I finally read Return Engagement a month ago. Yeah, yeah, I know - but the trade paperback edition of it was finally published, and I didn’t want to buy the hardcover. Of course, right as I finished I learned that Drive to the East is out on Tuesday, and I resigned myself to buying that hardcover anyway.
It was hell, I tell you, staying out of the discussion threads last year for RE. This time I’ll be in the thick of it.
I love the series and all but this is becoming a bit unweildy. I’ve not yet read Return Engagement (I’m poor and keep wasting what little money I can afford to waste on other stuff, like DVDs) and it looks like by the time I’ll get a chance to read it, there’ll be another dozen at the rate he churns these damned things out.
But wouldn’t it be so cool if in the beginning of his next book he has aliens invade and the United States and the Confederacy have to join together to fight them.
I like Turtledove, but I just can’t keep up with him. After the World War series, I wasn’t willing to join in on Colonization, so I’ve looked askance at the Great War/American Empire series too.
I figure I just won’t read any of his stuff unless it’s short stories or stand-alone novels, I don’t have the patience (or budget) for ever-expanding series.
I love most of what Turtledove does with alt-history but I’d love to have a chance to sit down with him and ask about some of the choices he made in this series. choices such as :
-Lincoln as a Socialist. Granted long before socialism became an issue in our world Lincoln was dead but Lincoln was not too inclined about issues that developed outside the US. He might have been some kind of prarie populist, despite being portrayed as the man who lost the war between the states. Socilaim in the US didn’t really take hold until the 2oth century when thepopulace began leaving the farms for work in the industrial cities
-Football as the national sport of the CSA. The photos and accounts from the Civil War make it very clear that both sides played something called base-ball both in bivouac and in the prison camps. It’s true that the first professional teams and leagues were northern but many of the better players in those leagues came from the South. Ty Cobb was the Georgia Peach. Also football was a far more northern university and prep school game. The first football games were played by Ivy League schools.
-Samuel Clemens never becoming a famous author. Yes,* Huckleberry Finn* was his most famous book but he also wrote The Innocents Abroad and A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court. The man was a writer. He would have found some other subject matter than his Missouri boyhood to write about.
-His daughter Olivia becoming a newspaper reporter. Twain and his daughters were estranged. Some of this was because he had to tour so much because of his abysmal business sense that caused him to squander so much money on bad investments in technology. If you suppose that Grant never became US President(and where was Grant during the Civil Was. I don’t recall there being any mention of him) then Twain would’ve never published his memoirs and never became filthy rich and then would’ve spent more time with his family then there would’ve been no estrangement. I think it more likely that Twain, who had intimacy issues probably would’ve found some other way to be away from home.
-Hemingway dying a non-entity. He may not have been a nice man but he would’ve found some way to become world-famous. Why are there no famous authors in this world? What happened to Fitzgerald?
By the way, I recently read a neat alt-history book called Weapons of Choice in which a US-led carrier group from 2027 accidentally time-travels back to the Battle of Midway. Anyhow, it had a nice little homage to Turtledove in which one of the WWII-era ship captains, when they’re still very puzzled as to what’s going on, says something like “what the heck is going on? did lizards from outer space just arrive?”, and the character he says it to is named Turtletaub.
Damn, I can’t even remember how that series ended.
Now, “Homeward Bound” is the continuation of those…right? The same series where Germany is nuked into the stone age and the Lewis & Clark is headed for Home?
[spoiler]Lewis and Clark is dropped for another ship. It takes place years after Germany; no other countries besides the US make an appearance. Yeager and his son are the only human character from the previous books.
The book seems to consist of tours of Home, some negotiations that seem to go nowhere, and Kassquit dealing with being both human and lizard.
Book ends with lots of stuff unresolved (especially with the Emperor) and they get Sam to go home (who’s been exiled since Indy). [/spoiler]
Yeah, it always seemed to me that Turtledove sort of wrapped up the WorldWar series in a realistic fashion but then publisher pressure forced him to reopen the thing for the colonization books. I suppose if the money’s there it’s worth it to him but it wasn’t as good.
Just finished the book. I liked it and want more. Again, he’s not shy about killing off point-of-view characters but at least he introduced one more here.