From archive (archive) Subject: WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN: ALTERNATE EMPIRES ed. by Benford & Greenberg Keywords: review From: ecl@cbnewsj.ATT.COM (Evelyn C. Leeper) Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Date: 21 Jul 89 11:53:51 GMT WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN, VOLUME 1: ALTERNATE EMPIRES edited by Gregory Benford & Martin H. Greenberg Bantam Spectra, 1989, ISBN 0-553-27845-2, $4.50. A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper This is the first of a projected series of alternate history short fiction. Most of the pieces seem to be new in this volume, though at least one ("We Could Do Worse") has previously appeared elsewhere. Benford in his introduction describes one of the constraints placed on authors for this volume: the alternate history must be the result of a failed event. Well, one man's success is another's failure; if the United States had won the Vietnam War, wouldn't that also be the failure of North Vietnam to defeat us? (Note: in discussing the stories, I will be often be telling what the failed event was. For some of the stories this might be considered a spoiler, as the event is not disclosed until the end of the story. Reader, beware!) Three stories deal with changes in the world's religious history. Poul Anderson's "In the House of Sorrows" postulates a world in which the Assyrians captured Jerusalem and the Diasporah occurred before Christianity had a chance to even get started. "To the Promised Land" by Robert Silverberg is the story of a second attempt at a Hebrew exodus from Egypt, the first having ended in disaster at the Red Sea three thousand years ago. (So why does Silverberg have his first-person narrator talk about the holiday of Simchat Torah? And how did this error get past the editors?) Both Anderson and Silverberg draw civilizations that seem three-dimensional, that give the reader the feel of being somewhere where things are not quite the same. This (to me at least) is one of the major jobs of an alternate history story and whether I like or dislike one often depends as much on this "flavor" as on whether the world is a reasonable extrapolation of the changed event. "Bible Stories for Adults, No. 31: The Covenant" by James Morrow is another in his series of "Bible Stories"; this one examines what might happened if Moses couldn't have gotten a set of replacement tablets for the ones he shattered over the Golden Calf. Rather than draw the alternate world, though, Morrow has a dialogue (admittedly interesting) between two computers, one of whom has reconstructed the tablets from the fragments, about how the Ten Commandments could be perverted. In other words, he spends his time describing *our* world. Interesting, as I said, but I find the implication that the world would be more moral without the Ten Commandments not very convincing, presented here more as an axiom than a conclusion from facts and reasoning. Three deal with political changes. In "Counting Potsherds" by Harry Turtledove, the Persians defeated the Greeks and democracy never developed. Turtledove has done his research on the Near East (used also as the setting in his set of alternate history stories collected in AGENT OF BYZANTIUM, though the latter is based on a change farther down the line), and the world here is as well-developed as those of Anderson and (in a different way) Silverberg. Benford's own "We Could Do Worse" is based on changes to the Presidential elections in the 1950s and set in that time period; "All Assassins" by Barry Malzberg is a fairly bland twist on the early 1960s, with its ending not much of a surprise at all, though it seemed to be intended as one. Neither gives one much feeling for the world the author draws, but then both are much shorter than other stories in this volume, so maybe I'm expecting too much. The remainder are a mixed bag. "Remaking History" by Kim Stanley Robinson is a a sort of "what if the rescue of the Iranian hostages had worked," but not up to the level of most of the other pieces here. (It's not clear what the "failed event" Benford required is in this case; I guess it's that the Iranians failed to stop the rescue.) "Leapfrog" by James P. Hogan is not, strictly speaking an alternate history (so far as I can tell), but a tale of how our current history could have been manipulated into being, rather than an alternate history which would have arisen had events taken their "natural" course. In any case, it is mostly a polemic on how we mishandling the space program, and while I sympathize with the opinions held, I'm beginning to tire of stories which exist only to beat the reader over the head with them. George Alec Effinger's "Everything but Honor" is a combination of time travel and alternate history. A black American physicist in an America in which the Civil War ran quite differently decides to use his newly-built time machine to "fix things up" and improve the lot of his race. The results are, I fear, predictable. "Game Night at the Fox and Goose" by Karen Joy Fowler gives us a description of an alternate world in which the war of the sexes has developed differently. We never get to see this world; instead of alternate history by demonstration we get alternate history by explication. Someone from an alternate world tells someone in *our* world what it's like (another approach is to have two people in the alternate world ruminate about why their world is the way it is ... "Oh, if only someone had shot Lincoln in 1865, he wouldn't have gotten brain fever in 1866 and signed that terrible Re-enslavement Act that led to the Second Civil War!"). Note that this is *not* the same as characters speculating about what would have generated our world (such as the Morrow story), because we know what our world is like. It's more like the old space opera stories where the hero explains everything he's building to his girlfriend. I much prefer alternate history by demonstration (a la Anderson, Silverberg, and Turtledove). "Waiting for the Olympians" by Frederik Pohl is another "Rome never fell" story, with the addition of some arriving aliens. Pohl's main character is a "sci-rom" (scientific romance) writer, who can't seem to grasp the concept of alternate histories when someone suggests that he write one. Cute, and the ending is supposed to be one of those "the-reader- knows-something-the-characters-don't" sorts of things, but while it was a reasonable way to wile away some time, it was basically only an average story. The final story has a history behind it. Larry Niven was asked to contribute an alternate history story; he agreed as long as he could include Robert Heinlein as a character. "The Return of William Proxmire" was finished and Heinlein read it shortly before he died. It too (like the Effinger) combines time travel with alternate history. While having Heinlein as a character makes it of interest to science fiction folks, it falls into the same traps as the Hogan and Effinger stories: the Hogan in that it is preaching to the choir, the Effinger in that readers know by now that if someone goes back to change the past to improve it, things will go wrong (at least from that person's point of view). Frank Capra knew this back in 1947 in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE. Come to that, Robert Burns knew it in 1785 ("The best laid schemes o' mice and men/Gang aft a-gley"), Ihara Saikaku about 1680 ("There is always something to upset the most careful of human calculations"), and Homer about 3000 years ago ("Zeus does not bring to accomplishment all the thoughts of men."). So the score is three good to excellent (the Anderson, Silverberg, and Turtledove); five so-so (the Morrow, Effinger, Hogan, Pohl, and Fowler); and four below average (the Benford, Malzberg, Robinson, and Niven). I notice that the three I liked are precisely those set in an Eastern empire world, and maybe this shows some sort of bias on my part. Then again, they're also the three longest in the book. In any event (an apt phrase when talking about alternate histories, I think), while the book has its low points, its high points make it more than worthwhile (I wouldn't be at all surprised to see any of them on next year's Hugo ballot), and I recommend it as well as look forward to the others in its series. Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 201-957-2070 | att!mtgzy!ecl or ecl@mtgzy.att.com Copyright 1989 Evelyn C. Leeper From archive (archive) Subject: WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN, VOLUME 2: ALTERNATE HEROES ed. by Benford & Greenburg From: ecl@cbnewsj.ATT.COM (Evelyn C. Leeper) Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Date: 18 Jan 90 22:08:36 GMT [Cross-posted to soc.misc because there has been much alternate history discussion there.] WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN, VOLUME 2: ALTERNATE HEROES edited by Gregory Benford & Martin H. Greenberg Bantam Spectra, 1990, ISBN 0-553-28279-4, $4.50. A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper This is the second (last?) of a series of alternate history short fiction. As with the other, WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN, VOLUME 2: ALTERNATE EMPIRES, the pieces here were commissioned for this volume but have appeared elsewhere between the time of their writing and their publication here. At least this volume indicates where they have been published previously, but in both cases one is left with the feeling that the publisher was trying to convince the buyer the stories were all new, when in fact the buyer may very well have most of them already. Be that as it may, this book examines the "great man" theory of history--the idea that history is made by "great men" rather than by the "tide of events." The "great man" theory says that if Hitler weren't around, the Nazi Party would not have developed as it did; the "tide of events" theory says that if Hitler weren't there, someone else would have taken his place. Michael Moorcock's BEHOLD THE MAN is perhaps an extreme example of the latter. (Strangely enough, the first volume was not "tide of events" stories, but "failed events" stories--what if X hadn't happened?) Unfortunately, many of the authors in this volume make their stories fit the "great man" theory by picking a great man, having something different happen to him, or having him do something different, though the "great man" usually seems to be more acted upon than acting in this anthology, and then stopping. There *is* no alternate history, just a suggestion of how one could write one. (Note: in discussing the stories, I will be often be telling what the change was. For some of the stories this might be considered a spoiler, so reader, beware!) For example, Harry Turtledove's "The Last Article" postulates that Hitler's armies made it to India and were controlling it when Gandhi tried to use his policy of non-violence against them. This sounds more like an alternate event ("Hitler conquers India") than a "great man" story, and is fairly predictable. But it ends at this point. What happens next? In "Lenin in Odessa" George Zebrowski postulates an early confrontation between Lenin and Stalin. But just when history changes, the story ends. What happens next? No answer. Harry Harrison and Tom Shippey's "A Letter from the Pope" has the same problem: just when Alfred changes his plans because he receives the chastising letter the Pope sent him (instead of not receiving it), the story ends. (This "great man" is so obscure to most readers that an introduction was included explaining what the story was about.) What happens next? We aren't told. (The back blurb promises "a Europe converted to Viking paganism"--it isn't delivered.) "Loose Cannon" by Susan Shwartz has T. E. Lawrence surviving his motorcycle accident to take a role in the African campaigns of World War II. But just after he talks to Rommel, the story ends. What happens next? Who knows? In Judith Tarr's "Roncesvalles," when Charlemagne discovers Ganelon's treachery was bought by Christians, he decides to convert to Islam and side with the Moors. What happens next? We never find out. These all read like introductory chapters to alternate history novels that the authors might be planning, rather than full-fledged alternate history stories. The characters are well drawn in all the stories here--they just don't go anywhere. Two stories deal with Abraham Lincoln. Michael Cassutt's "Mules in Horses' Harness" assumes Lincoln's death in 1863; James Morrow's "Abe Lincoln in McDonald's" includes time travel (Lincoln somehow travels forward in time to see the results of making a particular decision). I feel the use of time travel *and* alternate history lessens the latter, but perhaps I'm just a bit of a purist. I also find the alternate history set forth a bit unbelievable, but I would be willing to suspend disbelief for one change-- but not for two. Cassutt's story has a couple of variations on the usual "what if the Civil War turned out differently?" theme, but nothing startling, not even his "surprise" revelation at the end. Neither one, by the way, is a present of "a Confederacy that won the Civil War," which the back cover touts. In this, at least, they show originality. "No Piece of Ground" by Walter Jon Williams is another Civil War variation, with Edgar Allan Poe a general in the Confederate Army. Marc Laidlaw's "His Powder'd Wig, His Crown of Thornes" deals with George Washington as the Savior of the Indians, though with a twist. We don't see enough of the alternate world to judge the reality of its texture, though the main character is well-drawn and draws the reader into what we do see of his world. Barry Malzberg's picture of Hemingway as a hack science fiction writer in "Another Goddamned Showboat" is at least a change of pace. It was not quite as gimmicky as the similar story "Ike at the Mike" (by Howard Waldrop, not included in this volume). In common with the earlier discussed stories, was more a character study than a story, Malzberg picked a "great man" whose displacement would not leave one asking, "Okay, but what happened next?" Hemingway's shift to science fiction would not be expected to produce the same sort of drastically alternate history that Charlemagne's conversion to Islam would, so Malzberg leaves his readers satisfied with the picture he draws. Sheila Finch's musical Albert Einstein in "The Old Man and C" had nothing to hold my interest--even Einstein's musings on light seemed forced in the context of the story. "A Sleep and a Forgetting" by Robert Silverberg had an interesting premise (communications through the center of a star may get warped in such a way as to allow communication with the past/alternate worlds). But after hooking up with a world in which Genghis Khan did not become ruler of the Mongols, Silverberg's characters don't seem to know what to do with it, and the ending makes no sense at all. Harry Turtledove's second story in this collection, "Departures," is the base story of his "Byzantium" alternate history series in which Muhammed becomes a Christian monk rather than founding Islam. Again, it shows the split point and then drops it, but at least here there is already a milieu drawn with which readers of this collection are probably familiar. I found Rudy Rucker's story about William Burroughs, Von Neumann, and the atomic bomb unreadable, except for the last couple of paragraphs, which deliver their message with all the subtlety of a sledge hammer. (In fairness I must say that I generally find Rucker unreadable, and this may be just one of my quirks--certainly other people whose opinions I respect like his writing.) Of the fourteen stories in this volume, six are based on Twentieth Century men. Four more are based on men from American history. None are based on women. None have the richness of detail I found in several stories in the first volume (even though many of the authors are the same). Only the Harrison-Shippey, the Malzberg, and Turtledove's "Departures" seemed more than merely adequate, and several were below average. It may be that "great men" are less interesting than "failed events." But it is more likely that the apparent constraint of having the "great man" on stage throughout the story made it impossible to show the effects of the change in detail. Much as I liked the first WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN, I can't really recommend this one. [Note: After writing the above, I ran across the following quote from a letter from Olaf Stapledon to Naomi Mitchison written on 10 July 1940: "My (qualified) pacifism has been put in cold storage. But how loathsome it all is! An of course I remain fundamentally just as much pacifist as before. But at present pacifism simply won't work. I note in Gandhi's autobiography that his non-violence movement's success depended on the fact that some officials were decent folk. It would not have worked against a Nazi regime." I doubt Turtledove knew of this letter, since the observation is obvious, but who knows?] Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 201-957-2070 | att!mtgzy!ecl or ecl@mtgzy.att.com From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Dec 9 00:38:34 1991 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!seunet!mcsun!uunet!indetech!pacbell!pbhyc!djdaneh From: ecl@mtgzy.att.com (Evelyn C Leeper +1 908 957 2070) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN, VOLUME 3: ALTERNATE WARS Message-ID: <1991Dec3.184034.19936@pbhyc.PacBell.COM> Date: 3 Dec 91 18:40:34 GMT Sender: djdaneh@pbhyc.PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes) Reply-To: ecl@mtgzy.att.com Followup-To: rec.arts.sfwritten Organization: Pacific * Bell Lines: 204 Approved: djdaneh@pbhyc.pacbell.com WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN, VOLUME 3: ALTERNATE WARS edited by Gregory Benford & Martin H. Greenberg A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1991 Evelyn C. Leeper Well, after a long wait--over a year since Volumes 1 and 2 came out within a few months of each other--Volume 3 of Benford and Greenberg's series of alternate history anthologies is finally out. Whether this series is the cause or the effect is not known (at least not to me, though see my comments below), but we seem to be living in the Golden Age of Alternate Histories, with at least a dozen appearing in major magazines and who knows how many elsewhere just this year. Heck, even SPORTS ILLUSTRATED carried one ("Bubbles and the Babe," Fall 1991 special issue): not a very good one, true, but an