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Archive for the 'Alternate History' Category

The Man With The Iron Heart — An Early Book Review

by Doug Mataconis @ Wednesday, July 29th, 2009. Filed under Alternate History, Book Reviews, Books, Harry Turtledove

I’m doing something that I’m pretty sure I haven’t done in a long time; I’m giving up on, and reviewing, a book before I’ve finished with it. The reasoning is rather simply and will, I think, become clear below.
The Man With The Iron Heart is one of Harry Turtledove’s latest ventures into the world of [...]

A Meeting At Corvallis: A Book Review

by Doug Mataconis @ Friday, May 23rd, 2008. Filed under Alternate History, Book Reviews, Books

A Meeting At Corvallis, the final volume of the Change trilogy that began with Dies The Fire, comes to a satisfying, rollicking, action backed end, and there’s plenty there to satisfy anyone who became a fan of the first book and followed it all the way through.
After spending two volumes, stretching over nine years, building [...]

The Protector’s War: A Book Review

by Doug Mataconis @ Tuesday, May 13th, 2008. Filed under Alternate History, Books

Despite it’s title, S.M. Stirling’s The Protector’s War, the second volume in a trilogy that started with Dies The Fire isn’t about war in the Post-Change Williamette Valley so much as it’s about the precursors to a war between survivors in a new world that seems all but inevitable.
This second volume starts eight years after [...]

What Would Happen If Technology Stopped Working ?

by Doug Mataconis @ Friday, May 2nd, 2008. Filed under Alternate History, Book Reviews, Books

Imagine if, in a split-second, every piece of technology that you depend upon stopped working. Not just televisions, computers, and cell phones. Add in cars, trains, and anything based upon electricity or the internal combustion engine. To make things even more interesting, let’s add in firearms and gunpowder too.
What kind of world would result, what [...]

The Ultimate Alternate History Collection

by Doug Mataconis @ Saturday, April 26th, 2008. Filed under Alternate History, Book Reviews, Books, History

The Collected What If ? is nothing less than a comprehensive look at some of the most important turning points in history. And, once you get started considering the possible ways in which history could have turned out drastically different, it’s hard for the imagination not to start running wild.
With contributions from some of the [...]

Never Call Retreat: A Book Review

by Doug Mataconis @ Saturday, April 19th, 2008. Filed under Alternate History, Book Reviews, Books

Through three novels, Newt Gingrich and William Forstchen have told the story of a Civil War that might have been. It started with Gettysburg, where Robert E. Lee withdraws from the field of battle in Pennsylvania and forces the Army of the Potomac to fight a battle on his terms, with devastating results. Then, in [...]

Grant Comes East: A Book Review

by Doug Mataconis @ Monday, April 14th, 2008. Filed under Alternate History, Book Reviews, Books

Continuing the counter-factual history of the Civil War that they started with Gettysburg, Newt Gingrich and William Forstchen came up with another literary hit out of the park with the second volume of their trilogy, Grant Comes East.
When the last volume ended, the Army of the Potomac had been decimated at Union Mills, Maryland and [...]

Gettysburg: A Book Review

by Doug Mataconis @ Friday, April 11th, 2008. Filed under Alternate History, Books, History, Newt Gingrich

I don’t say this very often, but in Gettysburg, Newt Gingrich and William Fortschen have created a masterpiece.
The Civil War itself, and the Battle of Gettysburg in particular, have been the subject of countless historical books, novels, and films. The war has also been the subject of more than one “what-if” scenario; imagining how history [...]

In At The Death: A Book Review

by Doug Mataconis @ Sunday, September 9th, 2007. Filed under Alternate History, Book Reviews, Books, Harry Turtledove

Through eleven volumes and nearly 100 years of alternate history, Harry Turtledove has been writing the story of a North America quite different from the one that we’ve lived in.
It’s a world in which the Confederacy won the Civil War in 1862 thanks to a twist in history. In our world, just prior to the [...]

Harry Arrives From Amazon

by Doug Mataconis @ Wednesday, August 1st, 2007. Filed under Alternate History, Books, Harry Turtledove

Harry Turtledove that is:

I’m already at Chapter III.

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