Picked because I am begging mainstream writers, once again: please stop assuming that you can write alternate history novels simply because you can write regular ones. The genre has conventions. These conventions exist for a reason. You actually have to justify your change points. Len Deighton’s SS-GB is one of the few times where a mainstream author managed to make it all work, and ‘Nazis win WWII’ is easy mode. Don’t think you can just call it in.
(No, I’m not going to tell you what book set me off. It’s actually not a bad book, as long as you can turn off your knowledge of recent history. I don’t want to shame it, or the author.)
#commissionearned
When Turtledove’s “Guns of the South” is the most common recommendation for alternate history (instead of the variant time travel story it is), there’s obviously widespread confusion about what alternate history even is.
(For the record, Apartheid South Africans bringing ten thousand AK-47s back in time to prop up the Confederacy, ain’t it.)
Turtledove has a great grasp of the facts of the Civil War, which adds remarkable depth to the story. But I really don’t think I agree with his interpretation of the human behavior of his historical characters. I just didn’t believe that all of the characters would respond the way he had them do so, to get to the “enlightened ending”. I spent a few years wondering if my interpretation of the people had been mislead, but as I do more reading on my own, I wonder instead if perhaps Turtle wrote the ending he wanted, rather than the logical conclusion of the story’s precepts.
If you can justify sending tons of material over a century back in time, wishful thinking is nothing.
(It just willfully ignores everything we know about Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens. “The Lost Cause” was a real thing, but it was lost before the Yankees got involved. It was lost when the planters, led by Davis, knifed Toombs in the back and rolled the idealists in the confederate constitutional convention.)
I think he wrote “How Few Remain” because “Guns of the South” kept being pushed as alternate history, and he wanted to show what a real alternate history of the South winning the ACW would look like.
And even though I’d argue (at length) that it’s a much better book, it’s nowhere near as popular.