Author

[William]

Any recommendations on alternate history novels? I mean along the vein of what if we had lost WWII, Kennedy hadn't been assassinated, etc.

[Tim]

This book is not by the same Tim Campbell who is the author of All's Fair.

[Hilary]

I need to read it! Everyone's been telling me lately that it's really good...I will go to the library later today and pick it up!

[katie]

i got it from the library a while ago but, sadly, never read it. i am planning on checking it out the next time i go to the dear ole library! =)

[[deleted user]]

Any recommendations on alternate history novels? I mean along the vein of what if we had lost WWII

The Summer Isles by Ian McLeod is fantastic. (A Hitler character in Great Britain is the premise) Thanks for reminding me, I have to add that to my read list.

[Jim]

Fox on the Rhine by Doug Niles is a good one. Assassination attempt on Hitler by his own men succeeds (as it obviously failed in reality) and Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox, begins to turn the tide against Monty in North Africa, which prompts the Soviet Union to change sides and join the Axis, thus drastically altering the outcome of the war. Very cool book, very well researched.

[Jim]

double post--sorry.

[KristenR]

Jim, that book sounds very interesting...I have to add that to my ever-growing 'to read' list.

[Brooke]

The Years of Salt and Rice by Kim Stanley Robinson has been on my to-read list forever. From Amazon's review:

How might human history be different if 14th-century Europe was utterly wiped out by plague, and Islamic and Buddhist societies emerged as the world's dominant religious and political forces?

[Keegan Fink]

I would recommend The Man In The High Castle by Philip K. Dick. It's based on the premise that both the Nazi's and the Japanese won World War II and divided spoils by governing the United States, dividing it between each coast respectively. The German Reich controls the eastern seaboard and the Japanese Empire controls the west.

The Rockies and a handful of midwestern territories are all that's left of the "free territories". The novel centers around various characters on both sides and search to find the author of a inflammatory book called "The Grasshopper Lies Heavy" which depicts what it might of been like if the U.S. and Britain had succeeded in winning the war.

A good book though the end left me a bit wanting. Definitly a memorable read and worth checking out as "alternate histories" go.

[Nathan]

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke is not exactly alternate history in the sense that these other books are. It is more about the two titular characters, but it is set in an alternate magical England in the early 19th century. It's wonderful.

[Ty]

What a good topic!

The most thought-provoking alternative history book I've read was Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt. The author certainly did his homework when writing his book about a world where the entire population of Europe has been wiped out by the Black Plague.

John Christopher's Fireball and its sequels make for fantastic reading and was my first introduction to alternative history. Europe is still undergoing the inquisition, Mesoamerican civilization is flourishing, and the Chinese (and their technology) are in America...

Acknud, Alternative WW2 books are great - I second Keegan's nomination of Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle. It is pretty gripping. You might also like Robert Harris's Fatherland, with a similar premise set in the '60s, except that the United States is still free, under JFK.

I understand Harry Turtledove's books about a US split along Civil War lines is quite popular, but the premise for me was dashed when I realised down the track that North and South would unite to fight off an alien invasion. (huh?)

Can't wait to read some of the books mentioned here...

[Lori]

Donna, I loved The Yiddish Policeman's Union.

And Robinson's Years of Rice and Salt was very good too.

Tim Power's books could be referred to as alternative history. It's hard to pin him down in any genre, his stuff is also fantastical.

I have yet to read it, but the first book that comes to mind is Plot Against America, by Philip Roth. Hitler wins, America changes.

There's another one about Richard III, I'll wrack my brains trying to think of the title.

Thanks for all the above book suggestions! I do like this genre.

[[deleted user]]

Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus was an easy read about time travelers creating multiple alternate histories. Probably not the deepest book on this list, but you'll probably find it fun.

[Allison]

it's a good book. but there's a sequel that's not so great...

[M.D.]

Try Darwinia by Robert Charles Wilson. The latter part of the book is kinda weird, but it's a fascinating story.

[Allie]

I read 'Worldwar: In the Balance' by Harry Turtledove a few weeks ago, which is sci-fi kind of alternate fiction. Set in WWII, with aliens, basically. I was actually quite disappointed by it, but have read a lot of positive reviews around the place. I think my own reservations were relating to the writing style.

As Ty mentioned though, I've heard really good things about his civil war alternative history series (Guns of the South? etc), and think that perhaps the ideas that I had expected to find in WorldWar would be able to be explored a bit better without the lizard-alien dynamic. Lizard-aliens are great and all, but do change things a bit :)

[Melissa]

Uchronia! Whoohoo!

Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut is another WWII alternate history and I second the recommendation for The Plot Against America.

Connie Willis has a few books that deal with time travel, changing histories, and other temporal shifts that might be interesting to you. To Say Nothing of the Dog, Fire Watch, and Doomsday Book are particularly grounded in British history.

[Kersplebedeb]

i think Orwell's 1984 merits mention in this category - and props for being probably the most well-known and influential alternate history every written. So much so, that i keep forgetting it would qualify as SF.

