Monthly Archives: April 2009

Caution: things get weird. If you've ever loved lobbing stones into a calm pond to see where the ripples go, you'll love this exercise. I call it 'backtracking' or playing the 'what if' game.
During the last political season when I was getting fairly bummed out about US politics, global politics, local politics and everything in between; I started pondering what the political map would look like if things had happened differently in world history and how that might impact the world today. It's a nice place to visit, but you could write a book there.
Take for instance ancient Egypt, and let's start some reprogramming of history's timeline. The starting point is Cleopatra. What if Egypt had not been taken over by the Ptolemy dynasty? If Cleopatra had managed to retain her throne without the asp at her breast, would Egypt not have been a continuing regional power? Assume the answer is yes.
If the Egyptian dynastic line had been intact, perhaps the library at Alexandria would not have fallen so tragically. We'll never know what amazing tomes were in there, and I think that's just sad. But look at it this way, if the library at Alexandria were intact, the Dark Ages would not have happened! Okay, they may have been dim… But, there would have remained a stable, fairly sane source of information that had been catalogued for thousands (?) of years as a counter to the insanity of the Church in that period. There would have been no reason for Europe's lapse into leaderless chaos – in fact Egypt may have arisen as a leader on an international scale.
If the Dark Ages had only been Dim, would the Black Death have only been a shade of grey? We don't know what we've lost, what knowledge or medicine there may have been that could have identified the plague and stopped it in Italy before it consumed all of Europe.
If the plague had not happened, what would be the impact on modern medicine today? Would we have been as insistent on cracking open the mysteries of polio and small pox? Maybe so. Maybe not if the old ways were actually reliable. Would we be in the same position medically speaking?
Also consider that Egypt's religion may have played a part against the spread of Islam. Would Islam have spread so rampantly across North Africa if there were a solid stand against it by an army at the Nile River? I don't think so – but then again we're guessing here.
So think about the globe today with Egypt staunchly opposed to Islam, but with its own powerful religious adherents, as a strong counter to Europe. Both world wars of the 20th century would have been vastly different. Egypt would not have been compelled to fight Israel. Egypt would be a strong ally or adversary either for or against the West. They could even have a place on the Security Council at the United Nations.
Yes, it's a lot of guessing. But there's a story in there, just because Cleopatra decided to take an asp instead of taking a stand.
What's the moral of this blog post? Think outside the box. There is no box! There may be areas in your own world-building where small changes could reap big rewards for plot development. Don't be afraid to go against your own grain. And who said contemporary urban fiction had to agree with the encyclopedia and the newspaper headlines?
What's YOUR what if?