So why is that everyone loves Turtledove?

[HeWhoIsMe]

Got my hands on 'Agent of Byzantium' last week and it was awesome. Wish he would write more Byzantium stuff.

So here's me wasting my first post ever on this board to quote some guy from 3 pages back in the conversation only to ask a couple of totally unoriginal questions that i'm sure have been asked and answered countless times before I joined...so bear with me please...

Is "Agent of Byzantium" the "Byz with Magic" series/book some other person mentioned? What's it like? I'm kinda fed up with the Southern supremacy and the "Hitler meets ET" plot lately and I'd appreciate a change of scenery! I hope it's more like a Rule Brittania or even a TL-191 instead of Worldwar...i'd rather have my alt-history served plain with no alien invaders or wiccan byzantines added, thank you...

I'm no huge fan of HT's writing but as he's the best known, commercial writer in the alt-hist fiction subgenre I have read quite a few of his books...oh, well...the historical narrative parts where he's building up and fleshing out his worlds I like, I just usually skip the character to characater interaction pages and I'm fine...

Why can't he just write pure alt-history in an archival form like most "straight" history books and leave all the fiction out of the equation? Because that would severely reduce his reading audience that's why...and he's got kids to put through college as somebody mentioned...damn society of capitalists!

 

[History_Pintobean]

...and a surviving CSA is pretty much impossible.

How so? Just asking. There are countless point of divergences for the CSA that would have allowed them to survive. Unless you mean after the Civil War, which is a whole other story.

This reminds me of the part in The Man In The High Castle where one of the characters remarks about how the Allies could NEVER win World War Two. After all, the Axis nations had WAY too many advantages to forfeit a victory.

moving on.

I personally love Harry Turtledove's novels...except when he gets political as in The Man With The Iron Heart. When I first read it(and never finished the dang thing!), I expected a simple story about German Soldiers waging a guerrilla war. That's it. Around ten pages in it turned into a novel about how the war in Afghanistan is bad, and then all of a sudden Nazis are running into Allied soldiers with bombs strapped to their chests screaming "HAIL HITLER!" or "Fur Das Fatherland!"

Oh, God, please don't make me read another page of this crap.

I did enjoy The Guns of the South however. No politics involved. Just a simple, exciting, action-packed story that I really want to see a movie made out of.

If I want politics I will read one of my non-fiction history or philosophy books.

When Harry Turtledove wants to be good, he can be good. When he wants to be bad, he can be bad. Just like Stephen King.

Thanks to Turtledove, I have been striving to become a historical fiction/alternate history writer. My favorite periods are the American Civil War period, World War I, and the early Russian/early world Communist movement and the Cold War periods.

Right now I am working on a multiple page fake non-fiction text book about Confederate Naval combat and buildup during and before World War One.

I hope to post it in the finished-timeline/alternate history story section one of these days.

 

[RPW@Cy]

Is "Agent of Byzantium" the "Byz with Magic" series/book some other person mentioned? What's it like? I'm kinda fed up with the Southern supremacy and the "Hitler meets ET" plot lately and I'd appreciate a change of scenery! I hope it's more like a Rule Brittania or even a TL-191 instead of Worldwar...i'd rather have my alt-history served plain with no alien invaders or wiccan byzantines added, thank you...

No, "Agent of Byzantium" is set in a world where the POD is Mohammed converts to Christianity instead of founding his own religion (becoming a saint in Orthodoxy, for that matter) with the result that the arab conquests of the 6th/7th centuries don't happen and Byzantium is still a major power ruling most of the Mediterranean approximately 600 years later, when the stories take place. I'd agree with those who say "Agent" is one of the best things he's done.

There's no magic in the series BTW - I think the "magic Byzantium" one is "Thessalonica", though I haven't read it.

 

[Henriksson]

I hadn't even heard of Harry Turtledove until I came to this site.

I saw on wiki that he seems to hate France he screw it in so many timeline that it cannot be a simple error or coincidence.

France does seem to get screwed in alternate history a lot, though...

 

[RamscoopRaider]

There's no magic in the series BTW - I think the "magic Byzantium" one is "Thessalonica", though I haven't read it.

I think Magic Byzantium is the Videssos series

 

[Cazaril]

I think Magic Byzantium is the Videssos series

Kind of. Videssos is fantasy Byzantium, as opposed to Byzantium with magic (by which I mean that Videssos is a Byzantine-like nation in a fantasy world, as opposed to a historical Byzantium in our world with fantasy elements added).

 

[History_Pintobean]

France does seem to get screwed in alternate history a lot, though...

I believe he made both Britain and France fascist in the TL-191 series was so that in order for a fascist Confederacy to have any allies, it's longtime supporters and allies have to become fascist too.

Otherwise it would make for a really boring WWII alternate history with a predictable outcome.

I've noticed that the Communists get screwed over big time in his TL-191 series, too. The African American Communists fail in their endeavor(s) to create a socialist state in the Confederacy(which only led to the rise of fascism instead), while the Russian Revolution is utterly crushed.

So all we are left with in his alternate historical world is a few democratic nations, several constitutional/or absolute monarchies, and a whole lot of fascist nations.

I wonder how the Communist movement would have turned out in his fictional world AFTER the end of the last book of the last series though, with fascism utterly defeated around the world.

Surely Communism would make a come back, right?

 

[Wolfpaw]

So here's me wasting my first post ever on this board to quote some guy from 3 pages back in the conversation only to ask a couple of totally unoriginal questions that i'm sure have been asked and answered countless times before I joined...so bear with me please...

Welcome to the Board

Is "Agent of Byzantium" the "Byz with Magic" series/book some other person mentioned? What's it like?

I was referring to the Videssos series, which is a fun romp. It's set in a fantasy world with glaringly obvious analogies to Byzantium, Armenia, Persia, Mesopotamia, Turkic nomads, the Italies, etc., only there's magic and the major religion is Greco-Zoroastrianism. I'd recommend Bridge of the Separator especially.

Why can't he just write pure alt-history in an archival form like most "straight" history books and leave all the fiction out of the equation? Because that would severely reduce his reading audience that's why.

Well, that'd be a bit boring if it was strictly archival. He could just put some appendices in the back that flesh out the world (as some AH authors do), but that seems like it'd require more work than he'd be willing to put in. That being said, I find the world-building and overall quality (both literary and AH) of his short fiction to be quite good.

Oh, God, please don't make me read another page of this crap.

The very last page of The Man With the Iron Heart is actually pretty chilling, though I agree that the book as a whole could have been improved on.

 

[Kaiphranos]

]I was referring to the Videssos series, which is a fun romp. It's set in a fantasy world with glaringly obvious analogies to Byzantium, Armenia, Persia, Turkic nomads, the Italies, etc., only there's magic and the major religion is Greco-Zoroastrianism. I'd recommend Bridge of the Separator especially.

Really? I read that one only once, and it didn't really grab me. Mind you, part of my problem that since I was familiar with the other books the ending was a foregone conclusion. Perhaps it stands better on its own?

 

[Wolfpaw]

Really? I read that one only once, and it didn't really grab me. Mind you, part of my problem that since I was familiar with the other books the ending was a foregone conclusion. Perhaps it stands better on its own?

Ah, well there's the rub; it was my first Videssos book, so I had no idea how it would end