No pun was intended when I used the word"well",by the way.
Sir Arthur Wellesley is the man who became the Duke of Wellington, in our history. In that timeline he’ll never know he was the person he was curious about.
It’s been many years since I’ve read it, but I remember enjoying Robert Harris’s *The Fatherland. * It was also made into a movie starring Rutger Hauer some years ago. As alternate history isn’t really my genre, I can’t say how it stacks up against the competition, but like I said, it was a fun read.
Of the novels mentioned which I’ve actually read I’d rank them in the following order:
Highly recommended
Phillip K Dick The Man in the High Castle
Robert Harris Fatherland
Len Deighton SS-GB
Phillip Roth The Plot Against America
Worth a Look but much longer than 400 pages
Decades of Darkness
Lands of Red and Gold - Australian based alt-history on the same website.
Average
Harry Turtledove’s *Southern Victory * series - Starts with How Few Remain
Eric Flint’s 1632 I haven’t read the sequels, probably too fanastic to count as AH as well.
Excellent books but not really alt-history
Susannah Clarke Jonathan Strange and Dr. Norrell
Harry Turtledove Guns of the South
George MacDonald Fraser’s *Flashman * books
Would something like Scott Westerfield’s Leviathan (World War I with genetically engineered creatures and steam powered battle mechs) or Cherrie Priest’s Boneshaker (mad scientist’s device unleashes zombies in 1860s Seattle) count, or are they too far along the Steampunk axis?
Norman Spinrad’s The Iron Dream, which is a “reprint” of a pulp scifi/fantasy story (and critical/historical commentary about it and it’s author) written by Austrian immigrant Adolf Hitler after he came to the United States in 1919.
The AH elements arguably take a backseat to the commentary on thematic undercurrents in science fiction and fantasy stories, but they’re fascinating nonetheless.
Speaking of Harry Turtledove, The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump is a fun read.
Oh yes! I loved the vampster!
Hmm…I really didn’t know that that was the Duke of Wellington’s name.I guess you learn something new every day.Thanks for telling me.
Here’s a strange one: The Peshawar Lancers, by S.M. Stirling. (In the 19th Century, during the premiership of Disraeli, a comet strikes Earth, changes the climate so that Britain and Europe become too cold for growing food, and the whole of British society moves to the colonies, principally India where the King-Emperor reigns in Delhi; where, by the late 20th Century, the British royals and nobility and upper classes have all become thoroughly Indianized as the sahib-log caste.)
Check out John Birmingham’s Axis of Time series:
It’s a pretty interesting read - they come up with lots of things that you normally wouldn’t think of about this event actually happening, the most interesting of which (to me) was how people of the time dealt with the totally liberated women of the future - both socially and as members of the military.
Psst! Post #18.
I really wish Steve would write another novel set in this universe.
Yes - the culture shock between the future folks and the past folks on a wide range of issues made the books quite interesting.
Stirling did write Shikari in Galveston, a short story that’s a prequel to The Peshawar Lancers…
Available in an anthology–not bad. Especially interesting to me because it takes place in my own stomping grounds.
I enjoyed the “Assassin” series from Robert Ferrigno.
Set in a future where the US has split into two, hostile nations - one of them Islamic and one of them Christian.
There are three novels in the series.
Well,the 2nd book you mentioned might be a little too Frankenstein-ish for my tastes,but the 1st one certainly sounds like a good one,so I’ll have to check it out.Thanks for the help.
By the way,Morbo,Axis of Time sounds very good.I noticed how you mentioned the way that the people of the past reacted to the women of the future.Do you mention that because it’s a major part of the book,or is it just a subplot?
I wouldn’t call it a subplot, but I wouldn’t call it a major plot point either. Suffice it to say that various elements of the story are affected by powerful women of the future. Race factors in as well, as you can imagine.
I would say that the culture shock on both sides is a major theme of the series.
Sure, but I don’t want him to think the major plot is that women from the future go back to WW2 and talk about shoes. 