Now that AH is, er, more popular than it was, it's a pity that publishers haven't reprinted more of the good stuff that's gone out of print. I've seen King of the Wood recommended by quite a few people but the only chance I have of getting hold of it is via Abebooks, and the same with some other books. I used to work in a second-hand bookshop and I know there is always a high demand for difficult-to-find "classics" in any genre, but "clones" are completely unsellable twenty years after publication. I'd like to see some publisher bring out a line of inexpensive AH-reprints, printed on cheap paper. It's not going to happen, I know, but it should. If they chose the right books I'm sure they would make money.
Experiment: AH Book Rankings Thread
- Thread starter Akiyama
- Start date
I could never decide whether FOR WANT OF A NAIL was interesting in a boring sort of way or boring in an interesting sort of way.
Tielhard
Banned
ACHTUNG! SPOILERS BELOW!
ACHTUNG! SPOILERS BELOW!
I thought I would give this a go. First my top ten AH books:
1. Keith Roberts Pavane – 10
‘After fission fusion’ a quite stunning series of interlinked stories. This is not AH as such. It is a repeated history
2. Tim Powers - The Anubis Gate – 10
I am not quite sure what this is Fantasy? SF? AH? Yes all of these I suppose. Byron’s London with Gypsies, beggars, sorcery, Egyptian gods, immortal serial killers and a very very vicious clown.
3. Sterling and Gibson - The Difference Engine – 9+
The beginning of steam punk? Deterministic chaos is inherent in the structure and plot of this rather interesting AH.
4. Mary Gentle – Ash – 9
Again an AH that is not an AH. Several hundred pages of medieval Burgundian warfare interspersed with fantasy followed by a quick ten pages of discourse on quantum realities.
5. Norman Spinrad - The Iron Dream – 9
A corker. I have never found anyone milquetoast on this book you either love it or hate it. In this AH Adolph Hitler becomes an SF writer in the USA. The Iron Dream is his finest work. As funny as it is terrible!
6. Harry Turtledove - The Guns of the South – 8
I shouldn’t like this – but I do. The plot dies half way through. I particularly dislike the way the AWB are portrayed as obsessive nutters and the CSA as rational people. The characterisation is however, very good. It is very hard not to like this Lee the real one is a little more problematic.
7. Michael P. Kube-McDowell -Alternities – 8
Twenty interlinked worlds, a series of second chances as Earth enters the atomic age. Nice discourse on the engine of development within a society.
8. H. Beam Piper - Gunpowder God – 7
Cop falls into a theocratic state and becomes a great king. Simple and elegant.
9. Ward Moore - Bring The Jubilee - 7
The classic time-traveller changes the past and the classic alternative ending to the American Civil War.
10. Philip Dick - Man in High Castle - 6
Classical Dickian. Lots of slippery ideas floating around.
A fairly damming critique that can be laid against me is that of my best ten SF books three of the first four; Pavane, The Anubis Gate and Ash are not true Alternative Histories. Neither, for that matter are Alternities and Gunpowder God.
Here are my worst five so we can populate the lower end of the spectrum
1. Leo Fankowski – The Flying War Lord – 6
Bad, very bad. The third or forth in the series that started bad and went down hill fast. It scores so highly because it is actually fun to read it is so awful. Sexism, Polish Jingoism, Christian imperialism, white man’s burden and some rather dodgy engineering all help to keep you groaning. You could if you wanted say this was a time travel book rather than an Alternative History but why bother:?
2. L. Neil Smith - The Crystal Empire – 1
How bad can a book get I kept asking myself as we meandered our way across the plains. A hero more Randian than even Rand would have dared write. Utter, utter, cobblers saved only from total ignominy by a couple of nice images.
3. How Few Remain – Harry Turtledove – 3
For a supposedly realistic historically based AH it just irritated me I found it unrealistic. It seemed to me to be designed to sell lots of books in the USA and for no other purpose.
4. Marching Through Georgia – S.M. Sterling – 3.
I have to be careful here I don’t really like the central premise on which the Draka’s world is built but I can find no fault in it. I rather enjoyed Under the Yoke for example even if it did involve a lot of sexuality and navel staring. No, what gets up my nose with this one is that with a POD so far away so many modern political structure have still developed and are pilloried. Weird.
5. Roger Zelazny – Roadmarks – 3
A book by an author I very much admire. However, a total bummer. I suspect it to be a pot-boiler written under the influence of strange substances.
You will notice old Mr. Harrison’s ‘Stars and Stripes Forever’ trilogy is not in my lesser list, this is because I rather think the whole thing is at once a wind-up and an astute commercial exercise. Reading it in this context I thoroughly enjoyed it.
ACHTUNG! SPOILERS BELOW!
