Alternate History

[catsmate]

No apologies for reviving this excellent thread. I've just read "Dominion" by CJ Sansom and I was pretty pleased with it really. Basically it is a thriller set, in 1952, against the backdrop of a Britain where Churchill had failed to secure the post of prime minister, resulting in a surrender to the Nazis after Dunkirk and Britain becoming a Dominion of Germany. It came across as well researched with good characterisation, excellent back stories and a wonderfully, clinically cruel but disturbingly sympathetic baddie.

Well, they say you get more right-wing as you get older!

Yuri

I like that book. I recommend The Windsor Faction; no Wallis Simpson, no abdication, a weak, vain and pro-Nazi King Edward VIII.

Don't like Turtledove, because in what little I have read, where I know a little about things, I find gaping errors. And I am very far from an expert.

And his conceit of having famous people in a completely different role and background but the same name and some similar attributes, just grated. Upthread, there was a mention of him putting Castro somewhere irrelevant, which is similar to what I was thinking.

Yeah, Turtledove drags after a while. His one-off novels are usually OK.

 

[I Ratant]

"The Man in the High Castle" is the most prominent I can recall.
I did enjoy "The Ugly Chickens".
F&SF has run many AH short stories..
I recall one where an expedition from Europe with some Japanese members was going east to west across the US.. Possibly written by the author of "The Princess Bride"...?
A scurrilious slur on the Japanese is about the most I can recall of that one.
But on the whole, AH's can be fun to read and think about.

 

[Jarlaxle]

New to the party, but yes I liked that too.

Don't like Turtledove, because in what little I have read, where I know a little about things, I find gaping errors. And I am very far from an expert.

And his conceit of having famous people in a completely different role and background but the same name and some similar attributes, just grated. Upthread, there was a mention of him putting Castro somewhere irrelevant, which is similar to what I was thinking.

I vaguely recall in his TL-191 series, that an adviser to the US Army was Colonel Guderian. His aide was an NCO, a short, lean man with dark hair, a funny-looking mustache, and whose German had an Austrian accent.

 

[fleabeetle]

No apologies for reviving this excellent thread. I've just read "Dominion" by CJ Sansom and I was pretty pleased with it really. Basically it is a thriller set, in 1952, against the backdrop of a Britain where Churchill had failed to secure the post of prime minister, resulting in a surrender to the Nazis after Dunkirk and Britain becoming a Dominion of Germany. It came across as well researched with good characterisation, excellent back stories and a wonderfully, clinically cruel but disturbingly sympathetic baddie.

Well, they say you get more right-wing as you get older!

Yuri

I ran across "Dominion" just recently; mostly, loved it. Found much of the lesser, "background" stuff fascinating -- for instance, the world political map as per the book's scenario -- among other things, Switzerland has ceased to be, carved-up between Germany, France and Italy (and the Swiss banks' contents, appropriated); with Britain and France making peace with the Nazis in 1940, the USA never enters the war -- Japan does not go to war with the US, and in 1952 is in possession of much of China, and a patchwork of parts of south-east Asia.

Also, general conditions of life in Britain -- various detail differences from "our time-line" 's 1952, some things more advanced, some less: e.g., in emulation of admired and dominant Germany's autobahns, there is already an M1 motorway running north from London -- which took nearly another decade to come about in "OTL".

I like that book. I recommend The Windsor Faction; no Wallis Simpson, no abdication, a weak, vain and pro-Nazi King Edward VIII.

Thanks. Must look that one out.

 

[catsmate]

It's interesting how's there's a continual trickle of 'mainstream' AH these days; it's no longer just a sci-fi sub-genre.

Of course the Kennedy anniversary has led to a few speculations; apart from King's 11/22/63 there are Turtledove Zabel's Winter of Our Discontent, Greenfield's If Kennedy Lived and Zabel's own Surrounded by Enemies. Plus numerous re-issues of older works.