Hey there continuity freaks. Does history interest you?
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I guess I like my history to be the pretend kind. If only I absorbed real-life stuff as easily and enjoyably as I do Trek...
I love history (or, I suppose, historical fiction) as written by Neal Stephenson, but aside from that...
Was always my least favorite subject in school. My wife is a historian, and she's been turning me around, but I don't have enough knowledge to really know what to read that would be fun.
If anyone wants to recommend wildass awesome history narrative (like Neal Stephenson), I'm in
Was always my least favorite subject in school. My wife is a historian, and she's been turning me around, but I don't have enough knowledge to really know what to read that would be fun.
If anyone wants to recommend wildass awesome history narrative (like Neal Stephenson), I'm in
My answer isn't too different from King Daniel's. EDIT: Or Thrawn's, it seems. Mostly, my love for continuity links and consistency is just a product of the way my mind works. The bigger and more complex a world or a franchise becomes while retaining a coherency and consistency, the more I like it and want to become involved. My mind just likes linking things together into a web, I guess; building connections, absorbing everything into an interlinked whole. Like the Caeliar Gestalt. 
I guess it craves both familiarity, order, community and an inherently chaotically, fractured perspective. My core nature is very socialist-libertarian, if that makes sense, and that colours my response to most things in a big way. The way a little child feels when piercing together a jigsaw, maybe? The thrill of discovery that's also strengthening a comforting sense of familiarity and group security? It's the same reason why I love popular sci-fi franchises like Trek for the mass of races, cultures, societies and individuals they include, all interacting in a million different ways, creating so many microclimates of discovery. IDIC.
Real history can interest me, because people interest me and knowledge itself interests me, but it's never been something I'm particularly invested in.
EDIT: Or Thrawn's, it seems. Mostly, my love for continuity links and consistency is just a product of the way my mind works. The bigger and more complex a world or a franchise becomes while retaining a coherency and consistency, the more I like it and want to become involved. My mind just likes linking things together into a web, I guess; building connections, absorbing everything into an interlinked whole. Like the Caeliar Gestalt. I guess it craves both familiarity, order, community and an inherently chaotically, fractured perspective. My core nature is very socialist-libertarian, if that makes sense, and that colours my response to most things in a big way. The way a little child feels when piercing together a jigsaw, maybe? The thrill of discovery that's also strengthening a comforting sense of familiarity and group security? It's the same reason why I love popular sci-fi franchises like Trek for the mass of races, cultures, societies and individuals they include, all interacting in a million different ways, creating so many microclimates of discovery. IDIC. Real history can interest me, because people interest me and knowledge itself interests me, but it's never been something I'm particularly invested in.
Heck, I have a BA in history. The reason I liked studying non-Western history and cross-cultural interaction in college is because it reminded me of science fiction, which is frequently about different cultures meeting and interacting on frontiers or in colonial situations. So I think it's kind of the other way around -- I like history because I like SF.
I love history. If only I spent the time I waste on science fiction learning more about real history, I would know an amazing amount.
I love history, too. Prehistoric, ancient, medieval, modern. Went through a phase as a kid where I couldn't learn enough about World War II, built models, played tabletop wargames. I met my wife through a historical re-creation organization. Fascinated by heraldry and similar systems of display (European Coats of Arms, Japanese mon, etc) and how it's been used throughout the ages. Tons of history-related books around the house.
Now, I will admit that I sometimes think about how a newly-learned fact can be used in a D&D campaign I'm putting together for my kids. So there often is a geeky side to my interest in history...
Now, I will admit that I sometimes think about how a newly-learned fact can be used in a D&D campaign I'm putting together for my kids. So there often is a geeky side to my interest in history...
Continuity is one of the major aspects drawing me to ST. I read selected sci-fi only but I'm highly interested in different facets of history (avoiding WWII when possible, though), to the extend that I've also studied history at university.
My current focus is on Irish history since Common Era. Occasionally, my interpretation of events in history and sci-fi will be shaded by one another. It's helpful to find a new perspective.
My current focus is on Irish history since Common Era. Occasionally, my interpretation of events in history and sci-fi will be shaded by one another. It's helpful to find a new perspective.
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At school, history was my second least liked subject (the first place always belongs to physics). But once I was free of my knowledge being tested and, therefore, pressed to get everything right, remember everything right, including the dates and names, it turned out to be very interesting.
Like Christopher, I like non-Western history. Reading about other continents' past and people can be really eye-opening.
Like Christopher, I like non-Western history. Reading about other continents' past and people can be really eye-opening.
I have always loved history. I suppose what I love the most about the study of history is that it is, in essence, the politics of dead people -- how we interpret the meaning of our past, and how this affects our lives today.
If someone ever disliked history growing up, I'd like to take a moment to recommend James Loewen's excellent book Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. Loewen makes a compelling argument that the most basic problem with history as taught in most American public schools is that it is actually a form of propaganda, designed to make the American state and its major leaders always seem palatable at worst and heroic at best. A lot of substantive conflicts get swept under the rug, and history is presented as though there's only ever one clear "right" way of thinking about the past and historical figures. Conflicting interests and ideological conflicts within America and within Western culture are often ignored and history presented as a linear narrative in which the road of progress is history's default setting.