I thought I would give this a go. First my top ten AH books:
1. Keith Roberts Pavane – 10
‘After fission fusion’ a quite stunning series of interlinked stories. This is not AH as such. It is a repeated history
2. Tim Powers - The Anubis Gate – 10
I am not quite sure what this is Fantasy? SF? AH? Yes all of these I suppose. Byron’s London with Gypsies, beggars, sorcery, Egyptian gods, immortal serial killers and a very very vicious clown.
3. Sterling and Gibson - The Difference Engine – 9+
The beginning of steam punk? Deterministic chaos is inherent in the structure and plot of this rather interesting AH.
4. Mary Gentle – Ash – 9
Again an AH that is not an AH. Several hundred pages of medieval Burgundian warfare interspersed with fantasy followed by a quick ten pages of discourse on quantum realities.
5. Norman Spinrad - The Iron Dream – 9
A corker. I have never found anyone milquetoast on this book you either love it or hate it. In this AH Adolph Hitler becomes an SF writer in the USA. The Iron Dream is his finest work. As funny as it is terrible!
6. Harry Turtledove - The Guns of the South – 8
I shouldn’t like this – but I do. The plot dies half way through. I particularly dislike the way the AWB are portrayed as obsessive nutters and the CSA as rational people. The characterisation is however, very good. It is very hard not to like this Lee the real one is a little more problematic.
7. Michael P. Kube-McDowell -Alternities – 8
Twenty interlinked worlds, a series of second chances as Earth enters the atomic age. Nice discourse on the engine of development within a society.
8. H. Beam Piper - Gunpowder God – 7
Cop falls into a theocratic state and becomes a great king. Simple and elegant.
9. Ward Moore - Bring The Jubilee - 7
The classic time-traveller changes the past and the classic alternative ending to the American Civil War.
10. Philip Dick - Man in High Castle - 6
Classical Dickian. Lots of slippery ideas floating around.
A fairly damming critique that can be laid against me is that of my best ten SF books three of the first four; Pavane, The Anubis Gate and Ash are not true Alternative Histories. Neither, for that matter are Alternities and Gunpowder God.
Here are my worst five so we can populate the lower end of the spectrum
1. Leo Fankowski – The Flying War Lord – 6
Bad, very bad. The third or forth in the series that started bad and went down hill fast. It scores so highly because it is actually fun to read it is so awful. Sexism, Polish Jingoism, Christian imperialism, white man’s burden and some rather dodgy engineering all help to keep you groaning. You could if you wanted say this was a time travel book rather than an Alternative History but why bother:?
2. L. Neil Smith - The Crystal Empire – 1
How bad can a book get I kept asking myself as we meandered our way across the plains. A hero more Randian than even Rand would have dared write. Utter, utter, cobblers saved only from total ignominy by a couple of nice images.
3. How Few Remain – Harry Turtledove – 3
For a supposedly realistic historically based AH it just irritated me I found it unrealistic. It seemed to me to be designed to sell lots of books in the USA and for no other purpose.
4. Marching Through Georgia – S.M. Sterling – 3.
I have to be careful here I don’t really like the central premise on which the Draka’s world is built but I can find no fault in it. I rather enjoyed Under the Yoke for example even if it did involve a lot of sexuality and navel staring. No, what gets up my nose with this one is that with a POD so far away so many modern political structure have still developed and are pilloried. Weird.
5. Roger Zelazny – Roadmarks – 3
A book by an author I very much admire. However, a total bummer. I suspect it to be a pot-boiler written under the influence of strange substances.
You will notice old Mr. Harrison’s ‘Stars and Stripes Forever’ trilogy is not in my lesser list, this is because I rather think the whole thing is at once a wind-up and an astute commercial exercise. Reading it in this context I thoroughly enjoyed it.
An interesting list which contains quite a few of my favourite books. But PAVANNE I admire rather than enjoy, I found THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE unmemorable, ASH is a book I can't make my mind up about, and GUNPOWDER GOD is fun but always struck me as wish fulfilment. Have you tried Powers's THE DRAWING OF THE DARK?
Flocculencio
Donor
Fitzpatrick's War- 8. An excellent, imaginative piece
Servant of Byzantium- 7. Fun, pulpy. Turtledove doing what he does best.
A Transatlantic Tunnel. Hurrah!- 6. Excellent, vaguely steampunky. Harrison at his best
How Few Remain + Great War series- 1. Absolute dreck. Turtledove taking on something on a scale he doesn't have the talent to carry off.
Ruled Britannia- 7. Again, very fun.
The Difference Engine- 6. along similar lines as Harrison's Transatlantic tunnel.
