the Roma former slaves are present in these depictions as an imagined future working class. The Roma slaves were crucial to the existing Moldavian and Wallachian economies as domestic laborers, agricultural laborers, entertainers, traders but most significantly, as craftsmen. In 1841, Teodor Diamant published a detailed plan to “teach them (Roma people) order, economics, morals and religion” by settling them in “agricultural-industrial colonies” or phalansteries, where they would be used for “productive work”. Both utopian-socialists and proto-capitalists perceived Roma as an easily controllable working class of “naturally” skilled craftsmen, that can be undoubtedly used in industrial fantasies. The stereotypes concerning the Roma as the lowest working class can be followed during socialist period but also in contemporary science-fiction literature, as in the steampunk subgenre.

Alexander P. Dyle: Die Erwählte. Die Päpstin Johanna. Ein historischer Roman aus dem Frühmittelalter. Johanna, die Heldin der Geschichte, erlebt ein fulminantes Abenteuer, das sie von einem Dorf im fränkischen Reich über das Kloster Fulda bis nach Venedig führt. Um ihre Studien zu vertiefen, reist sie in das Reich von Byzanz, besucht Konstantinopel und studiert in Athen. Sie kehrt nach Italien zurück und macht in Rom eine beispiellose Karriere, doch ein Geheimnis überschattet ihr Leben. Und doch läuft alles fast perfekt - bis zum Tag der Volkswahl. Ein auf historischen Tatsachen beruhender Roman über den größten Skandal des Mittelalters. Leicht aktualisierte Neuauflage.
ISBN: 978-3757511180
https://www.amazon.de/dp/3757511182/
Auch als E-Buch erhältlich: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B09X666LVR

As a result of post-modern criticism s, history as science has lost its fundamental conviction that it is possible to stud y the past objectively an d State "how things really were". If history is a literary artefact or an ideological discursive practice, how can we assess its value according to the existing criteria, and, in particular, according to the criterion of the "historical truth"? Should professional historiography be favoured in any w ay over other narratives of the past created by both different an d similar to historiography means?
The information revolution offers an increasing challenge to the supremacy of professional historiography a n d it has led to an open market for narratives of history produced beyond the academe. A whole range of unacademic and, simultaneously, unliterary narratives of the past operates in the public sphere, some of which attempt to pass as "true historiography", while others use elements of historical discourse and even some historical methodological tools to create openly fantastic stories. Among them there are such different strands as counterfactual histories, alternative histories, uchronias, revisionist histories based upon conspiracy theories, negationism and, last but not least, New Chronology developed by Anatoly Fomenko.
All of these "separate" narrative forms are much more attractive to the media than academic historiography. The problem does not only lie in the competition between them. Perhaps scientific history, w hose disciplinary identity has been seriously damaged by post-modern criticism , should search for its new justification on its farthest margins, that is in the points of contact with the narratives of the past that are definitely unhistorical? Perhaps reflecting upon the "boundary conditions" of historiography will be helpful in determining a positive programme for history's disciplinary identity.

Dans cette contribution est comparee une histoire contrefactuelle recente (1940. Et si la France avait continue la guerre) et trois romans historiques reposant sur une version contrefactuelle de la seconde guerre mondiale (de Philip K. Dick, Harris et Roth). Cette comparaison vise a mettre en evidence le caractere non homogene de la fiction d'un point de vue ontologique, ainsi que la difference entre histoire et roman a travers l'inscription et l'articulation des modalites epidemiques et axiologiques.

This complete survey of alternate histories in Hungarian speculative fiction yields noteworthy findings from a hitherto lesser-known literary corpus. Most notably, it documents that the very first novel concerning itself retrospectively with the subject of a 'Third Reich triumphant' (the alternate history sub-genre par excellence) was written and published in Hungary just a few month after the end of World War 2. The survey then provides summaries of the main conceptual ideas treated in Hungarian alternate histories, largely grouped by subject matter, which fall into four main categories: alterations to the medieval Hungarian kingdom and the Ottoman wars; alternate 19th centuries; variants of the post-WW2 international order; and alternate theological and mythological fiction.

Cinema, History and ‘Spectator Catharsis’
The Uchronia in Once upon a time in Hollywood by Q. Tarantino

Abstract
Can films that propose a reconstruction of the past exert considerable influence over the collective perception and interpretation of an historical period? And in this respect, can films serve as an example of ‘public history’?  This paper analyses a particular kind of historical reconstruction, ‘alternative history’, a narrative development of an alternative past, different from the one that happened, focusing on the film analysis of Once upon a time in Hollywood... by Q. Tarantino (2019). Set in the late 1960s, the film is a socio-cultural portrait of Los Angeles at the time through the lives of a declining actor (L. di Caprio) and his stuntman (B. Pitt). The film re-elaborates real and fictitious sources in an original way: the final part of the story of the two protagonists is intertwined with that of the followers of the sect of Charles Manson - the authors of the murder of Cielo Drive (1969), who murdered the actress Sharon Tate, then wife of Roman Polanski, and some of his friends. However, the American director-screenwriter changes the narrative plot in the opposite direction, reaching a happy end that represents some sort of ‘cinematographic revenge’ or ‘cathartic device’. This operation brings with it several consequences, not as one might think due to the intentional alteration of the facts, but rather to "how" the context relating to these facts is represented.

