When I want to stretch my mind, I turn to Science Fiction. I like the odd twists and alternative realities contained therein. I find myself diverted, astounded, shocked or smiling as the vehicle of fiction enables me to suspend my disbelief in what I am reading.
Mary Gentle’s books often deal with alternative realities, time travel and the ‘what could have been’ or ‘may be yet’ of history. I’ve just read a short story called ‘The Logistics of Carthage’, a pre-quel novella to her novel ‘Ash’ and in her afterward she gives her own definition of the difference between history and the past.
She says;
‘The past happened. It’s just that we cannot recover it. History is what we can recover, and it’s a collection of fallible memories, inconvenient documents, disconcerting new facts and solemn cultural bedtime stories.
….those inconvenient things on which history is based: memoirs, archaeological artefacts, fakes, scholarship tussles and quantum mechanics.’
Quantum mechanics? My mind is boggling.
My thoughts keep coming back to this definition, especially when I read of attempts to ‘re-write history’, or the publication of new school history books in new regimes in the world, or the jailing in Austria of the Englishman who denies the Holocaust happened. What are the facts on which I base my view of the world? What about other people? What is the boundary between fact and fiction? How did the writers of the history text books used in my schooling – the last time I am aware I read a ‘history’ book - decide which facts to put in, and which to leave out?
Wouldn’t life be boring if we were all the same?
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This has been sent to me in response to my comments. The Author wishes to remain anonymous, so I am posting it on their behalf:
Some things that happen in the past just aren't recognised in history because the facts aren't widely known.
I've just come across (quiet by accident) this article on Alan Turing, and was fascinated to discover there were reasons (other than the Official Secrets Act) that resulted in the muted recognition he has received.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1068-2269380,00.html
It does sadden (but not surprise) me that vice was associated with treachery, and judgements of people were made on who they were - not what they had done.
This situation would never have happened if we were all the same.
Still, thank goodness times have changed, and sense now prevails.
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