alternate history nonetheless. I say I don't know whether this series is the cause or the effect, but I suspect it is at least partly the cause. Why? Well, while it's possible that eleven authors independently decided to write alternate histories this year--and that they all got published and then collected by Benford and Greenberg--it is less likely that they would all fit in the category of "alternate wars." So I would assume that these were commissioned for the anthology but, finances being what they are, arrangements were made to allow them to be published first in the magazines. I say "eleven authors," and the cover says, "Tales of Alternate History by Eleven Premier Voices in Science Fiction," but there are actually twelve stories and authors. While there is some evidence that the Resnick story may have been a last-minute addition, I think it more likely that one they considered the twelfth author is the one not usually considered a "premier voice in science fiction," though he did win a Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1930, when his career in politics appeared finished, the Right Honourable Winston S. Churchill, M. P., was commissioned by J. C. Squire to write a piece for IF IT HAD HAPPENED OTHERWISE: LAPSES INTO IMAGINARY HISTORY. That anthology is now almost unobtainable, but Churchill's piece, "If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg," is at last reprinted here. The title is not a typo; Churchill writes as though in a world in which Lee won, and his descriptions of what would have happened had Lee lost are mostly of the sort "We wouldn't have X" and "Y never would have happened," though he also "predicts" carpetbaggers et al. But clearly the alternate history aspect is in his descriptions of the world in which Lee won. (One might ask why someone who could predict all sorts of alternate events arising from Lee's victory could fail to see even two year's into his own world's future, but just as hindsight is easier than foresight, so is sidesight.) The remaining stories are all from sixty years later (1991) so I will treat them chronologically by internal date. James Morrow's "Arms and the Woman" (AMAZING, July 1991), set during the Trojan War, takes a look at what might have happened if Helen had taken a somewhat more active role. Done in Morrow's typically irreverent style, it's not completely credible as a piece of realism, but as part of a mythos it does work, and works well. "The Number of the Sand" by George Zebrowski looks at the infinite possible branchings of history, in this case those centering around Hannibal. Unfortunately, Zebrowski can do little but catalog the various variations--there is no time to develop any of them to a reasonable extent. The time setting is initially vague for "The Tomb" by Jack McDevitt, so I will place it here. (Yes, you eventually find out when it takes place, but that would be telling.) It's a powerful story, marred only afterward by nagging doubts that the change would have caused such a drastic result. (In stories in which the change point is not given early on, I will try to speak in generalities to avoid spoiling the surprise.) Even with these doubts, though, I still find "The Tomb" a haunting story that I'm sure I'll remember for a long time. "And Wild for To Hold" by Nancy Kress (ISAAC ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE, July 1991) postulates an institute that pulls critical people out of the past in order to tailor history. The story centers on Anne Boleyn, though other historical personages figure as well. My objections to this story are two-fold. First, the "alternate war" element is minimal and the story seems out of place in this anthology. Second, and more seriously, the extraction of some of the characters from history would seem to preclude the existence of others who appear. Contrary to the blurb in ISAAC ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE (where it first appeared in October 1991), Gregory Benford's "Manassas, Again" is *not* set in the future. It's an alternate Civil War--a very alternate Civil War, and certainly one of the more original of that sub-genre. Interestingly enough, though, the same key incident was recently used independently by another author to go off in another direction entirely. Benford's story is the more concise (the other was a novel) and explores the idea with a thrifty compactness. Poul Anderson has the Americans fighting the French empire in "When Free Men Shall Stand." It appears superficially that the change point was the Battle of Trafalgar, but that was in 1805 and the change obviously occurred before the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. No, it was the decision by Napoleon not to invade Egypt but to consolidate his-European holdings that led to this face-off of the United States and a still French Louisiana Territory. (I mention this only because the reviewer in LOCUS seems to tag Trafalgar as the cause.) Anderson has done his homework, though I still think "In the House of Sorrows" is his best alternate history. (It appeared in WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN 1: ALTERNATE EMPIRES.) But the self-contained nature of "When Free Men Shall Stand" makes it more satisfying than any of his long series of Time Patrol stories, showing an originality and freshness and "edge" that they are missing. (Readers may want to compare this to T. R. Fehrenbach's "Remember the Alamo,"recently reprinted in Isaac Asimov and Martin Greenberg's GREAT SCIENCE FICTION STORIES: 23 (1961). Anderson's is better, and more believable.) "Over There" is one of Mike Resnick's "Alternate Teddy" stories (Roosevelt, that is). It first appeared in ISAAC ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE in April 1991 and assumes that Theodore Roosevelt decided to take his Rough Riders to Europe to fight in World War I. More a character study of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson than an "alternate war" story in spite of its whole raison d'etre being to comment on the changing face of war, this tale draws on Resnick's African knowledge as well. Alternate World War IIs are always popular (they and alternate Civil Wars are neck-in-neck for the lead), and Benford and Greenberg provide three. "Tundra Moss" by F. M. Busby deals more with telegraphy on an Arctic island base than with the alternate history situation, which is basically an aside in half a dozen short paragraphs at the beginning and another half- dozen at the end. With this, as with many alternate histories that merely mention the alternate history aspect without doing anything with it, I am reminded of the marble hand found by the archaeologists in James A. Michener's THE SOURCE. They believe it to have been broken off a complete statue, but it wasn't--the artist intended it to *imply* the rest of the figure. Perhaps it might work in a sculpture, but in an alternate history story, anyone can say, "In this world, X happens" (or doesn't happen, depending)--the point is to develop that idea, not to leave it as an exercise for the reader. As fiction, "Tundra Moss" is okay, but it fails as alternate history. "Godard's People" by Allen Steele (ISAAC ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE, July 1991) is a straightforward "history" of the Allies' big push toward rockets (rather than atomic bombs) during World War II. (There is purportedly a previous story, "John Harper Wilson," which is set in the same timeline and appeared in the June 1989 issue of ISAAC ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE.) Unlike many of the stories, which are character studies with a veneer of alternate history, this is almost pure alternate history speculation. (The purest such was, of course, Robert Sobel's FOR WANT OF A NAIL, and this sub-genre has its special devotees.) Barry N. Malzberg's "Turpentine" is set in an alternate 1968 where everyone is like they were in 1968, only more so. Given the tenor of 1968, for most people this means angrier and the results are perhaps predictable when some protesters seize a reactor at the University of Chicago. Other Malzberg alternate history stories center around the 1960s and angry protests. Benford describes this as "fevered remembrance," but I find the obvious passion with which Malzberg writes overpowering and too strident for my tastes. I had mixed feelings during 1968--I thought the Vietnam War was a mistake, but I also had a father over there, so I was not ready to condemn everyone who went either. My reaction Malzberg's story may reflect this and, as always, your mileage may vary. Last is Harry Turtledove's "Ready for the Fatherland." The premise here is that Hitler was assassinated in 1943, before he could manage to get Germany so stuck on the Eastern Front that they could never accomplish anything. Flash forward a few decades. Two agents are trying to smuggle arms for the uprising in Croatia, difficult because the government has a cordon around the port city of Rijeva. The Serbs are attacking the Croats every chance they get, and vice versa. Roadblocks and multiple armies make the going rough. And now, gentle reader, a question for you: are the last three sentences describing Turtledove's story or CNN's latest news bulletin? If you answered, "Both," you are correct. If