history and the superpower

[marycatelli]

The thing about superpowers is that it's hard to project them too far back in time unless you want to change the world. Alternate history is generally close enough to history that you can recognize it.

All right, you could have them say that there were superpowers back in the dawn of history, thus explaining the myths of gods. But, if they were continuous to modern times, any serious number of superpowered people, or any number of people with serious power, would affect history. They would affect wars, famine, drought, flood -- possibly not for the better, but they would affect it. Functional gods floating about would, of course, have major effects on religion -- their manifest human flaws being part of the effect.

If superpowers first appear in the 20th century, you can discuss how the manifest inequality would affect democracy, since if you can't coerce them, the superpowered do not have to accept the judgment of the majority. But early would raise serious questions about whether democracy could arise at all.

Comments

[nodrog]

I rather like the idea that the changes you make do not survive you - that like U K LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven, both you and whatever you did cancel out at your passing.

The world stands in awe of El Supremo and the new inland sea he created, and it's understandable that he would carve a mountain into his likeness…  He stands with upraised hand, acknowledging the praise…  but when he dies he is vaporised in the Orwellian sense.  No grave, no mourners - no inland sea either, and the mountain is untouched.  El Who?  No such person ever existed.

Sure, there have always never been superheroes in every no age of history.

[marycatelli]

That would have an effect bigger than every superhero ever. It would have too many implications for metaphysics for everything except a story centered on it -- and that's a very limited set of stories.

[jbellinger]

Or something like "Darker Than You Think", where the superpower/witchcraft is a matter of manipulating probabilities, so there's always plausible deniability--it wasn't witchcraft, just bad luck.

[marycatelli]

That would change the genre.