Actually, Revolt in 2100 was a compilation of several short stories and novellas about that time period in Heinlein’s “Future History.” If This Goes On… was one of the stories included.
M.J. Engh’s novel Arslan has the US (and most of the world) being taken over by a Central Asian warlord. I’ve never managed to finish the book, though, since it was just too creepy and disturbing. I’m not sure if this quite fits the OP’s request, since it’s an external conquest rather than an internal political shift, but part of Engh’s point seems to be how people become complicit with conquerors, so that might fit.
Sorry to take so long to respond to this, Exapno– the thread dropped off my radar for a bit.
I think the only difference we have is in our use of the term “genre fiction.” Myself, I wouldn’t call anything “genre fiction” unless it is (to some degree at least) generic.
The reason I don’t consider The Man in the High Castle to be science fiction is best explained by this passage, in which The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, (a book about an alternate reality in which the Axis powers were defeated in 1945 and never came to occupy the United States,) is discussed:
Also, you must remember that, even at that point, Dick wasn’t looking at his work as fantasy. He was inspired by his everyday experience, which continued to get wierder and wierder. He didn’t draw his ideas from the genre, he got them from mystical writings of various degrees of obscurity, and from far, far too much amphetamine. He actually believed that an alternate universe of Platonic perfection was offered to him, and that it was only because he hesitated at the threshold that he remained stuck here in the trash stratum. It pissed him off until he died.
Anyway, “The Man in the High Castle isn’t genre SF” is a long way from “If it’s good, it can’t be SF.”
There’s plenty of science fiction (and even genre science fiction) that’s great stuff. Some genre science fiction is great literature.
A lot of things which contain science fiction ideas aren’t really genre science fiction, though. Dennis Potter’s Cold Lazarus, for example, is loaded with science fiction ideas. Silver jumpsuits, flying cars, cryogenics, dystopian future, all that good stuff. It was the last thing he ever wrote, though, in a race against cancer, and it’s a deeply personal work about mortality, nostalgia, and reconciling his feelings about letting crass commercial interests exploit his memories of childhood with the fame and virtual immortality that it allowed him. The sci-fi devices are just a way to write about his reflections on his life and his meditations on posterity.
Anyway, I agree with nearly every point in your essay above – but I think you are making rather a large pigeonhole marked “science fiction,” which includes many things which are clearly something else:
All alternative forms? Virginia Woolf wrote science fiction? James Joyce? Angela Carter? Toni Morrison? Carlos Castaneda? Lewis Carroll?
Eh, ultimately, it’s a minor disagreement over terms for categories. I don’t imagine it can have much effect on our enjoyment or understanding of the works themselves.
I happen to think Phjilip Roth’s scenario is more than far-fetched, it’s just plain silly.
It’s not just that Charles Lindbergh didn’t become president- it’s that he never had the slightest interest in running, and couldn’t have gotten the party’s nomination if he had.
Lest we forget, the supposedly isolationist GOP nominated a liberal internationalist New Yorker, Wendell Willkie, in 1940. And who came in second? An anti-semitic Midwesterner? No, ANOTHER liberal internationalist New Yorker, Thomas Dewey.
In other words, a writer would have to work very hard to construct a plausible scenario with an isolationist anti-semite in the White House. And Roth doesn’t. He simply takes it for granted that the U.S. was on the verge of fascism. And despite his protestations to the contrary, it’s pretty clear he thinks it still is.
Len Deighton’s “SS GB” was mighty far-fetched too, but at least it was entertaining!
There’s also The Sixth Column as a full-length novel.
Rand’s Anthem should qualify too. If [Atlas Shrugged* then why not The Fountainhead?
What about Caldwell’s The Captains and the Kings (hope I got that right after 30 some years) It was about the secret hands that work the puppets in government.
Actually, no, he didn’t – in this timeline, at least! 
The book was to be titled The Sound of His Wings, but was never written. If This Goes On… was the story of the Second American Revolution, overthrowing the successor of the First Prophet, the guy who took over in 2012. It’s an integral element of the Future History in which many of Heinlein’s early short stories and novels (and a few later ones) were integrated. He left four stories he’d plotted out as elements of the Future History unwritten when he turned to other plotlines, completing one of them, Da Capo 30 years later, as Time Enough for Love. But the Scudder theme – that someone could rally the Christian right to a political movement and take over the government by a well-strategized political campaign, seemed extremely outrageous in the 1940s.