Stars and Stripes trilogy- 0. WTF? I don't know what Harrison was on. Absolute shite. Even worse than the Great War series.
The Two Georges- 8. Possibly Turtledove's best AH work. Fun thriller where the AH is incidental.
The Peshawar Lancers- 8. One of the best recent works of AH. Great swashbuckling, Kiplingesque derring do.
163X- 2. Even by Baen standards, rather poorly written and uninteresting.
Belisarius series- 6. Poorly written but it makes up for it by being a fun pulpy romp.
Worldwar series- 6.5. Here Turtledove's temptation to overinflate his books through tons of prose that could have been edited out begins to show. Still fun to skim though.
Years of Rice and Salt- 4. Would have been a 7 without KSR's pretentious divergence into religion. Those bits in the Bardo were just boring and killed the story.
Servant of Byzantium- 7. Fun, pulpy. Turtledove doing what he does best.
A Transatlantic Tunnel. Hurrah!- 6. Excellent, vaguely steampunky. Harrison at his best
How Few Remain + Great War series- 1. Absolute dreck. Turtledove taking on something on a scale he doesn't have the talent to carry off.
Ruled Britannia- 7. Again, very fun.
The Difference Engine- 6. along similar lines as Harrison's Transatlantic tunnel.
Stars and Stripes trilogy- 0. WTF? I don't know what Harrison was on. Absolute shite. Even worse than the Great War series.
The Two Georges- 8. Possibly Turtledove's best AH work. Fun thriller where the AH is incidental.
The Peshawar Lancers- 8. One of the best recent works of AH. Great swashbuckling, Kiplingesque derring do.
163X- 2. Even by Baen standards, rather poorly written and uninteresting.
Belisarius series- 6. Poorly written but it makes up for it by being a fun pulpy romp.
Worldwar series- 6.5. Here Turtledove's temptation to overinflate his books through tons of prose that could have been edited out begins to show. Still fun to skim though.
Years of Rice and Salt- 4. Would have been a 7 without KSR's pretentious divergence into religion. Those bits in the Bardo were just boring and killed the story.
Tielhard
Banned
More Spoilers/
Prunesquallor,
Yeh, I have read 'The drawing of the dark' I am never sure if it was some kind of wind up or a serious effort. "So Tim you reccon you can write a fantasy book about beer?"
Pavane needs several reading, it grows on you.
If you read the Difference Engine as an exercise in deterministic chaos it makes a lot of sense. As a story it is not up to much.
Prunesquallor,
Yeh, I have read 'The drawing of the dark' I am never sure if it was some kind of wind up or a serious effort. "So Tim you reccon you can write a fantasy book about beer?"
Pavane needs several reading, it grows on you.
If you read the Difference Engine as an exercise in deterministic chaos it makes a lot of sense. As a story it is not up to much.
Diamond
Banned
What exactly is a 'true' Alternative History, in your opinion?Tielhard said:
If Pavane and Alternities are not, then our definitions of what comprises an alternate history are radically different... I will agree with you, however, on Ash, and I can't comment on The Anubis Gate and Gunpowder God, not having read them. (Although The Anubis Gate has been in my 'to read' stack for at least three years.)I have to totally disagree with you there - The Crystal Empire is one of my favorite AH novels. His Libertarian alt-US books are crap, but TCE I found to be engaging and exciting, with great characters and plot. No accounting for taste, I suppose...Tielhard said:
Well, here's my top ten (and if I weren't pissed I'd justify them), even if some are only marginally AH
A CONNECTICUT YANKEE AT THE COURT OF KING ARTHUR (Mark Twain)
BRING THE JUBILEE (Ward Moore)
THE IRON DREAM (Norman Spinrad)
ANNO DRACULA (Kim Newman)
The DRAKA trilogy (S.M. Stirling)
A DANGEROUS ENERGY (John Whitbourn)
LEST DARKNESS FALL (L. Sprgue de Camp)
THE ANUBIS GATES (Tim Powers)
GLORIANA (Michael Moorcock)
THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE (Philip K Dick)
Give them all ten, if you're doing the stat thing. And I'll admit, next day my list might be different.
A CONNECTICUT YANKEE AT THE COURT OF KING ARTHUR (Mark Twain)
BRING THE JUBILEE (Ward Moore)
THE IRON DREAM (Norman Spinrad)
ANNO DRACULA (Kim Newman)
The DRAKA trilogy (S.M. Stirling)
A DANGEROUS ENERGY (John Whitbourn)
LEST DARKNESS FALL (L. Sprgue de Camp)
THE ANUBIS GATES (Tim Powers)
GLORIANA (Michael Moorcock)
THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE (Philip K Dick)
Give them all ten, if you're doing the stat thing. And I'll admit, next day my list might be different.
