Alternate History Book Club: Bring The Jubilee

[Kaiphranos]

Well, it's about time I posted a new discussion thread--the book this time is Bring The Jubilee, by Ward Moore. If you have a book or story you'd like the Alternate History Book Club to read, feel free to post it in the main thread.

As this is a discussion thread, spoilers are to be expected. If you haven't already found time to read this book sometime in the last 50+ years, consider yourself warned.

And as for discussion, here are some questions to get people started. Answer any or none of them, as it suits you!

0. Did you like the book? Why or why not?

1. How plausible did you find the alternate history elements to be, given the POD of a Confederate victory at Gettysburg?

2. Are there any allohistorical details you found particularly interesting? (A revitalized Shogunate, etc.)

3. Bring The Jubilee was originally published in the mid-1950's. In what ways do you think Moore's own milieu influenced the alternate world he created?

4. What characters did you like, dislike, or find especially interesting--and why?

5. Based on the information given, what can you infer or speculate about parts of the world not mentioned in Bring The Jubilee?

6. What sort of influence do you think this book may have had on later works of alternate history?

7. Are there any other elements (AH or otherwise) that you found interesting or noteworthy?

 

[B_Munro]

SPOILERS




0-Yes. It was a weird but interesting funhouse mirror image of North-South relationships, and had some interesting characters.

1-Quite implausible. New Red Dawn Movie level of implausibility. The south not only wins at Gettsysburg, but then goes on to take (very heavily fortified, IIRC) Washington and imposes a crushing peace treaty on the US which gains for the South the wildest hopes of the Confederate leaders. It then goes on to conquer Latin America AT LEAST down to Lima. (While independent Haiti somehow survives so we can have a free black friend for the protagonist). The US, meanwhile, turns into Ruined Old South, Chin-Beard Edition, with no reference to its industrial and other economic advantages, and even installs a kind of slavery in the form of long-term indentures, IIRC.

2-Japan is peaceful enough that it can abolish its police force, and if technology is backwards as hell in other ways (another improbability) heavy engineering is doing well: the Japanese have an undersea tunnel to Korea, and the British and Frence have one under the Channel. The fact that the French still have an Emperor and are apparently on good terms with the UK (a German ally) hardly seems to make sense given that the Germans was a winner the "Emperors war" and presumably dominates Europe, but it adds a bit of peculiar detail that excites my curiosity. Similarly, since it's Empire seems down to Cuba (perhaps also the Philippines), what makes Spain an important ally of Germany?

3. I think the vast territorial changes of WWII helped fool Moore into thinking such things could easily happen in an alternate history setting entirely different in its circumstances: and of course if it had been written further from WWII, the annoying "Germans can't help but massacre Jews" bit might not have been written. And of course the model for the US in this world is the still bitter, racially segregated and impoverished south of the 50's: one wonders if Moore, who never lived in the south, had a Californian's exaggerated image of how bad things were there. [1] He certainly wouldn't have written the same book if he had known of the modern, post-segregation, post-northern migration South.

4. Tyss is a fine broth of a Nihilist, and Barbara is interesting in that she was the first time I ran into a character in an SF story that was both scientifically brilliant and deeply emotionally messed up (that is, in other than a mustachio-twirlingly evil way)

5. Given the total lack of mention of it, and Moore's clear identification of Germans=Nazis, I suspect Russia has been utterly destroyed as a nation: possibly Austria-Hungary is gone as well, scavenged for parts or even entirely incorporated into the German Union. There is a line "that Haiti, the only American republic south of the Mason-Dixon line to preserve its independence" that indicates the Confederacy may have gone full Decades of Darkness. Or have the parts of Spanish America south of Peru rejoined Spain? Brazil might still be around as an Empire, but the general theme is "insanely unlimited expansion."

6. Influence? Hmm. Were there any other AH Confederacy-wanks before this? I wonder if he was the first to write an AH-caused-by-time-travel in which _our_ world isn't the original (Brunner's "Times without Number", the only old one which comes immediately to mind, was '62), or at least a relatively "notable" one.

