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27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
What If Scenarios, August 24, 2005
Virtually every historian, amateur or professional, has asked the question --- What if ? What if Hannibal had not made it across the Alps ?
What if Germany had won the Battle of Britain ?
What if the South had won the Civil War ?
That's the question Harry Turtledove tries to answer in The Guns of The South.
The book begins in the winter camp of the Army of Northern Virginia. Robert E. Lee, only months from the defeat at Gettysburg, ponders yet another spring and summer of confrontation with the North when he is approached by a man offering him an unparallelled advantage in the war --- weaponry from the 20th Century in the form of the AK-47. As it turns out, this man is the leader of a group of South African whites who have traveled back in time to 1864 in an effort to change the course of history and create in the Confederate States of America a power center for the white race into the 21st Century.
The course of a Civil War changed by automatic weaponry is predictable. Instead of winning the Battle of the Wilderness, the Army of the Potomac suffers a horrible defeat at the hands of the Lee's men and begins a retreat back to Washington that never succeeds.
The first half of the book ends with the Confederate Army on the lawn of the White House as General Lee accepts the surrender of Abraham Lincoln. The description of battles that never took place --- in Bealton, Virginia and Rockville, Maryland --- is gripping and the vision created by the description of Lincoln and Lee standing on the White House Lawn amidst a sea of Confederate Gray made me wish the book had been made into a movie.
The second half of the book is where the interesting things happen. The South has won its independence and now, the question is, what will it do with it ? Reflected primarily through the character of Robert E. Lee and First Sgt. Nate Caudell, Turtledove paints a picture of a Confederacy not entirely at ease with the institution that sets it apart from its Northern neighbor -- slavery. As Lee begins his path toward the Presidency of the Confederacy, he begins to question whether slavery should continue and comes to a conclusion that puts him at odds with the foreign benefactors who gave the South the means to achieve its independence.
Ultimately, this book tries to answer the question of what the Civil War was really about. Was it about state's rights and federalism as modern-day Southern partisans would claim, or was it really about slavery and the domination of one race of men by another ? I'm not sure I agree that an independent South would have given up slavery as easily as the author suggests, but he presents a compelling case.
On some level, though, I found this book disappointing. It wasn't true alternate history. It was history manipulated by the deus ex machina of time traveling South African racists. I would much rather see a story that took history has it actually occurred and simply changed the outcome of one event. That, apparently, is what How Few Remain and the books that follow it is about. That is a story I look forward to seeing unfold.
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Almost all sci-fi looks at the future. Almost all..., March 29, 1999
Time travel, as absurd and unlikely a concept that it is, has long enamored science fiction fans. Witness the incredible box-office returns of the "Back to the Future" and "Terminator" films -- movies about as far apart in overall audience appeal as one can get, yet both dealing with the same basic premise. Most of the genre deals with the potential paradoxes involved, and a few (David Gerrold's "The Man Who Folded Himself" springs to mind) investigate the logistical issues. Yet Turtledove takes a completely different approach: Who cares about Paradoxes, if you had a time machine, what would you do with it? If you could change history, what even would you alter? For a renegade band of South African mercenaries, the answer is easy: Change the outcome of the Civil War. At risk of dating myself, I remember a long-ago Saturday Nigh Live sketch in which Napolean was given a B52. Absurdist comedy, nothing more. Yet the intriguing cover of this book shows Robert E. Lee holding an AK-47. What if, indeed? The mechanics of the time machine are not investigated, nor should they be, as this is a historical novel as opposed to a sci-fi novel. I find it more akin to "Killer Angels" than anything by, say, Arthur Clarke. Instead we are given an in-depth look at Lee, plus a schoolteacher-turned-first seargent from North Carolina, as they both watch the Civil War unfold in a manner completely different from what you and I were taught in history class. Turtledove's eye for detail is, as always, keen; after reading the first chapter, the reader could probably pick up, load, and fire an AK47. We meet characters from the 47th North Carolina, and spend a winter and a few battles with them. We see first hand how women and blacks are integrated -- or rather, NOT integrated -- into the southern society, not out of any particular hostility by the white men who run the south, but more as an extension of tradition. It is difficult to read about Nate Caudell, a poor schoolteacher who is without a doubt the most learned man in his community (but one who uses the "n-word" with familiarity) and not have him shatter the image of the backwoods racist redneck (not to worry, there are plenty of those as well). Turtledove completely avoids the paradox issue; we assume that the Afrikanners are building a new world that will evolve from 1864, not changing their own planet Earth of 2014. But even early on, I felt a bit of a chill, as an obscure colonel named Rutherford Hayes is casually mentioned to have perished in a battle. Should the South Africans gather their automatic weapons and retreat into the future, the world has already been irrevocably changed (especially for me; Hayes is (was) a distant relative. And my great-great grandfather was wounded at Petersburg, a battle that never happens in Turtledove's world. Can I be reading this if I don't exist?). Quite possibly the perfect airplane book, "The Guns of the South" strikes a balance between being thought-provoking and entertaining.
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49 of 63 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Could've used a good editor, December 2, 2000
Harry Turtledove, Guns of the South (Del Rey, 1992) Time to make shish kebab out of another sacred cow. Guns of the South is considered THE alternate history novel by many, the one alternate history novel that should be required reading in history classes and on just about every historian's list of must-read Civil War books. And to be fair, it's almost that good. Really. As with most fiction of the speculative type, especially alternate-history speculative fiction, the plot can be summed up by asking one simple question. In that case, "what if the South won the American Civil War?" The book is essentially divided into two halves; the first half takes place during the war, and the second half afterwards. And when Turtledove is writing battle scenes, he shines. The first half of the book flies by. It's a page-turner to end all page-turners. Unfortunately, when Robert E. Lee moves from military command to political life, the story bogs down. Badly. It does pick up again, a hundred or so pages later, but there are a few places in the book where the pace gets so glacial I started to think I'd accidentally picked up Frank Herbert's Children of Dune instead. Yes, it gets that slow. It all wraps up pretty nicely, but the journey to get from point A to point B can sure be hard sometimes. ** 1/2
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