Secret history
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A secret history (or shadow history) is, a fictional universe, a revisionist interpretation of either fictional or real (or known) history which is claimed to have been deliberately suppressed or forgotten.
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[edit] Secret histories of the real world
Originally secret histories were designed as non-fictional, revealing what is portrayed as the truth behind the spin: the exemplar is the Anecdota of Procopius of Caesarea (known for centuries as the Secret History), which portrays the reign of the Roman Emperor Justinian I to the great disadvantage of the Emperor, his wife and some of his court.
Secret history is sometimes used in a long-running science fiction universe to preserve continuity with the present by reconciling predicted events in a science fiction universe with what actually happened in actual history.
[edit] Examples
- In the Doctor Who serial Remembrance of the Daleks, the Seventh Doctor ironically chides his companion for not knowing about such events as the Yeti in the Underground (The Web of Fear) or the Loch Ness Monster's appearance in London (Terror of the Zygons) making a point that the "historical events" of the Doctor Who must have affected public consciousness in some way, yet clearly in the continuity of the series, failed to do so, because of human self-deception and denial.
- Blackadder — the first series has a forgotten King Richard IV of England
- Dark Skies
- The X-Files
- Stargate
- The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson
- many of the novels of Robert Graves are in this genre, e.g. I, Claudius, Claudius the God, Count Belisarius, Wife to Mr Milton
- The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon
- In the Country of the Blind by Michael Flynn is about a secret society that attempts to influence history with mathematics calculated on Babbage analytical engines.
- Harry Paget Flashman is placed at the centre of many 19th century events by George MacDonald Fraser
- The Shadow Hearts series of video games uses secret histories as its trademark style.
- Fantasy Author Tim Powers predominate style of writing is based on secret histories.
- Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle, by Neal Stephenson, both contain elements of secret history.
- Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
[edit] Secret histories of fictional worlds
Retconning, the process of inventing or altering the canonical account of past events in fiction which revealed the untruth of what we previously believed as definitive story. A retcon might equally convert an established history into a secret history. It occurs with particular frequency in long-running superhero comic books.
[edit] Examples
- Remembrance of the Daleks also alludes to hidden fictional history, establishing that during the events of An Unearthly Child, the First Doctor had in his possession a super-weapon stolen from his own people. The story also implies that he knew of the Daleks before he "first" met them.
- DC Comics' Crisis on Infinite Earths which made years of "established" events and characters from the DC Universe (for example the existence of Krypto) "un-happen". In the revised continuity only a few privileged characters remember the old continuity.
- Alan Moore's has offered many revisionist histories of known works.
- During the character's revival in the 1980's, he showed that Miracleman's original, lighthearted adventures had taken place place in a virtual reality.
- In Lost Girls, he reveals events of Alice in Wonderland, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Peter Pan as fantasies invented to cover up memories of childhood sexual abuse.
- He revised Swamp Thing's origin twice, revealing the title character's origin not as an altered human but a sentient plant which had absorbed a dead human's memories. Later, he established Swamp Thing as a supernatural plant elemental, rather than a science-based mutated vegetation.
- In League of Extraordinary Gentlemen the histories of various characters are referred to as differing from those in the books they previously appeared, especially their deaths (notably Allan Quartermaine, Dr Jekyl and the Invisible Man) with in-text references to the books being mistaken histories of the characters within the LOEG universe.
- The Wold Newton universe, which heavily influenced Alan Moore's subsequent League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Both of these universe tie together many disparate fictional creations in a variety of surprising ways.