Interesting series. Have you noticed that Turtledove tends to write alternate-universe dystopias? Any speculations regarding this?
I remembered another book; K by Donald Easterman, about the Nazis and Klan taking over the United States.
Can’t believe I forgot this one; Newman’s one of my favorite authors. It’s a very good book, which I recommend. It’s not, however, technically a novel; it’s written as a series of stories set in a common background.
I was thinking of If This Goes On… which was written.
Turtledove wrote The Two Georges and Agent of Byzantium, which were non-dystopian alternate history.
Someone once said that American and British authors tend to write dystopian alternate history; the theory was that real history worked out for the USA and UK, so alternatives were viewed as an unpleasant alternative. By contrast, French alternate histories supposedly often portrayed a variant from real hisotry as being better.
Slightly off topic, but I’m curious-has anyone written an alternative history novel where the United States turned out better?
Let’s look at Turtledove’s alternate history books (I’m not looking at short stories, because he has so many of them)
Guns of the South-Terrorists from the future go back and give the Confederates AK-47s, Confederates win Civil war. Not dystopic.
In the Presence of Mine Enemies-Jews try to survive in a future where the Nazis won WWII. Dystopic.
Ruled Brittania-The Spanish Armada was successful, England is Catholic and under Spanish control and is ready to revolt. Dystopic if you’re Episcopalian, not dystopic if you’re Catholic.
The Two Georges-Revolutionary war never happened, America is a British dominion. A police detective has to track down a stolen painting. Not dystopic.
Agent of Byzantium-Islam never arises, Byzantine Empire flourishes. Not dystopic
Worldwar series-Aliens invade during WWII. Dystopic.
Great War-American Empire series-Confederacy wins Civil War, ends up under fascist dictator. Dystopic
Gunpowder Empire-Alternate universe where Rome never fell. Less technologically advanced than ours, but not dystopic.
So, that’s 3 and 3, with Ruled Britania being an open question.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
The argument over the definitions and boundaries of science fiction – under any name and guise, which I’m going to abbreviate as SF and think of as speculative fiction – go back more than fifty years in the SF critical and academic communities. It’s hardly unique. Similar arguments over what should be included under the rubric of crime – or mystery or detective – are even older and what should be included as romance fiction is the hottest topic of today.
Just as taxonomy has its lumpers and splitters, so does sf, although it’s more useful to think of them as inclusionists and exclusionists. The underlying reason for the split is the same. Does it help understanding of the underlying reality to put small distinctions together to see the larger picture or to separate out the distinctions to see the differences in brighter light? The difference, if any, between taxonomy and SF is that critics in SF may go either way. SF as a marketing category is so specific and so narrow that all too frequently discussion of anything not marketed as SF is a waste of time.
Alternate history is obviously not one of these discussions. Putting Philip Roth and Philip K. Dick into the same discussion is fruitful, because they appear to have had many of the same goals and desires about freedom and individualism in America (going only by reviews and interviews in Roth’s case). And I admit that it’s also partly frustration to be inclusionistic here, because it’s the proverbial mule and the two-by-four. You cannot have this discussion unless you admit that genre got there first.
Dick is genre. The novel before MitHC was Dr. Futurity, the novel after was The Game Players of Titan. The short stories that he published right after the novel appeared in Galaxy and Amazing. Yes, he supposedly wrote MitHC by throwing the bones for the I Ching in six days on speed or whatever (but then what explains his two-year publication gap?), but he also knew his mainstream manuscripts weren’t selling and that the 1950s were a boom time for alternate history. One of those 1963 stories, “Top Stand-By Job,” is another political dystopia. If MitHC is not an exemplar of what good genre is capable of, then where can you possibly draw the line?
And why should you? If Dennis Potter is using science fictional tropes to best express his feelings about mortality, nostalgia, and commercialism, then he is writing SF. Other than marketing and position on the bookstore shelf, what makes it not SF? Its intent? Its feel? Its, you know, quality? Why do you believe that you can draw a line that puts genre SF on one side and mainstream on the other if they are both using the same tropes for expression?
I get exercised over the distinction or lack of one because so many people who are not familiar with genre don’t even understand that there is a subject here to be discussed and debated. If you doubt this, read just about any review of Roth in any major magazine.
