I read that one!
Warning: A very good book but very very grim.
Harry Turtledove has made a career out of various alternate history tales.
His WorldWar series (set in 1942 and thereabouts), where WW2 was going pretty much as we all remember, until the aliens landed… is pretty decent. The followup, set 20ish years later, is okay but not as good.
In The Presence of Mine Enemies follows the popular “Hitler won” meme into the early 21st century, and focuses on a family that is Jewish but has managed to pass for Gentile. This is a standalone.
Ruled Britannia, where the Spanish Armada succeeded, is also a standalone. William Shakespeare is commissioned to write a play … except he’s being paid by a bunch of different sources, each of whom wants the play to support the glory of their viewpoint.
The Hot War series (Korean war, Truman decides to use nukes; it does not go well) was decent but not the happiest, obviously.
He’s been kind of phoning it in, with some of his later stuff. Hail! is the tale of how the Marx Brothers got zapped back in time to the Fredonian Rebellian - which happened in Texas in the 1820s. Not good.
I have not read any of his Byzantine Empire stuff - supposedly he is actually a historian who specialized in that era.
I read that one and really liked it. The play quotes spread throughout are great but my favorite scene is when Queen Elizabeth stands before the crown just after being released from the Tower.
I’d say that the novel version of “The Presence of Mine Enemies” maps the real world collapse of the Soviet Union onto a Nazi regime that lasted into the early 21st century.
Turtledove’s best alternate history might be The Guns of the South (South Africans from the late 20th century try to alter the outcome of the American Civil War).
I enjoyed that - but it’s less plausible, in that it requires time travel.
IIRC, the racists from future South Africa see the South winning the war… but the slaves did not remain quite as oppressed as the South Africans had planned.
How Few Remain is more straight “alternate history”; I haven’t read the whole thing, but I recall it begins with one pivotal event going differently from how it did in our history, leading to the South winning the war.
I have read a ton of Turtledove which others have recommended. When he is good he is great but sometimes his repetition of saying the same things over and over or his paralleling actual history takes me out of things. But yeah he is one of the most popular for a reason.
Two books I read long ago and remember liking but I don’t remember many details other than I liked them. They both have similar themes but that is a coincidence.
Underground Airlines is set in an America where slavery never fully ended and was still legal in four states (you can probably guess which ones).
The other is a Duology. The first book is Lion’s Blood. It is set in a world where Africa colonized North America and gets its slave labor from a fractured Europe.
My favorite alternate history idea is that George RR Martin never started Wildcards and finishes A Song of Ice and Fire before he dies instead.
“This is certainly true”, said Frodo, reading the SDMB through his extremely thick glasses.
Frodo, carefully settling his extremely thick glasses over his nose to read the SDMB, had to agree with Quimby.
Frodo “Four Eyes” Baggins, an unfortunate nickname he had acquired due to the very very thick glasses he needed to read, agreed with Quimby’s opinion.
Reaching for his “Coke bottle” glasses Frodo…
Before I replied, I spread zinc oxide on my fair skin.
Steve Barnes wrote those - and they are good. There’s also an album of songs inspired by the books
Minor nitpick: Most people who caught the virus got over it with no known problems (though it’s later revealed that two such people maybe oughtn’t reproduce as the offspring would have major issues).
Some smallish percentage were, as noted, transformed into what the series called “jokers”. An even smaller percentage developed powers, and were called Aces (IIRC; it’s been a while since I’ve read any of the books). Some number wound up developing powers that were not bad, but not terribly useful - I don’t recall what any examples were, but imagine you could, say, always tell which side of the bread would hit the floor first (buttered / plain), and nothing else.
I heard Martin read the first tale in the series, at WorldCon in 1986, just as it was about to start publication.
Yes, the deuces. One had the power to put a sparkly pink spot on people, places and things. The spot lasted a few hours. One could bring small amounts of water to a boil.
I’m still following the series, have been since about 1990.
That’s awesome!!
Man in a High Castle by Phillip K. Dick. Required reading in a Sci-Fi class in college, it has stuck with me for over two decades. Axis has won WWII and the US is divided between Japan on the West Coast and Germany on the East Coast, this book is about the West Coast. Obviously Fascism and the Holocaust are horrible, but the book’s main thrust is getting the reader into the mind of a conquered people. Culturally how a group handled not only losing, but no longer deciding for themselves basic government operations. Americans didn’t have this in their national conscience and it affected how we stomped around the world in the name of eradicating Communism at the time.
The book was subtle and a delicate slow burn, for instance an important event the book’s plot revolves around was just a single awkward conversation, but why it was awkward and what it means takes explanation film doesn’t seem to have time for. What little I have seen of the Prime show just grinds up the books point. See also,The Handmaid’s Tale, it’s not bad it’s just a lot more going on and so a lot more themes to sift through and digest.
Another good “occupied America” book is The Divide by William Overgard.
Here’s an interesting one- is Spinrad’s “The Iron Dream” an alternative history?
For those that don’t know, it’s a dig at the quasi-authoritarian, Uberman loving side of science fiction fandom. The introduction establishes that Adolph Hitler fled Germany for America after a disastrous attempt at politics, became a itinerant painter and writer of pulp science fiction, and after his death gained a cult following; the main text is his magnum opus. You can probably imagine the plot.
Based on the recs here, and some internet searching I ordered it.
How much water and how pure? Someone who could bring a small amount of liquid in someone’s veins to a boil would be dangerous indeed
IIRC he had to see the water to heat it, and it took a while, and only small amounts.
A slightly lesser known Turtledove work:
Is fun for me, in that while it’s an alternate fork of our universe, it’s more or less internally consistent, although our protagonist is too involved in too many dramatic discoveries to be exactly plausible. But it’s basically a set of chronological short stories involving the same character, and is an easier read than Big Fat Trilogies.
A more recent mention, and I’m only bringing it up because you mentioned 1632, is David Drakes “Oblique Approach” series, in which faaaaar future descendants of humanity meddle in the Byzantine era of Justinian and Belisarius in order to change their own timeline.
One thing I found amusing about agent of Byzantium was Basil’s favorite saint Muamet.