(This was originally posted to soc.history.what-if on March 13, 2006)
From New Worlds of Fantascience, April 1993
New Books by Buddy Alger
Global War: North American Front by Harry Turtledove (Knapp & Co., NA£12.50, IBIC 27114-B-741)
The most popular topic for alternate history novels by far has been "what if the rebels had won the North American Rebellion". This has been the subject of works as disparate as Robert Kenney's posthumously published melodrama Dominion of the Snake, and Robert Sobel's faux textbook For All Time. Harry Turtledove's own contribution to that subgenre was his The Two Georges, set in a technologically backward near-utopia where the Rebellion was headed off in the 1760s by William Pitt the Elder.
The second most popular topic has been alternate outcomes to the Global War, featuring an outright victory by one side or the other -- Mexico conquering Japan, Japan conquering Mexico, Germany conquering Great Britain, and even Britain and France conquering Germany. Once again, this genre has been visited before by Turtledove, in the form of his Globalwar series, in which the Global War was interrupted by an ultra-terrestrial invasion. This time out, Turtledove returns to the Global War with a new wrinkle: instead of attacking Japan, the Mexicans cross the Mississippi to invade the C.N.A.
Global War: North American Front is actually a sequel to Turtledove's earlier novel Northern Exposure: A Novel of the Second Rocky Mountain War, in which Thomas Kronmiller maneuvers Ezra Gallivan out of office in 1899 and intervenes in the Great Northern War. That novel ended in 1900 with the C.N.A. in possession of Alaska, the Russian Empire still intact, Benito Hermión deposed a year early, and a young Alvin Silva swearing vengeance on the perfidious Tories of the C.N.A.
Global War: North American Front picks up the story 39 years later. In Europe, Britain, France and a still-intact Russian Empire face off against Germany and a still-intact Austrian Empire. Meanwhile, with no Siberian protectorate to guard and a vengeful Alvin Silva in Chapultepec Palace, the Mexicans are ready for a rematch with the C.N.A.
Fortunately (for the North Americans), this C.N.A. is not the isolationist nation that sat out the war under Bruce Hogg. The Moral Imperative has been the nation's dominant ideology for 40 years, and it shows. This C.N.A. is just as militarized and expansionist as the U.S.M. it faces. In a parallel with our own history’s Global War, the war between the two North American powers does not begin in North America itself, but in South America. The C.N.A. has built up Brazil into a counterweight against New Granada, encouraging the Brazilians to re-conquer their lost provinces of Grão Pará and Rio Negro. A Neogranadian-instigated revolt flares up in the restive Amazonian provinces, and war breaks out between the two nations. It isn’t long before North American and Mexican troops intervene and come to blows with each other. By October, the two nations have exchanged declarations of war.
As with Turtledove’s earlier Globalwar novels, Global War: North American Front features a large and varied cast of characters, some historical and some fictional. By far the most interesting are the historical North Americans in their new roles, from Governor-General Herbert Lee to General Douglas Watson to Serjeant Carter Monaghan. On the other side, there is a certain morbid fascination in watching notable Mexican military figures such as Paul Suarez and Edmund Buchanan battling their North American counterparts in the Caribbean and on the banks of the Mississippi. The novel also features a number of fictional characters in Mexican-occupied New Orleans and Fort Lodge, as well as on the front lines in Georgia, Southern Vandalia and Alaska.
The novel ends in December 1940 with Mexican forces stalled outside of Mobile, Georgia and Novidessa, Alaska, while military and political leaders on both sides prepare for renewed fighting in the spring. Future volumes in the series will presumably follow the war to its conclusion, whenever and wherever that might be.
From Confrontation Magazine, April 1993
The Literature of Post-Atomic Imperialism by Joan Kahn
There has always been a strain of imperialism in the national character of the C.N.A. It impelled the militias of New England to commit the savageries of King Philip’s War, it impelled Colonel George Washington across the Appalachians to spark war with France, it impelled Tomkinson into Spanish Florida and Curtis into Spanish Louisiana during the Trans-Oceanic War, and it impelled Henry Gilpin to launch the Rocky Mountain War.
The utter futility and horrific cost of the Rocky Mountain War played a large part in the reduction of this strain from a dominant trait to a latent one. For over a century after the war, imperialism was always the unplayed hand, with the Gallivans and Hoggs able to thwart the designs of the Kronmillers and Watsons. And so it remained up until the advent of the Atomic Age. The threat posed by the atom bomb was sufficient to bring the imperialist strain out of its hidden recess to re-emerge as the dominant trait in the North American national character. Now the two major parties vie with each other in a contest to see who can produce the more aggressive foreign policy, while the formerly dominant pacifist impulse is now confined to a perennially weak third party.
