Customer Reviews

The Tranquility Alternative

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I have a soft spot for "alternate history" stories. Philip K. Dick's "The Man in the High Castle," which posits that the Axis powers win World War II and occupy the United States, and Len Deighton's "SS-GB," which looks at England under Nazi German occupation, are two of the best of the genre (Harry Turtledove's many such tales notwithstanding). Now I must add Allen Steele's "The Tranquillity Alternative" to the short-list of alternate history novels that I have most enjoyed.

The "space geek" will immediately feel right at home in Mr. Steele's alternate universe. This is a universe in which the first manned spaceflight, in Nazi Germany's "Amerika Bomber," takes place in 1944. It is a universe (in this way like our real one) in which NASA is in serious decline due to slashed funding, personnel cutbacks and the lack of a meaningful mission. And, most intriguing of all, it is a universe in which Dr. Wernher von Braun's early-1950's vision of a major space exploration program comes to pass. You'll find in "The Tranquillity Alternative" all of the hardware that Dr. von Braun conceived and presented to the American public via a series of stunningly illustrated articles in "Collier's Magazine" starting in 1952. The "Space Wheel" is here in all of its full rotating glory, along with the enormous three-stage reusable "ferry rocket," the "lunar reconnaissance vehicle" and the classic "moonship" that fans of Chesley Bonestell will instantly recognize. There is a U.S. lunar base under the Sea of Tranquillity. Ominously, it houses six "interplanetary" ballistic missiles, relics of the time when U.S. military planners thought that basing nuclear weapons on the moon would deter Soviet aggression on Earth (they really did believe this at one time). And there is even a nuclear-powered rocket straight out of George Pal's 1950 film "Destination Moon."

"The Tranquillity Alternative" features interesting, well-defined characters, realistic dialogue and a strong story line involving the pending transfer of the abandoned Tranquillity Base from the U.S. government to a private German space corporation. Mr. Steele keeps the action going at fever pitch as the scene shifts from Earth to the Space Wheel and on to the Moon. He throws in fascinating glimpses of everyday life that add depth and texture to his alternate universe. For example, the Kennedy Space Center is named after President Robert F. Kennedy. Elvis Presley is on tour with U2. Chuck Yeager pilots the maiden flight of NASA's giant new passenger rocket in 1956. And Irwin Allen's "Star Trek" is a top-rated television show for eight seasons between 1958 and 1966. These little throw-away hints of a very different universe from our own are jarringly unfamiliar but logically and internally consistent. They show well the amount of research, thought and hard work that Mr. Steele put into "The Tranquillity Alternative." This is fun stuff. I highly recommend it to all sci-fi readers and to anyone interested in exploring a little of "what might have been."

In this novel of alternate history, the United States has gone further in the exploration of space than in reality, yet at the same time has taken several steps back. The story is told through a series of interviews and news stories sprinkled throughout the events that occur as the US sends its last manned mission to the moon. Some different politicians have been elected, altering the course of history just enough to affect the space race.

During the Cold War, the United States built Tranquillity Base on the moon, mainly for scientific purposes, but there were also six nukes stashed a few miles away in another crater, called Teal Falcon. The government had managed to keep the nukes a secret for awhile, until outed by the media. The United States experienced a second wave of flak when it was discovered President Dole authorized their use during Desert Storm. In a symbolic gesture, just before the USA sells Tranquillity Base to a German company, it sends one last manned mission to the moon to fire the Teal Falcon missiles harmlessly into the sun.

Unbeknownst to the crew of the Conestoga, the rocket ship taking them to the moon, one of them is an impostor, his agenda unknown. While his identity is no secret, his back-up is another, unknown member of the crew. It's not Commander Gene Parnell, who had helped install Tranquillity Base all those years ago, but there is reason to suspect the two German astronauts who rendezvous with the Conestoga at a low orbit space station. Also suspect is second in command Cris Ryer, a lesbian who is being shoved out of NASA for her sexual preference, a cause of great bitterness. Along for the ride are an annoying team of journalists, Rhodes and Bromleigh, Leamore, the token Brit who works for the Germans, and Lewitt, who Commander Parnell takes into his confidence, as he can't seem to trust anyone else. Commander Parnell has only one chance to stop the unknown plot involving Teal Falcon from unfolding and creating unknown havoc, and makes a few mistakes until he figures out who his enemies really are.