Досліджується специфіка напряму альтернативної історії. Розглядаються її твори в сучасній політичній аналітиці, фантастиці й аматорських дослідженнях. Особлива увага звертається на твори альтернативної історії, поширені в українському культурному просторі. Також зачіпається проблема міфологізації минулого й використання альтернативної історії як засобу маніпуляції масами.

VII Міжнародна науково-практична інтернет-конференція «Гуманітарний простір науки: досвід та перспективи»

Whose perspective, whose truth, whose version of history can survive? Postmodern historiographic metafiction challenges the authority of the truth by highlighting alternative or small partial histories that have been neglected, ignored, untold, forgotten, bypassed, distorted, hidden, changed, omitted, eliminated, and eradicated. In this respect, history cannot be described as one concrete formulation or as a stable history but a collection of fragmented multiple histories. Julian Barnes's A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters (1989) and Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children (1980) both deal with the historical facts, one in a playful and the other in a magical way, questioning what would happen if "the" history is rewritten by the other, ex-centric, excluded, unseen, unclean, abnormal, the victim or the ordinary people whose personal stories shape and deconstruct "the" history. What Barnes and Rushdie offer is "a" history of the world rather than the totalizing nature of "the" history of the world, demonstrating many possible partial histories and personal (hi)stories or (her)stories interrelated to the grand history or national history. This article examines how Barnes and Rushdie portrays an alternative historical rewriting by blurring the line between the factual and fictional history that makes readers question the assumptions about the objectivity and truthiness of history. Öz Kimin bakış açısı, kimin hakikati, kimin tarih versiyonu ayakta kalabilir? Postmodern tarihyazımsal üstkurgu, ihmal edilmiş, göz ardı edilmiş, anlatılmamış, unutulmuş, atlanmış, çarpıtılmış, gizlenmiş, değiştirilmiş, atlanmış, ortadan kaldırılmış ve silinmiş alternatif veya küçük taraflı tarihleri vurgulayarak gerçeğin otoritesine meydan okur. Bu bakımdan tarih, tek bir somut formülasyon ya da istikrarlı bir tarih olarak değil, parçalanmış çoklu tarihlerin bir koleksiyonu olarak tanımlanabilir. Julian Barnes'ın On 1 This article is a revised and extended version of the paper presented at romanların her ikisi de eğer kişisel öyküleri ile "tekil" tarihi şekillendiren ve yeniden yapılandıran öteki, ek-santrik, dışlanmış, görünmeyen, kirli, anormal, kurban ve sıradan insanlar tarafından tarih yeniden yazılırsa ne olacağını sorgulayarak-biri latifeci diğeri de büyülü gerçekçi bir yolla-tarihsel gerçekleri ele alırlar. Barnes ve Rushdie'nin sunduğu, büyük tarih veya ulusal tarihle karşılıklı ilişkili olan birçok olası taraflı tarihleri ve kişisel (eril-dişil) öyküleri açımlayan tümleyici doğası ile "tekil" dünya tarihinden ziyade "herhangi bir" dünya tarihidir. Bu makale, Barnes ve Rushdie'nin, okuyucuların tarihin tarafsızlığı ve doğruluğu hakkındaki varsayımları sorgulamasına neden olan gerçekçi ve kurgusal tarih arasındaki çizgiyi bulanıklaştırarak alternatif bir tarihsel yeniden yazımı nasıl tasvir ettiğini inceliyor.

In"History is a Natural Selection" I discuss how municipal city museums in Israel, one among many agents, initiate the construction of collective memories of memorial sites and areas through "the politics of memory."  It illustrates the way memory becomes fluid in the hands of its designers, and how it is consciously and intelligently used for ideological, political and social purposes. The article discusses the thwarted attempt to establish an alternative model for museums in bi-national cities, a model that differs from the one sided and biased pattern, instrumental in shaping consciousness and erasing Palestinian history, currently used by Israeli museums to write the history of the powerful and the occupier.

Аннотация: в статье выявлена специфика документальной прозы как жанра литературы. Раскрываются следующие характерные черты докумен-тальной прозы: наличие субъективно‐лирического повествования; самоустра-нение автора, предоставляющего читателю самому раскрывать смысл предла-гаемых фактов; сведение вымысла к минимуму; фактологическое раскрытие бывших исторических событий или же их переосмысление.

The article observes the elements of alternative history in Agnon’s Ir u-mloa, focusing on the story “The Parable and Its Lesson” as a case study. Alternative history is considered here not in the narrow sense as a popular genre that is embedded, as most of the critics mistakenly suggest, in the postmodern situation, but rather as a method of thinking about history and its causality in terms of multiple possibilities, oscillation between them and choice. Agnon’s writing applies this method on the levels of characters, plots, imagery and ideas. Its analysis, as demonstrated in the article, reveals the unfolding of the writer’s possibilistic philosophy of history, particularly of the history of the demolished Jewish community in Europe, as presented in his post-Holocaust stories of Ir u-mloa.