My Alternate History Novel

I take it you dislike alternate histories as a genre. I sympathize. For ever "The Man in the High Castle" there's a score of crappy novels like "A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!"

Still, "Castle" was pretty good, and so was "Voyage" by that Baxter guy, and that almost justifies the sub-genre.

How 'bout this: we get the Democrats to sponsor a bill saying no one can write an Alternate History novel unless they actually *know* how real history worked in the first place? That would spare us hundreds of "What would Apollo 13 have discovered on the moon if they hadn't had the accident" novels written by hacks who can't be bothered to find out that Apollo 14 went to the same site 13 had intended to go to.

I guess I haven't found the "Alternate Apollo 13 History" shelf at the bookstore. Is it next to the "Neanderthal Shakespearian Cyberpunk" section?

Here's a really silly one. Israel gets destroyed shortly after it's established, and the United States reluctantly lets the Jews displaced by WWII settle in Alaska. But decades later a murder plot reveals all kinds of foregin intrigue just as..... It's been done?? What idiot came up with....?? Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon?? Oh, if Michael Chabon wrote it it must be brilliant. (Except for that crap ending.)

OK, here's a really stupid one. Charles Lindbergh gets elected president instead of FDR, and he.... Really?? Phillip Roth?? Another Pulitzer Prize winner?

Now I'm completely confused. Why did the 'serious literature' writers start mucking around in this genre? Does this mean that Harry Turtledove should start clearing a place on his mantle for his Pulitzer?

How 'bout this: The land bridge between Asia and North America stays above water after the last ice age, and imperial Russia discovers it and colonizes North America, completely shutting the Western European Powers out of it, and then we explore how the soc...what the hell? Really? Nabokov wrote that? Vladimir Nabokov? Really? Yeah, he's pretty reputable.

I guess what continues to annoy me about Alternate Histories is that (A) they tend to be a little too amero-centric; (B) revolve around wars that involve the US and (C) they tend to involve the same wars over and over and over again.

I mean how many possible different outcomes to the Civil War or World War 2 or the Revolution do I have to sit through? Couldn't there be one that involves the myriad ways the War of 1812 could have gone wrong? Or World War 1? Or - just a crazy thought here - how about an Alternate History that revolves around something that doesn't involve the US at all, we're on the periphery of it, like the USSR and China going to war in the 70s.

Or - and probably this is just because I haven't been taking my meds - how about an alternate history that doesn't involve a war at all?

That last one would never happen...

You forgot my favorite non-WWII movie, "The Not-So-Great Escape." Everyone who watched the movie wondered why Steve McQueen was covered in dirt and continually played catch by himself in a not-cell. However, the motorcycle chase scene included lots of less-than-awesome jumps over not-barbed wire.

(I never made it through Chabon's 'The Yiddish Policemen's Union.' It didn't grab me like K&C.)

1. A world without tacos?? Are you crazy? I think such a scenario impossible based upon the immortal words of Voltaire: "If tacos did not exist, it would be necessary to invent them".
2. I imagine that if Bruce Wayne's parents were not killed, he would have rebelled against his parent's liberal efforts instead of embracing them, and grown up not to be the world's greatest detective but rather a mindless spoiled brat with delusions of grandeur. I.e., Tucker Carlson.
3. Poor Robert Harris. Fatherland continues to be the only alternate-history novel that I just can't get through.
4. Without the rise of WWII and Nazism, Anne Frank's diary would have been remembered not as a haunting tale of love, loss and survival, but rather would be recalled as a shockingly pornographic tale of pubescent lust and angst that resulted in Anne's being grounded for three months, and would later be dragged out of the attic to torment Anne by Mr. and Mrs. Frank when Anne brought home her first serious long-term boyfriend from college.

@ The Movie:
- A bold choice to do A World Without Tacos. I'd have gone w/ A World Without Philadelphia Cream Cheese myself, and how it's absence led inexorably to a third world war in the early 1960s. Maybe the plot of the Alternate History you're thinking of could be them attempting to invent The Taco in order to fill some nagging hole in humanity's collective soul? Or simply to get rid of all that extra cornmeal?

- I think the DC/Marvel "Amalgam" universe already answered the whole "Alternate Bruce Wayne" thing with their one-shot "Bruce Wayne: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D." Really! Or maybe not, I know they published that, but I was kinda' drunk when I read it, so I can't really remember the details.

@ The Movie:
- A bold choice to do A World Without Tacos. I'd have gone w/ A World Without Philadelphia Cream Cheese myself, and how it's absence led inexorably to a third world war in the early 1960s. Maybe the plot of the Alternate History you're thinking of could be them attempting to invent The Taco in order to fill some nagging hole in humanity's collective soul? Or simply to get rid of all that extra cornmeal?

- I think the DC/Marvel "Amalgam" universe already answered the whole "Alternate Bruce Wayne" thing with their one-shot "Bruce Wayne: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D." Really! Or maybe not, I know they published that, but I was kinda' drunk when I read it, so I can't really remember the details.

About 20 years hence, someone is going to write a great alt-history novel based on the premise of "what if that pretzle was fatal".