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Alternate Anthologies #4
Alternate Outlaws
What if . . .
• JFK was a modern-day Robin Hood?
• Helen Keller used her remaining senses to become a safecracker?
• Elizabeth the First took to the high seas as a pirate?
History's great men and women made their own rules, and sometimes only a twist of fate separated the criminals from the crowned. When good guys go bad and bad guys go legit, only today's most imaginative SF authors can keep the rap sheets straight. From Charles Manson to J. Edgar Hoover, from Jesse James to Humphrey Bogart, nobody's wanted more than . . .
ALTERNATE OUTLAWS
• JFK was a modern-day Robin Hood?
• Helen Keller used her remaining senses to become a safecracker?
• Elizabeth the First took to the high seas as a pirate?
History's great men and women made their own rules, and sometimes only a twist of fate separated the criminals from the crowned. When good guys go bad and bad guys go legit, only today's most imaginative SF authors can keep the rap sheets straight. From Charles Manson to J. Edgar Hoover, from Jesse James to Humphrey Bogart, nobody's wanted more than . . .
ALTERNATE OUTLAWS
402 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
1 person is currently reading
156 people want to read
About the author
Mike Resnick
810 books550 followersMichael "Mike" Diamond Resnick, better known by his published name Mike Resnick, was a popular and prolific American science fiction author. He is, according to Locus, the all-time leading award winner, living or dead, for short science fiction. He was the winner of five Hugos, a Nebula, and other major awards in the United States, France, Spain, Japan, Croatia and Poland. and has been short-listed for major awards in England, Italy and Australia. He was the author of 68 novels, over 250 stories, and 2 screenplays, and was the editor of 41 anthologies. His work has been translated into 25 languages. He was the Guest of Honor at the 2012 Worldcon and can be found online as @ResnickMike on Twitter or at www.mikeresnick.com.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
July 6, 2025
Barclay Shaw’s photorealistic artwork on the cover is a piece of imaginative frippery, as nowhere in the stories in this collection does Elvis Presley appear as a Latin American revolutionary. Instead, what readers get is over two-dozen tales involving historical characters in a variety of criminalistic scenarios. These are:
“Ma Teresa and the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang” by Jack C. Haldeman – Many alternate history tales are well-imagined scenarios that amuse and delight, while others involve throwing a bunch of names and places into a mental blender and spinning out a mash. Haldeman’s story of “Ma” Theresa as a gang of ne’er-do-wells in the American West is squarely in the latter category.
“A Quiet Evening by Gaslight” by Geoffrey A. Landis – In this one Landis stretches the alternate history concept to provide a creepy variation on the occupant of 221-B Baker Street. It’s all the more effective for its succinctness.
“A Spark in the Darkness” by Beth Meacham – Helen Keller seemingly would make for an unlikely subject for a collection about alternate outlaws, but Meacham does a great job of imagining how her deprivations would make her a fantastic crook.
“Common Sense” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch – Rusch has a talent for doing good alternate history tales that are well grounded, and her story of Thomas Paine’s doomed dalliance with the daughter of an aristocrat is an excellent example of her skill at it.
“Literary Lives” by Kathe Koja and Barry M. Maltzberg – I’m a huge Dorothy Parker fan, but this story of two alternate relationships with Ernest Hemingway just didn’t work for me.
“Saint Frankie” by Laura Resnik – This story involving a Francis of Assisi-turned-Robin Hood is told by Laura Resnik in a way that I just didn’t enjoy.
“Good Girl, Bad Dog” by Martha Soukup – Pal the dog gets tired of playing Lassie and runs off with a spoiled cast member. This one has perhaps the most unusual selections for a premise, and the dark ending is extremely well done.
“Comrade Bill” by John E. Johnston III – Remember when Bill Clinton was regarded as a leftist radical who threatened to undermine the American way of life? If you do, Johnston’s tale – which instantly dates the entire collection – will provide you with a nostalgic reminder the paranoid rhetoric of the political from those days, even if the result isn’t a particularly good story.