Like it seems everyone else, i have to tip my hat to Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt, i loved it as did my nephew whom i lent my copy to. SPOILERS: While Robinson occasionally slips into the didactic, his reincarnation-plot-device works brilliantly, and provides a nice open ended backdrop to the myriad lives we are introduced to. The only thing that i thought a bit "cheap" was the way in which the lack of europeans simply allowed certain other civilizations to flourish, but with an end result "modern era" much like our own. While it was nice to see an author acknowledge the Haudenosaunee's world significance, a friend has pointed out that they are the only North American nation to get any kind of serious treatment in Robinson's alternate world. Another writer i remember pointed out that Robinson's Haudenosaunee are in many ways similar to how American's mythologize themselves (freedom loving, out to save the world, etc.), while the Chinese in Robinson's world end up like the Chinese today, an oppressive dictatorship.

You may also want to check out Fire on the Mountain, by Terry Bisson. It's an alternate history of what would have happened had Harriet Tubman been along to help John Brown, and had the raid on Harper's Ferry succeeded. My politics are relatively close to Bisson's i think, and a lot of his references are fairly superficial and obvious when viewed in light of certain pro-national liberation communist groups from the 1970s and 80s, but i'm guessing it would seem more fresh to most readers.

Gotta say, although many friends and i disagree on this point, and i consider myself as much a PKD fan as the next guy, The Man in the High Castle was a dud for me. Dick's brilliance to me is where he gets me shaking my head not even being able to imagine how one could imagine the humourous, tragic weirdnesses he does (lots of drugs, pain, and mental illness i think is the answer) - there was none or little of this in Man in the High Castle. Guess it didn't help that someone had already told me how it ended...

In general i do not enjoy alternate history, and it is a genre i try and avoid (though with obvious exceptions). In light of which, i'm not sure if it "counts" or not, but i really loved the short story "The Pacific Mystery" by Stephen Baxter. A "how would history have unfolded" if the earth was bit bigger...

[katie]

what is the sequel about, allison?

[Cairnraiser]

I was unsure whether I should mention this as it's not strictly alternate history, but 1632 by Eric Flint is about Grantville, a small town in WV, which is somehow transported back in time to Germany in 1632.
The book deals with the changes brought about in society, diplomacy and warfare when modern technology and philosophy is introduced into a time completely unprepared for it.
"1632" has spawned a number of sequels and short story compilations, not all of them written by Flint himself.

[The other John]

Harry Turtledove has a whole mess of alternate history novels. It's quite a challenge to keep them all straight. There's the Worldwar series in which the second World War is interrupted by invading aliens. Then there's the 11-part Timeline-191 series which has no aliens but features 80+ years of on and off conflict between the United States and the victorious Confederate States of America. (I just finished reading that series and I can recommend the initial novel, How Few Remain, and the first trilogy, The Great War. The subsequent novels are lesser efforts.) And there's also an unrelated novel, The Guns of the South, which also features the Civil War, but involves time travelers providing the Confederates with AK-47s.

[[deleted user]]

You can't get much more alternate than West of Eden. I didn't realize there were sequels. Where can the author possibly go after writing about having sex with dinosaurs?!

[Ty]

Kersplebedeb, I'm interested in how you distinguish between 'alternate history' and 'science fiction'? I would have thought that Nineteen Eighty-Four fell into the latter category, as it was written prospectively, not retrospectively. I agree that it is a great book, and in my eyes is probably one of the most influential books of the 20th century.

[Kersplebedeb]

Right you are!
i was wrong - i think because reading 1984 today is for all intents like reading an alternate history. i had almost mentioned Swastika Night in the alternate history category, but had noticed the problem (a Nazis-won-the-war novel, it was first publishedin 1937), but then made the same mistake with Orwell.

Which makes me wonder - will other SF, especially the "happening five minutes from now" variety - read as "alternate history" eventually?

[Shannon]

The Temeraire series by Naomi Novik, starting with His Majesty's Dragon, is set during the Napoleonic War.

In a way, the Kushiel Series by Jacqueline Carey is an alternate version of Europe - in setting at least. But not so much history. Still, they're good books :)

[Sandi]

Strictly speaking, wouldn't alternate history be a sub-genre of science fiction/fantasy that addresses "what if historical event X never happened or happened differently"? Other science fiction sub-genres that might be confused with it would be parallel universe stories and time-travel stories in which a time traveler changes history. To add to the confusion would be old science fiction stories that take place in a future that is now the past, like "1984" and "2001: A Space Odyssey."

Oh, and let us not forget the general fiction sub-genre of historical fiction--fictional stories that take place in a historical setting and may or may not include historical events.

A true science fiction/fantasy alternate history would be a book like "The Man in the High Castle" by Philip K. Dick, "The Difference Engine" by Bruce Sterling and William Gibson, or "Fatherland" by Richard Harris.

[Brooke]

In a way, the Kushiel Series by Jacqueline Carey is an alternate version of Europe - in setting at least. But not so much history. Still, they're good books :)

Those are a lot like Guy Gavriel Kay's books, which are meticulously researched but are more "historical fantasy" than anything else. I love how the real history and culture sort of bleeds through and inspires the stories.