7. Gotta go!

[1] Bad as the US south may have been in the 1930s and 1940s, Moore's USA is definitely worse

 

[Kaiphranos]

5. Given the total lack of mention of it, and Moore's clear identification of Germans=Nazis, I suspect Russia has been utterly destroyed as a nation: possibly Austria-Hungary is gone as well, scavenged for parts or even entirely incorporated into the German Union. There is a line "that Haiti, the only American republic south of the Mason-Dixon line to preserve its independence" that indicates the Confederacy may have gone full Decades of Darkness. Or have the parts of Spanish America south of Peru rejoined Spain? Brazil might still be around as an Empire, but the general theme is "insanely unlimited expansion."

The "rejoining Spain" theory might explain why Spain is an ally worth having. (Maybe the Chincha Islands War goes differently?) Not sure about how to account for Argentina, though. Or maybe the line about Haiti only refers to North America, though with the Confederates in Lima, perhaps not...

A couple other thoughts:

-Maybe it's just from watching Legend of Korra recently, but on this read-through I found myself trying to draw parallels between the USA in this world and turn of the century China: large but technologically backward, with the Grand Army standing in for the Boxers. Makes me wonder whether the US could eventually have turned things around for itself, if not wiped out by time-traveling historians.

-What ever happened to Canada? I don't recall it ever being mentioned, despite it being a large and presumably free country not that far north of New York. I presume it must still be British, though there's no mention of any TL-191-style concessions.

 

[Georgepatton]

The "rejoining Spain" theory might explain why Spain is an ally worth having. (Maybe the Chincha Islands War goes differently?) Not sure about how to account for Argentina, though. Or maybe the line about Haiti only refers to North America, though with the Confederates in Lima, perhaps not...

I had thought there was a line later on about the Confederates appropriating Manist Destiny and going all the way to the Tierra del Fuego.

 

[B_Munro]

Minor note; there's a "Republic of South Africa" which seems a popular immigration destination. No Boer wars?

I think Moore had some thoughts as to how difficult it would be to get the US as weak relative to the Confederacy as shown, so he throws in a couple bizarre political aspects to the situation, most notably the two major US parties agreeing that the US (far more thinly populated than any major European country west of Russia) is too populous for its economy to support, and not only are immigrants discouraged, but it's actual government policy to encourage people to have less children.

Bruce

 

[Chris Oakley]

Well, it's about time I posted a new discussion thread--the book this time is Bring The Jubilee, by Ward Moore. If you have a book or story you'd like the Alternate History Book Club to read, feel free to post it in the main thread.

As this is a discussion thread, spoilers are to be expected. If you haven't already found time to read this book sometime in the last 50+ years, consider yourself warned.

And as for discussion, here are some questions to get people started. Answer any or none of them, as it suits you!

0. Did you like the book? Why or why not?

1. How plausible did you find the alternate history elements to be, given the POD of a Confederate victory at Gettysburg?

2. Are there any allohistorical details you found particularly interesting? (A revitalized Shogunate, etc.)

3. Bring The Jubilee was originally published in the mid-1950's. In what ways do you think Moore's own milieu influenced the alternate world he created?

4. What characters did you like, dislike, or find especially interesting--and why?

5. Based on the information given, what can you infer or speculate about parts of the world not mentioned in Bring The Jubilee?

6. What sort of influence do you think this book may have had on later works of alternate history?

7. Are there any other elements (AH or otherwise) that you found interesting or noteworthy?

0--HELL NO! It was horribly written and full of the most unlikable people I've ever come across in AH fiction.

1--The Confederate victory POD was about the only thing that even came close to making sense; everything else was weapons-grade ASB.

2--The "minibile" references were kind of interesting, and in a better story would have been awesome.

3--Made it depressing as hell, that's what.

4--I didn't like any of the characters all that much, but I particularly loathe Hodgins Backmaker....whiny, self-absorbed, mind-blowingly stupid. And those are the nicest things I can say about him.

5--It's not a place you'd want to spend a whole lot of time in if you can help it.

6--It served as a textbook example of how NOT to write alternate history.

7--The time travel angle was the only worthwhile element in "Jubilee" other than the minibikes.

 

[Kaiphranos]

0--HELL NO! It was horribly written and full of the most unlikable people I've ever come across in AH fiction.

It's always good to have a dissenting opinion...

