The development of this school is tied to the proof in recent years of the parallel universe theory, whose far-reaching implications for all disciplines, history included, are only beginning to be felt.
I won’t deny that there are a few serious alternate historians, such as Alexander Levenson (The Direction of the Section) and Matsumoto Taro (Unlimited Branching), whose research uses a unique perspective on another potential pathway as a way to expound an innate law of actual history. These scholars have my respect; that their work has been ignored is historiography’s tragedy. On the other hand, the school has provided a wonderful stage for showy crowd-pleasers who are far more interested in alternate history than in the real thing, and for whom the name “historian” is less appropriate than “alternate history novelist.”
The aforementioned Liu Jing is their chief exponent. She pops up in the media these days flogging her fifth book, for which she was reportedly paid an advance of 3.5 million Martian dollars. From its title, The Big If, you can pretty much guess at the contents. Liu Jing’s father from back in the Common Era must be mentioned in any discussion of her scholarship, not, I assure you, because I’m trying to make a bloodline argument, but simply due to the fact that Dr. Liu has repeatedly acknowledged her great father’s influence on her academic approach. I feel I ought to understand him a little. This has been no easy task. I scanned through materials from the Common Era and searched through all the ancient databases I could find, but came up with nothing.
Fortunately, Liu Jing was Verené’s graduate advisor, and so I had her ask Dr. Liu directly. I learned as a result that Liu Jing’s nobody of a father, Liu Cixin, had written a few science fiction stories back in the Common Era, most of them published in a magazine called SFW (I checked this out; Science Fiction World was a previous incarnation of the Precision Dream Group that has a monopoly on hypermedia arts on two worlds). Verené even brought back three of his stories. I got halfway through the first one and had to throw it away; what utter trash! The whales in that story even grew teeth! Under the influence of a father like that, it’s no wonder Liu Jing has the attitude toward scholarship and the methods she does.
The psychological school of superhistory is a far more serious pursuit. Its adherents believe that the great divergence in the Supernova Era from the track of prior human history was due to child psychology in SE society. In Germ Cell Society, Von Svensker systematically expounds on the unique implications of the family-free society at the start of the era; Zhang Fengyun goes further in the somewhat controversial Asexual World, providing a sober yet brilliant analysis of a society in which sex is basically absent. But to my mind, the psychological school is built atop a shaky foundation, for in actual fact, the psychological state of SE children was entirely different from that of CE children. In some ways they were far more naïve, but in other ways they were more mature than even CE adults. Whether SE history created this psychology or vice versa is a true chicken-and-egg question.
A few serious scholars who do not adhere to any school have made valuable contributions to superhistory. In Classroom Society, A. G. Hopkins provides a comprehensive study of the forms of government in the children’s world. This monumental work was attacked from many sides, mostly on ideological grounds rather than for any questions of scholarship, which, given the scope of the book, is hardly surprising. Yamanaka Keiko’s Raising Oneself and Lin Mingzhu’s A Candle in the Cold Night are two books on the history of SE education that, despite being a bit heavy on sentimentality, nevertheless have value as comprehensive, objective historical documents. Zeng Yulin’s magnum opus To Sing Again is a rigorous yet poetic systematic study of the art of the children’s world, and one of the few works of superhistory with both critical and popular appeal. The results of these scholars’ research must still stand the test of time, but their research itself is serious, at least compared to the stuff in The Big If….
“You lose your cool whenever you mention my advisor,” Verené says, looking over my shoulder.
Can I keep cool? Can Liu Jing? My book’s not even published, and already she’s mocking it in the media as “unfictionlike fiction, reportage that doesn’t report, ahistorical history. It’s unclassifiable.” An attempt to bolster oneself by belittling others will in no way have a positive effect on the academic climate of superhistory that’s polluted already.
I wrote this way out of desperation. A prerequisite for historical research is to let history cool down first, but has the Supernova Era cooled down in thirty-odd years? Not one whit. We are the witnesses to that history, and the terror of the supernova, the loneliness of the Epoch Clock running out, the torpor of Candytown, the great tragedy of the Supernova War, all of it is deeply imprinted in our minds.
Before migrating here, I lived beside the railroad tracks, and every night I was tormented by nightmares in which I was running through the wilderness in the dark surrounded by terrifying noises—floods, earthquakes, the howls of hordes of giant beasts, the thunder of nuclear bombs. And then one night, I awoke with a start from that nightmare and dashed to the window. No stars, no moon, only the Rose Nebula shining over the land, and a night train making its slow passage. Can one do research at a theoretic level in such a state? No, we lack the dispassionate detachment that theoretic research requires. It will need to wait until there’s enough distance between the early Supernova Era and the researchers, which may leave it in the hands of the next generation. All our generation can do is descriptive writing, giving our descendants records of the period from the perspective of eyewitnesses and of historians. That is all that superhistory can do for the time being, in my opinion.
But even this isn’t easy. My initial approach was to write from the perspective of an ordinary individual, making the book feel more like a novel, and deal with high-level national and world developments by incorporating quotations from source documents. But I am a historian, not a litterateur, and have not a drop of literary talent in a huge ocean. And so I went the other way, depicting the national leadership directly and incorporating details about the experiences of ordinary people as quotations. Most of the child leaders from that time are no longer in their posts, giving them plenty of time to take my interviews, and as a result I have written what Liu Jing calls an “unclassifiable” book.
“Daddy Daddy, come quick! It’s going to get cold outside soon!” Jingjing shouts, rapping on the window. His face is pressed up against the glass, squishing his nose to one side. In the distance the strange, isolated peaks cast long shadows across the red sands. The sun is going down. Of course it’s going to get cold.
But I am, after all, a historian, and I can’t help but do my job. The study of superhistory is currently concentrated in a debate over a few key questions, a debate that has spilled over into the media, where it has only become more sensationalized. However, far fewer serious superhistorians than laypeople have put forth opinions, and so I will take this opportunity to explain my position on a few of the hottest topics.