Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note on the Translations
- Introduction
- Part I The Great Discourse on the Future
- 1 Utopians and Utopian Thought
- 2 Futurists and Futures Studies
- 3 Utopian/Dystopian Writers and Utopian/Dystopian Fiction
- 4 Science Fiction: The Nexus of Utopianism, Futurism, and Utopian Fiction
- Part II German Science Fiction in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
- 5 Some Preliminary Thoughts on German Science Fiction
- 6 First Contact: Martians, Sentient Plants, and Swarm Intelligences
- 7 The Shock of the New: Mega Cities, Machines, and Rockets
- 8 Utopian Experiments: Island Idylls, Glass Beads, and Eugenic Nightmares
- 9 To the Stars! Cosmic Supermen and Bauhaus in Space
- 10 Visions of the End: Catastrophism and Moral Entropy
- 11 Virtual Realities: Caught in the Matrix
- 12 Alternative Histories: Into the Heart of Darkness
- 13 Big Brother Is Watching Us: Who Is Watching Big Brother?
- 14 Artificial Intelligences: The Rise of the Thinking Machines
- 15 Eternal Life: At What Cost?
- 16 Social Satires: Of Empty Slogans and Empty Hearts
- 17 Critical Posthumanism: Twilight of the Species or a New Dawn?
- 18 High Concept: Time, the Universe, and Everything
- Conclusion
- Appendix 1 Chronological List of German SF Novels—A Selection
- Appendix 2 Chronological List of German SF Films—A Selection
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
12 - Alternative Histories: Into the Heart of Darkness
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 September 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note on the Translations
- Introduction
- Part I The Great Discourse on the Future
- 1 Utopians and Utopian Thought
- 2 Futurists and Futures Studies
- 3 Utopian/Dystopian Writers and Utopian/Dystopian Fiction
- 4 Science Fiction: The Nexus of Utopianism, Futurism, and Utopian Fiction
- Part II German Science Fiction in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
- 5 Some Preliminary Thoughts on German Science Fiction
- 6 First Contact: Martians, Sentient Plants, and Swarm Intelligences
- 7 The Shock of the New: Mega Cities, Machines, and Rockets
- 8 Utopian Experiments: Island Idylls, Glass Beads, and Eugenic Nightmares
- 9 To the Stars! Cosmic Supermen and Bauhaus in Space
- 10 Visions of the End: Catastrophism and Moral Entropy
- 11 Virtual Realities: Caught in the Matrix
- 12 Alternative Histories: Into the Heart of Darkness
- 13 Big Brother Is Watching Us: Who Is Watching Big Brother?
- 14 Artificial Intelligences: The Rise of the Thinking Machines
- 15 Eternal Life: At What Cost?
- 16 Social Satires: Of Empty Slogans and Empty Hearts
- 17 Critical Posthumanism: Twilight of the Species or a New Dawn?
- 18 High Concept: Time, the Universe, and Everything
- Conclusion
- Appendix 1 Chronological List of German SF Novels—A Selection
- Appendix 2 Chronological List of German SF Films—A Selection
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
ALTERNATIVE HISTORIES ARE well established in Anglo-American literature— for example, Philip Dick's The Man in the High Castle (1962), Keith Roberts's Pavane (1968), Richard Harris's Fatherland (1992), or Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)—but less so in German literature, where the division between high and popular culture has been maintained far longer (cf. chapter 4) and where the need for an alternative history has tended to concentrate on and emanate from the traumatic experience of the Third Reich. It wasn't until Carl Amery’s Das Königsprojekt (1974)—a time travel story that sees the Catholic Church attempt to change history in its favor—that German writers discovered the potential of alternative history fiction for cultural criticism. In this chapter I explore three examples of extraordinary quality and complexity that haven't (yet) been translated into English.
Christian Kracht is well-known for his novels Faserland (Land of Fibers, 1995) and 1979 (2001). Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten (I Will Be Here in Sunshine and Shadows, 2008), the third novel by this globe-trotting Swiss writer, starts with a simple yet fundamental retrospective change to world history: Lenin never left Switzerland in 1917 but stayed on and, together with Kropotkin and Bakunin, established a Swiss Soviet Republic. In the year 2013, this state has been engaged in almost one hundred years of war with fascist Germany and Britain. Warfare has not advanced much beyond World War I airships, bombs, and gas, but it is nevertheless conducted with fanatic efficiency. To hold its own, the Swiss Soviet Republic has resorted to colonizing the greater part of Africa, spreading its unique blend of efficiency and communist ideology, and recruiting there its cannon fodder (and, increasingly, its officers) for the eternal war. The unnamed narrator is a black African stranger in a strange land, a political commissar charged by the Swiss supreme soviet with the capture of Oberst Brazhinsky, an officer gone rogue.
The commissar encounters a war-torn, desolate country full of minefields and desperate survivors, including a mysterious dwarf named Uriel (an allusion to the archangel of the apocrypha) who rescues him from certain death.
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- Beyond TomorrowGerman Science Fiction and Utopian Thought in the 20th and 21st Centuries, pp. 157 - 169Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2020