Harry Turtledove, the "master of alternate history."y

In My Humble Opinion
1

Turtledove is, I guess, famous for imagining a past in which the South won the Civil War. I can’t think of any other writer who’s gotten so much mileage out of “the South won” storylines. He also imagines an alternate WWII in which aliens invade.

BUT…I can’t stand reading him anymore!!!

Yes, he has very interesting and complicated plots, and he seems to have done his historical homework, and he does convey the “feel” of how it was back then…

But his narrative style drives me nuts! It’s all P.O.V. vignettes, all character-driven scenes. (And too damn many characters! I can barely remember who everybody is!) It’s like, the reader never “sees” anything happening, unless it happens to a major character, in a “P.O.V.” scene. Most of the time, the reader only hears second-hand about stuff happening:

“Hey, Jeb, you heard the Martians done landed and done ab-ducted General Lee? Pass the fritters…”

“Yeah, Clem, I done heard about it. You done with them biscuits and gravy…?”

And on and on, like that.

Geez Louise, how could anybody stand to read all of Turtledove’s books? Who (besides po’ sucker me) would have the patience to get through more than three of them?

This kind of stuff makes me yearn for the “omniscient narrator” style.

Isn’t there anybody who specializes in alternate history who writes more pleasingly than Turtledove?

One could also make the facile accusation that the blacks get a raw deal in Turtledove’s books, but maybe he’s just trying for “realism.” But, shite, this is fantasy fiction. Why can’t the blacks win once in a while?

I noticed that the third in Turtledove’s “Great War” series is still not in paperback after quite some time. Maybe I’m not the only one who’s getting tired of him?

2

I’ve noticed the same thing. For whatever reason, I really dig alternate history, but I don’t want to know more than eight or nine separate story lines going at one time. His style can really, really grate on you sometimes. As for the Great War series, the first two are in paperback. The third, and I assume last, I saw but once in hardcover.

He’s also ridiculously prolific. He’s extended the alien contact during WWII thing over five original books, with a second series just beginning. Plus he has a veritable library of other books that I haven’t even dared to look at.

For the record, I’ve read three now. If I read the last of the Great War series, what do I win? :slight_smile:

3

You win a headache like mine.

That’s IF he ever finishes the Great War series. Since Great War #3 hasn’t even made it to paperback after all these months, and the hardcover is no longer available at the Barnes&Noble, and he’s STILL not even friggin’ finished with the storyline…it doesn’t look good.

4

For your sanity, don’t check Amazon. They have the paperback of Breakthroughs, as well as the hardcover of the sequel to that, interestingly named Blood and Iron.

Included in his catalog are also a ‘prequel’ book to the Great War Series, eight bloody books in that bloody aliens and WWII series, and a grand total of 79 entries for Amazon. Peruse at your own risk.

5

Well, I did kinda get hooked on the Great War series, so now that the paperback’s out, I guess I can suffer a little more. I mean, I really, really want the blacks to win something at the end.

Ain’t buying no Turtledove hardcovers.

But World Wars? The first book of that was enough for me. Two major cities blown up by atomic blasts, and we don’t “see” any of it, we only hear about it later. Cheap!

6

Don’t get your hopes up. Whatever the blacks win, the aliens are sure to confiscate. :slight_smile: And Turtledove’s hinted that this whole mess will segue(slowly, might I add) into an alternate second world war.

7

I made it through Guns of the South and the first one of the WWII books, but he lost me with the writing style. It became an effort to figure out what was going on at any given point in time and the reading pretty much lost its enjoyment. And I’m someone who’ll usually read anything, so for me to give up on a series means I thought it was very bad.

8

Any of you who are interested may want to read Stephen Fry’s Making History, which might have come in under your radar. It’s an alternative history based on the premise of a certain Austrian painter never having been born. It’s scope is limited almost entirely to the personal story of the main character (who implements the history-changing event), but it’s a pretty wild ride.

I dimly remember enjoying The Guns of the South but I also dimly remember it getting a little tiresome toward the end.