Perhaps not ours, since we already know there are works on both sides of whatever imaginary divide we set up. So many others, however, have no idea that the other side exists or has value that it’s worth my screaming into the night to wake them up.
It’s a question of value judgment, but you could make a case that the North American Union (part of the British Empire) in Turtledove’s The Two Georges is in some ways better than the U.S.A. we really live in. It’s less efficient and less industrialized, but also less polluted and more pleasant and polite – kind of a Greater Canada – and the slaves were freed peacefully by Act of Parliament, and some of the Indian nations still have home rule in large territories.
One thing that bugs me about Turtledove’s scenario is that the “no taxation without representation” thing was never really resolved, although all other points of contention between Britain and the colonies were more or less resolved, when a colonial delegation led by George Washington went to London to hammer things out with George III. 200-odd years later, the NAU is still ruled, ultimately, by a London Parliament in which Americans have no voice, and which allows America such autonomy as seems good to it at the time. (Governor General Martin Luther King is concerned over the theft of the NAU’s national treasure, the Gainesborough painting The Two Georges, by a secessionist underground known as the Sons of Liberty, mainly because after a cockup like that, “London won’t trust us to manage our own affairs” for years to come.)
I’d like to see something different: Suppose colonial representation in Parliament had been established back when English colonization was just starting out? E.g., at a moment when Raleigh was in Elizabeth’s favor, he got her to grant Virginia its own M.P. (himself). And that set a precedent and was granted to all other colonies, shortly after their founding, as a matter of course. That state of affairs might have averted the Revolution – and also led to the British Empire turning into a de facto American Empire, sometime in the 19th Century, assuming periodic reapportionment of boroughs to reflect population shifts.
Has anybody ever written a novel about that?
Nyeh. Neal Gaiman’s take on the ‘Prez Rickard’ thing might well count. So, theoretically would Turtledove’s ‘Two Georges’. Even if there’s no ‘United States’ per se in TG there’s a world in which native american’s weren’t utterly wiped out, crime is at a minimum, and the death by firearm of a federal agent makes front page news around the entire continent.
As for the ‘definitions’ thing you guys sound like geneticists arguing over species classifications. Clearly, the only possible answer is to acknowledge that all literature exists inside a continuum and boundaries are arbitrary and, to a large extent, impossible to enforce.
Honestly, would Asimov’s E Danell Olivaw be in SF or mystery?
Would Card’s ‘Alvin Maker’ books be SF or religious fiction?
Would Orwell’s ‘1984’ be SF or political fiction?
Hell, for that matter would Tom Clancy be SF or thriller?
I posit, gentlemen, that they are BOTH. There is no way to distinguish their spot on the continuum (at least in a SF/non-SF continuum). To do so would require at LEAST 3 dimensions…possibly more.
And as for Turtledove being ‘dystopian’…please note that what he primarily ends up writing is military alternate history. And how can you have large, all-encompassing wars, with the destruction and death that entails, without presenting a bleak vision?
A graphic novel rather than pure text, but the 8th volume of the Sandman has a bizarre little story of a young, perfect president who gets assasinated after finishing his second term. America is nearly perfect while he’s in office.
That story also begins with this interesting little exchange, between a man named Brant and a stranger at a crossroads between different realities:
I don’t know why but that’s one of my favourite exchanges from the Sandman 
Ack – Jonathan Chance, what a simulpost. Here I was, slowly typing out that text and you were posting the same thing
There’s also L. Neil Smith’s novel The Probability Broach – which I’ve never read because I could never find it in any library or bookstore; I know it only from reviews. Smith is a radical Libertarian. In his AH, the 1789 Constitution lasts until the Whiskey Rebellion, which George Washington loses, and he is subsequently executed and the Constitution scrapped. Then America evolves into a minimal-government paradise, lightly ruled by a Continental Congress which is called into session only in rare emergencies. Everybody carries guns. There is no welfare and lazy people are left to starve or beg. Etc. I wish I could give more details. But this is clearly an exercise in wishful thinking – an America that turned out “better” in terms of the author’s standard of values.
Do Tom Clancy novels count?
Only if The Probability Broach counts. :dubious:
Yep. I’ve spouted this exact notion for years. And after my previous essays I’ll spare everyone the details.
Yet another example of analog human behavior not fitting a regimented and digital world.
Not really a tragedy. Efficiency is highly overrated.