[M.D.]

I'd definitely classify alternate history into speculative fiction rather than science fiction, because a lot of novels defy the science aspect but don't quite fall into the fantasy genre. Think Jurassic Park, for instance. Granted it's not alternate history but it's not science fiction either.

Darwinia is probably a better example; it's a very different version of the twentieth century but the ending falls almost into the fantastic (I won't give spoilers here). Spin, another Wilson book, happens in the twentieth century and could nearly be called alternate history and although it's based on solid science the entire premise is more speculatively fantastic than scientific.

That's why more and more the term speculative fiction (although one might argue that all fiction is speculative) is more appropriate or more all-encompassing and I prefer it to breaking down novels into science-fiction and fantasy sub-genres.

[Sandi]

M.D., do you think it would behoove booksellers to get rid of the "Science Fiction/Fantasy" sections and move to "Speculative Fiction" sections instead? Is the current genre system in book stores and among publishers outdated?

[[deleted user]]

M.d. I didn't read Jurassic Park, just saw the movie. Why wouldn't you consider that science fiction?

[M.D.]

Sandi,

The current genre system is definitely outdated and handcuffs many publishers. Instead of trying to publish good novels they will buy only those that they can classify into a genre; that's why mixed genre took so long to emerge in fiction other than romance, which has always embraced multi-level stories (romantic suspense, paranormal romance, etc.)

As an example, take Dave Duncan's new Apprentice series. Dave is the author of the King's Blades series, a strong fantasy story. Then he comes out with his Apprentice series (The Alchemist's Apprentice) which is set in medieval Venice and features Nostradamus and his apprentice. I would classify it more a series of historical mystery novels with fantasy elements (hence reverting to speculative fiction) than a fantasy novel, which is its classification. If you pick up this book an expect something like the Blades, you'll be disappointed, because it's not. (The Apprentice books are awesome, BTW). Mieville, Doctorow, Wilson, deLint, Morgan, all those authors are somewhat unclassifiable because they basically write what they need to write. Yet, everyone is trying to fit them into slots. Even Atwood, who frantically denies writing science fiction (Oryx and Crake, The Handmaid's Tale), could be said to have stepped out of the slot she's been put in. If she's not writing SF, what is she writing?

I'm not sure who is in charge of classifying books, whether it's bookstores or publishers. I have a feeling it's the latter and, until the public is more familiar with the term Spec Fic, they'll continue to rattle about SF&F with a multitude of sub-genre.

My problem with using Science Fiction as a term for novels is that people immediately think Star Wars... and teenager-level fiction. People think SF, they think movies, and special effects with thin plots. Star Wars has effectively ruined the literary science fiction genre; people don't believe in it any more. Yet, when I read Nalo Hopkinson, Holly Phillips, Robert Charles Wilson, Mary Doria Russell, all of whom cannot be easily classified into SF, I cannot help but think literary Spec Fic.

[M.D.]

Sue,

I'd consider it speculative fiction but not science fiction because the science is made up, not only from a DNA/cloning perspective, but from the availability of enough variety of dinosaurs to make up that island. As well, many of these dinosaurs didn't live in the same era so it's impossible to know how they would have survived. There's also not enough known on their behaviour, their diets, the way they bore their young, their diseases, their social structures, their mating habits, etc... for it to be credible, not only with one dinosaur but with a whole slew of them.

It's a cool "what if" story line, and uses pseudo-scientific elements, so my way of looking at it is that it's either a thriller or a speculative fiction story.

[[deleted user]]

M.d.

If you were going to turn it into science fiction, what would it look like? Take the cloning aspect for instance. What would need to change in the story to make it plausible?

[[deleted user]]

"not enough genetic material to be making all those kinds of dinosaurs"

So what you mean is that we don't have enough variety of genetic material? In other words we have the genetic material of a brontosaurus but not all the other dinosaurs? I would have thought that the implausibility would be that stem cells don't survive fossilization.

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding your point, but I really want to know the specifics of this.

Thanks for your explanation.

[[deleted user]]

I haven't read it we can't find the unabriged version.

[Kevin]

In the presence of mine enemies. Harry turtle dove.

Its modern day germany. Nazis won WWII. And Jews are in hiding. A German office is one of these Jews.

A hell of a story.

[Kelle]

There isn't an unabridged version. Check out Princess Bride on Wikipedia. The context section is particularly enlightening. I had no idea until I read that. Bummer... would have liked a longer version.

[Robyn]

Laura wrote: "Well, I started to read the Wiliam Goldman one I think last year, and I was so bummed out b/c I didn't watn to hear about some guy who's checking out some blonde by the pool while trying to track d..."

There is no "Unabridged version" That is all kind of a trick by William Goldman. William Goldman is the origional author of the Princess Bride, (just so you know)

[Aurora]

I think it funny how William Goldman goes on how many pages he cut out and what was on those pages.