Winston Churchill

Maid of Baikal

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This one came to me unsolicited from Mr. Fleming who thought I might be interested given that I’ve reviewed other alternate histories.

I agreed to review it given its original premise and, frankly, I was rather hoping the fanatical Baron Ungern-Sternberg would show up. (He doesn’t)

Review: Maid of Baikal, Preston Fleming, 2017.514j1MYvOSL

That original subtitle in my review copy, “A Speculative Historical Novel of the Russian Civil War”, hints that alternate history fans should not expect any distinct Jonbars, turning points, or “sharp agate points” (to borrow Winston Churchill’s phrase when he dabbled in alternate history) where our history diverges from Fleming’s story.

Instead, Fleming has done something else that may or may not be too much for an alternate history buff to swallow. He has given us a sincere tale of miracles and prophecies and clairvoyance. He’s given us a Russian Joan of Arc.

I’m not spoiling anything by saying that. Fleming is open about it in the description of his book, and he is true to his conceit by presenting a close analogy to the Maid of Orleans in his story. The visions of Zhanna Stepanovich Dorokhina are real, and she achieves real victories that match her prophecies.

This spiritual element didn’t bother me nor the absence of a traditional alternate history turning point. There is, of course, no known example of any such figure in the Russian Civil War. Continue reading →

Hawkmoon

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While I work through my backlog of pending reviews, we continue with old stuff and the Michael Moorcock series.

The Eternal Champion was volume 1 in White Wolf Publishing’s Moorock series. This is volume 3. I made no notes on volume 2, Von Bek, but I’d recommend it just on the basis of The War Hound and the World’s Pain being in it.

Raw Feed (1998): Hawkmoon, Michael Moorcock, 1967, 1992.Hawkmoon

“Introduction” — Short piece where Moorcock says this series of four novels was written as popular entertainment with no profundity despite some allusions to “The Beatles or well-known politicians”.

The Jewel in the Skull — I liked the character of Hawkmoon with his emotional detachment, near catatonia, awakening to become an enemy of Granbretan. I liked the Black Jewel threatening to eat his mind. I liked the villains Granbretan (Great Britain of a far future Europe). The emotional reserve and fascination for eccentric behavior, animals, and heraldry of the British is here satirized by the Orders who constantly go about in animal masks. I liked the knight in Jet and Gold.

The Mad Gods’ Amulet — Hawkmoon’s fight against the Dark Empire continues with a classic fantasy ploy – the diversion to quest after a magical item necessary for the main fight/quest. Though here Hawkmoon is unaware, for a long time, that the Runestaff has manipulated him into seeking the Mad God’s Amulet. He thinks he’s pursuing his betrothed Yisselda. I liked the Mad God and his minions (particularly the army of naked woman). I also liked the ambitious villain D’Averc with his affected illness. Hawkmoon warily accepts him as an ally. I also liked the ethereal city of Soryandum. I also liked the far future setting of this series with is antique cites and forgotten cities. Continue reading →

“Future Wars, 1890-1950”

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The review series on Brian Stableford’s Opening Minds concludes.

Review: “Future Wars, 1890-1950”, Brian Stableford, 1983.Opening Minds

Interesting look, inspired by I. F. Clarke’s Voices Prophesying War 1763-1984 (I reviewed its second edition), at the history of British future war stories from “The Battle of Dorking” (1871) on with particular emphasis on the influence of World War One on inter-war science fiction. By doing this, he is addressing a weakness he perceives in Clarke’s survey.

The “jingoism” of the British stories was unique, but American future war stories shared “the myth of a war to end war”. It shows up in works like Frank R. Stockton’s The Great War Syndicate (1899) and Stanley Waterloo’s Armageddon (1898).

World War One, of course, turned out to be nothing like anything imagined.

As it did with so much, the war changed British science fiction and imbued it with a pessimism unfelt in the American science fiction pulps that started in the inter-war period. Continue reading →

If It Had Happened Otherwise

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I’m on vacation, but I’ll still post this.

It even has some World War One material relevant for today.

This was, I believe, the first collection of academic alternate histories ever done and featured various famous historians and literary writers of the early 20th century.

This is a Raw Feed, so my historical ignorance is not as great as 29 years ago.

Raw Feed (1987): If It Had Happened Otherwise, ed. J. C. Squire, 1931, 1972.if-it-had-happened-otherwise

“Introduction”, J.C. Squire — Brief comments on academic alternate history treatises.  Emphasizes importance of causality chain beginning with trivial event (brilliantly explored in Bradbury’s “Sound of Thunder”) and how we almost always think of alternate histories as undesirable worlds to our own though this obviously depends on cultural/moral/political point of view.

“Introduction”, John Wheeler-Bennett — Brief comments on history of alternate history as literature and valid historical speculation. (His definition of alternate histories are peculiar. He includes political sf like Fail-Safe.)  He also writes on why he likes sub-genre.