With post-atomic imperialism now ascendant, it should come as no surprise to see the C.N.A.’s new commitment to aggression enshrined in popular literature. Harry Turtledove was a specialist in Byzantine history at Brant University before gaining success as a writer of fantascience and alternate history. In his latest novel Global War: North American Front (Knapp & Co., NA£12.50, IBIC 27114-B-741), he writes of an alternate timeline in which Thomas Kronmiller became Governor-General in 1899 and set the C.N.A. on a new course of imperialist conquest.
In the hands of another writer, the world of Global War: North American Front might have served as a cautionary tale on the dangers of imperialism. By 1939 the C.N.A. has become militarized beyond the wildest dreams of Douglas Watson. Compulsary military service has been introduced, and the C.N.A.’s normal peacetime army numbers 5 million. By 1939, however, tensions between the U.S.M. and C.N.A. are at their height, and Governor-General Herbert Lee has called up an additional 4 million reservists. When war breaks out between New Granada and the North American client state of Brazil, 30,000 North American troops are airlifted to Grão Pará and Rio Negro, where they quickly come to blows with a Mexican force of similar size.
Turtledove paints a bleak picture of his alternate C.N.A. The highest rated vitavision shows are contemporary espionage dramas and historical war dramas set during the Rocky Mountain War and Turtledove’s fictional Second Rocky Mountain War. Jack-and-Stripes-themed decorations are found everywhere. Members of the Grand Council openly represent the interests of arms merchants rather than the people of their districts. This could be the stuff of a cautionary tale, but it is not. The tone of Global War: North American Front is unmistakeably triumphalist. Turtledove invites the reader to cheer along with every victory by the C.N.A. and groan in anguish at every victory by the U.S.M. The Mexican occupation of Fort Lodge allows Turtledove to catalogue an endless array of horrors perpetrated by the Mexicans upon the Negroes of Southern Vandalia.
The lessons the reader is meant to draw from Global War: North American Front are all-too-simple ones: the glories of militarism, the nobility of battle in a righteous cause, the fearsome threat faced by the C.N.A., and the absolute necessity of dealing with that threat by any means necessary. And to make certain that the message isn't too rough to swallow, it is coated with a sugary confection of simple, popular writing. The narrative is straightforward, the characterization is by-the-numbers, the good guys are very good, and the bad guys are as blackhearted as can be. If you were looking for a work of propaganda to help convince the masses of the C.N.A. that an aggressive foreign policy was just plain good sense, you couldn't ask for a better example than Global War: North American Front.
From New Worlds of Fantascience, April 1993
New Books by Buddy Alger
Global War: North American Front by Harry Turtledove (Knapp & Co., NA£12.50, IBIC 27114-B-741)
The most popular topic for alternate history novels by far has been "what if the rebels had won the North American Rebellion". This has been the subject of works as disparate as Robert Kenney's posthumously published melodrama Dominion of the Snake, and Robert Sobel's faux textbook For All Time. Harry Turtledove's own contribution to that subgenre was his The Two Georges, set in a technologically backward near-utopia where the Rebellion was headed off in the 1760s by William Pitt the Elder.
The second most popular topic has been alternate outcomes to the Global War, featuring an outright victory by one side or the other -- Mexico conquering Japan, Japan conquering Mexico, Germany conquering Great Britain, and even Britain and France conquering Germany. Once again, this genre has been visited before by Turtledove, in the form of his Globalwar series, in which the Global War was interrupted by an ultra-terrestrial invasion. This time out, Turtledove returns to the Global War with a new wrinkle: instead of attacking Japan, the Mexicans cross the Mississippi to invade the C.N.A.
Global War: North American Front is actually a sequel to Turtledove's earlier novel Northern Exposure: A Novel of the Second Rocky Mountain War, in which Thomas Kronmiller maneuvers Ezra Gallivan out of office in 1899 and intervenes in the Great Northern War. That novel ended in 1900 with the C.N.A. in possession of Alaska, the Russian Empire still intact, Benito Hermión deposed a year early, and a young Alvin Silva swearing vengeance on the perfidious Tories of the C.N.A.
Global War: North American Front picks up the story 39 years later. In Europe, Britain, France and a still-intact Russian Empire face off against Germany and a still-intact Austrian Empire. Meanwhile, with no Siberian protectorate to guard and a vengeful Alvin Silva in Chapultepec Palace, the Mexicans are ready for a rematch with the C.N.A.
Fortunately (for the North Americans), this C.N.A. is not the isolationist nation that sat out the war under Bruce Hogg. The Moral Imperative has been the nation's dominant ideology for 40 years, and it shows. This C.N.A. is just as militarized and expansionist as the U.S.M. it faces. In a parallel with our own history’s Global War, the war between the two North American powers does not begin in North America itself, but in South America. The C.N.A. has built up Brazil into a counterweight against New Granada, encouraging the Brazilians to re-conquer their lost provinces of Grão Pará and Rio Negro. A Neogranadian-instigated revolt flares up in the restive Amazonian provinces, and war breaks out between the two nations. It isn’t long before North American and Mexican troops intervene and come to blows with each other. By October, the two nations have exchanged declarations of war.
