Are you saying that the problem is "what can one small person do to make a difference in a large world"? Or am I missing something, not being acuainted with Gernsback?

Is there a difference between the traditional epic hero and a Gernsbackian hero beyond costuming and implements?

Greg, I think there’s a difference, but only one of personality and temperament. The story plays out the same way.

B, I’m saying that in the real world, world wars aren’t won by a handful of plucky adventurers making a daring foray into the heart of danger to destroy the enemy’s superweapon. Catastrophes aren’t averted by the last-minute cleverness of unrecognized geniuses. And there are no foreordained crises that can only be solved if the predestined hero is in exactly the right place at the right time.*

Given that, can you still tell a story in which the characters and what they do are as important as they are in an epic fantasy, without sacrificing the realism of the world the story’s set in?

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* I admit there’s some debate about this — some people still subscribe to the Great Man theory of history. Me, though, I’m more of the blind impersonal forces school. What you do makes a difference to you, but it’s not likely to make much difference to the long-term price of fish.

Also, I thought that limiting the question to one of literary style (rather than History with a capital H) was interesting; I hadn’t heard it put that way before, though having read War and Peace I think it makes a lot of sense. And as a literary style issue, it pretty much nails the problem I’m having with what I’m working on right now.

David, I think you're right that, to shape a story such that the hero becomes the critical lynchpin who brings about large change, you have to reshape the world in a way that strains realism.

Is this a problem with a particular strain of SF, or is this just, in a broad sense, what fiction does?

I think it’s a problem with a particular strain of storytelling. There’s plenty of fiction in which it’s only small change the hero brings about, and in an entirely plausible way.

Maybe I’m just bitching because I’ve plotted and characterized myself into a corner, and I’m just using my dissatisfaction with that strain of storytelling as another excuse not to write.

Perhaps you could look at it from a different viewpoint: are there many (or any) real-life examples of how a person did (or could've) changed what happened?

Altho' I must admit, the first example that sprang to my mind were the generals in WWII who tried to assassinate Hitler. If they'd pulled it off, what would've happened?

Now granted, these guys weren't a ragtag band of Allied soldiers parachuted into the heart of Nazi Germany (and I don't think they were particularly heroic). But all that might mean is that you need to be particular about who your hero is for the realism of your story.

To sum up: I think the two poles can reconciled, but only for certain stories.

I think the hero can realistically effect large-scale change when he or she is the cue ball, or the stick, or the player, but not all three.

Jon, if they’d succeeded, the war would have ended sooner, and obviously life would have been different for millions of individuals, but I don’t think that on a grand scale the second half of the 20th century would have looked much different. (That’s debatable, of course.)

Greg, that’s either very astute or merely very clever, but either way it’s an analogy worthy of a VP lecture. I’ll have to think about that.

I vote astute!

Well, that's the great thing about alternate history.

David, it does seem as if you're portraying two extremes re: the historical impact of individuals.

Yeah, I think you're right that history very rarely boils down to something like a couple of hobbits destroying a ring of power and saving the world. But you seem to be saying that the other main alternative is that individuals have no effect on the course of events.

Jon brought up WWII. Well, who won it? I don't think Hitler was defeated by an individual hero or small band of heroes, and I don't happen to think it just happened, that his defeat was inevitable, independent from the actions of others. Why not the third alternative: That history is changed through the complex interactions of thousands of individuals, collaborating and in conflict? Why does it have to be either Hero or Fate?

For example, the Enigma codebreakers didn't win the war single-handedly, but their contribution was significant (and plenty of stories have been written about them).

Can your protagonist be written as contributing to successful change in the world without being the sole cause of it?

Actually, I’m trying to talk about writing, but I’ve spent too much time studying history not to end up talking about that instead. :)

Yes, there are plenty of stories to tell about people who either did something interesting or had something interesting happen to them during times of great uncertainty and change. But those stories are different from the ones about people who were directly and individually the cause of that change.

I think someone could tell a hell of a story, for instance, about one of the spice smugglers that Gurney Halleck briefly hooks up with in Dune, or about the Imperial general in Star Wars with the working-class British accent who seems to be the only one that actually sees the rebels as a threat. But that wouldn’t be the same kind of story as the story of Paul Atreides or the story of Luke Skywalker.

I'm not talking about just writing about people doing interesting things during times of change. I'm talking about writing about people who directly contribute to that change, but not in an all-or-nothing way.

Fine. Substitute “meaningful” for “interesting”.

I think where I come down on this debate is that some change is likely inevitable (a war starting or ending, the industrial age beginning, slavery ending, the sexual revolution starting whatever), due to massive cultural forces at play in very small ways.

But at the very same time, there are probably one to a few individuals whose particular personal actions place them at a historical fulcrum. And sure, if they didn't do it, a different few individuals would likely be at another fulcrum a few years later. The change would probably happen regardless. But I'm not sure that matters -- from the inside, from the point of view of those people, and the people around them, watching, they changed history -- they were the spark that set off the piled up tinder and made the whole world go boom.

Be in the right place at the right time, be the right kind of person, and you get to (have to) change the world. Or somebody else will.

Now I think we need to decide how much effect on events would qualify as meaningful.

I don’t think so; I think it’s mostly a matter of presentation — at least as long as we’re talking about ahistorical fiction.

With real events, the reader knows too much and can draw his or her own conclusions about what ‘really’ happened, but in SF — alternate history aside — the author controls what the reader knows about the events, so the author’s preferred reading carries much more weight.

Well, my example was the Enigma codebreaking team. Not Luke Skywalker, but not some guy totally detached from the machinery of history.

I would think that the type of story you wrote would depend a great deal on your own worldview. David, it almost sounds like you're feeling a fair amount of cognitive dissonance by writing a heroic figure in a fatalistic world.

I would say that your main two options are to either try to align the plot/character with the world/setting, or use the contrast as an element of the work itself. Hmm...Hellboy springs to mind here. He's an independent/free-will-centric character in a prophetic/apocalyptic world.

Or, of course, write an epic tragedy instead -- the epic hero tries to change the world, but fails. :)

Ditto Derek's original comment, btw, and Mary Anne's as well. The leaders of the American Revolution were pivotal in bringing about great change; maybe if it hadn't been them, it would've been someone else, but they did it. As long as you keep the complexity of background and interacting forces in mind (that is, as long as the epic hero doesn't have sole responsibility for the entire change they're trying to effect), I think an epic hero can have a huge impact without necessarily implying the Great Man theory.

Okay: so is there a difference between the Tolstoyan mode of fiction and the Gernsbackian? Is it only that Gernsback, in Tolstoy’s shoes, would have preferred a story about Napoleon and Wellington and Nelson rather than a story about the Rostovs and Bolkonskys?

David, I think in so-called Gernsbackian fiction, a large part of the appeal comes from the notion than any humble Tolstoyan peasant can grow up to be Napoleon.

That would explain Gernsbeck. After all, he developed his style of fiction in a country which has long promoted the trope, "Any child can grow up to be President," no matter how unlikely that may be in real life (Bill Clinton notwithstanding).

“Any child can grow up to be President, so long as he’s smart, charismatic, lucky, and wants to be President more than anything else in the world.”