“The Ballad of Richie Valenzuela” by Maureen F. McHugh – Here McHugh describes the filming a very different Ritchie Valens biopic from La Bamba. It’s enjoyable, but it doesn’t quite measure up to some of the standouts,
“One Month in 1907” by Frank M. Robinson – Hugo Gernsback’s twofold reputation as the “father of science fiction” and as a sleazy exploiter of authors are both on display in a story in which he and Charles Ponzi end up switching places. It’s a fun tale, especially for those who know their history of the genre.
“What Goes Around” by David Gerrold – The first of Gerrold’s two contributions to the volume, in this one he imagines Charles Manson as the lead singer in a poorly-regarded underground rock band who is massacred along with its other members by someone with an unusual connection to him. This one was definitely among the better stories for me.
“Red Elvis” by Walter Jon Williams – By far the best story in the collection, Williams imagines a very different King from the one with which people are familiar.
“Cui Bono?” by Katherine Kerr – This is the one that feels least like an alternate history story, as two people involved in the 1950s Red Scare reminisce three decades later about the era and the most dangerous Soviet mole of them all.
“Cowards Die: A Tragicomedy in Several Fits” by Judith Tarr – In his editor’s preface Resnick describes this tale of Julius Caesar becoming a Roman gangster as an “off-the-wall” story. Sadly, it proved a little too much so for my tastes.
“Black Betsy” by Dean Wesley Smith – A down-on-his-luck attorney gets to revisit the time he stole Shoeless Joe Jackson’s bat. While this one strays a bit from the premise of the series, it’s a great story about regrets and second chances.
“Miranda” by Robert Sheckley – This is another one in which a bunch of historical figures – in this case, actors from Hollywood’s “golden age” – are mashed together in a silly tale of Depression-era bank robbing. While Sheckley has a reputation for absurdism, this one was more lazy than entertaining.
“Riders in the Sky” by Allen Steele – This was another of my favorites, both for its premise – that the development of dirigibles in the 1860s leads to the invention of skyjacking a century early – and for Steele’s approach towards telling an alternate history story.
“#2 with a Bullet” by Jack Nimersheim – The first of two JFK-centric alternate histories imagines Kennedy as a crime boss whose death at the hands of the authorities becomes the stuff of conspiracy. While not terrible, it’s definitely not the best in the book.
“The Crimson Rose” by Tappan King – King’s story of an Elizabeth Tudor living in the Americas as a pirate queen is one of the most fun in the collection, and is probably the one that best reflects the intention behind it.
“What She Won’t Remember” by Michelle Sagara – Sagara uses Agatha Christie’s famous disappearance as a premise for answering the eternal question of whether mystery authors would make good criminals. It’s a perfect fit for the collection, and a good story to boot.
“My Tongue in Thy Tale” by Gregory Feeley – I think I get what Feeley was doing in his tale of Edward de Vere’s and Francis Bacon’s war of words, but this is one of the ones that I just didn’t appreciate very much.
“Souvenirs” by Alan Rodgers and James D. Macdonald – Like most of the contributors to this collection, the two authors were previously contributors to one of Resnik's previous collections, Alternate Kennedys. This, however, is a far superior story to the one they wrote for that collection, especially with its premise of a much more disturbing motivation behind John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
“Bigger than U.S. Steel” by Brian M. Thomsen – This is another of those alternate history tales that likes to flip historical personages, in this case making Meyer Lansky into a powerful government bureaucrat and J. Edgar Hoover into Public Enemy #1. I’ve never been a fan of this approach, and Thomsen doesn’t do anything in this story to revise my opinion.
“Giving Head” by Nicholas A. DiChario – DiChario’s “Winterberry” was by far the best contribution to Alternate Kennedys. While this take of Manfred von Richthofen’s rehabilitation by Sigmund Freud and his daughter Anna isn’t quite as good, it’s still in the top half of the stories here.
“Satan Claus” by David Gerrold – Gerrold’s second tale is another that pushes the limits of the alternate history concept by introducing a counter to St. Nicholas. Even more than Dean Wesley Smith’s story it doesn’t really qualify as alternate history, but that doesn’t make it any less readable.
