![]() This is an America where the Constitution is no longer worth the paper it’s printed on, and civil liberties is a dirty phrase. In “We Could Do Worse”, Gregory Benford paints a chilling picture of a United States in which Joe McCarthy becomes president. It’s a slow and thoughtful meditation on the conflict between occupier and occupied. She becomes a target of affection for the new consul and aims to seduce him, only to discover that foreigners are more complex than they appear. Instead, it swallows the Byzantine empire in a single, mighty gulp! The protagonist of this story is a rich, single woman in Venice, watching the Romans move in to occupy her city. ![]() Robert Silverberg’s“An Outpost of the Empire” posits that the Roman empire never fell. ![]() It’s intriguing, because Turtledove taps into the cultural tension that is still present, to some extent, in the United States today. ![]() The South is a much less forgiving place the United States are not so much united as held together by the iron fist of the North. What makes this story stand out against all the other Civil War alternative history is how Turtledove then jumps towards the present day and shows the consequences of this divergence. In this case, a stray Confederate bullet kills Lincoln in his first term as he peers over the battlements, so his vice president inherits and the Civil War becomes a much bloodier affair. It diverges during the American Civil War, an all-too-popular event in alternate history. “Must and Shall” is a Harry Turtledove story. Though I’m disappointed that not one of the ten contributors is a woman, the stories themselves are much more thoughtful and interesting than those I encountered in Other Earths. The premise is similar, but in this case the stories were all previously published in either Analog or Amazing. Now I’m dipping into this specialized sub-genre again with Roads Not Taken. Not that long ago, I sampled another anthology of alternate history, Other Earths. But if you’re looking for some nice, quality alternate history tales, this volume is worth checking out. The only potential drawback is that none of the stories are original to this volume all have appeared in magazine form before, either in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine or Analog Science Fiction and Fact. I found each one of these 10 stories to be entertaining at the very least and many were quite thought provoking. There are some big name authors in here including the aforementioned Benford and Resnick but also giants of the field such as Harry Turtledove, Robert Silverberg, L. Gardner Dozois, whom I have long regarded as one of the best science fiction magazine editors in history (Asimov’s 1984-2004) and a marvelous author in his own right, along with Stanley Schmidt have put together a very nice collection of alternate history stories. Sure, a reader can enjoy a good yarn about a what-if scenario along the lines of “What if…General Washington succumbed to the harsh winter at Valley Forge and somebody else stepped into his role?” That tale could be good if well told, but in a story that deals with the subtleties of McCarthyism (Gregory Benford’s “We Could Do Worse”) or involves the personality of Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Rider escapades (Mike Resnick’s “Over There”) a reader might not be so enamored of the piece if they didn’t know too much about the subject. I like to consider myself an amateur/armchair historian and I think a healthy appreciation for and understanding of history is essential if one is to fully appreciate high quality alternate history. How I Lost the Second World War and Helped Turn Back the German Invasion.Enter worlds that are at once fanciful and familiar, where fact and fiction meld in a provocative landscape of infinite possibilities. Alternate History: The What-If? fiction that has finally come into its own! Shedding light on the past by exploring what could have happened, this bold genre tantalizes your imagination and challenges your perceptions with thrilling reinventions of humanity's most climactic events.
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