6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Enjoyable Alternate History, June 29, 2002
This review is from: Alternate Generals II (Hardcover)
Science fiction anthologies have gotten tired in recent years, perhaps reflecting a general malaise in the field over the past decade as the last of the Golden Age giants, Asimov, Anderson and Dickson, for example, have died and no authors of similar stature appear on the horizon. I am pleased to state that this volume defies the trend. The stories in this volume are, on the whole, well written and imaginative. From a world where Patton didn't slap the soldier in Sicily, to a world where the League of Nations occupies parts of the American South, the stories weave entertaining might have beens. I especially liked the story where Custer meets his end at the Battle of the Bulge!
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Alternate Editing, August 26, 2002
This review is from: Alternate Generals II (Hardcover)
I'm a bigtime Harry Turtledove fan, and eagerly grabbed this book in hopes of reading some good alternate history. For those of you unfamiliar with this term, alternate history allows the author to change an event or assumption and then write the history that would, or could, have developed with the change. Turtledove himself wrote a terrific US Civil War novel called "How Few Remain" where the South wins a crucial battle and then the war. This book takes place 20 years later with the CSA as a sovereign nation, making alliances against the USA.
Now, when I pick up an anthology edited by someone who is a big name in the field, I expect to get their expert opinion along with their expert selections. I don't think Turtledove succeeded with either. There is no introduction, conclusion, or even lead-in vignettes by the editor, and that's a tremendous lack. Unlike Turtledove, I am not a history expert, I don't know each and every turn of history referred to in these stories, despite my being reasonably well-read. All he had to do was give us an intro or an afterward on the "branching point" in the story and many would have made so much more sense. Without this, this collection would be only of interest to war-stories buffs (as would be expected since each story must include a general in it), when it could also have been a cross-over to science fiction and alternate history fans like me.
While some of the stories are good, most either plod, or don't have enough detail for someone who isn't an expert in the time period covered. My favorite piece by far was "Southern Strategy" by Michael F. Flynn, where post-WWII UN forces are occupying the US South, attempting to root out racial oppression. Many famous people in our timeline have different roles because of the occupation. Adlai Stevenson is a senator attempting to negotiate a compromise candidate between the Northern and Southern factions of the Democratic party. George Wallace is either a terrorist or a loyalist, as is Martin Luther King, Jr., in their own ways. Even Dick Nixon ensures he won't be kicked around, and there's a cameo by Elvis Presley, too. This story of occupation, despair, retribution, and futility haunted me for days. But the general in this story, Rommel, is mostly offstage. The real interest is following the different factions; the North, the Southern whites, the Southern blacks, and the occupying Germans.
"Labor Relations" by Esther Friesner, is part fantasy, part war story, and also well-written as we should expect from her. It takes place in non-contemporary Japan, but I couldn't figure out when. It appears to be a Korean occupation. I don't know if the Japanese Empress is a real character or if one of the soldiers should have been the general in real history.
"American Mandate" (James Fiscus) has the US occupying (and then withdrawing from) Turkey in 1918 at the conclusion of WWI. It's interesting and has both local color and intrigue, but like most of the stories in this book, it assumed I knew more about the time period than I did. "Horizon" (Noreen Doyle) covers ancient Egypt, and while an interesting tale, I had no idea where things had changed from our timeline. It was also far too long for a story whose point I was missing, as I couldn't identify most of the characters in the story. Chris Bunch has a story where George Custer is born years later and ends up fighting in World War II, taking Patton's place after the latter meets an early and untimely end. This was the only story to move a character in time rather than change an event, and it worked well.
Turtledove's contribution to the book is "Uncle Alf," which takes place during 1929 and a German occupation of France and Belgium (clearly they were victorious in WWI). While it's supposed to be a surprise who the narrator is, I figured it out quickly enough. Kind of a light effort for ol' Harry.
It's a shame that Turtledove didn't do the editing work despite getting his name on the cover. A little bit of background would have improved this book. But the question must be asked: are there really enough good alternative histories with generals to justify a second anthology? Go buy Alternate Generals instead, as the stories are of better quality.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Could have been MUCH better . . ., October 7, 2003
This review is from: Alternate Generals II (Hardcover)
In the past decade or so, a small group of science fiction authors and editors have made a sort of cottage industry of original anthologies of alternate history stories. Some are quite good, some are exceedingly mediocre. Several in this latest collection feature both an excellent grasp of historical cause and effect and writing of high quality, including "American Mandate," by Jim Fiscus, in which Gens. Smedley Butler and John Pershing find themselves trying to carry out the League of Nations mandate in the old Ottoman empire against the revolutionary forces of Mustapha Kemal. Another is Joel Richards's "In the Prison of His Days," which tells of the 1916 Easter Uprising in Dublin and William Butler Yeats's part in it. "George Patton Slept Here," by Roland S. Green, shows a close grasp of the details of the Italian campaign in 1943, this time led by a Patton who kept his job by managing not to slap around battle-fatigued soldiers. Chris Bunch's "Tarnished Glory," on the other hand, is the sort of quasi-alternate history that just irritates the hell out of me. He has George Armstrong Custer being born in 1885 so as to take part in WWII in the Patton role -- except that Custer's buddy Patton died in the influenza epidemic of 1918 and Custer screws up in the Battle of the Bulge instead of Sicily. The thing is, you can't just snatch a historical personage out of his proper time and plunk him down otherwhen, and pretend that his personality will still be what it was! Nurture matters at least as much as nature, and context counts! Anyway. There are a couple of other stories here of particular interest, especially Michael Flynn's "Southern Strategy," about a League of Nations incursion into the American South, and "Devil's Bargain," in which Judith Tarr allows Richard the Lion-Hearted to succeed in his quest for Jerusalem. "Horizon," by Noreen Doyle, though, is a confused and not very readable story of Akhenaten as a military conqueror, written in a style presumably meant to be reminiscent of the Book of the Dead. Susan Schwartz's "And the Glory of Them," about Behemond's conquest of Antioch, portrays the 11th century king as having almost 20th century attitudes. As much as I enjoy this particular sf theme -- when it's well done -- maybe it's time we gave it a rest.
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