For example, Woodrow Wilson is presented as an idealistic believer in democracy and self-governance, ignoring his numerous invasions and occupations of Latin American countries and his virulent racism. Another example of historical propaganda would be the way students are taught about Helen Keller and how she was taught to communicate, yet are not taught that she became a radical activist in her adult life, who agitated for socialism, admired the nascent Soviet Union, and co-founded the ACLU. They are taught how she learned to speak, but never taught what she had to say -- in part because what she had to say is still ideologically threatening to the American establishment.
Another excellent book on history would be Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. Loewen and Zinn really complement each other well; where Loewen focuses on specific instances in which historical events or historical debates have been manipulated by the U.S. textbook industry, Zinn brings to life the story of American history from Columbus to the early War on Terror from the perspective of history's victims -- the marginalized, the oppressed, the "people history stepped on." Columbus's arrival from the perspective of the Arawak; colonial America from the perspective of African slaves; U.S. expansion west and Indian Removal from the perspective of Native Americans; the post-Civil War era "Gilded Age" from the POV of socialists; etc, etc.
History in real life -- not as presented in school -- is very much alive and well, and its meaning is still very much being debated. It's not a field in which there is only ever a single "right" answer. It's a living field, and how we understand our past very much afflicts how we understand our lives today and our future prospects. I hope more people can come to see that it is a field of debate and investigation, not a field where every question has already been resolved or where every historical figure's life proved either the virtue of the American establishment or the vice of its opponents.
If someone ever disliked history growing up, I'd like to take a moment to recommend James Loewen's excellent book Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. Loewen makes a compelling argument that the most basic problem with history as taught in most American public schools is that it is actually a form of propaganda, designed to make the American state and its major leaders always seem palatable at worst and heroic at best. A lot of substantive conflicts get swept under the rug, and history is presented as though there's only ever one clear "right" way of thinking about the past and historical figures. Conflicting interests and ideological conflicts within America and within Western culture are often ignored and history presented as a linear narrative in which the road of progress is history's default setting.
For example, Woodrow Wilson is presented as an idealistic believer in democracy and self-governance, ignoring his numerous invasions and occupations of Latin American countries and his virulent racism. Another example of historical propaganda would be the way students are taught about Helen Keller and how she was taught to communicate, yet are not taught that she became a radical activist in her adult life, who agitated for socialism, admired the nascent Soviet Union, and co-founded the ACLU. They are taught how she learned to speak, but never taught what she had to say -- in part because what she had to say is still ideologically threatening to the American establishment.
Another excellent book on history would be Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. Loewen and Zinn really complement each other well; where Loewen focuses on specific instances in which historical events or historical debates have been manipulated by the U.S. textbook industry, Zinn brings to life the story of American history from Columbus to the early War on Terror from the perspective of history's victims -- the marginalized, the oppressed, the "people history stepped on." Columbus's arrival from the perspective of the Arawak; colonial America from the perspective of African slaves; U.S. expansion west and Indian Removal from the perspective of Native Americans; the post-Civil War era "Gilded Age" from the POV of socialists; etc, etc.
History in real life -- not as presented in school -- is very much alive and well, and its meaning is still very much being debated. It's not a field in which there is only ever a single "right" answer. It's a living field, and how we understand our past very much afflicts how we understand our lives today and our future prospects. I hope more people can come to see that it is a field of debate and investigation, not a field where every question has already been resolved or where every historical figure's life proved either the virtue of the American establishment or the vice of its opponents.
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I love history- most of my work has had period settings, and I've spent the last couple of years editing and writing for military history publishers...
I have a BA in History, but after studying it for years I've lost my interest in the subject--whilst my degree has nothing to do with my job at present.
As for Trek novels building on themselves, I'm not a huge fan. If there are canon apects that contradict or don't make sense, I generally correct them in my own head, with what works for me.
I never really cared much for History as a subject in school, but I think that's more a function of how it was presented in class than the material itself. But, I really enjoy reading about history on my own.
I think there are many folks who get turned off on History, and also classic literature, by how they are initially exposed to it in school, but that's just my opinion.
I think there are many folks who get turned off on History, and also classic literature, by how they are initially exposed to it in school, but that's just my opinion.
That's sadly true of a lot of subjects, it seems. I often felt I learned more from my own individual investigations than I did from classroom lessons.
And the whole reason I chose to concentrate on non-Western and world history in college was because my previous history education had been so profoundly Western-biased. We were barely taught anything about other parts of the world except in the context of white people's interactions with them.
This was my experience as well. Other than some brief discussion of ancient Mesopotamia, it was all European/North American based. Not to say there isn't interesting stuff there, but that's hardly the whole picture.
"For years in this industry, whenever an African American character, hero or villain, was introduced - usually by white artists and writers - they got slapped with racist names that singled them out as Negroes. Now, my book, White-Hatin' Coon? Don't have none of that bullshit. The hero's name is Maleekwa, and he's a descendant from the black tribe that established the first society on the planet, while all you European motherfuckers were still hiding in caves and shit, all terrified of the sun."
I would add Daniel Quinn to Loewen & Zinn.
Last year at a convention I had a long and detailed dinner conversation with another fan about Wilson. A large group of us had gone out to dinner, and somehow we ended up talking Woodrow Wilson. One of my dinner companions thought he was one of the greatest presidents of all time. I argued the alternate viewpoint, that he was very much a disaster as a president, the Fourteen Points were hopelessly naive, and American intervention in World War I was nothing short of a mistake.
Government history education will include some BS no matter what. I am not sure how would they justify teaching about Liu Bang for the parents.
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