I agree that a lot of the characters are rather unpleasant people, in a variety of ways, and that Hodge definitely has his flaws. In Hodge's defense, I will point out that he largely seems to mirror the people around him, and when those people are his parents, Mr. Tyss, Tirzah, or Barbara, that does him no favors. I think he improves over time, and that's an important part of the story. I think it's also worth noting that the most pleasant characters (or at least the ones I find most pleasant)--Enfandin, the Agatis, and Catty--are all in some way foreign to the United States, which ties back into the World Half Empty nature of the setting.

 

[B_Munro]

I did a map a while back (excuse the quality) to try and make some sense of the setting...

 

[Greg Grant]

I always feel like I'm the least "plausibility" guy on this forum. I will take great writing over "did his research, but writes like George Lucas/Robert Conroy lovechild" any time.

This is very well written novella. Good characters. Great world building. And ground breaking a lot of ways.

If you look at the AH out there prior to this novella, by a giant-giant margin, most South Wins the ACW writing was revanchist drivel. Regardless of whether the writer was a Southerner, a Northerner, or - in several memorable cases - British, the Confederacy winning the War led to a mind-bottling stronger United States with a strong Confederate States of America as its partner. The two nations got past their war quickly and it was all hugs and puppies and Global Force for Good. Sometimes, USA, CSA, and UK formed an Axis of Awesome, too.

Descriptions of life in a winning CSA and the fates of their minorities prior to this novella were either non-existent or worse, suggestive that African-Americans were better off with CSA winning the War and emancipating later, and with less "violence." Why, if them darkies waited for the good white people to figure out to free them, the world would be better.

There was only one notable exception to this Southern-lovefest, a Virginius Dabney article in American Mercury, "If South Had Won the War," written in October of 1936, where CSA was an analogue for fascist Germany, because of the time the story was written, the writer wanted an analogue come Hell or High Water. But outside of that, you had Winston Churchill (!) writing a DBWI imagining a terrible world where the Federals win at Gettysburg.

This novella changed the game. Oh, to be sure you still had occassional bout of cascading stupidity: MacKinlay Kantor's If the South Had Won the Civil War in 1960 essay for "Look" magazine. Where, incidentally, he probably became the first writer to have Texas secede from CSA over differences after winning the ACW. But, unlike others, then had Texas, US and CSA peacefully coexist on the same continent. Oh, and they all eventually reunite as one nation, because, ya know, happy thoughts.

But with the exception of outliers, after "Bring the Jubilee," you could not handwave racism and slavery in a major publication of AH of ACW and not be considered a racist, or an apologist. I think BtJ had a large part in that, by putting the issue front and center.

BtJ is also important in that it focuses on the negative consequences to USA. Prior AH publications treat the ACW as an aberration, a nasty divorce that frees up the couple to pursue others and do better. BtJ leaves USA lying in a ditch, covered in blood and permanently broken.

Here, the plausibility could be dodgy. Is it truly plausible that a nation as industrially powerful as US could lose ACW after the loss of Gettysburg (1), and more importantly, would it truly shatter the industrial base of the much larger and more powerful nation (2)?

Once again, given my weakness in stressing plausibility over story and characters, these are not deal breakers for me. But I think (1) is ultimately more implausible than (2). By 1863, I do not think the South had a chance of winning a North mobilized for war and ready to finish the job. Peter G. Tsouras wrote an interesting case study on it. As for (2), given the timeline of the writing of this novella, Germany could be a great case study of what a loss in a war does to the psyche of a nation.


Some other things to note:

Steam technology. Probably not the first AH work to use steam instead of internal-combustion-engine, but certainly it is curious to note how many other AH writers started referencing it, after BtJ.

Zeppelins. There is no heavier than air flying in this world, and I need not remind the good people of this forum the importance of zeppelins in AH.

This is the first ACW AH novella written under the "new" rules I outlined above for subsequent ACW AH works. But it is also the end of an era of optimism and a certain treatment of a Southern victory in ACW.

BtJ is the last major work where the South wins the ACW utterly on its own. France and England do not have to intervene for the victory. No time travel. No aliens. The South still has a chance to win on its own. Subsequent writers will not be as "kind" to the Confederate self-esteem.

This and Kantor's warm and fuzzies are the last of the "happy ending" ACW AH for a long, long while. The '60s were a drought for ACW AH, but once the '70s got going, the Confederacy became a whole lot worse. Then the '80s rolled around, and Confederacy became even worse, and a chance for as subtle as ATF at Waco criticism of South Africa. Then '90s happened, and military writers invaded ACW AH and made things gorier, bloodier, and messier.