“Shootout at Gower Gulch” by George Alec Effinger – Effinger has long been a favorite of mine, and this story, in which an older Frank James and Bill Monaghan head west to find fame in early Hollywood, only reinforced my esteem for his quirky stories.
“Painted Bridges” by Barbara Delaplace – While Delaplace’s tale about an institutionalized Hitler turning to art therapy may not fit well with the overall theme of the collection, the story of the disturbing effects of his paintings is good enough to overlook the difference.
No doubt other readers will have different opinions of the stories in the collection. But while Resnik was arguably running out of concepts for these collections, in this one the good outweighs the bad-to-middling enough for alternate history fans to read it for themselves.
“Ma Teresa and the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang” by Jack C. Haldeman – Many alternate history tales are well-imagined scenarios that amuse and delight, while others involve throwing a bunch of names and places into a mental blender and spinning out a mash. Haldeman’s story of “Ma” Theresa as a gang of ne’er-do-wells in the American West is squarely in the latter category.
“A Quiet Evening by Gaslight” by Geoffrey A. Landis – In this one Landis stretches the alternate history concept to provide a creepy variation on the occupant of 221-B Baker Street. It’s all the more effective for its succinctness.
“A Spark in the Darkness” by Beth Meacham – Helen Keller seemingly would make for an unlikely subject for a collection about alternate outlaws, but Meacham does a great job of imagining how her deprivations would make her a fantastic crook.
“Common Sense” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch – Rusch has a talent for doing good alternate history tales that are well grounded, and her story of Thomas Paine’s doomed dalliance with the daughter of an aristocrat is an excellent example of her skill at it.
“Literary Lives” by Kathe Koja and Barry M. Maltzberg – I’m a huge Dorothy Parker fan, but this story of two alternate relationships with Ernest Hemingway just didn’t work for me.
“Saint Frankie” by Laura Resnik – This story involving a Francis of Assisi-turned-Robin Hood is told by Laura Resnik in a way that I just didn’t enjoy.
“Good Girl, Bad Dog” by Martha Soukup – Pal the dog gets tired of playing Lassie and runs off with a spoiled cast member. This one has perhaps the most unusual selections for a premise, and the dark ending is extremely well done.
“Comrade Bill” by John E. Johnston III – Remember when Bill Clinton was regarded as a leftist radical who threatened to undermine the American way of life? If you do, Johnston’s tale – which instantly dates the entire collection – will provide you with a nostalgic reminder the paranoid rhetoric of the political from those days, even if the result isn’t a particularly good story.
“The Ballad of Richie Valenzuela” by Maureen F. McHugh – Here McHugh describes the filming a very different Ritchie Valens biopic from La Bamba. It’s enjoyable, but it doesn’t quite measure up to some of the standouts,
“One Month in 1907” by Frank M. Robinson – Hugo Gernsback’s twofold reputation as the “father of science fiction” and as a sleazy exploiter of authors are both on display in a story in which he and Charles Ponzi end up switching places. It’s a fun tale, especially for those who know their history of the genre.
“What Goes Around” by David Gerrold – The first of Gerrold’s two contributions to the volume, in this one he imagines Charles Manson as the lead singer in a poorly-regarded underground rock band who is massacred along with its other members by someone with an unusual connection to him. This one was definitely among the better stories for me.
“Red Elvis” by Walter Jon Williams – By far the best story in the collection, Williams imagines a very different King from the one with which people are familiar.
“Cui Bono?” by Katherine Kerr – This is the one that feels least like an alternate history story, as two people involved in the 1950s Red Scare reminisce three decades later about the era and the most dangerous Soviet mole of them all.
“Cowards Die: A Tragicomedy in Several Fits” by Judith Tarr – In his editor’s preface Resnick describes this tale of Julius Caesar becoming a Roman gangster as an “off-the-wall” story. Sadly, it proved a little too much so for my tastes.
“Black Betsy” by Dean Wesley Smith – A down-on-his-luck attorney gets to revisit the time he stole Shoeless Joe Jackson’s bat. While this one strays a bit from the premise of the series, it’s a great story about regrets and second chances.