Churchill can be taken to task for failing to predict two years into his future, Turtledove is in the unenviable position of having history belie his story even on its publication. His premise--that Hitler's demise would have led to the survival of a fascist Croatia and continued internal strife between Serbs and Croats--may be true. Unfortunately, when the opposite event (Hitler's survival) is shown to lead just as inevitably to this war, it looks too much like predicting the sun will rise. True, in our world the Serbs have the upper hand (last time I checked) and in "Ready for the Fatherland" the Croats do, but ironically, the results are almost indistinguishable--a country full of troops in a state of civil war. This may sound like a criticism of Turtledove. It isn't. It's more a commentary on the Balkans--*any* history will result in war. (All roads lead to Rome, and all timelines lead to Balkan wars.) Turtledove postulated a slightly different war. Had he projected a glorious peace, THEN I would be skeptical. I don't know whether Turtledove intended it this way, or whether it's merely serendipitous (a la MAROONED and THE CHINA SYNDROME), but "Ready for the Fatherland" is a strong argument for the inevitability of some historical trends, a vindication of the "Stream of History" over the "Great Man" theory. To paraphrase: The Moving Finger has already future writ, / And has moved on: nor all your Piety nor Wit / Can ever make it change a single line / Nor all your Tears alter a Word of it. WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN 3: ALTERNATE WARS is a worthy successor to WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN 1: ALTERNATE EMPIRES and WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN 2: ALTERNATE HEROES. Though there are a few disappointing stories, there are enough good ones to more than compensate, in particular the McDevitt, the Morrow, the Anderson, and the Turtledove. Add to this the inclusion of the Churchill and the book becomes irresistible to alternate history fans and a good choice even for those who are just looking for good, thought-provoking reading. %T Alternate Wars %C New York %D December 1991 %I Bantam Spectra %O paperback, US$4.99 %G ISBN 0-553-29008 %P 296pp %B Anthology/collection title for individual stories/articles %E Gregory Benford %E Martin H. Greenberg %S What Might Have Been %V 3 Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | att!mtgzy!ecl or ecl@mtgzy.att.com From rec.arts.sf.reviews Wed Sep 23 22:59:22 1992 Xref: herkules.sssab.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:129 soc.history:1793 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!mcsun!uunet!paladin.american.edu!europa.asd.contel.com!darwin.sura.net!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ames!ig!dont-reply-to-paths From: ecl@mtgzy.att.com (Evelyn C Leeper +1 908 957 2070) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,soc.history Subject: WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN, VOLUME 4: ALTERNATE AMERICAS Message-ID: <9209201345.AA18490@presto.ig.com> Date: 20 Sep 92 13:42:00 GMT Sender: mcb@presto.ig.com Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Lines: 299 Approved: mcb@presto.ig.com (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN, VOLUME 4: ALTERNATE AMERICAS edited by Gregory Benford & Martin H. Greenberg A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1992 Evelyn C. Leeper This anthology contains "fourteen tales of alternate history" according to the cover blurb, though by the strict definition of "alternate history" two or three of these stories are not really alternate histories. (That's okay--in fact, I think two of these are among the three best stories in the volume--but I thought you should know.) It was, of course, inevitable that an anthology of alternate Americas would appear in October of 1992. After all, alternate histories are all the rage now and everyone is getting on the Columbus band wagon (except for those who are trying to overturn it for being more a war wagon or a slave wagon than a band wagon), so an alternate Americas anthology was hardly unexpected. Unfortunately, the apparent constraint of choosing only new stories for this volume meant that some of the classic alternate Americas were left out (such as L. Sprague de Camp's "Wheels of If" and Harry Turtledove's sequel "The Pugnacious Peacemaker," Joe Lansdale's "Letter from the South Two Moons West of Nacogdoches" and "Trains Not Taken," Somtow Sucharitkul's "Aquiliad" stories, or even Philip Jose Farmer's "Sail On, Sail On"--a longer list appears at the end of this review). But the long lead time meant that half the stories have already seen print elsewhere anyway by the time this book came out. The worst of both worlds. Harry Turtledove's "Report of the Special Committee on the Quality of Life" is the exception to this, having appeared in Terry Carr's UNIVERSE 10 in 1980 (under the byline "Eric G. Iverson"). I can't see any change that would warrant the 1992 copyright date indicated for it in WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN 4--the only differences I found were one extra paragraph break and one change in capitalization. It's also not, strictly speaking, alternate history. Rather, it's a parody of government feasibility studies by having Jaime Nose'nada ("I know nothing" in Spanish) write up all the reasons why Spain shouldn't bother to follow up on Columbus's journey. Cute, but more than a little preachy--I'm sure all the pro-space groups love it. "Ink from the New Moon" by A. A. Attanasio is the first of three stories in this volume which assume that North America was first settled from Asia rather than from Europe. What could have been a good story is undercut by Attanasio's foray into a description of the "Unified Sandalwood Autocracies" which sounds, not surprisingly, like our own USA. Maybe the point is that the more things change, the more they stay the same, but it ends up looking contrived instead of convincing. And I feel obliged to point out a minor quibble: The Chinese load Columbus's ships with tobacco, peanuts, and potatoes. But peanuts and potatoes are native to South America--peanuts were introduced to Africa by European explorers and reached North America with the slave trade; potatoes were brought to Europe from South America and from there to North America. I suppose it's remotely possible that peanuts would have arrived in the "USA" of Attanasio's story through trade, although Attanasio has said there was a huge wall separating the "USA" from the Aztec empire. The quibble and the parallels are really the same thing--an attempt to make the alternate world look familiar. But by making it familiar, Attanasio has made it less realistic. "Vinland the Dream" by Kim Stanley Robinson is not an alternate history in the strict sense of the word--it's about remaking history, all right, but not by taking a time machine and going back to change something. Rather, Robinson asks, what if all the evidence of Norse exploration in Canada and elsewhere in North America had been faked by someone in the early 1800s? What if he *had* "remade history" (a common theme with Robinson, whose latest collection is titled REMAKING HISTORY after its title story)? In "Vinland the Dream" some archaeologists discover the truth, making them sort of Schliemanns in reverse, turning fact into myth. What motive would the hoaxer have? Was he just a practical joker or a Norse chauvinist, or was he trying to give us dreams? In both "Vinland the Dream" and "Remaking History" (which examines an alternate history on many levels: what did happen, what might have happened, how what happened is portrayed in the media, and so on) Robinson looks at how our perceptions of history give direction to our lives. "If There Be Cause" by Sheila Finch assumes that Sir Francis Drake actually settled New Albion (San Francisco) instead of just claiming it and moving on, or if he didn't settle, at least he and his crew stayed long enough to leave a lasting impression and a lot of descendents. Finch does the politically correct thing by having the Native Americans ("The People") the heroes and the Europeans the villains, except for Drake (who probably wasn't the saint the People remember him as) and, while the characters are well-drawn, the somewhat heavy-handed message is annoying. James Morrow's "Isabella of Castile Answers Her Mail" is not an alternate history, though a world in which Isabella and Columbus could exchange mail as he was sailing across the Atlantic is clearly not *our* world. (One can also argue that in our world Isabella wouldn't have talked about the "Golem of Jewish folklore," which was known only to a few scholars until the 16th Century in Prague.) But the main thrust of the story is that Columbus passes through a time warp and visits modern-day New York. And what he finds most surprising is, ...., well, surprising. The reaction of someone from the past to our present is a staple of science fiction, but Morrow manages to make it fresh and new. Maybe I'm just an incurable Morrow fan, but maybe that's because his work is so good. "Let Time Shape" is another of George Zebrowski's "climetricon" stories, the climetricon being a device that lets one see all possible outcomes of