Tielhard
Banned
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
Diamond,
1) I have never read anything of L. Neil Smith other than the Crystal Empire. So if you were assuming I disliked it because of his Libertarian position as a Libertarian author that is not the case. I did detect an unhealthy authoritarian/hero worship motief that ran through the book but I was not even 100% convinced Smith understood how he was writing at a concious level. The hero worship thing is very similar to what I have found in the SF works of Peter Hamilton which I generally enjoy but which get on my 'tits' at the same time. No, TCE is just a really bad book from my perspective.
2) Pavane is not AH, there are no alternative worlds. Ther are two (or possibly more) SERIAL worlds in time our world and the world of the Lady Margaret, Elanore, the Church and the people of the heath.
Alternities is primarily SF. At a point in time n the world splits in to 20 alternatives in order (conjectured) to maximise human survival. It is implied in the text that at some point in the future these world will recombine in some unspecified way.
Prunesquallor,
I had forgotten 'Lest Darkness Fall'
Diamond,
1) I have never read anything of L. Neil Smith other than the Crystal Empire. So if you were assuming I disliked it because of his Libertarian position as a Libertarian author that is not the case. I did detect an unhealthy authoritarian/hero worship motief that ran through the book but I was not even 100% convinced Smith understood how he was writing at a concious level. The hero worship thing is very similar to what I have found in the SF works of Peter Hamilton which I generally enjoy but which get on my 'tits' at the same time. No, TCE is just a really bad book from my perspective.
2) Pavane is not AH, there are no alternative worlds. Ther are two (or possibly more) SERIAL worlds in time our world and the world of the Lady Margaret, Elanore, the Church and the people of the heath.
Alternities is primarily SF. At a point in time n the world splits in to 20 alternatives in order (conjectured) to maximise human survival. It is implied in the text that at some point in the future these world will recombine in some unspecified way.
Prunesquallor,
I had forgotten 'Lest Darkness Fall'
whatisinaname
Donor
My top 3 are as follows -
Luftwaffe Victorious: An Alternate History (Hardcover) By Mike Spick - 10
Moscow Option by David Dowing (Thanks to Dave Howery) - 10
Battle of the Bulge (Edited by Peter Tsouras) - 8
Luftwaffe Victorious: An Alternate History (Hardcover) By Mike Spick - 10
Moscow Option by David Dowing (Thanks to Dave Howery) - 10
Battle of the Bulge (Edited by Peter Tsouras) - 8
Saladin said:
The Napoleon Options ed Jonathon North, Greenhill Books
Overall very good value (esp at only 2 quid
) -- all of the scenarios are well written and focus on the alternate, rather than TTL as happens in some of the What If articles. Some variants are obviously more bizarre anbd unlikely than oths, but with writers of the calibre of Griffiths, Hofschroer, C S Grant and Elting, the quality is there in most cases. This is a stayer on my shelves 9
Next up: The Day the Kissing Stopped, Constantine FitzGibbon - A novel set in a UK occupied by the USSR, c 1980
The Coming Of The Quantum Cats by Fred Pohl
Proteus by Hogan
Einstein's Bridge by Cramer
Good hard science variety alternate history novels.
Lord Kalvan by Piper
Good reading for entertainment but a dumb paratime police subplot and bizarre prehistory. He thought the Aryans were blond and blue eyed!
Proteus by Hogan
Einstein's Bridge by Cramer
Good hard science variety alternate history novels.
Lord Kalvan by Piper
Good reading for entertainment but a dumb paratime police subplot and bizarre prehistory. He thought the Aryans were blond and blue eyed!
A list of some old and new AH books
The Foresight War by Anthony G Williams -10
The Last Year of the Old World by Ronald Clark - 8
The Moscow Option by David Downing -10
The Sound of his Horn by Sarban - 4
Aztec Century by Christopher Evans - 7
And All the King's Men by Gordon Stevens - 6
A Dammed Fine War by Bill Yenne - 3
Lest Darkness Fall by L. Spraque De Camp - 7
The Nomad of Time by Micahael Moorcock - 7
Anti-Ice by Stephen Baxter -10
Stars and Stripes Forever - 3
The Foresight War by Anthony G Williams -10
The Last Year of the Old World by Ronald Clark - 8
The Moscow Option by David Downing -10
The Sound of his Horn by Sarban - 4
Aztec Century by Christopher Evans - 7
And All the King's Men by Gordon Stevens - 6
A Dammed Fine War by Bill Yenne - 3
Lest Darkness Fall by L. Spraque De Camp - 7
The Nomad of Time by Micahael Moorcock - 7
Anti-Ice by Stephen Baxter -10
Stars and Stripes Forever - 3