As with Turtledove’s earlier Globalwar novels, Global War: North American Front features a large and varied cast of characters, some historical and some fictional. By far the most interesting are the historical North Americans in their new roles, from Governor-General Herbert Lee to General Douglas Watson to Serjeant Carter Monaghan. On the other side, there is a certain morbid fascination in watching notable Mexican military figures such as Paul Suarez and Edmund Buchanan battling their North American counterparts in the Caribbean and on the banks of the Mississippi. The novel also features a number of fictional characters in Mexican-occupied New Orleans and Fort Lodge, as well as on the front lines in Georgia, Southern Vandalia and Alaska.
The novel ends in December 1940 with Mexican forces stalled outside of Mobile, Georgia and Novidessa, Alaska, while military and political leaders on both sides prepare for renewed fighting in the spring. Future volumes in the series will presumably follow the war to its conclusion, whenever and wherever that might be.
From Confrontation Magazine, April 1993
The Literature of Post-Atomic Imperialism by Joan Kahn
There has always been a strain of imperialism in the national character of the C.N.A. It impelled the militias of New England to commit the savageries of King Philip’s War, it impelled Colonel George Washington across the Appalachians to spark war with France, it impelled Tomkinson into Spanish Florida and Curtis into Spanish Louisiana during the Trans-Oceanic War, and it impelled Henry Gilpin to launch the Rocky Mountain War.
The utter futility and horrific cost of the Rocky Mountain War played a large part in the reduction of this strain from a dominant trait to a latent one. For over a century after the war, imperialism was always the unplayed hand, with the Gallivans and Hoggs able to thwart the designs of the Kronmillers and Watsons. And so it remained up until the advent of the Atomic Age. The threat posed by the atom bomb was sufficient to bring the imperialist strain out of its hidden recess to re-emerge as the dominant trait in the North American national character. Now the two major parties vie with each other in a contest to see who can produce the more aggressive foreign policy, while the formerly dominant pacifist impulse is now confined to a perennially weak third party.
With post-atomic imperialism now ascendant, it should come as no surprise to see the C.N.A.’s new commitment to aggression enshrined in popular literature. Harry Turtledove was a specialist in Byzantine history at Brant University before gaining success as a writer of fantascience and alternate history. In his latest novel Global War: North American Front (Knapp & Co., NA£12.50, IBIC 27114-B-741), he writes of an alternate timeline in which Thomas Kronmiller became Governor-General in 1899 and set the C.N.A. on a new course of imperialist conquest.
In the hands of another writer, the world of Global War: North American Front might have served as a cautionary tale on the dangers of imperialism. By 1939 the C.N.A. has become militarized beyond the wildest dreams of Douglas Watson. Compulsary military service has been introduced, and the C.N.A.’s normal peacetime army numbers 5 million. By 1939, however, tensions between the U.S.M. and C.N.A. are at their height, and Governor-General Herbert Lee has called up an additional 4 million reservists. When war breaks out between New Granada and the North American client state of Brazil, 30,000 North American troops are airlifted to Grão Pará and Rio Negro, where they quickly come to blows with a Mexican force of similar size.
Turtledove paints a bleak picture of his alternate C.N.A. The highest rated vitavision shows are contemporary espionage dramas and historical war dramas set during the Rocky Mountain War and Turtledove’s fictional Second Rocky Mountain War. Jack-and-Stripes-themed decorations are found everywhere. Members of the Grand Council openly represent the interests of arms merchants rather than the people of their districts. This could be the stuff of a cautionary tale, but it is not. The tone of Global War: North American Front is unmistakeably triumphalist. Turtledove invites the reader to cheer along with every victory by the C.N.A. and groan in anguish at every victory by the U.S.M. The Mexican occupation of Fort Lodge allows Turtledove to catalogue an endless array of horrors perpetrated by the Mexicans upon the Negroes of Southern Vandalia.
The lessons the reader is meant to draw from Global War: North American Front are all-too-simple ones: the glories of militarism, the nobility of battle in a righteous cause, the fearsome threat faced by the C.N.A., and the absolute necessity of dealing with that threat by any means necessary. And to make certain that the message isn't too rough to swallow, it is coated with a sugary confection of simple, popular writing. The narrative is straightforward, the characterization is by-the-numbers, the good guys are very good, and the bad guys are as blackhearted as can be. If you were looking for a work of propaganda to help convince the masses of the C.N.A. that an aggressive foreign policy was just plain good sense, you couldn't ask for a better example than Global War: North American Front.