history. This one concentrates on a single timeline--what if the survivors of Carthage had crossed the Atlantic and settled North America--rather than examine several lines as some of his others do. The interjections of climetricon theory add little to the story and make the narrative seem somewhat choppy. Also, I find the idea that New Carthage would be so advanced and in a secret alliance with England without Spain knowing anything about its existence hard to believe. Jerry Oltion's "Red Alert" is little more than an aerial dogfight story with an alternate history framework--the Native Americans successfully resisted the European's attempts to steal their land (even Cortez was defeated by the Aztecs) and are limited to Manhattan Island, the only land they actually bought. Other than this, and Oltion's use of names such as Sitting Bull and Tecumseh for characters, this could be any dogfight story anywhere. "Such a Deal" by Esther M. Friesner looks at what might have happened if Columbus had been turned down by Ferdinand and Isabella and had gotten his financing from the Jews of Granada instead. It's more a tale of alternate Spain than alternate America (though Columbus seems to have gone a *lot* further on his first voyage here than his first voyage in our world), and entertaining enough. Unfortunately, it ends on a word play in English which would not work at all in either the Spanish or Ladino in which it was presumably related, nor the "Cathayan" in which it was used--an odd slip, since Friesner's last alternate history centered around the ambiguities of translation. Robert Silverberg can always be relied on to produce a first-class story, and "Looking for the Fountain" maintains that reputation. The narrator tells of traveling with Ponce de Leon to look for the Fountain of Manly Strength, commonly--and erroneously--called the Fountain of Youth. On their quest they find a tribe of Latin-speaking Christian Indians. How such a thing came to be I will leave for Silverberg to explain. I will say that this is a genuine alternate history and not just a secret history or lost race story, but its main virtue is Silverberg's skillful use of the theme of "recovering what one has lost" on several different levels. As with Robinson's "Vinland the Dream," "Looking for the Fountain" bears multiple readings. "The Round-Eyed Barbarians" by L. Sprague de Camp is another "what if the Chinese had settled North America first" story. (As a side note, all these alternate Americas are alternate *North* Americas. It's a bit disappointing that no one did anything with South America.) Once again the Chinese settlers meet the European explorers. Ho hum. The story is competent, but mundane. Brad Linaweaver's "Destination Indies," on the other hand, is far from mundane. So far, in fact, that one wonders what he was thinking of when he wrote it. (My suspicion is that he was inspired by some of Howard Waldrop's stories.) This is chapter 107 of the on-going saga of Christopher Columbus sailing the Atlantic and fighting the Dark Duke, agent of the Turks and builder of a microdemonically engineered submersible.... Not my cup of tea, but fans of old pulps and serials may enjoy it. In "Ship Full of Jews," Barry N. Malzberg supposes that Torquemada has convinced Columbus to carry a large contingent of Jews to the New World for his (Torquemada's) own secret purpose. Malzberg does a fair job of drawing his characters, but his errors and slips made the story hard to appreciate or even accept. First, he refers to the Jews as Chassids and describes their style of clothing in such a way as to be consistent with the Chassidim, but Chassidism wasn't founded until the 18th Century (and then in Poland rather than anywhere near Spain). Second, everyone talks about going to the "New World." But Columbus thought he was sailing to the East Indies and China, *not* a "New World," and in fact died not knowing he had found a new continent. And third, when I'm reading along and hit the phrase "between she and Cristoforo," it's like hitting a protruding stone while skating across an apparently smooth pond. Benford, Greenberg, and how many other editors let this past them? "Ship Full of Jews" has that dark Malzberg tone that he does so well, but I found too many stumbling blocks to rate it as highly as some of his past works. "The Karamazov Caper" by Gordon Eklund starts from the premise that Pope Innocent VIII was assassinated in 1486 and his successor was more interested in purifying the Church than in exploring the lands Columbus discovered. The result of this is that North America was settled from the west by the Russians and from the east by the Germans. When the story starts, the baby son of the German ambassador has been kidnapped and killed in Russian territory and the investigator Trotsky has been sent to find the murderer. And therein lies the rub, as they say--I can't believe that Lenin and Trotsky and Czar Nicholas II would even exist, let alone fill the same roles in this world as in ours. (For example, without an imperialist Spain, would Henry VIII have felt the need to marry Catherine of Aragon? If he hadn't married her, he wouldn't have had to divorce her, so England's break from the Catholic Church might never have occurred, or might have occurred later. And so on.) And finally "The Sleeping Serpent" by Pamela Sargent, in which the Mongols were not stopped in their expansion and swept through most of Europe and across the Atlantic. Only a few English settlements along the New England coast are causing them problems and they know how to deal with them- --they think. In many ways similar to "If There Be Cause," this story deals more realistically with the philosophies of the various groups involved and avoids the obvious traps. Though there are some outstanding stories in this collection, such as the Robinson and the Silverberg, overall I was disappointed by it. Granted, it's 1992. Still, these are supposed to be alternate Americas, so having five of the fourteen about Columbus's journey seems excessive. Four more deal with settlement from Asia. Strangely, only one did anything with the Vikings, and no one had anything to say about Central or South America. This collection is not up to the level of the previous three in the series, and not up to the level of Mike Resnick's "Alternate" series from Tor. Recommended for completists only. Further Reading: - Anvil, Christopher, "Apron Chains," in ANALOG Dec 70: The scientific revolution arrived early and the discovery of the Americas is sidetracked by a NASA-like project, while Mexicans plan an expedition of discovery east across the Atlantic. - Benford, Gregory, "Manassas, Again," in WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN 3: Rome developed a steam-driven machine gun and colonized the New World. - Coulson, Juanita, "Unscheduled Flight," in BEYOND TIME: The Bermuda Triangle offers a one-way trip to an America colonized by Vikings and English pirates. - Coulson, Robert, "Soy la Libertad!," in BEYOND TIME: Magellan discovered the Americas. - Cox, Irving E., Jr., "In the Circle of Nowhere," in UNIVERSE Jul 54 and FANTASTIC Jan 60: AmerInds enslaved Europe. - de Camp, L. Sprague, "The Wheels of If," in Tor SF Double #20: Celts settled North America. - Effinger, Geo. Alec, RELATIVES: Has one world in which Europe never colonized America or Africa. - Eklund, Gordon, "Red Skins," in F&SF Jan 81: The Americas were discovered in 1219 by a Moslem, but not seriously colonized until Europeans showed up c. 1700. - Eklund, Gordon, "The Rising of the Sun," in BEYOND TIME: Europe fell to the Moslems and was discovered by the Incas in 1600. - Farmer, Philip Jose, "Sail On, Sail On," in THE GREAT SF STORIES: 14 (1952): Columbus sails off the edge of the Earth. - Lansdale, Joe R., "Letter from the South Two Moons West of Nacogdoches," in BY BIZARRE HANDS: North America was settled by the Japanese, Aztecs and various tribes. - Lansdale, Joe R., "Trains Not Taken," in BY BIZARRE HANDS: Japan colonized the western part of North America and Europe the east. - Norton, Andre, QUEST CROSSTIME: Cortez's death prevented the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs. - Ryan, J. B., "The Mosaic," in ASTOUNDING Jul 40: A different outcome at Tours results in an Arabic America. - Saberhagen, Fred, THE MASK OF THE SUN: An Inca Empire in a timeline that had defeated the Spanish conquests recruits soldiers from other time periods to stop the Spanish conquests in yet other timelines. - Silverberg, Robert, THE GATE OF WORLDS: Europe was practically wiped out by the Black Plague in 1348, and North America was conquered by the Aztecs. - Smith, L. Neil, THE CRYSTAL EMPIRE: Europe was destroyed in 1349 when an attempt to ship plague-ridden rats to Saracen lands backfired disastrously, and the Western Hemisphere is ruled by the secretive, mysterious Aztec empire. - Somtow, S. P., THE AQUILIAD (a.k.a. AQUILA IN THE NEW WORLD), THE AQUILIAD II: AQUILA AND THE IRON HORSE, and THE AQUILIAD III: AQUILA AND THE SPHINX: Romans discovered the steam engine and conquered the world, including Terra Novum. - Somtow, S. P., "Sunsteps," in FIRE FROM THE WINE DARK SEA: Aztecs depopulate the world in order to meet sacrificial needs. - Turtledove, Harry, "The Pugnacious Peacemaker," in Tor