#alt-hist

Flag of a theocratic successor of the United States (part of an alt-hist project I'm working on)

The Jews would never have been safe there, which is why almost none of the survivors wanted to stay. Literally thousands of survivors were killed when trying to reclaim their houses in Poland, then in 1968 Poland banished just about all of the Jews left there. Neither half of Germany did fuck-all to prosecute ex-Nazis except when at American gunpoint.

The concept is explored in the alt-history novel "Judenstaat," by Simone Zelitch, where through Stalin's good graces instead of an East Germany there was a Jewish client state of the USSR set up instead. Their flag was a sick mirror of the Israeli flag, with a yellow star and striped pattern taken from the concentration camp uniforms.

@thewhitenerd713 sends us two exposures of a Cross-Universe Flux Matrix Entry Zone (Class Megative F/ive/our, from the looks of the argonite ring patterning). Based on the surrounding landscape and the relative height of the individual pictured, I’d say this is from the New Britain Free Zone, and that the photographed fellow is Doctor Salomon Jonas, DDS, FRCD(C). Dr. Jonas is one of the few dentists who maintains a substantial cross-universe presence-- he collects new dental techniques or interesting pieces of dental ephemera.

Some state flags for an alt-hist America

Historian Thomas Cahill, author of The Gifts of the Jews (Knopf, 1999) claimed that the Jews invented the very concept of history. They were the first, he said, to perceive time not as an endless circle of life, death and rebirth, but as the flight of an arrow, on a linear path to somewhere from somewhere.

However, what if time is not one arrow, but a volley of arrows? What if there are other timelines, other histories, other Jews? Would they still have a covenant with the one God? What would have become of their triumphs? Their defeats? Their suffering and their successes?

Award-winning author/editors Andrea D. Lobel and Mark Shainblum propose to answer this question in Other Covenants, the first-ever anthology of Jewish alternate history, to be published by ChiZine Publications in Fall 2019!

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Submission window: August 28, 2017 at 12:01 AM Eastern Time to Sunday, Feb. 4, 2018, at 11:59 PM Eastern Time.

Open to submissions by authors of all backgrounds, from anywhere in the world.

Please do not submit by email. We will accept digital submissions only via the Moksha submissions system at https://chizinepub.moksha.io/publication/other-covenants.

Stories must be in the alternate history genre and must be clearly relevant to the theme of the anthology.

Length: 500–15,000 words. There are relatively few spots for stories at the high end, so please query first if you think your story will go long.

Preference will be given to stories previously unpublished in English, however, we will consider previously published stories on a case-by-case basis.

NEW: Also open to poetry submissions. Original poems on theme. No more than 2 pages (8.5 x 11) in length. (Maximum word count set arbitrarily to 2,000 words as system won’t allow max lines or pages.) No need to double-space.

Submissions may be made in English or French. Author is responsible for translations into English after acceptance.

English-language translations of stories from other languages (published or unpublished) are welcome, but we can only accept submissions in English or French.

Multiple submissions welcome; up to two stories maximum per author, sent under separate cover.

We prefer no simultaneous submissions, please (we promise to respond promptly).

Initial responses (rejections, holds, and rewrite requests) within 30 days of submission; final responses no later than 30 days after the deadline.

Payment is 8 cents per word in Canadian funds. (SFWA qualifying after exchange to US funds).

File formats accepted: .docx, .doc, or .rtf.

Formatting: indented paragraphs; italics in italics (not underlined); Canadian spelling; use # (or other unambiguous symbol) to indicate scene breaks; no headers, footers, or pagination; no outlandish formatting, please; full contact info (name, street address, email, phone number) and word count on the first page. That said, don’t fret too much about formatting; good fiction is what’s most important. (Correct spelling also counts.)

Please include a cover letter with a brief author bio, title of story, and full contact info, including street address.

Please do not summarize or describe the story in the cover letter.

To be published by ChiZine Publications in Fall 2019.

Rights: First World Rights, including audio and translation rights. (NOTE: CZP has a foreign rights agent who will be presenting the anthology in foreign markets.)

NOTE ON PSEUDONYMS: we will only publish one story per author, even if you write under several names; please use your real name on all correspondence and indicate your pseudonym in the cover letter and on the byline of the story itself.

NOTE ON SUBJECT MATTER: Any book dealing with the Jewish people, Jewish history and Israel will, by definition, be controversial. We welcome controversy and politics, but don’t forget that this is a fiction anthology. Telling good stories takes first, second and third place. Submissions that grind axes loud enough to drown out the story are unlikely to be accepted.

Questions or queries: [email protected]. Please don’t submit stories via email, as noted above.

A WORD ABOUT THE ALTERNATE HISTORY GENRE

Other Covenants is open to authors of every background, and for those of you who may not be familiar with alternate history, here’s a quick thumbnail sketch of the genre.

A popular sub-genre of speculative fiction, alternative history weaves fictional narratives into the “what-if”s of the past, and explores the infinite number of historical roads not taken in the past, present or future.