Compared to other Steele novels I've read, the pace of this one is a little slow, merely meandering along until the Conestoga reaches the moon and then getting page-turningly exciting when things start to happen. It seems to be more of a sad commentary on what could happen if we lost our interest in space and its exploration than a story about bad guys trying to get their hands on nuclear weapons. Though not as gripping as some of Steele's others, this is still a good novel with a unique spin.

Has Golden Age feeling yet reads like a pulp fiction novel with a dash of hard SF in an alternative history context. The idea that humans have traveled into space before the 1950s has been written about in SF before (consider Baxter's short story collection Traces). While the idea may be a bit crackpot and conspiratorial, I find it rather dull. The book reads like pulp fiction (rather than science fiction) with flat characters and a hokey easily unfolding plot. Yet, the story line is fast paced and has twists and turns... BUT overall flat when it comes to original SF.

... It is one Steele's more gripping novels. It started slow for me - only in that I had to guide myself into Steele's alternative history and get used to Presidents McGovern and Dole. I had to convince myself that Neil Armstrong was NOT the first man on the moon. These were just minor distractions. However once I figured it all out, I became totally entrenched in this book. He breaks up each chapter with a newspaper article or television report that provides a chronological alternative history to the space program. I liked that idea. It gave it more believability. There were a few unexpected twists and turns toward the end, which I won't give away...

As usual for Steele, this is a hard sf book of the exploration of near-Earth space. But unlike Orbital Decay and Lunar Descent, The Tranquillity Alternative is not set in the near future, but in an alternate history, where the American space program started in World War II and effectively ended after a joint US-USSR expedition to Mars in 1976. The story line is intriguing because of the close similarity to real history, which makes the deviations surprising (Nixon won the 1960 elections, Robert Kennedy became President after Nixon in 69, was shot in Dallas. McGovern became president in the 70s, Dole instead of Bush was Reagan's vice president and followed him as president).

What makes alternate history hard to swallow is that one the one hand America is depicted as a nation in decline without the will to pursue objectives in space anymore - Tranquillity Base is sold to a German company - much worse than in reality: Is this meant to be the consequence of higher spending for space in the alternate history?

Another disappointment is that of the 300 page story, about 250 pages are used to depict the scenery, and only for 30 or so pages there is some action. However, the descriptive parts are most interesting and thought-provoking.

TA is anything but tame! The plot moves at breakneck speed. The characters, though somewhat cardboard, are there long enough to deliver the desired effect. Parnell, the main character, at least is a thoroughly likeable fellow. He's not a philanderer, drug abuser, or wife beater; nor is he a magnanimous prick, as several other well-known scifi authors seem to favor for their main characters. This Parnell guy is an honorable, relatively reasonable and likeable character to follow through a great Heinlein-ish plot. Indeed the likeable character is also much like RAH's own main characters in his earlier work. Therefore, the story works for me, and I believe it'll work for the mainstream audience as well because of these notoriously wonderful ingredients that make for a great read. Grab it and enjoy the ride!

Allen M. Steele writes with a combination of poetry and high energy that are rarely seen by writer's of hard science fiction. Well drawn characters draw you into a fast moving Heinleinian plot set against a backdrop of an alternate space program. The politics and the underlying message may leave you chilled, but the storyline and it's telling is handled superbly

Sorry, I wasn't satisfied with TA. I was looking for more specifics about an alternative space program that started in the 1940's. Instead, I got a silly plot set ahead to the 1990's with a disappointing ending. If you are looking for hard details about an alternative NASA and its accomplishments, try Stephen Baxter's "Voyage".