SF Double #20: Celts settled North America. - Waldrop, Howard, "The Lions are Asleep This Night," in OMNI Aug 86: Columbus found the Americas uninhabited; African slaves were imported to mine Peruvian gold but rebelled, leading to white decline worldwide. - Waldrop, Howard, THEM BONES: In one world, there was no Roman Empire, no Christianity, the Arabs have explored the New World, and the Aztecs are still powerful. - Weissman, Barry Alan, "Past Touch-the-Sky Mountain," in IF May 68: Marco Polo discovers America for the Chinese. - White, James, THE SILENT STARS GO BY: The Irish have discovered and settled North America in (relative) peace with the original inhabitants. - Yarbro, Chelsea Quinn, "An Exaltation of Spiders," in BEYOND THE GATE OF WORLDS: Europe was practically wiped out by the Black Plague in 1348, and South America continued to be ruled by the Incas. (Thanks to Robert Schmunk for maintaining the list from which these entries were taken.) %E Gregory Benford %E Martin H. Greenberg %B What Might Have Been Volume 4: Alternate Americas %T "Report of the Special Committee on the Quality of Life" by Harry Turtledove %T "Ink from the New Moon" by A. A. Attanasio %T "Vinland the Dream" by Kim Stanley Robinson %T "If There Be Cause" by Sheila Finch %T "Isabella of Castile Answers Her Mail" by James Morrow %T "Let Time Shape" by George Zebrowski %T "Red Alert" by Jerry Oltion %T "Such a Deal" by Esther M. Friesner %T "Looking for the Fountain" by Robert Silverberg %T "The Round-Eyed Barbarians" by L. Sprague de Camp %T "Destination Indies" by Brad Linaweaver %T "Ship Full of Jews" by Barry N. Malzberg %T "The Karamazov Caper" by Gordon Eklund %T "The Sleeping Serpent" by Pamela Sargent %I Bantam Spectra %C New York %D October 1992 %O paperback, US$4.99 %G ISBN 0-553-29007-X %P 304pp %S What Might Have Been %V 4 Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | att!mtgzy!ecl or ecl@mtgzy.att.com Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.books.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!liuida!sunic!pipex!pipex!howland.reston.ans.net!ix.netcom.com!netcom.com!postmodern.com!not-for-mail From: ecl@mtgpfs1.mt.att.com (Evelyn C Leeper) Subject: MATTER'S END by Gregory Benford Message-ID: <9501051359.ZM1774@mtgpfs1.mt.att.com> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Sender: mcb@postmodern.com (Michael C. Berch) Organization: The Internet Date: Sun, 8 Jan 1995 04:58:14 GMT Approved: mcb@postmodern.com (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Lines: 54 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:713 rec.arts.books.reviews:189 MATTER'S END by Gregory Benford Bantam, ISBN 0-553-56898-1, 1995, 294p, $5.99 A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1994 Evelyn C. Leeper As a fan of short fiction, I am always happy to see a publisher bring out a collection of an author's short fiction. There was a period during which most publishers seemed to shy away from single- author collections, but lately we've been seeing them from almost all the major science fiction publishers. Bantam's latest is this collection of twenty-one stories by Gregory Benford. This is his second collection; the first was titled IN ALIEN FLESH. Although only seven stories list earlier copyright dates on the copyright page, I believe that all the stories have appeared elsewhere before. They span the entire three decades of Benford's writing career, and cover a wide range of styles and subject matters. Benford, in fact, talks about this in his afterword, a far better description of the stories in terms of category, style, and intent than I could hope to give. The diversity of styles will probably mean that there will be some stories not to your liking, but it also means that there will probably be some stories you do like (as opposed to an all-or-nothing situation). Benford, though a professional physicist, does not write in the way many people expect scientists to write (although he is almost alone among science fiction writers in refusing to use faster- than-light travel in space travel stories, as being scientifically impossible), so you never really know what to expect from him. I can't say I liked all the stories, and some I would argue with for one reason or another, but with such excellent pieces as "Freezeframe," "Centigrade 233," "Nobody Lives on Burton Street," "We Could Do Worse" (okay, I'm a sucker for alternate history stories), and "Immortal Night," this is certainly a volume I can recommend. (Is it just my imagination, or is there a possible future history cycle in "Immortal Night," "The Bigger One," "Nobody Lives on Burton Street," and "Centigrade 233"?) %A Benford, Gregory %T Matter's End %I Bantam Spectra %C New York %D January 1995 %G ISBN 0-553-56898-1 %P 294pp %O paperback, $5.99 -- Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | Evelyn.Leeper@att.com "As I stood before the gates I realized that I never want to be as certain about anything as were the people who built this place." -Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg on her visit to Auschwitz From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Sep 19 17:26:23 1995 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,soc.history.what-if Path: news.ifm.liu.se!liuida!sunic!sunic.sunet.se!newsfeed.tip.net!tott.powertech.no!nntp-oslo.UNINETT.no!nntp-trd.UNINETT.no!Norway.EU.net!EU.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!gatech!swrinde!sgigate.sgi.com!uhog.mit.edu!news!nobody From: jacob@plasma1.ssl.berkeley.edu (Fungi from Berkeley) Subject: Review: Hitler Victorious ed. by Benford and Greenberg Message-ID: <4255tg$o2s@agate.berkeley.edu> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Sender: news@media.mit.edu (USENET News System) Organization: U. C. Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory Date: Fri, 1 Sep 1995 23:46:32 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu (Alan Wexelblat) Lines: 94 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:835 soc.history.what-if:3299 Hitler Victorious ed. by Gregory Benford & Martin H. Greenberg Garland, New York, 1986 ISBN 0-8240-8658-9, pp. 278 Adolf Hitler is perhaps the most important person in shaping the history of the 20th century; certainly one of the most influential. It has been argued that there would have been no WWII without this man. It would have definitely had some other form, maybe better, probably not much worse. This possibility is not considered, however, in _Hitler Victorious: 11 Stories of the German Victory in World War II_. It focuses instead (as should be readily apparent from the title) on the possibility of a history in which Adolf Hitler had success, in one way or another, in his military endeavors. Norman Spinrad, author of "The Iron Dream", provides the introduction. Surprisingly (or perhaps not, being Spinrad), the introduction is one of the best reads of this book. Though short, it is informative in the historical sense and thought provoking in the alternate historical sense. Since this is *just* an introduction, however, I'll leave it out of an in depth review. Sadly, the introduction gives the book more promise than it actually delivers. As a general rule for this book, the shorter the story the better. For some reason, the longer tales tend to be rambling adventures more reminiscent of poorly thought out role-playing games than thought provoking stories focusing on what might have actually been. Most notably are C. M. Kornbluth's "Two Dooms" and Brad Linaweaver's "Moon of Ice". Benford explains away the first by stating that Kornbluth died before finishing the tale, but he also says that "it is arguably Kornbluth's best work." Not having read any other Kornbluth, I can't comment, but I won't hold this one against him. I don't see an excuse for Linaweaver's work, however. While it begins as a promising tale of excerpts from Goebbels' diaries after the war, focusing on some of the pseudo-scientific beliefs of the Aryan cosmos, it quickly descends into a goofy B movie romp. If it weren't for the hopeful start, I might not have disliked this one, so I shall attribute this to the author masticating more than what is digestable. Three other tales that suffer less from this are Hilary Bailey's "The Fall of Frenchy Steiner", Keith Roberts' "Weihnachtsabend", and Sheila-Finch's "Reichs-Peace". Of these three, I enjoyed Bailey's tale the most, which gives a textured feel to a London controlled by the Empire across the channel. Though I found the ending satisfying, the transition from the harsh reality of daily life in England to Nazi mysticism was too abrupt for me and damaged the story as a whole. Finch's tale, however, suffered from a hastened ending as well as more "magical" Nazi technological. Weihnachtsabend was an enjoying story to read, but also suffered from an overdose of ill-placed Nazi mysticism. After further thinking, all of the above tales were spoiled for me because they asked me to believe in something I didn't. They failed to convince me of their stories' realities. This is a particular problem in alternate history stories, where the reader is presumably familiar with the history being altered. In the above tales, "magic" (used loosely here, as either occultism or future technology) was presented as an important part of