9

I’ll tell ya, I don’t mind Turtledove’s style so much. Complex novels with numerous characters and subplots are fine with me and I don’t mind character driven narratives. I’ve generally liked his books just fine. Except…

…The fucking Videssos series drove me batshit. Not because it was poorly written or uninteresting - It was neither of those things. I enjoyed the story. But what really annoyed me is that in a weird way it seemed like historical plagiarism*.

It was his first series. He has a degree in Byzantine history. I know quite a bit about Byzantine history, myself. That whole series was basically an exercise in a historical “what if” of a Roman Legion being transported to 13th century ( actually kind of a melange of 11th-13th century ) Byzantium. Only with magic, all the names changed, and the geography reversed in a East-West orientation. If he had used an actual “alternate universe” Byzantium with magic, or at least fully acknowledged his source material in a forward, I wouldn’t have been annoyed. But he didn’t, instead giving the unspoken impression that he had invented this very rich fantasy setting wholecloth. Which is what my step-brother thought ( he was praising him up and down for this intricate world he had supposedly created ).

A little thing, really and probably just my own hangup. But it has always grated, for some reason :wink: .

  • Tamerlane
10

I don’t know. I sort of enjoyed the Videssos books, because it gave me the chance to say to myself “Hey, that’s the battle of Manzikert!” or whatever. It did bug me that the main character of the Videssos cycle spoke Greek and still didn’t realize that the title Avtocrator was greek…

11

I picked up one of his books on the WWII, just to find out what the hubub was about. I only made it through half of it before putting it down for good. The way the story flowed just didn’t interest me.

But he did have a novella I read in an anthology of the year’s best SF called Da Vinci Rising which I thought was really good. It was an alternative history of Leonardo. No aliens, but a few explosions. Anyway, I’d recommend it.

tclouis, you want my recommendation for alternative history? Orson Scott Card. Yeah, big surprise coming from me. But Pastwatch: the Redemption of Christopher Columbus is one of his best books ever. And the series The Seventh Son is also nice. Alternative history of the 1800s with magic. Lots of historical characters make cameos.

Also, not alternative history, per se, but Shogun by James Clavell is an excellent book. Very long and very very very detail oriented, but it flows well and there isn’t a dull moment, even if they’re not really doing anything. Sounds weird, I know. Best way I can think to describe it.

12

I read Guns of the South and the first Worldwar trilogy. GotS wasn’t too bad, but Worldwar pissed me off. Almost everything (except the Panzer commander’s scenes) happens off-screen. And the whole addiction subplot was sort of stupid. And he kept building up characters and then having them come to pointless, useless, and boring ends! Look at Ussmak, Drefsab, and Larsson! AAARGH! Yes, in wartime sometimes people (and aliens, I guess) die in ways that aren’t glorious, aren’t dramatic, and aren’t satisfying in any way. But the author can choose to write whatever he wants, and he might as well write about folks who have satisfying stories. Sheesh.

13

**

That’s because most of his characters aren’t the movers and shakers of the world. In Guns of the South and the World and War series the characters are just regular folks living through historical events. I think a lot of historians really enjoy finding first hand accounts of past historical events. How many Civil War shows read letters written to parents and sweethearts in Dixie or up north?

**

In Guns of the South there was a black character that was acting as an assistant to the southern troops. They even gave him a rifle to defend himself with but those time travellers took it away. One of the main characters even felt bad because the black guy was shot running away and he only ran away because those new people treated him so poorly. Also in Guns of the South this same character commented on the negro troops of the north being every bit as brave as their white counterparts.

In the Great War series, first book I think, one of main characters in the south purchases a tamale from a black vendor. For one reason or another he finds out that the tamale isn’t made from beef and threatens the black vendor. The vendor says “Mr, it don’t seem to me that these invaders treat me any different then they treat you. You can hit me if you want but I might just hit you back.” That was severly paraphrased I know.

Also in the Great War series it was a group of blacks that set up one of the atomic bombs in Florida at an alien base.

It has been a while since I’ve read it so I might be a little inaccurate.

Marc

14

I really dig Turtledove’s writing style. I collect diaries and such-like. The way HT writes reminds me a great deal of those.

I have one in which, on December 7, 1941, the writer goes on about something at her church and some small fights between her and her brother. The last line mentions a name (I can’t recall the name off the top of my head) and says that he’s the first American killed in the war. That’s IT.

