Subject: Need it be a family line?
Author:
Posted on: 2017-10-08 12:21:00 UTC
...Because look at Foundation: It has a lot of aspects that you're discussing: an heirloom (The Seldon Plan and the videos) as a common thread, following a common line across a wide swath of history (but now the common line is a civilization). OTOH, this isn't historical at all, being entirely set in the future.
I've noticed lately that there seems to be a subgenre of what I have to call generational historical fiction. This is where a book or series of books doesn't follow one character, but a family line across a long swathe of history.
The first example that comes to my mind is Rosemary Sutcliffe's Eagle of the Ninth saga, which runs from the height of Roman Britain to the Norman Conquest. Thd family with the dolphin ring (another thing: there's quite often an heirloom passed down the family, to maintain the narrative thread) is fairly common, but they make a great window on British life pre-conquest.
There's also Steven Saylor's Roma and Empire, which run from before the founding of Rome to the reign of Emperor Hadrian. That also has a piece of jewellery, and sticks with the same family; it does bring its protagonists rather closer to greatness, though (they hang out with basically every Emperor).
But I don't know how big this sub-genre is. In particular, I'd love to know if it exists for history outside western Europe. If someone's done this for, say, China, or one of the African nations, it would be a fantastic way for me to fill some of the gaps in my feel for history.
Does anyone have other examples? I think Stephen Baxter's Time's Tapestry also counts, running pretty continuously from the Roman invasion of Britain to Columbus' journey - though it is a bit more sci-fi-ish, with the 'heirlooms' being messages from the future. I can't count something like his Northland trilogy, because it only shows three widely-separated generations, not the slow progression.
Anyone?
hS
Rather than following one family, it follows several intertwining ones through WWI, WWII, and the Cold War/Civil Rights era. All European and American, but with some good attention paid to women, gay people, and black people. No heirlooms, unless a family tradition of being politically active counts as an heirloom.
~Neshomeh
Non-fiction, though--a sort of creative autobiography mixed with family history, IIRC. It's called The Hare With Amber Eyes (I've forgotten the author's name). It uses a particular type of Japanese figurine (the name of which I have also unfortunately forgotten) as a thread in a family story that stretches from Europe to Japan and I think America too? It does include Western Europe, IIRC, but it's really not the typical story, and it's not following a white family. It stretches across several centuries, at any rate, including both the author and his ancestors.
I don't remember being *that* caught by it--among other things, the print in my copy was really small--so I didn't finish it, but the story itself was interesting and I know my mom (who's much more into non-fiction and autobiographies than I am) read it and liked it. I think she said it picked up a bit after the beginning, though.
Anyway. Not straight historical fiction, but certainly interesting, and it does otherwise fit that subgenre you're talking about. At any rate, it was the first thing I thought of.
~Z
The 'fiction' part of 'historical fiction' was the more disposable part. ;) It sounds interesting, I'll have to look it up; the artistic nature of the heirloom ties in with some of my previous interests, so.
Thank you!
hS
The closest thing I've seen is that thing creators do sometimes when they make one story's protagonist the descendant of another story's protagonist as kind of a fun detail or easter egg. (Yep. iD Software in my brain again.)
...You know what? You've got me motivated. I seriously want to try my hand at something like this genre - probably a fantasy counterpart, since I'm not really a historical fiction person. That would be pretty cool. Now to figure out a plot!
-Twistey
(Am I being shunned, or do I just need to learn how to make my Board posts better at adding something to the topic? Probably the latter. That'll take some time to learn, given how I was with my Scratch comments... }:P)
.... I've gotten very bad at replying to anything. Checking over the Front Page...
... sweet mercy, how is the entire month of September still up? Where's everyone gone?!
Anyway, no, you're not being shunned, but apparently everyone's stopped talking.
hS
I'm reading it for English class. Would that count? It covers multiple generations and is historical fiction (a lot of Biblical references in there, too.)
-Twistey
(Also, there are a couple googly Walfas pics that I made for you and you didn't see, but I'm too sleepy to spend the effort to repost them here.)
Steinbeck is all like "Mass production and working in groups is destroying our creativity. Nothing good can come out of collaboration."
and I'm like "Oh yeah?! I can debate that! *shoves Warriors series in his face, or at least pretends to in the form of annotating in the margins that I would do so*".
But the actual story bits are decent. I've gotten to love some of the characters (especially Sam Hamilton. I loooooove crazy inventor characters), and the one borderline Sue there is isn't 100% Sueish. I think...
But yeah, Steinbeck is a bit opinionated indeed.
(Okay, good, you did. Hahaha! I plan to make more of that meme.)
-Twistey
The ones that are currently up have been extending longer and longer. There's 72 posts in the last week alone.
so 72 in a week is probably not all that unlikely, but it means that no big excuse for people to post has come up.
Also, the Discord is rather active.
Has been running for the better part of September, and had a really big number of posts.
Wikipedia has a list of some popular works in the genre.
Wikipedia's list looks incredibly drab, though - it's items 'of literary note', which is usually shorthand for 'borderline unreadable'. ^~ I quite like the idea of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PalaiologanDynasty(novelseries)">The Palaeologian Dynasty. The Rise and Fall of Byzantium, but I don't think they've been translated from the Greek; they're certainly not in my library.
And that's going to be a problem: most of these stories are written by people from the relevant culture, and they're not going to be translated. FROWNYFACE.
hS
is the North and South trilogy by John Jakes. It presents the U.S. Civil War period through the eyes of two separate families from Pennsylvania and South Carolina, reaching from the decade of unrest that led to the war to the reconstruction period long after. The focal characters of each family are sons of roughly the same age, who meet while attending West Point and become friends, only to end up fighting against each other during the war.
It's not exactly a fee-good story, and for me, it had rather too much sex in it. The last book felt like it went a bit off the deep end compared to the earlier two, and some of the supporting characters dive a bit too far into the realm of strawmen as well, Overall, though, I think it gives a much better feel for the place and time than any history textbook I ever encountered could manage.
—doctorlit
... is that I've learned most of what I know about it from alternate history stories. Certainly I can't think of any other reason I would have had the Natural Geographic civil war poster hanging around for so long.
hS
...Because look at Foundation: It has a lot of aspects that you're discussing: an heirloom (The Seldon Plan and the videos) as a common thread, following a common line across a wide swath of history (but now the common line is a civilization). OTOH, this isn't historical at all, being entirely set in the future.
It's bad to say that I've never really liked his writing, isn't it? :( But I haven't.
I think this genre is actually more common in fantasy/scifi than realistic fiction. Being able to explore the progression of your ideas beyond one lifetime is a big deal - heck, even Tolkien did it, if you think of The Hobbit and LotR as a series. (And of course 40K has taken it to the ultimate extreme, with 'here's two series set ten millennia apart'.)
Sadly, it's specifically the ability to learn about real history that I'm interested in with this.
hS
Yeah, makes sense. As does your distaste for Asimov: it's not for everyone, especially not Foundation, which is an interesting series, but has quite a few problems as a story - well, the trilogy does, because that's what I read.
But as for historical fiction... well, the only thing I can think of is Stephenson, with Baroque/Cryptonomicon, but 1) that has a massive timeskip, and 2) it includes one character who is actually immortal. So... yeah.