“Miranda” by Robert Sheckley – This is another one in which a bunch of historical figures – in this case, actors from Hollywood’s “golden age” – are mashed together in a silly tale of Depression-era bank robbing. While Sheckley has a reputation for absurdism, this one was more lazy than entertaining.
“Riders in the Sky” by Allen Steele – This was another of my favorites, both for its premise – that the development of dirigibles in the 1860s leads to the invention of skyjacking a century early – and for Steele’s approach towards telling an alternate history story.
“#2 with a Bullet” by Jack Nimersheim – The first of two JFK-centric alternate histories imagines Kennedy as a crime boss whose death at the hands of the authorities becomes the stuff of conspiracy. While not terrible, it’s definitely not the best in the book.
“The Crimson Rose” by Tappan King – King’s story of an Elizabeth Tudor living in the Americas as a pirate queen is one of the most fun in the collection, and is probably the one that best reflects the intention behind it.
“What She Won’t Remember” by Michelle Sagara – Sagara uses Agatha Christie’s famous disappearance as a premise for answering the eternal question of whether mystery authors would make good criminals. It’s a perfect fit for the collection, and a good story to boot.
“My Tongue in Thy Tale” by Gregory Feeley – I think I get what Feeley was doing in his tale of Edward de Vere’s and Francis Bacon’s war of words, but this is one of the ones that I just didn’t appreciate very much.
“Souvenirs” by Alan Rodgers and James D. Macdonald – Like most of the contributors to this collection, the two authors were previously contributors to one of Resnik's previous collections, Alternate Kennedys. This, however, is a far superior story to the one they wrote for that collection, especially with its premise of a much more disturbing motivation behind John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
“Bigger than U.S. Steel” by Brian M. Thomsen – This is another of those alternate history tales that likes to flip historical personages, in this case making Meyer Lansky into a powerful government bureaucrat and J. Edgar Hoover into Public Enemy #1. I’ve never been a fan of this approach, and Thomsen doesn’t do anything in this story to revise my opinion.
“Giving Head” by Nicholas A. DiChario – DiChario’s “Winterberry” was by far the best contribution to Alternate Kennedys. While this take of Manfred von Richthofen’s rehabilitation by Sigmund Freud and his daughter Anna isn’t quite as good, it’s still in the top half of the stories here.
“Satan Claus” by David Gerrold – Gerrold’s second tale is another that pushes the limits of the alternate history concept by introducing a counter to St. Nicholas. Even more than Dean Wesley Smith’s story it doesn’t really qualify as alternate history, but that doesn’t make it any less readable.
“Shootout at Gower Gulch” by George Alec Effinger – Effinger has long been a favorite of mine, and this story, in which an older Frank James and Bill Monaghan head west to find fame in early Hollywood, only reinforced my esteem for his quirky stories.
“Painted Bridges” by Barbara Delaplace – While Delaplace’s tale about an institutionalized Hitler turning to art therapy may not fit well with the overall theme of the collection, the story of the disturbing effects of his paintings is good enough to overlook the difference.
No doubt other readers will have different opinions of the stories in the collection. But while Resnik was arguably running out of concepts for these collections, in this one the good outweighs the bad-to-middling enough for alternate history fans to read it for themselves.
October 3, 2018
Resnick, Mike, ed. Alternate Outlaws. Tor, 1994.
The premise of Alternate Outlaws is silly but fun idea for a thematic anthology. Ma Teresa is running a gang of bank robbers, including Big Al Einstein and Little Al Sweitzer. A singer named Presley is a communist agitator. Sherlock Holmes goes out in disguise at night and comes back with dripping fangs. The James gang high-jacks dirigibles. And many others. Enjoy.
The premise of Alternate Outlaws is silly but fun idea for a thematic anthology. Ma Teresa is running a gang of bank robbers, including Big Al Einstein and Little Al Sweitzer. A singer named Presley is a communist agitator. Sherlock Holmes goes out in disguise at night and comes back with dripping fangs. The James gang high-jacks dirigibles. And many others. Enjoy.
