Friday, July 31, 2015

Welcome To (Alt)History Inc! Yet Another Alternate History Blog

Hello, and welcome to (Alt)History Inc; Yet Another Blog on Real and Alternate History*

Creative title, I know, but (re)Writing History had already been taken. It was such a good one, darn it!

All well.

My name is Tyler Bugg, a recent graduate of the University of Winnipeg with a Bachelor of Arts in History and English (Creative Writing), so this blog uses two things I've spent five years and gotten myself $50,000 in debt to learn. Yay modern post-secondary education!

I often go by "tbguy1992" on the internet, and if you were to Google that, you'll find my name around mostly related to Alternate History, including a short story published in the anthology Substitution Cipher and althistory.wikia.com. I've worked on multiple projects there, the biggest being French Trafalgar, British Waterloo, a timeline where Napoleonic France won the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Go ahead and take a browse through it. Sorry that it's still not finished. Someday I plan to get around to it.

So, what else to do... well I guess describe what I plan to do for this blog.

Quite simply, I'm here to start talking about History, and the rewriting thereof. If you don't know what Alternate History is, it's quite easy just to look it up online and have much better explanations for it. But the way I describe it as simply exploring the "What if?" of historical events and scenarios. It can be both plausible and implausible, the difference being, for example, having Hitler win World War Two through better strategies and maximizing resources in a certain sector, and, say, giving him dinosaurs in the Battle of Stalingrad. Both are alternate history, but I'm going to be focusing on the more plausible, realistic examples and ideas.

But I also plan to provide a bit of a history lesson, namely by writing articles about a topic, subject or artifact that I find interesting, and can tie into an alternate history scenario. This doesn't mean that every week there the historical article and the alternate historical article will be linked, but quite often it will. I'm even willing to try some more... outlandish ideas, like alternate history based off of movies, books, video games, etc., though those articles may be more rare and not come up as often.

The alternate history articles will range from simple thesis, exploration and hypothesis of a topic to full blown, multi-series short stories with plots and characters. I can't guarantee when those will happen, and the time frame they will be posted until I have a firm grasp of what I'm doing here. Most articles will not be taking the "Butterfly Effect" into consideration, and will most likely only explore immediate changes from a major change, with longer term outcomes being more "hazy" and generally less thought out. And I will mention it now: just because my articles may say something in history would happen differently doesn't mean it's the only way something could happen. In fact, my way could contradict or run opposed to more popular perceptions of what would have happened. It is, however, an idea of what exactly could have happened, and I'm willing to hear what you would think would happen.

I'm thinking of posting at least twice a week, most likely on Tuesday and Friday. I may have one day for alternate history, the other for real or a switch between the two, I'm not sure yet. I'm more or less doing this by the seat of my pants at the moment.

If you have topics or ideas you would wish for me to research and explore both for real and alternate history, feel free to email me at tbguy1992@gmail.com, Twitter me at @tbguy1992, or post comments on this or future articles. Some articles, for example those pertaining to the World Wars, will be much easier for me to get out quickly due to previous knowledge and research, while pop-culture and more Ancient History can take longer due to my lack of knowledge in these areas. I don't want to dissuade anyone from suggesting topics, but just a heads up that I may not accept all ideas.

So, I hope you will stick with me as I try this blogging thing out, and posting my ideas and thoughts on history, alternate history and a bunch of other things! The first actual article will be posted next Tuesday, so long as everything goes well.

*This may or may not be the full title of the blog: what do you think?