the story. And I just didn't buy it, for one reason or another. On the opposite side of the spectrum is "Thor Meets Captain America" by David Brin, wherein the Norse gods return to help the Nazis to victory. Here is a magic that is so overboard that it is believable, and the story worked on several levels for me because of this, though I found the title a little off-putting at first. Two tales that worked high technology into the story well were Tom Shippey's "Enemy Transmissions" and "Valhalla" by co-editor Gregory Benford. Shippey's was probably my second favorite tale, with vivid imagery *and* an interesting reality. Any description of "Valhalla" other than this is about what actually happened to Uncle Adolf would spoil the story, whose placement in the book as the final tale is a good climax. Greg Bear also has a nice short short, under the guise of "Through Road No Whither", whose prose reads as the title suggests, with typical poetic justice for the tale's antagonists. Algis Budrys and Howard Goldsmith ("Never Meet Again" and "Do You Hear the Children Weeping?", respectively) also have stories, with Budrys' being a traditional time travel yarn and Goldsmith's a typical tale of "karma never forgets." Being a history buff, I would have originally said that my enjoyment of the stories would have been based on how much they focused on altered historical details. Upon retrospect, I found that not to be the case, however. The stories I enjoyed most were those that made me believe whatever they were trying to sell. Unfortunately, this was only about 50% of the stories therein by number, and much less than that based on word count. Thus, I can only recommend this book to the true alternate history fan. (But honestly, who else would buy it?) %B Hitler Victorious: 11 Tales of German Victory in World War II %E Gregory Benford and Martin H. Greenberg %C New York City %D 1986 %I Garland %O clothbound %G ISBN 0-8240-8658-9 %P 278pp jdjacob@euler.berkeley.edu "Nam et ipsa scienta http://www.me.berkeley.edu/~jdjacob/ potestas est." Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lejonet.se!linkoping.trab.se!malmo.trab.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!Cabal.CESspool!bofh.vszbr.cz!howland.erols.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!18.24.4.11!newsswitch.lcs.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!not-for-mail From: "Michael I. Lichter" Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: FOUNDATION'S FEAR by Gregory Benford Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 24 Feb 1998 11:29:59 -0500 Organization: none Lines: 148 Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:1794 FOUNDATION'S FEAR by Gregory Benford HarperPrism, March 1998, ISBN 0-06-105638-3, 616pp, US$6.99 Review by Michael Lichter Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy is one of the great classics of science fiction. Spanning a period of several thousand years, it tells the tragic story on one hand of an enormous galactic empire falling inexorably into decay and barbarism, and on the other of the heroic efforts of a scientist and his successors to cushion the fall and speed the recovery of civilization. The scientist, Hari Seldon, founds a scientific discipline called "psychohistory" which predicts the empire's collapse. Using psychohistory as his guide, Seldon creates two "foundations" for the new, future empire: the First Foundation, which keeps knowledge alive by compiling and publishing the ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA, and the shadowy Second Foundation, which uses psychohistory and special powers to influence the galaxy's recovery. In his later years, Asimov wrote a series of novels which tied together his near-future robot novels with his novels of the more distant future, including the Foundation books. The link is personified, so to speak, in the character of R. Daneel Olivaw, the robotic protagonist of Asimov's first robot novels. Not only does Olivaw survive for tens of thousands of years, the last link between the modern galactic empire and the days of old Earth, now all but forgotten, but Olivaw also plays an important role as a benign and (mostly) behind-the-scenes manipulator of human progress. He is *deus et machina* as opposed to merely *deus ex machina*. Asimov's final novel, FORWARD THE FOUNDATION, completes the bridge across time by returning to Hari Seldon's early years, including his initial efforts towards developing "psychohistory." The first part of a planned "Second Foundation Trilogy," Gregory Benford's FOUNDATION'S FEAR takes up more or less where Asimov's FORWARD THE FOUNDATION leaves off. Hari Seldon is still grappling with the basic questions of psychohistory; in particular he is still trying to figure out what sorts of things he needs to know in order to model human societies and project their macro-level changes over time. Though Seldon would like to be left alone with his science project, Emperor Cleon has other plans: he wants Hari to be his First Minister. Nothing being simple in this universe, there are others who also want to be First Minister, and they are willing to kill in order to advance their interests. Seldon must learn to play political hardball, or die. Benford is pretty good at writing adventure, and the sections of the book that deal with Seldon evading assassins are taut and exciting. But there is much more to the book than adventure, and most of it is extremely tedious. A major subplot involving computerized simulacra of Voltaire and Joan of Arc, for instance, features pages and pages of unoriginal musings on the meaning of Being Digital. What does this have to do with Asimov's Foundation universe? Why is there a major thread railing against deconstruction, postmodernism and the sociology of science? Why does Benford introduce a rebellion of slave robots and the possible existence of nonhuman intelligences and then do nothing with either? Benford seems to feel compelled to include anything that strikes his fancy, whether it advances the plot or not. At one point Benford has Voltaire advise us that "'The secret of being a bore is to tell everything'" (p. 577). Benford tells everything, and then some. One of Benford's goals in this book is to show the development of psychohistory, putting some flesh on Asimov's famous fictional science. The idea of a predictive science of society which would put government on a rational basis did not originate with Asimov. Auguste Comte (1798-1857), the man who coined the term "sociology", had a remarkably similar vision for his new science, which he hoped would foster "order and progress." Rather than follow this strand of sociological thought, however, Benford turns to sociobiology, of which he is a big fan. As part of his search for answers, Seldon spends time watching a troop of genetically engineered post-chimpanzees (called "pans"), and subsequently makes many fascinating and original (sarcasm alert) observations about how we humans resemble our simpler cousins. If you've read another book by Benford, say SAILING BRIGHT ETERNITY, you've probably already been exposed to this. In fact, some of the exposition in FOUNDATION'S FEAR looks to be lifted almost verbatim from SAILING. While some of Hari's seeking is interesting and even insightful, psychohistory as developed here becomes little more than a compendium of Benford's personal prejudices. Some of Seldon's better insights are, by the way, social science commonplaces. Benford doesn't know this because where he comes from social science isn't *real* science. Sociobiology has genes and phenotypes and is practiced by people who use microscopes and get NSF or NIMH grants and gee it really *sounds* scientific. Very close to none of it is based on or has been applied to actual people or human societies except speculatively. Benford doesn't seem to realize that there's very little of interest he can do with sociobiology, that because social phenomena are emergent (as he notes) our genetic heritage is largely a non-issue. Check out Kim Stanley Robinson's RED MARS series to see the work of an SF author who is serious about understanding people and social change. The most disappointing thing about FOUNDATION'S FEAR is the mundanity of Benford's vision for the far future. This isn't entirely his own fault; the far future has progressively become much less awesome and mysterious in SF writing over the past fifty years. Nobody writes futures any more like Asimov did in FOUNDATION or Clarke in THE CITY AND THE STARS. It may be that our technological development has resulted in the channeling of imagination along very specific pathways; when less was known about what was really possible, many more options seemed open. This still doesn't mean that Benford has to turn the Empire into a constitutional monarchy with a capitalist economy like Great Britain (Seldon -- cringe! -- extols the virtues of the free market). This concession to Francis Fukuyama's THE END OF HISTORY thesis that liberal democracy is at the pinnacle of human social development seems out of place here. In his original series, Asimov avoided specifics, never explaining how a blaster or a starship worked. What this book does is to take the mythic far future world of the Galactic Empire and cut it down to size by