Alternative history

Have you ever read a book that made you put it down every few minutes to pause and think? A book that made you see the world around you in a different way?

In science fiction and fantasy, there are books which make you ask questions about events, and how they could've transpired differently. This is a sub-genre called "alternative history." It takes place in our world's past but frequently a key historical event happens differently and magic or other fantastical elements are present. These stories explore "what if" questions like "what if Hitler had been assassinated before starting World War II" or "what if Jesus' ministry had been different" and so on.

While The Evenarian does not take place on Earth, its world very well could have been ours, or rather, our world may have been The Evenarian's world.

One of the themes tackled in the story is just how much of truth is hidden from us, including history and destiny. Many elements of The Evenarian's world are parallel to ours.

For example, what if the messianic figure that changes the world had created a positivist religion (i.e. based on science) instead of a mystic one? What would our society be like if its religious institutions were founded on positivism and post-enlightenment thinking? How would this even go about happening?

The world before the Evenarian came was a mystical place, full of simple wonders. But our hero knows that the world left behind by the ministry of the Evenarian will be full of fanatics. Opposing groups with different scientific axioms are constantly at war because of conflicting logic instead of religious beliefs. These groups are, of course, painfully unaware of what we know as Goedel's incompleteness theorem. It's our world, except that it's totally different. After reading the complete story, you'll hopefully see many of our modern debates about the nature of truth and religion from a new angle, much like after meditating on a zen koan.

I'm very proud of this concept. It's one of those mind-bending puzzles that makes you put a book on your chest and gaze at the ceiling. If you enjoy that feeling of enchantment that a book gives you, then please support our Kickstarter (launching October) so we can get this book published.

Talking politics

One of the greatest challenges a fiction writer faces is whether or not to include references to current events in one's work. If your story is set during a recent historical event, that's one thing.  It's also par for the course to include familiar sites and cultural touchstones to guide the reader and give them a sense of place. But what if you're crafting a world out of thin air?

There are many major works of literature that contain veiled references to contemporary political issues and cultural figures. F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ayn Rand's books come to mind, and they weren't always straight-up allegories either. Those works can be appreciated if you don't understand the references, but reading through their entries on Sparknotes certainly fills in the gaps.

But in a few years (let alone 50 or 100), who's going to care about a spot-on caricature of a society matron or a send-up of an obnoxious political operative? Why risk future readers conflating an interpretation of the author's time with a message for all time?

Also, some authors who tackle political analogies in their fiction don't always get a warm reception. In A Dance With Dragons, the most recent installment of ASOIAF, George Martin was accused of modeling one of the book's subplots on the U.S.'s recent involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. He denied drawing inspiration from those wars, but the perceived parallels made the already shaky subplot even more unpopular with readers.

That's he conundrum I've been wrestling with lately. So far, I've come up with one answer. Shoehorning in pop culture references is a sure road to irrelevance, but there's always interesting people in the world, no matter what era you live in. If those people have something equally interesting to say in your world, maybe you should let them in.

Kill Hitler

The Evenarian will be fantasy book, like Game of Thrones, but it has a character who had time-traveled to kill a historical figure who will be responsible for causing the future world's problems. It's a takeoff on the old "if only someone would go back in time and kill Hitler" idea. But would that actually work out?
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We assume the kill-Hitler scenario would work because that era is so well-documented and we have many first-hand accounts of what happened (let's face it, The History Channel owes its success to World War II's thorough records), so a prospective time-traveling assassin would be able to pinpoint the perfect moment to swoop in and complete his mission. But even though those events took place less than 100 years ago, there are still many gaps and unsolved mysteries of the era.

So...what if someone went back in time several centuries, even thousands of years, with a similar goal? What if the man they try to kill had been prophesied? Can one really kill a prophecy to save history?

Ironically, we rely on history to help shape our worldviews and often our own identities. But can we really know everything in history? No. It's impossible. Just think of all the mistakes one over-confident person could make if they were actually able to go back in time.

Suddenly that whole kill-Hitler thing doesn't sound so simple. Nether is killing The Evenarian.