I have another one running from 1941-1945 from an elderly man in Chicago. He’s opposed to the US joining the war because he feels the British class system is corrupt and doesn’t rate our support. Other than that he mentions the war yes, but distantly, as if it was something happening a long way off to other people. And it was.

Turtledove does a good job of capturing the essense (so I feel, he’s never written about a period of time in which I passed through) of an era and the attitudes of the people who live through events.

Oh, and don’t get the WorldWar series and Great War series confused. The aliens attack the world in 1942 in the WorldWar series (7 books and finished now). The US and Confederacy join WWI on different sides in the Great War series. No aliens in that one.

The Great War series was planned for 4 books. After the 3rd one (Breakthroughs) came out demand was high enough that he contracted for 2 more and decided the first three could stand alone and the next three (The American Empire series) would be a seperate trilogy. The first one, “Blood and Iron” is due out in August.

Sorry if I came on too strong. God, I’m such a geek.

And “Pastwatch” and the “Alvin Maker” books by Orson Scott Card are both excellent. Worth reading no matter what.

15

I’m a big fan of Turtledove’s history stuff, i don’t particulary care for his fantasy. I love the Race from the World War series.

As for his writing style, sometimes i am disappointed when something neat happens and we are off-camera during the happenings, but usually he has at least someone there (like the battle of Chicago from the world war books.) From what i gathered from his style, he just rotates between characters, and divides chapters about every 24 pages, and books by every 20 chapters. Guns of the South is different, in that it follows only 2 characters, but it is one of his earlier novels, and was probably before he thought he could handle many characters.

After the World War series, i started the Great War series (the world war 1 books) and saw that he expanded the amount of characters he covered vastly, and it was a little annoying at first (it takes 4 chapters to get back to some of the characters), but then people die off and the book runs more smoothly. I can say i learn more from his books than many other authors, he puts in lots of little facts that make you feel like this could be really happening.

16

If y’all like alternate history series, try S.M. Stirling’s Drakon series. Four novels, an edited/compiled hardcopy of the four novels, and an anthology. The books are, in order of publication:

Marching Through Georgia
Under The Yoke
The Stone Dogs
Drakon

The anthology was simply titled Drakas.

Basically, the series hinges on the Fergusson Rifle, invented by Loyalist Patrick Fergusson. This was the first breech-loading rifle, and had a sustained rate of fire of up to 6 times a minute, was as accurate as the Pennsylvania, and as rugged as the Brown Bess.

In our time line, Fergusson, in command of a Loyalist Militia as part of Cornwallis’ Army, was killed at King’s Mountain, and the Fergusson-equipped militia was disbanded.

In Stirling’s version of history, Fergusson survived King’s Mountain, and his rifles delayed the Colonial victory by two years, when the Dutch declared for the Colonial Revoltionaries in the closing stages of the war.

As retribution, the British siezed the Dutch colony in S. Africa, and relocated their loyalist and Hessian Mercs. there, instead of dispersing them to find their way to Canada.

A slave owning aristocracy, backed by the battle-hardened German mercenaries, armed with the world’s first repeating rifles, decends upon the stone- and early-Bronze age primitives of Africa, and have the geographic isolation, raw materials and time to develop a nation, based upon conquest and “serf labor”, attracting the best and brightest minds available with monetary and land grants.

Naturally, they don’t like America.

As well: Stirling wrote another series (3 books) Island in the Sea of Time, in which he posits some kind of natural or man-made disaster which hurls the entire island of modern-day Nantucket back to about 1,500 B.C.

Good stuff.

17

It’s not really alternative history, but if you’re interested in reviewing Byzantium, allow me to recommend Guy Gavriel Kay’s Sailing to Sarantium and its sequel, Lord of Emporers (there might be a third book forthcoming, the end of the second book allows the story to go either way). It’s basically a fantasy retelling of Byzantium, with a wee bit of magic tossed in, following the mosaicist hired to decorate the fantasy version of the Hagia Sophia. If you like it, GGK’s stand-alone The Lions of Al-Rassan takes place in the same fantasy world, a few centuries later (during the alternative version of the Spanish Reconquista).