substituting straight-line extrapolations of contemporary technologies for what was left magical and mysterious in the original. He gives us contemporary-sounding networks of digital computers, contemporary slang, contemporary cliches, contemporary stale jokes, contemporary academic politics and funding dilemmas, and more or less contemporary understandings of physics. Benford puts Clarke's Law (any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic) in the mouth of the Emperor, but he obviously doesn't know what to do with it; he makes 30,000 years in the future look depressingly like tomorrow. Finally, there's Hari Seldon. When I first read the FOUNDATION TRILOGY, I pictured Seldon as an alternate Albert Einstein, a gentle but brilliant scholar, a man of principle who cared deeply about people and about humanity. He was also a man of action, having set up his two foundations, but not somebody who cared for arbitrary power over others. The Seldon of FOUNDATION'S FEAR is a cranky senior professor who wants to develop psychohistory because he's a control freak who can't stand the thought of social instability. This is a man who, when confronted with the grievances of minorities, says "shut up, I've heard it already!" and when dealing with a potential Bosnia-like conflict says "put up a fence and let 'em kill each other." This is not the Hari Seldon I remember. In sum, this book has some good parts, but Benford's heavy-handed preaching and his penchant for excessive and often totally irrelevant detail makes it a frustrating read. Die-hard Foundation fans will find it hard to resist buying the book, but they should be prepared to hold their noses and to skim. I have hopes that Greg Bear's FOUNDATION AND CHAOS, which is now available in hardcover, and David Brin's forthcoming THE SECRET FOUNDATION will not suffer from the same sorts of problems (although Benford did help plot them out). %A Benford, Gregory %T Foundation's Fear %I HarperCollins Publishers / HarperPrism %C New York %D March 1998 %G ISBN 0-06-105638-3 %P 616 pp. %S The Second Foundation Trilogy %V Book 1 %O paperback, US$6.99 Michael Lichter, UCLA Department of Sociology, and UCLA Center for the Study of Urban Poverty e-mail: mailto:lichter@ucla.edu WWW: http://www.ben2.ucla.edu/~lichter/ Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!nntp.primenet.com!nntp.gctr.net!howland.erols.net!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!dreaderd!not-for-mail Sender: wex@deepspace.media.mit.edu From: "Aaron M. Renn" Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Subject: Review: The Martian Race by Gregory Benford Organization: GNU's Not Unix! Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 04 Feb 2000 18:07:29 -0500 Message-ID: X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.5/Emacs 20.3 Lines: 52 NNTP-Posting-Host: deepspace.media.mit.edu X-Trace: dreaderd 949705650 22470 18.85.23.65 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2591 The Martian Race by Gregory Benford Review Copyright (c) 2000 Aaron M. Renn Conclusion: Worth Reading Confronted with the task for writing the story of man's first visit to Mars, I imagine far too many writers would elect for the 500+ page epic. Fortunately, Benford does not, and this book is much the better for it. Instead, he chose to write a work of more average length and ambitions. While this pretty much precluded it from achieving true greatness (the ambitions part, not the length!), it also dramatically reduced the odds that the book would suck. In the early 21st century, man's quest for Mars came to virtual halt after another Challenger-like explosion killed several people. However, a multi-mega-billonaire stands ready to step into NASA's shoes. The reward? $30 billion prize pledged to the first expedition to successfully visit and return from Mars. This amount had been pledged by various nations in order to provide quasi-funding for NASA. Now two other groups have stepped forward to claim the prize. The book is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, its portrayal of the Mars quest derailed by mission accidents is very timely in light of NASA's two recent un-manned Mars mission failures. Second, its idea of putting up a bounty to encourage space exploration. While I'm not sure that the bounty idea would work for a Mars mission, it's something I think could work in other areas of aerospace. All too often it seems the government subsidizes military contractors and the like on a time and materials basis. It would be nice to switch to a pay for results only plan for a change. On the other hand, I didn't care much for the characters and the plot was fairly standard. I thought things started off pretty slow, but about a hundred pages into it things started building up. In particular the suspense and tensions introduced by the mystery "Airbus" expedition worked well, but I simply hated the way Benford ended the book. I wish I could say more on this, but I can't without spoilers. Sorry. Overall, a solid if unspectacular effort. Worth reading, but non-Benford fans should probably pass until the paperback. %A Benford, Gregory %T The Martian Race %I Warner Aspect %D 1999-12 %G ISBN 0-446-52633-9 %P 340 pp. %O mass market paperback, US$23.95 Reviewed on 2000-01-29 Aaron M. Renn (arenn@urbanophile.com) http://www.urbanophile.com/arenn/ Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.ida.liu.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!feed2.onemain.com!feed1.onemain.com!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsswitch.lcs.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!dreaderd!not-for-mail Sender: wex@poison-ivy.media.mit.edu From: tillman@aztec.asu.edu (P.D. TILLMAN) Subject: Review: Eater by Gregory Benford (& my GB novel problem) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Reply-To: tillman@aztec.asu.edu Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Organization: none Date: 31 Jul 2000 11:52:35 -0400 Message-ID: X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.5/Emacs 20.3 Lines: 69 NNTP-Posting-Host: poison-ivy.media.mit.edu X-Trace: dreaderd 965058778 9443 18.85.23.103 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2772 Eater by Gregory Benford (& my GB novel problem) Review copyright 2000 Peter D. Tillman Rating: "B+"(me), 3.7/5 (Amazon) -- an uneven reworking of a classic SF theme, featuring some of Benford's best writing yet. But.... The Eater is a small black hole that enters the Solar system in 2023, and opens a conversation with the astronomers who discover it. Hijinks ensue. The book opens with some of the strongest writing in Benford's career -- the three major characters come to life in prose that's pretty near perfect. Channing Knowlton, an astronaut-turned-astronomer who is dying of breast cancer, is particularly well-drawn. Her husband Benjamin, a senior astronomer at Mauna Kea, and Kingsley Dart, Britain's Astronomer Royal, once Channing's lover and a master scientist-politician, are very fine indeed. Benford's portrait of scientists at work is wonderful, unmatched by any other novelist I know. Reading the first 100 pages, I got that primo creamy rush from great writing, neat ideas and wonderful characters. But when the politicians enter the story, greatness tails off to competence, though still with flashes of the Pure Quill. When the shoot-em-up starts -- well, hell, it's still pretty good, but not *magic*, y'know? Drama turns to melodrama, and a bold remake of 'Mankind meets a Cosmic Being' becomes just another thriller. Sigh. But those first 115 pages -- wow. Worth the price of admission. Eater is an improvement over Cosm (1998), which featured a great physics idea married to a silly thriller plot. I find Benford a frustrating novelist; his ideas are great, his science is diamond-hard, his writing is always competent and sometimes inspired, so why don't his novels click? This is his 26th novel, of which I've read maybe twenty. A couple of the Galactic Center series were amazing but, sigh, the last couple were awful. He writes great pop-science articles, excellent short fiction, and has been a trufan forever. Maybe it's just me? Or maybe not -- a scan of Amazon shows his recent books have reader ratings ranging from 0 to 5. So, YBBAMV (your Benford book-appreciation may vary). But I'm sure I'll keep reading them, hoping he gets the mix right, grumbling when he doesn't, and enjoying the good parts regardless. Links: Amazon readers' ratings: 3.7/5, 6 readers, range 2/5 to 5/5 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0380974363/ SF Site review of Eater: http://www.sfsite.com/05a/eat80.htm The Science Fiction Century: this wonderful meditation on the interplay between science and SF is one of the 10 best critical essays in the history of our genre. From F&SF 9-99 (slightly revised in Nebula Awards Showcase 2000): http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/depts/sci11.htm %T Eater %A Gregory Benford %D May 2000 %I Eos %O US$24 %P 340 pp. %G ISBN: 0380974363 Climate engineering: http://www.reason.com/9711/fe.benford.html -- possibly his best science column yet; highly recommended. "It is the business of the future to be dangerous..." --Alfred North Whitehead, 1911 Read more of my reviews: http://www.silcom.com/~manatee/reviewer.html#tillman