The Collins English Dictionary defines alternative history as “a genre of fiction in which the author speculates on how the course of history might have been altered if a particular historical event had had a different outcome.” According to Steven H. Silver, an American science fiction editor, alternate history requires three things:

1. A point of divergence from the history of our world prior to the time at which the author is writing 2. A change that would alter history as it is known 3. An examination of the ramifications of that change

Although alternate history is related to counterfactual history, it is distinct from it. The latter term is used by historians to refer to the academic, non-literary, question “what could have happened if . . .”.

Now please don’t take the above as prescriptive or proscriptive. We understand that boundaries are vague, definitions are fuzzy, and the distinction between an alternate history and a counterfactual may be entirely in the eye of the beholder. But whatever voice you write in, please keep in mind that first and foremost we are looking for stories about characters.

Also, though alternate history originated as a sub-genre of science fiction and fantasy and may incorporate tropes like the many-worlds theory, parallel universes, time travel, mysticism and magic, these are not requirements. Use them if you want to, don’t use them if you don’t. The only speculative element required is the break from history as we know it, and the effect of that break on the Jewish people.

THE KIND OF THEMES WE MIGHT EXPLORE:

Please don’t take these as prescriptive or proscriptive either, the whole canvas of Jewish history is open to you—Biblical, historical and mythological:

What if • the Holocaust had never happened? What if • Joseph’s brothers had not sold him into slavery in Egypt? What if • The State of Israel had been established in Uganda? Or Germany? What if • Jesus’ followers had not broken with Judaism? What if • The Jews had proselytized their faith door-to-door for a thousand years? What if • The Romans had not destroyed Jerusalem and the Second Temple? What if • Judaism became the dominant Western religion, but was riven by conflicts between the Temple priesthood and reformist rabbis who put the Torah and prayer before Temple ritual and sacrifice? What if • The Spanish Inquisition had never occurred? What if • Napoleon had not smashed down Europe’s ghetto walls? What if • The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were reality . . . in some other universe?

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Andrea D. Lobel has been a writer and editor for over a decade, winning two awards for her work.

An ordained rabbi and university lecturer, she holds an M.A. in Religious Studies (McGill University), and a Ph.D. in Religion (Concordia University), specializing in the history of religion and science, astronomy and religion, celestial mythologies, calendars, magic, and religious authority in Judaism, as well as in the Hebrew Bible and its ancient Near Eastern context.

Her book, Under a Censored Sky: Astronomy and Rabbinic Authority in the Talmud Bavli and Related Literature, is forthcoming from Brill Publishers in 2018–19.

Mark Shainblum was born and raised in Montreal, where he and illustrator Gabriel Morrissette co-created the acclaimed comics series Northguard and Angloman with Gabriel Morrissette. Northguard has recently been revived by Chapterhouse Comics in Toronto.

In addition to writing comics, Mark has published science fiction in various magazine and anthology markets including On Spec and Island Dreams: Montreal Writers of the Fantastic. As an editor, he co-edited Arrowdreams: An Anthology of Alternate Canadas with John Dupuis in 1998 and Superhero Universe: Tesseracts Nineteen in 2016 with Claude Lalumière.

Mark shared an Aurora Award with John Dupuis in 1999 for Arrowdreams, and in 2016 he was inducted into the Joe Shuster Awards Canadian Comic Book Creator Hall of Fame.

I remember the day I received my copy. It was 2005 and I had just turned nine. Rav Sabbati led me into a dark corner of the Beit Midrash at the Sinagoga Al-Hambra, handed me this and told me that he understood I had an interest in cross-universe travel and that he could help me with it. He would let me have this book now, and if I turned nineteen and was still interested, he would connect me with the Consortium pour le voyage et l’etude d’univers alternatifs, in Lyons.

Since then, my copy of this book has seen thousands of timestreams in hundreds of universes. It’s gazed upon the mechanized horror of Nazi Germania and the crumbling boulevards of Paris under Soviet occupation. It’s served as a improvised notebook for recording the singsong language of the walen (Dutch-affiliated whale communities; long story) and the consonant-heavy folksongs of the Muscovite Nyandertalets.

This book has ridden in the bag of the striking garment workers of the Arbeiter Ring as a roiling New York City faced off with the National Guard. It’s seen the Appalachian Free State and the Negro Revolt, and stood stopped a Union bullet at Ninth Manassas in 1934. It’s ridden the steppes of the great Khazar Empire with the Ninth Armoured Reconnaissance Division “Khagan Yosef’s Own”. It’s seen the underwater kingdoms of the Eelmen of the Pacific Rift. It’s staunched bleeding wounds and holes in dikes. It’s been signed by soldiers and musicians, commercial airship pilots and the conductors on the underwater trains that crisscross the Pacific. In the back cover is the small, cramped signature of John Peacock Flannery O’Nann (W-Deseret), the first Neanderthal President of the United States.