Historical Fiction: Life Before the Internet?

 As a graduate of UCLA, I appreciate the hand my alma mater played in the development of the Internet.

I can even give a grudging nod to the self-proclaimed inventor, former Vice President Al Gore, who insisted that the government put everything online.

That’s made a lot of stuff easier to do (including filing our taxes). Thanks, Mr. Vice President.

But at work the other day, we got into a discussion about historical fiction.

I’m working on a novel right now that takes place in 1993, when a Desert Storm widow gets a job as a researcher for a journalist.

No problem —until I researched how she does her job because —no Internet!

One of my colleagues doesn’t really remember life before the Internet’s easy accessibility.

To her, a story set before the Internet and cell phones is almost anachronistic.

She laughed, “Even now, when I read a book about a heroine in some sort of danger, I wonder why she doesn’t just pick up her phone and call for help?”

Do you see how different life was before, say, 1996?

Think how dated so many movies look now when the hero whips out the latest invention–a mobile phone the size of a brick. (Unless, of course, we’re discussing Maxwell Smart and his shoe phone).

You can judge a movie’s era by how they manipulate the computer–and the size of the tower.

The joke where Scotty addresses the computer in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (you can relive the moment here) is no longer a joke.

I asked several editors recently to define historical fiction, and they all agreed it was novels set during or before World War II.

Or, as one editor put it,

“I can’t say anything later than that, like the Viet Nam War, is historical fiction because too many of my reading customers would be insulted to be considered historical.”

My own family provided a similar problem.

I told my daughter that I didn’t have a computer when I was growing up.

“Why?” she asked. “Were you too poor?”

They hadn’t been invented yet.  🙁

What happened in 1993?

But with my current novel, I have an advantage over some writers.

I was doing research in 1993, and I remember how much time I spent at the library reading books and magazines to find information.

I had no other concept of how to do research. The Internet hadn’t reached the general populace then.

We purchased a scanner in 1994 so I could at least scan in the information and keep it on the computer.

The idea that I could just type in keywords and the information would turn up on my screen? Unimaginable!

The world prior to 1996 or so ran differently. People did not have such ready access to information, nor the ability to deal with issues as quickly.

They could pick up a phone — and most phones were no longer tethered to a wall by 1996 — but they’d have to call the library itself for information.

You read the newspaper to find out which movies were playing. You wrote a letter if you wanted to communicate with friends living far away. The mail took a long time to get there, much less to get an answer.

For that reason, I think historical fiction could really be anything from before the Vietnam War. How about you?