Customer Reviews

History Revisited: The Great Battles, Eminent Historians Take on the Great Works of Alternative History

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This collection contains six alternate history short stories: "Southern Strategy" by Michael Flynn; "Empire" by William Sanders; "The Lucky Strike" by Kim Stanley Robinson; "The Daimon" and "Must and Shall" by Harry Turtledove; and "Vive L'Amiral" by John Mina. It also contains seven non-fiction essays where various historians discuss the real-world history of the events in the stories and weigh in on how plausible these alternate versions of events are.

The six stories are all well-written but all of them have appeared in past anthologies. The information and opinions in the essays will also probably be familiar to most fans of the alt-history genre. So this book, while enjoyable, doesn't offer much that is new to genre fans. However, it would make a good introduction to the alt-history genre.

I found this book somewhat less than enjoyable. In addition to the problem of the stories having appeared previously, having them picked apart in the included essays was both tedious and unnecessary. Most of the historians could have made the required points in a quarter of the space actually provided. Some of the additional comment approached the length of the actual story.

I might have liked reading some of these stories again if the historical essays had not sucked the life out of them.

History Revisited: The Great Battles
Edited by J David Markham and Mike Resnick

In concept, this is a great idea. Take some classic military oriented AH short stories: Southern Strategy by Michael Flynn. Must and Shall by Harry Turtledove. The Lucky Strike by Kim Stanley Robinson. Having some classic AH stories in one volume is a great idea in general. Then, each of these stories, pair them with an essay from a bonafide historian exploring the divergence, and its plausiblity.

Such are the lines that History Revisited are built upon. In practice, however, its a failure.

Uniformly, the essays by the historians are long, dull, and unimaginative. The historians mostly reject the scenarios posited by the science fiction writers, and in the worst offenders, seem to look down upon the very idea of the alternative. It is the exception, not the rule, when a historian actually likes the story that he has been paired with, rather than at best bemusement. This sort of condescension takes the wind out of reading the story, if one reads the paired essay immediately afterwards.

This, in my opinion makes the reading experience of the stories less pleasurable and it is for that reason that I don't really recommend this collection--unless you *like* to poke holes in Alternate Histories. If you read AH stories to see where Turtledove or Flynn "clearly got it wrong" and grouse about it, then this collection is definitely your cup of tea. If, instead, you enjoy AH stories on their own merits, you can either read the stories and skip the essays, or if you read the essays, I recommend you read them removed in time and space from the story itself. Otherwise, the pleasure of reading the stories will be diminished, as it was from me.