I think BtJ is a vitally important piece of AH, and a keystone to ACW AH.

 

[B_Munro]

As for (2), given the timeline of the writing of this novella, Germany could be a great case study of what a loss in a war does to the psyche of a nation.

Didn't make it any less an industrial great power, though...

Bruce

 

[Greg Grant]

Didn't make it any less an industrial great power, though...

Bruce

Yeah, that's a good point.

But I'd argue there that post WW1 Germany had a strong military tradition and the crutch of a loss blamed on civilian administration. Post-Southern Victory US would have had its faith shattered politically and militarily. They would have been beaten on the field, and had their capital taken. Washington is part of the Confederacy in this timeline. That's a harder pill to swallow.

If anything, I'd look at post WW2 Germany, which was split in half, saw its industry ground down, and it's capital splintered. That Germany took a while to bounce back, with FRG being propped up by US and the West until it could find its own way, and GDR was being lashed together by bullshit and slogans.

The way foreign powers move about BtJ US is pretty close, if a lot darker, to zones of control victorious Allies created in Germany. Gloomy and shattered East Berlin comes to mind in the shrunken New York City.

There is a lot of curious choices to unpack in BtJ, and I enjoy unpacking them, because - once again - the novella is so well written.

 

[Petike]

How do the minibiles look like ? Are they something like this, just steampowered ?

 

[freivolk]

I just read the german translation of the book and I´m not sure they got everything right.
So I assumed,
1. that France was a empire till the War 1914-1916, but after that the Emporer lives in exil.
2. That the Unification of Germany was a result of this war.
3. Thta the German Uion was a republican state.
3. That the USA was used of a battlefield during this war.

Can anybody confirm or denie this for me?

 

[The Kiat]

I did a map a while back (excuse the quality) to try and make some sense of the setting...

I think that goes a bit beyond best case scenario for the CSA.

 

[Evan]

Here're two long posts I wrote for a thread about this book a couple years ago.

I reread the book yesterday, and it turned out that I'd forgotten a fair amount. Yes, how the South wins the Battle of Gettysburg is fairly plausible. But what happens afterwards isn't:
* The Army of the Potomac is defeated, scatters, and fleeing soldiers clog the northbound roads. Plausible enough.
* Lee takes Washington. Barely possible. Just barely. Is he aware of how strong the defenses are?
* The government and (survivors of the) army retreat to Philadelphia in early January 1864. There goes all plausibility. Okay, if Washington is captured, i suppose the government would go there. But if there's an army in place large enough to retreat overland, why isn't it staying around somewhere closer? And in the name of all promptness, what has Lee been doing for the past six months if not taking Washington? And what has Lincoln been doing that he hasn't made Washington an impregnable citadel or at least brought up some reenforcements?
* The South wins some battle at Chattanooga; I guess it's this one in October 1863. So Lincoln has shifted some resources east - but why aren't they enough? Aren't many fewer men needed to defend fortified Washington than break the siege of Chattanooga?
* The US surrenders on July 4, 1864, at Reading. Why? How? Lincoln would never surrender - he thought it unconstitutional and against his oath of office! Hamlin was a strong abolitionist; I can't see him doing it either! Who's surrendering? Why has the country suddenly fallen apart? Why do they surrender instead of just make peace? How does the Confederacy get into a place to dictate whatever terms it wants?
* "Unreconstructed Federals" in the western armies refuse to accept the surrender. Of course not - it makes utterly no sense.
* The Confederates take Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia (except the panhandle), Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, California, and "Nevada's tip" (whatever that is; Las Vegas didn't join the state until 1866).
* Vallandingham is elected President. I suppose he could be, if Lincoln's policies so inexplicably and utterly failed. He's followed (not necessarily immediately) by Seymour.
* In Japan, in 1868, the Shogun suppresses the Meiji Restoration.
* The Whig Party reforms and elects "President Butler." The beginning dates this at 1876, but our narrator (a trained historian by then) says in chapter 16 that it's in 1872. He immediately expels all Jews from Missouri (despite that it's now Confederate). Anti- Black, Oriental, Jewish, and Indian riots follow.

