Alternative history
When it comes to books I'm pretty much a literature omnivore. I have friends who only like mysteries, others that only like nonfiction and still others who won't read anything but romances.
That's not me.
I'll read anything and everything I can get my hands on. In the past month, for example, I've read Dee Harrison's sword-and-sorcery epic "The Firelord's Crown" as well as Bill Ward's "Encryption," a scary - and sexy - high-tech thriller, and a marvelous book by Karen Ingalls entitled "Outshine: An Ovarian Cancer Memoir" that reveals what it's like to be diagnosed with, and then wage war against, this terrible illness.
One of my favorite genres, however, is alternative history. I like it because it gives us a glimpse into what the world MIGHT have been like instead of how it is. It's one of the reasons that I wrote my own alternative history, a Steampunk adventure called "The Ashtabula Irregulars: Opening Gambit."
Given that, it's probably no secret that I'm a fan of Christopher G. Nuttall, who has written one of the best alternative history novels I've read in a long time. It's called "The Invasion of 1950" and it puts us into a world in which Britain made peace with Germany during World War II instead of continuing to fight.
That peace is a tenuous one, however, and the Nazis are waiting for their chance to roll over the White Cliffs of Dover. In 1950 they do, at least in Christopher's novel.
What makes his book so good, in my opinion, is that he knows what he's talking about on a wide variety of subjects. The weapons are not fanciful but realistic, the political machinations are very real (and I know a little bit about that having covered the Pentagon and Congress for UPI as well as state Legislatures in New York, Florida and Delaware.) His characters are finely drawn and, well, in other words his book reads like a real history of his imaginary invasion.
That's the key, I think, to writing an effective alternative history novel: It has to read like an actual history. The events contained within it have to be rooted not in some fantasy world but in the real one with believable characters and action that fits the time and place.
Not everyone agrees with me when it comes to alternative history novels. I know lots of folks who won't read them because, while they are perfectly happy to go to Mars with John Carter, they are, for some reason, uncomfortable reading about a world in which a key battle was lost allowing the Nazis to win the Second World War.
I like them, though, and if you've a mind to at least give one alternative history book a try, get hold of "The Invasion of 1950" and see how well it can be done.
That's not me.
I'll read anything and everything I can get my hands on. In the past month, for example, I've read Dee Harrison's sword-and-sorcery epic "The Firelord's Crown" as well as Bill Ward's "Encryption," a scary - and sexy - high-tech thriller, and a marvelous book by Karen Ingalls entitled "Outshine: An Ovarian Cancer Memoir" that reveals what it's like to be diagnosed with, and then wage war against, this terrible illness.
One of my favorite genres, however, is alternative history. I like it because it gives us a glimpse into what the world MIGHT have been like instead of how it is. It's one of the reasons that I wrote my own alternative history, a Steampunk adventure called "The Ashtabula Irregulars: Opening Gambit."
Given that, it's probably no secret that I'm a fan of Christopher G. Nuttall, who has written one of the best alternative history novels I've read in a long time. It's called "The Invasion of 1950" and it puts us into a world in which Britain made peace with Germany during World War II instead of continuing to fight.
That peace is a tenuous one, however, and the Nazis are waiting for their chance to roll over the White Cliffs of Dover. In 1950 they do, at least in Christopher's novel.
What makes his book so good, in my opinion, is that he knows what he's talking about on a wide variety of subjects. The weapons are not fanciful but realistic, the political machinations are very real (and I know a little bit about that having covered the Pentagon and Congress for UPI as well as state Legislatures in New York, Florida and Delaware.) His characters are finely drawn and, well, in other words his book reads like a real history of his imaginary invasion.
That's the key, I think, to writing an effective alternative history novel: It has to read like an actual history. The events contained within it have to be rooted not in some fantasy world but in the real one with believable characters and action that fits the time and place.
Not everyone agrees with me when it comes to alternative history novels. I know lots of folks who won't read them because, while they are perfectly happy to go to Mars with John Carter, they are, for some reason, uncomfortable reading about a world in which a key battle was lost allowing the Nazis to win the Second World War.
I like them, though, and if you've a mind to at least give one alternative history book a try, get hold of "The Invasion of 1950" and see how well it can be done.
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