Conquistador

Tyr · Sep 9, 2004

Has anyone read this? Its by SM Stirling and is quite new I think.
In it back in 1946 a bloke discovers a portal to a parallel world where Alexander the great survived a longer time and as a result Europe is still in the middle ages and never discovered America, this bloke gathers a few friends and family and colonises the new America somehow roping other people in and building up a full nation by the current day.
So has anyone else read it or is it just me?
I think it was rather good except I don't see how they managed to get the 1st settlers...

zoomar · Sep 9, 2004

Not too many of us, I gather. I posted about it several months ago (not long after it was published) and got fairly few responses - a few negative. A shame, because I though it was very imaginative, very good, and an interesting take on this whole subject of what people might do when they have a door open to an alternate world just sitting there for the taking. I also think it was an excellent exploration of how different mid-20th and early 21st sensibilities on a lot of issues are. Very much underappreciated, if you ask me.

Dave Howery · Sep 10, 2004

I read it, but I winced at the racism and rather harsh conservatism of so many of the settlers. Still, it wasn't a bad book.
For a variation on the same thing, find a copy of 'Wildside'. This one deals with a bunch of teenagers of our time finding a doorway to an alternate earth with no people at all... very good story...

Tyr · Sep 12, 2004

Winced at the racism?
The only racism which could be seen as insulting is maybe that Frenchman muttering about the arabs. All the rest is well known stuff.

Yossarian · Sep 15, 2004

I read it and enjoyed it a lot.

sbegin · Sep 18, 2004

Dave Howery said:
I read it, but I winced at the racism and rather harsh conservatism of so many of the settlers. Still, it wasn't a bad book.
For a variation on the same thing, find a copy of 'Wildside'. This one deals with a bunch of teenagers of our time finding a doorway to an alternate earth with no people at all... very good story...

I have read both Conquistador and Wildside. Yes, I too winced at the racism. I would have had very different choices in settlers, Nazis and Africaneers, how could anyone go worse! Wildside was very interesting also, I wish there was a sequel!

zoomar · Sep 20, 2004

You guys are missing the point of the "racism". The people settling this "new world" were not bad guys by and large - they were mostly a bunch of ex-GIs. By the standards of the mid 1940's they were not particularly racist or sexist. The Nazis and Africanners who came over later were not typical. Part of the effectiveness of this book is how radically it shows the world of the 2000's has diverged what was standard in the 1940's.

Tyr · Sep 21, 2004

The nazis and extremist afrikaners were desperate enough to want to go there.
They did spread people out to try and make them all merge into one culture and by the end of the book its clear they have tamed the Nazis.