“If the Moors in Spain Had Won“, Philip Guedalla — Like most essays in this book promise to be, this story (told in excerpts from travel books, history texts, diplomatic papers, and newspapers) this is a rich source for alternate world ideas. The work not only develops its premise but wryly comments on historical study:  chance events of little seeming significance to change things drastically, the events of our history were not inevitable, over reliance on economic factors in studying history, and belief that events in our history were for the best.

“If Don John of Austria Had Married Mary Queen of Scots“,  G.K. Chesterton — A rather muddled piece of writing (part of problem could be I’m not familiar with the fine points of English history) whose purpose seems to be less constructing an alternate history than an edifying Christian legend of true love (which, evidently, the rest of us mortals can not achieve due to the Original Sin) in Don John and Mary’s marriage. Chesterton’s portrayal of Mary (perhaps because he is a Catholic) seems very idealized though he does seem to validly suggest Mary was a charming, beautiful, vigorous monarch. Chesterton seems to think their marriage would have included England in a greater community (that would have been created with the marriage) of a Europe with Christian traditions and morality and Renaissance vigor and questioning. He seems to attack Puritan influence on England as culturally mordant and brutal. He does have a satirical wit in regard to the question of history and study. He also has a valid point when he says we should consider personal motives such as attraction (and, unspoken, sex) as well as great abstract motives of diplomacy and economics. (A similar point as to Ward Moore’s saying history is made by people obsessed with the trivial.) Continue reading →

What Might Have Been, Vol. 3

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The Raw Feeds continue on this anthology series.

Raw Feed (1991): What Might Have Been, Volume 3: Alternate Wars, eds. Gregory Benford and Martin H. Greenberg, 1991.Alternate Wars

“And Wild for to Hold”, Nancy Kress — This is not a kind story to Anne Boleyn, its focus. Usually Anne Bolyn is portrayed as a sympathetic woman who is interested in not only maintaining her station and virtue but ambitious, willing to rift Henry VIII away from the Catholic Church and, in the future, cause another secular/temporal rift between the Church of the Holy Hostage and the Time Research Institute. Kress does a nice job setting up another historical analog with Mary Lambert’s infatuation with Michael Culhane and Culhane’s infatuation with Boleyn mirroring Henry’s love of Boleyn. She is determined to live her life and have the drama of her averted death and she callously does not care who gets hurt in either of her time streams. Her supporters in England may be appreciated, but she is willing for them to die like her for the sake of drama and stubbornness. As the constable in the Tower of London says, “This lady hath much joy in death.” This story does something not done too often in the time travel and alternate history sub-genres. It gives us the vision of a person contemplating her own alternate history and being made responsible for deeds she did not — but was definitely going to — commit in another time stream. The weird sensation of seeing the actions and consequences of a life you did not live is well portrayed.

“Tundra Moss”, F. M. Busby — In his introduction to this anthology, Benford talks about how the fate of an entire society can depend on a single line of infantry. This is a story built around that theme. I didn’t find it that compelling. Its historical turning point has Franklin Roosevelt getting a heart attack and not making, immediately, his “Day of Infamy” speech. Public sentiment demands immediate vengeance on Japan, and Roosevelt is politically unable to first direct his efforts to defeating Germany. The story centers on a small group of men on the Aleutian island of Amchitka trying to counter Japanese sabotage of the Alaskan Communication System. The ACS is needed to get a secret message from Russia to MacArthur’s forces. They have been waiting for Russian permission to use Russian landing fields for bomber flights to Japan. By this communication and an accident the Japanese are defeated. Then Busby throws in some cheap irony and reveals that Germany has detonated an atomic bomb. I don’t really see how tackling Germany second would have gotten them the A-bomb any sooner. I also found the tech talk about ACS incomprehensible. I did like the image of Dwight D. Eisenhower rearing to go in the second most important theater of the war. Continue reading →

Wars to End All Wars

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Having just finished an alternate history, Clash of Eagles, I decided to read another one. Since I’d just been to the National World War One Museum the day before — and this was on the review pile, I picked this one. (I heartily recommend the museum, by the way, it looks at the whole war and not just the American involvement.)

The publisher was giving this one away free on Amazon, so I picked it up on July 28, 2014 — one hundred years to the day after the Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war on Serbia.

warstoendallwarsBelow is the short review. I’ll be taking a more in depth look at each of them in future installments of my World War One in Fantastical Fiction series. Yes, that includes “On the Cheap”. (And just when I was beginning to think it was wrong for my grandpa to deny his grandmother was Irish.)

Review: Wars to End All Wars: Alternate Tales from the Trenches, ed. N. E. White, 2014. 

From the moment when Gavrilo Princep stares into the eyes of Archduke Ferdinand to a distant future where the war is a memory only for some, these stories take a look at altered and distorted versions of the Great War. Sometimes lurid, sometimes comical, sometimes thoughtful and mysterious, they are never the solid alternate histories the title implies. Continue reading →