You love starship fight and zooming through futuristic metropolis like Coruscant . But you also sleep together gladiator fight and seeing 1920s Atlantic City recreated for Boardwalk Empire . Why is that ? Though historical fable is supposedly based in fact about the past tense , the genre has a surprising amount in vulgar with the wondering tales of science fable . Here are ten major themes and ideas share by HF and SF .
Art byKeith Thompson .
Please note that this lean is n’t mean to be totalize . Not all SF and all HF have these subject in common , obviously . remember of this news report as creating a Venn Diagram of SF and HF , then describe what ’s in that pill - shape overlapping area .
1 . build up a world
One of the most of import persona of effective SF and HF is the creators ’ ability to build a humankind . There ’s a reason why SF filmmaker and special force wizard James Cameron put as much FX oeuvre into Titanic as he did into Aliens , The Abyss and Terminator 2 . Bringing a historical full stop to life , with all its crazy details and lose customs duty , can in reality be more difficult than creating an alternating realness out of whole cloth . Some of today ’s great literary writers , like Thomas Pyncheon and Margaret Atwood , have jump easily from HF to SF in their novel precisely because both have a keen sense of contingent .
2 . attempt to represent the alien
This goes back to my first point , which is that good historical fiction should be an exercise in worldbuilding . History is another country , an alien worldly concern , where everything from the build landscape to societal mores are dissimilar . One of the pleasance of watching Boardwalk Empire or Mad Men comes from trying to wrap our brain around the theme that just a few decades ago , it never would have occurred to people that it ’s a criminal offense to abuse fair sex . In Boardwalk Empire , we ’re receive to conceive of what the world was like when pot likker was illegal , “ wireless ” entail radio , and telephones were advanced engineering . It ’s a conversant world yet completely unlike from our own , much the elbow room Syfy ’s Battlestar Galactica series created a recognizably human culture but interpenetrate with unearthly differences , from faith to technology , that made it clearly alien .
3 . Scientific progress
One of the enduring preoccupations of HF and SF is the idea of scientific progress . Both genres often feature a sole discoverer or group of scientists , and through the forward motion of their body of work we watch as history itself progresses . This is in some horse sense the overarching composition of Isaac Asimov ’s Foundation series , and is also what animates Neal Stephenson ’s Baroque Cycle . Scientists from the controversial sexologist Alfred Kinsey to electricity madman Nikola Tesla often beat back the action mechanism in historical dramas like Kinsey and The Prestige . And some of the most beloved historical novels , like T. Coraghessan Boyle ’s The Road to Wellville , offer us a glimpse of chronicle by depict us scientific experiments that fail — in the case of Wellville , we learn about how John Kellogg ( yes , the guy cable who created Corn Flakes ) was a bizarro wellness fancier who carry a snake pit for the rich where they were “ cured ” of ill health with machine that sound like something out of a steampunk art show .
4 . Alternate timelines
The rise of steampunk is only the latest example of how historic fable can create alternative universes far more flaky than anything you ’d find in a quad opera . Some of the twentieth century ’s greatest SF writers tackled alternative story — Philip K. Dick ’s “ what if the Nazis won World War II ” novel , The Man In The High Castle , is a classic . More lately , Michael Chabon reckon an Israel - like State Department being created in Alaska after World War II in The Yiddish Policeman ’s Union , and Scott Westerfeld is retelling the history of World War I with biotechnology in his Leviathan trilogy . Inspired by Patrick O’Brian ’s Aubrey - Maturin serial publication ( include Master and Commander ) about the Napoleonic Wars , Naomi Novik ideate what would have happened during those wars if each army had had dragons at their disposal to use as steeds and weapons . Novik ’s Temeraire serial is one of the most successful alternating histories today .
5 . Heroism
This sound like an obvious one — who would make a motion-picture show or save a book without a torpedo in it ? But in fact there is a big dispute between having a protagonist , even a very likable one , and having a hero . Many drama centre on masses leading ordinary lives , as do solicit . The the great unwashed in these stories may feel extraordinary or uncanny thing , but they do n’t have a grand fortune or change the path of large events . HF and SF , however , often call for striking paladin from Abraham Lincoln and Queen Elizabeth , to Honor Harrington and Luke Skywalker .
6 . What happens when gild goes through an tremendous change
Robots have enslave humanity . Zombies have take over the cities . The Black Death has killed half of London . The Roman Empire is about to collapse . What happens next ? These universe - shake questions are the meat and potatoes of HF and SF .
7 . A broad canvass with many characters from all walk of life
In a sentiency this is another corollary to “ building a world . ” When your subject is an historical period or an foreign universe , one of the best way to represent it is to give us a large plaster cast of fibre who can take us into every nook and cranny of the universe . That ’s what Stephenson does in The Baroque Cycle , and it ’s one of the big speciality of Boardwalk Empire , with its focus on racial and heathen political sympathies , as well as the web of societal networks colligate even the poorest of secondary criminals with the U.S. Attorney General . The across-the-board canvas approach also enhances alternate history like Susanna Clarke ’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell , where two very unlike men rediscover how to do magic during the Napoleonic War — and affect the lives of everyone from British politicians to small handmaiden .
8 . Individuals can change the future
One of the great pleasure of HF is the benefit of hindsight . When Elizabeth is an obscure noble just sample to get laid in the first Elizabeth movie , it ’s fascinating to ascertain her move through the former modern world because you do it she ’s about to vary that shit forever and usher in the Renaissance . Same goes for reading one of my favorite historical novel , George Eliot ’s Middlemarch , which is in part about the birth of the labor movement and scientific medicine in England ( yes , Middlemarch is itself historical — it was published in the 1870s and is about the 1830s ) . There ’s nothing like watching events unfold when you already ( legitimately ) know the spoiler — it allows you to take account small things , like a telling conversation , rather than focusing on whether the gentlewoman will become queen or the turn - socio-economic class politician will win his compatriots the rightfield to vote . At the same sentence , HF reassures us that individuals can convert the futurity — just like John Connor does in Terminator , and Lyra does in Philip Pullman ’s His Dark Materials serial publication .
9 . Escape from the present tense
I ’m sick of iPhones , highway intersection , pencil denim , ibuprofin , and post - feminism . I ’m sicken by world politics and want to stab myself when I hear to the presidential debates in the United States . GET ME OUT OF HERE , DOCTOR ! Seriously , just pick me up the TARDIS and take me anywhere — the time to come or the yesteryear . Anything has to be honest than live on daytime after day in running sentence , knowing I ’ll never fly to Mars , never reek a medieval woods , never upgrade my brainiac with nanotechnology , and never see a Pleistocene grassland full of mastodons . fortunately , I have SF and HF to take me aside from it all . There ’s nothing like leaving the present day behind to give you the ultimate escapist kick .
10 . Really amazing costume
Sure it ’s superficial , but there ’s a intellect why one of my supporter in college coined the set phrase “ whisker and hat pic ” to account historical dramas . allow in it . Half the understanding you ’re activated about the subsequence to Sherlock Holmes is for the white - and - gallus pornography , and the intact reason you went to see Marie Antoinette was for the dresses . And do n’t even get me started on the press fetichism in brainsick Men and Boardwalk Empire . But the same could be state for costume in SF . All you need is a cursory glance at Dune , The Fifth Element , or The Matrix to know that style can take an SF fib from excellent to fabulously excellent . What would Mal be without his fuddled knickers ? My full stop is that millions of cosplayers ca n’t be wrong . SF and HF have intercourse how to deliver the costume awesomeness . The steampunk movement is the perfect blend of both .
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