Aboutness

I am an archivist who enjoys following the threads of documentation, history, and information management in my everyday life. I write observations about libraries, archives, and archivists through this lens.

The title of this blog, Counterfactual Archivist, was inspired by the historical fiction and fantasy subgenre of alternate history, or “allohistory,” that inspired me to pursue a history BA and an MLS specializing in archives. Numerous approaches are employed within subgenre.

• Crucial wars turn out differently because serendipity favored the other side
• A technology, or method such as magic, foreign or anachronistic (Steampunk for example) to the reader’s world shapes the course of this parallel civilization.
• Time travelers (willing or unwilling) alter the past.
• Serious historical analyses of how an event could have transpired differently and the lasting consequences. An example taken from “What If? 2” speculates the fate of Western Civilization if Socrates was felled in battle in performance of his Athenian obligation of citizenship–before he articulated his philosophy.

Whatever the subgenre these alternate histories imagine a new world far different from our own. But the result of these new histories are also new records! Archival records are, after all, the consequence of routine activities necessary for the conduct of a person or institution. I savor moments when protagonists mull over their world’s development or visit an archive.

In a way all fiction is alternate history so the difference between straight fiction and alternate history is usually scale. The machinations of a detective or even an elaborate James Bond plot are discreet and, to an extent, believable within our own frame of reference; the city-destroying battles of the recent Marvel universe films or save-the-president movies Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down do not look far fetched in a post 9/11 world. But a comet striking an Earth at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution? This is more truly alternate history because of a globe spanning, all encompassing ripple effect on the character’s (and world’s) normal course of action and therefore the records of this newly envisaged world.

There’s something oddly satisfying about all the history I know becoming irrelevant. Also these novels usually have pretty awesome maps.