Oh - and let's not forget how Deseret's economy is "the nearest thing to a prosperous group in the country" (near the end of ch. 16) despite that "the tracks stop short in Ioway..." I guess it's connected to the Confederate railroad network? Or maybe it's just a self-sufficient economy; its plaudit wouldn't be too hard to get in this US.

And later, for some reason, using nothing more than pen and paper, a physicist can design a time machine which she then proceeds to build with the proceeds of one Spanish estate. It seems a little too easy.

Aside from that, it's a good story. But the setting could use a fair deal more work.

But to try my hand at a little more data... Any explanation really should start with the least plausible event: Barbara's building a working time machine on the budget of one estate, by herself. Two explanations present themselves:

1) Theoretical physics has advanced centuries beyond OTL, despite technology being no better, if not retarded. (We can't be absolutely clear on that score because our narrator never travels outside the approaching-third-world United States. Are there any absolute references to things in richer countries that I'm forgetting?) Just barely possible - several more Einsteins could've been butterflied into existence. Or perhaps the Confederacy brought higher education to an Einstein in Latin America.

2) She has ASB assistance.

Possible backstories following each thread:

1) Theoretical physics is at OTL 2010 levels, for some reason. In OTL, Bohr et al developed the quantum model of the atom around 1920 or so; iTTL, as soon as their analogs do, I guess it's seized by the military R&D (maybe they recognize the potential for an atomic bomb?) who, for some reason, build huge particle smashers and conduct all sorts of experiments. Or maybe it's developed earlier and the particle smashers come at the analogous times. Either way, someone tries an experiment slightly different from every one tried iOTL; it leads to inexplicable results dramatically different from OTL's; theoretical physicists mull over it. Barbara, with a burst of insight, realizes it can be explained by time travel. She publishes; everyone laughs. (Except for military R&D, which offer her a job that she doesn't take, and then try fruitlessly to develop her results to some practical significance.) Barbara, however, continues working on her own, reinterprets previous data that've been thrown away as erroneous, and constructs a theory that lets time travel be practiced on a shoestring budget. But, not wishing to be laughed at again, she decides to build a working prototype first. That's where our narrator (with no physics or math training) comes in.
Barely possible, if you believe our universe's set up that way. I guess alien races who've discovered this earlier are changing their past all the time and we never notice because butterflies are weak. The toughest point here is explaining the particle smashers: they have no practical use; it's not like they're needed to build atom bombs!

2) An sadistic teenage alien space bat masterminded the US's surrender in an attempt to continue slavery. His parents discovered it just after the Confederacy conquered Mexico; they made the Confederates turn right around, abolish slavery, and treat the freedmen nicely. But after the US continued to flounder in depression and the rest of the world geared up for one war after another, they gave that TL up as a lost cause and gave Barbara the plans for a time machine.

Now which one of these explanations explains more?

 

[B_Munro]

Notion for a semi-happy sequel (yes, I know the entire world has been wiped from existence, but I'm going to go with "continues in a different time-stream ): the German-Confederate war is hard to win through knockout since the states are separated by an Ocean and there's no Russia to do any heavy lifting on land, and the tech isn't advanced enough for nuclear weapons. UK-Confederate invasions of Europe bog down, and the war drags on till the Confederacy's non-citizens (since nobody save descendants of those who were full Confederate Citizens at the end of the Civil war is allowed citizenship, they are almost certainly in the majority) rise up in revolt over the privations of the unending war, and the Confederacy falls apart. Germany conquers most everything from India on west, including the UK, but ends up grossly overextended, and the German empire falls a generation later when it attacks the Chinese-Japanese alliance and the technically proficient Japanese develop the world's first atomic bomb.

Bruce

 

[B_Munro]

Well, we seem to have mined this one dry rather quickly: anyone else have any opinions?

 

[zoomar]

I read the book ages ago and have forgotten most of it. I remember it as a well written a piece of fiction but I considered the basic premise of a super-powerful dictatorial CSA and a very weak rump USA implausible. I read it more as a dystopian horror story than "alternate history". I need to read it again. Seems there may be more to it than I thought.

 

[Petike]

snippet

Very good analysis, I like it.

 

[Hodgins Backmaker]

I, of course, enjoyed the book immensely.