Best. Alternate. History. Novel. Ever.
Seriously: Best. Alternate. History. Novel. Ever. Period. End Sentence.
I love alternate history novels. I like a window in to worlds where established history traveled down a different road from our own. I love visions of the myriad different ways the modern world could have turned out. I adore the questions of identity that arise when you see how people could have turned out differently had they lived through altered circumstances.
Even so, it’s a sub-genre that tends to annoy most, and not without good reason. As Niven one pointed out, it’s too easy: anyone with a good almanac or a history book can write their own alternate history. It’s also frequently badly done. For every good book like Bring the Jubilee (1953) or Ada (1969) or The Man in the High Castle (1962), or hilarious like The Kennedy Enterprise (1992), you’ve got a zillion half-assed ones like A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah (1972) (in which we loose the American Revolution, and are still part of the British Empire, and yet the Kennedys are still a political dynasty, and Texans still wear cowboy hats), or Fire on the Mountain (1988) where a the American South ends up as a communist hyper technologically advanced independent black nation called “Nova Africa,” that launches missions to Mars in the 50s, and in which Elvis is an auto mechanic. Really. A fundamental flaw in the logic of these books seems to be wish fulfillment, rather than a realistic extrapolation of history. I read one short story where Abraham Lincoln *Wasn’t* assassinated, and became such a hero that the Russians venerated him, established a constitutional monarch based on his example, and Communism never got off the ground. What? How is any of that likely? If Lincoln had survived, he’d have been more likely to have been impeached than venerated. Gah. Or then there’s the Probability Broach series, in which George Washington is hung by irate unpaid soldiers shortly after the Revolution, thereby causing the US to become a libertarian utopia in which monkeys can talk. And vote. Really. How much of that follows logically?
Another disadvantage is that Alternate Histories tend to be entirely too culturally based. We’ve all seen a zillion “The South Won The Civil War” stories, and frankly it’s become a bit of a bore. Likewise, if someone did a novel where an alternate history evolved from a Oliver Cromwell getting defeated during the English Civil War, would anyone outside of England care?
So I’ll admit that there’s a lot of low cards in that particular hand, and yet I love it still because there are aspects of SF that no other subgenre can touch, that no other form of writing can do. When it’s done correctly (which I’ll be the first one to admit doesn’t happen very often). Yet I'm the first to admit that Alternate History is, and has always been, a somewhat faithless lover.
But shall I tell you what bugs me most about Alternate histories? They’re all about war. Now, I’ve got nothing against war as a plot device, but virtually every Alternate Timeline diverges off as the result of a war. Generally, it’s the same, too: What if the Bad Guys won The Revolution, The Civil War, Either of the World
Follow us on Twitter! Stay up to date on new posts, goodies and whatnot!
All content copyright by its respective creators 2008-2010 The 'Republibot' name, 'Elephant Logo' and associated intellectual property is the property of the Republibot Partnership; All rights reserved
| Arthemia is based on the original design by Michael Hutagalung.
Comments
27 December 2008
4 min 29 sec
Yeah. The MOL and the Dyna-Soar were both the results of an ongoing turf war between NASA and the USAF back in the day. The USAF wanted their own manned space program, and NASA felt that was a threat to them, so they whined to Congress and had it repeatedly shut down.
The Dyna-Soar would very likely have been a disaster, but it probably should have been tried anyway. Assuming it didn't turn out to be an aviation coffin - and believe you me, there were a skillion things that could have gone wrong with it - we would have learned a lot about resusable spacecraft from it, and spaceplanes. Very likely, had it gone through it's not-terribly-ambitious test schedule (10 launches in 7 years), we would have learned enough to realize the Shuttle was a bad idea, and never would have built the thing.
The MOL, however, was a neat, cool, and sexy idea that really *should* have been done, though the DOD was right that satellites did it safer and cheapter. That's not the point, however: the man-in-space experience gained would have been phenominal. The MOL was *not* a permanently-manned station, however. In fact, it was to be a series of small "Disposable" stations with a 40-day lifespan. Lots of specific details here http://www.astronautix.com/craft/mol.htm
Though I totally believe shutting down Apollo 3 missions early was a travesty, I have to admit we wouldn't have that much more day-to-day stuff to show for it if we'd used the final three missions. We *might* (Though doubtful) have made a landing on farside. There's a fair chance that Apollo 19 would have had a fatal disaster en rout, based on what we know in hindsight. But even if we'd done all that, and had the MOL and the DynaSoar, I don't think we'd have been on Mars, or anything cool like that by now. There were simply no plans in place for that. In 1970, six months after the moon landing, Spiro Agnew gave a big speech on the steps of the white house about how we should go on to Mars and he outlined a plan that would have had us there by 1981, and he was booed! Openly booed! People just weren't interested in it at the time, damn filthy hippies.
There were *never* any plans for a moonbase. Never. We *might* have had a Skylab kind of station orbiting the moon, but that's as far as it goes.
27 June 2009
2 hours 1 min
I have not read this book and it sounds like I should, my read stack is about four feet hight right now so when I will get to it is anyones guess. It seems to fit into a series of stuff I have read surfing the net the last few days.
First it seems I am in the new generation that all the social science egg heads are talking about because of the president. Generation Jones born between 1954 and 1965, I was brought screaming into the world in 1960. We Joneses are less optimistic, distrustful of government, and have a general cynicism. I thought that made me a libertarian but who know. The egg heads state that this state was brought on by us being promised the stars and all we got was the shitty ISS or something like that. Again I thought I was distrustful because of LBJ, less optimistic because our leaders have no vision and my cynicism was because I was from New York City.
Well this Jones thing seems to tie into the web pages I have hit since I read your review. First because it is close to the anniversary of Apollo 11 I was reading a few articles about that event. This lead me to some other stuff about the space program of the 60's notably the air forces maned orbital laboratory and the plan some in NASA and the Air Force were pushing for project Gemini and the X 20 Dyna-Soar project.
Two that jump right out that may have changed history in a similar way that Baxter envisioned are the Maned Orbital Laboratory and the Gemini moon lander project. As a kid I read every thing I could get about the space program saved every newspaper about Apollo (lost when my mother shit canned all my stuff when I was in the Navy), so I know that Von Braun thought we should build a space station first then go to the moon from there. The Orbital Laboratory could have gave us that while NASA did the what some thought to be the one time stunt of Apollo. The Laboratory was to be an Air Force recon station to be maned at all times over years. This could have grown into a real orbital station like the one in 2001. The Gemini moon lander was part of the direct to the moon argument that went on before and after the start of Apollo. The general idea was an unmanned habitat would be sent to the moon and a maned lander would follow. This would allow the landing crew to stay on the moon for months at a time and cost less because it used the already developed Titan launcher and a modified Gemini. You can see this in the 1968 movie Countdown with James Caan. This idea was killed by LBJ because he was using Apollo as a pork program for Texas and other southern states. The Orbital Lab was killed because the Air Force and the CIA determined that unmanned spy satellites where better and cheaper, that sounds like the old robot vs. man flight we hear all the time (or as I call it the scientist full employment plan).
We could have done better than we did, but I believe we have never had a President or congress that truly believed in a space program with the goal of colonies. Most people are one Earthers they believe there is only one world where we can live in so they do not want anyone to try anything that might prove that wrong.