May 24, 2019
A collection of alternate history stories transforming heroes into villains and vice versa. Stories feature the James Gang, Elvis, JFK, Mother Teresa, many others. In general the concept is better than the execution.
November 15, 2019
A fun read.Different stories from great to mediocre.
January 9, 2022
Some of the stories have not held up but the ones that have are riveting.
August 9, 2024
Very uneven balance of good/bad/bland stories.
August 3, 2016
This is a solid collection of alternate history stories, all based on one of (sometimes both of!) two premises: a famous historical figure was in fact an outlaw; an infamous criminal was in fact the hero of the story. It's a fun idea, but many of the stories, while entertaining and satisfying as fictional yarns, don't fully live up to the promise of the premise. Others feel like slice of life, dependent entirely on the identity of the fictional outlaw to give the story interest.
I particularly enjoyed the stories based on the wackiest outlaws: Sir Francis of Assisi, Helen Keller, Santa Claus. Some of the stories were chilling: Michelle Sagara's "What She Won't Remember" (Agatha Christie), Janni Lee Simner's "Learning Magic" (Harry Houdini) and the closing story, Barbara Delaplace's "Painted Bridges (Adolph Hitler). Also of a note was a particularly lush tale featuring Queen Elizabeth, Tappan King's "The Crimson Rose." And finally, "Good Girl, Bad Dog" by Martha Soukup shows Lassie in a light you've never seen before.
This is a minor point, but in many cases, I wish the stories hadn't come with author introductions that revealed the name of the historical persona beforehand. It would have been more fun to piece together while reading.
I particularly enjoyed the stories based on the wackiest outlaws: Sir Francis of Assisi, Helen Keller, Santa Claus. Some of the stories were chilling: Michelle Sagara's "What She Won't Remember" (Agatha Christie), Janni Lee Simner's "Learning Magic" (Harry Houdini) and the closing story, Barbara Delaplace's "Painted Bridges (Adolph Hitler). Also of a note was a particularly lush tale featuring Queen Elizabeth, Tappan King's "The Crimson Rose." And finally, "Good Girl, Bad Dog" by Martha Soukup shows Lassie in a light you've never seen before.
This is a minor point, but in many cases, I wish the stories hadn't come with author introductions that revealed the name of the historical persona beforehand. It would have been more fun to piece together while reading.
February 14, 2020
I've only read Michelle Sagara's short story.
This is about Agatha, a writer of detective novel. One day at a luncheon a young man tells her that she know nothing of the criminal mind. That really annoyed her and she cannot put it out of her mind and go back to her writing. She goes back to see him and he takes her in the street and ask her her opinion about some people and they talk a little. All this upset Agatha a lot and she decides that she needs a change of scenery.
I like this story a lot and it’s one I would recommend reading. Here Michelle offers an explanation about Agatha Christie’s disappearance and later claim of amnesia.
This is about Agatha, a writer of detective novel. One day at a luncheon a young man tells her that she know nothing of the criminal mind. That really annoyed her and she cannot put it out of her mind and go back to her writing. She goes back to see him and he takes her in the street and ask her her opinion about some people and they talk a little. All this upset Agatha a lot and she decides that she needs a change of scenery.
I like this story a lot and it’s one I would recommend reading. Here Michelle offers an explanation about Agatha Christie’s disappearance and later claim of amnesia.
February 19, 2016
An interesting collection of what-if stories that turn historical heroes into villains (and vice versa). Among some of the better offerings are "Good Girl, Bad Dog" (one of television's most famous canines turns bad), "Red Elvis" (the King of Rock 'n' Roll presented as a communist) and "Common Sense" (where Thomas Paine remains in Britain rather than going to America). Overall a decent selection of alternate history tales.
October 22, 2015
I believe this one was the best volume of the Alternate series that Resnick edited for Tor books several years ago. I enjoyed almost all of the contents, particularly the stories from Allen Steele, George Alec Effinger, and my favorite was from Maureen McHugh. Fun for history buffs!
May 1, 2011
A book of short stories. Some awful and some delightfully awesome. =)
September 17, 2012
the perfect man whose never see tomorrow
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews