Probabilities (novel); and Marrying invention with history

This study explores the relationship between history and the writing of historical and speculative fiction. The relationship of historical settings with world building techniques used in speculative fiction is discussed through an examination of key novels and how they have approached the history they utilise to build a world that is acceptably real to readers. It explores these approaches to history through the novel, Probabilities.

Probabilities narrates what happens when a team of scientists travels to the past for the first time. It is science fiction, using some of the theories spun under the rubric of quantum physics to create the possibility of time travel. The main focus, however, is not on techno-wizardry but on cultural differences between people from different times and between people with different backgrounds. It explores some of the greyer areas related to personal responsibility and to private desires interfering with work. Most of all, it explores the relationships of people with history, both personal and Medieval, and tests our understanding of our own past.

The dissertation component, "Marrying invention with history" examines the relationship between history and the writing of historical and speculative fiction through examining the methods writers use to build history into a novel; the writing techniques fiction authors use to indicate the past; the understanding of the author's relationship with history and translating them into a novel.

Historicising can be integral to the novel: through it the novel can participate in historical discourse. The craft of the historian, additionally, can be used to develop narratives and to help build an effective world for that narrative. Probabilities demonstrates this and also demonstrates that while a novel can be used as historiography, form and function are still crucial to a reader's understanding of a text.