Space Station Mir

 As a huge fan of time travel, books set in the future, and alternate histories, I love this week's Top Ten Tuesday topic over at That Artsy Reader Girl . I also used to read a lot of historical fiction, but these days I tend to prefer reimaginings, more inclusive historical fiction, or historical fiction fantasy. One of my friends said recently, "I need at least two layers of separation from reality" in her reading life, and my reading lately would tend to concur. Here are some of my recent favorites set in another time--and probably also an alternate timeline! My Top Ten Books Set in Another Time (And Probably Also In An Alternate Timeline) No One Will Save Us by Julie L. Brown--I read this for a LibraryThing review and really loved it! It's a reimagining of the Atlantic slave trade where a group of West African warrior women sail to the New World and rescue the enslaved Africans! Incredibly and vividly imagined characters, scenery, cultures, and plot. The Once and ...

In 1997, Anita Diamant's The Red Tent smeared historical fiction in menstrual blood. Women, especially Jewish women, read it breathless with recognition, awe, and sometimes, outrage and disgust. Little women, like myself, read it at midnight out of the bathroom cupboard, so our mothers wouldn't catch us (maybe that was just me). I don't remember men reading it. I don't remember conceiving of either historical fiction or women's fiction as genres before I read it, but after I read it and listened to the adults around me, I knew it to be both. At the time, I didn't question that there were such genres as historical fiction and women's fiction, and Jewish fiction. I didn't question that the depiction in The Red Tent was grossly ahistorical. I loved it, but I knew our foremothers couldn't have worshipped pagan gods or held arcane rituals around their menstrual blood. The attack on Shechem could not have been about anything other than the rape of ...

Yesterday, I wrote in my review of Gloriana's Torch , "I think fictional protagonists are one of the more successful strategies for grounding a novel in a historical period." I would like to expound on why I have found this to be so. 1) The reader has no expectations for the fictional character. Therefore, the author is free to characterize him or her as he or he chooses, without falling into the snare of contradicting the personalities of historical characters or running up against readers' preconceived notions of them. 2) The author can place a fictional character in any life situation or historical event that is convenient for the author's purposes and there is no historical contradiction. 3) A fictional character can have more in common and more appeal to the modern reader than a historical character might. For example, a fictional character could have anachronistic opinions about women's rights or minority rights without causing contradiction with a hist...