Back in the USSA
10 best books like Back in the USSA (Kim Newman): Zulu Heart, Bring the Jubilee, The Two Georges, If the South Had Won the Civil War, King and Emperor, Felaheen, Alternate Empires, For Want of a Nail: If Burgoyne had won at Saratoga, Elvissey, A Calculus of Angels
| Author | Steven Barnes |
| ISBN | 0446531227 |
This book is the sequel to Lion's Blood
Zulu Heart returns to the 19th Century of Steven Barnes's justly acclaimed novel Lion's Blood, a brilliant alternate history in which black Africans have colonized the New World with white Europeans as their slaves. As Zulu Heart opens, New World nobleman...
| Author | Ward Moore |
| ISBN | 1857987640 |
Bring The Jubilee is about, well... imagine that the Confederacy won the American Civil War and… hey! Why are you backing away? Wait! I promise not to talk about McClellan and the Army of the Potomac! Trust me - this is a good book!
OK, for those of you who are still reading this review, I don’t...
| Author | Richard Dreyfuss |
| ISBN | 0812544595 |
A precious and historic painting has been stolen by terrorists—radical separatists who will stop at nothing to shatter the union. Colonel Thomas Bushell, the government’s most fearless agent, is the only man who can stop them.
But this is not our world. For the stolen painting depicts...
If the South Had Won the Civil War
| Author | MacKinlay Kantor |
| ISBN | 0312869495 |
The Past is a strange place indeed . . . everything could have been so different so easily.
Just a touch here and a tweak there . . . .
MacKinlay Kantor, Pulitzer Price-winning author and master storyteller, shows us how the South could have won the Civil War: how two small shifts in history...
| Author | Harry Harrison |
| ISBN | 0812536460 |
Driven by prophetic dreams, the Viking warrior Shef as become the One King, the undisputed ruler of the North. Now he must face the reborn power of the Holy Roman Empire.
Rome threatens Shef's fearsome Viking navy with a new invention of unparalleled destruction: Greek fire. Unable to defend...
| Author | Jon Courtenay Grimwood |
| ISBN | 0553383787 |
In a world where secrets kill, an ex-cop discovers he's got the biggest secret of all. . . .
Set in a 21st-century Ottoman Empire, Jon Courtenay Grimwood's acclaimed Arabesk series is a noir action-thriller with an exotic twist. Here an ex-cop with nothing to lose finds himself on the trail of...
| Author | Gregory Benford |
| ISBN | 0553278452 |
THE UNIVERSE NEXT DOOR
What would have happened if history had been different -- if the major events that shaped our times had occurred in a different way ... or had not occurred at all? In this stellar collection, twelve of science fiction's most imaginative minds have altered the past to reveal...
| Author | Robert Sobel |
| ISBN | 1853675040 |
For Want of a Nail is an alternate history classic. The outcome of one battle in the American Revolution diverges from reality, and sparks an unstoppable chain of events which affects the history of the whole North American continent. In reality, the British general John Burgoyne, heavily outnumbered...
| Author | Jack Womack |
| ISBN | 0802134955 |
At once a biting satire and a taut, fast-paced thriller, Elvissey is the story of Isabel and John, a troubled couple who voyage from the year 2033 to a strangely altered 1954. They are on a desperate mission to kidnap the young Elvis Presley and bring him back to the present day to serve as a ready-made cult...
| Author | Greg Keyes |
| ISBN | 0345406087 |
1722: A second Dark Age looms. An asteroid has devastated the Earth, called down by dire creatures who plot against the world of men. The brilliant-- some say mad--Isaac Newton has taken refuge in ancient Prague. There, with his young apprentice Ben Franklin, he plumbs the secrets of the aetheric beings...
| Author | Paul J. McAuley |
| ISBN | 0380778203 |
The Renaissance has both blessed and cursed the great Florentine Republic - ushering in a glorious new age of artistic and scientific achievement...while drowning the powerful Mediterranean city/state in polluted rain and the filthy, tainted air that spews from its foundries and manufactories....
| Author | Ian Watson |
| ISBN | 1845297792 |
As usual, I've reviewed each story as I've come to it.
The Raft of the Titanic by James Murrow
The problem with taking the obvious route when applying alternative history to HMS Titanic is that if you create a story where the Titanic doesn’t ship it becomes a case of “so what?” The interesting...
| Author | Harry Turtledove |
| ISBN | 0451460545 |
Worlds That Weren't is a collection of four alternate history stories, each written by a different author known in part for their own work in the genre. Each story diverges from history as we know it at a different point, with some going much further than others. The stories by S.M. Stirling and Mary Gentle...
| Author | Tim Flannery |
| ISBN | 0802118984 |
In Now or Never, the internationally acclaimed author of The Weather Makers returns to the subject of climate change with a book that is at once a forceful call to action and a deeply (and often surprisingly) pragmatic roadmap toward sustainability. Utilizing the most up-to-the-minute data available,...
| Author | Bruce Sterling |
| ISBN | 1560258411 |
I'm a science fiction writer. This is a golden opportunity to get up to most any mischief imaginable. With this fourth collection of my stories, I'm going to prove this to you. With these words, Bruce Sterling—author of New York times Notable Books of the Year and one of the great names in contemporary...
| Author | S.M. Stirling |
| ISBN | 0765314886 |
Marc has been assigned to Jamestown, the US-Commonwealth base on Venus, near the great Venusian city of Kartahown. Set in a countryside swarming with sabertooths and dinosaurs, Jamestown is home to a small band of American and allied scientist-adventurers.
But there are flies in this ointment...
| Author | Brendan DuBois |
| ISBN | 0515129496 |
Very good alternative history book. The Cuban Missile crisis is not averted; instead, the Soviets launch 10 missiles, causing devastation in a number of cities and the U.S. destroys the Soviet Union. Ten years later, the U.S. is still recovering, with substantial support from the British. Boston...
The Way It Wasn't: Great Science Fiction Stories of Alternate History
| Author | Martin H. Greenberg |
| ISBN | 0806517697 |
The Way It Wasn't takes an amusing, intellectually stimulating excursion into speculative history. Here are thirteen memorable stories by renowned science fiction writers, telling what things might be like if... Elvis Presley weren't the "King" but the President of the United States ("Ike at the...
| Author | Mike Resnick |
| ISBN | 0812511921 |
I had not heard of the editor before, nor had I been aware that he was prone to editing alternate universe collections.
Most people realize that anthologies tend to be uneven and of widely variable quality, so I'll not belabor the point. I will however, mention that most of these writers were...
Talking Right: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism Into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show
| Author | Geoffrey Nunberg |
| ISBN | 1586483862 |
Geoffrey Nunberg breaks new ground with this fierce and funny narrative of how the political right has ushered in a new world order, aided unwittingly by the liberal media. Democrats are well known for their "lousy bumper stickers," as Joe Klein puts it. As liberals wade through the semantics of "social...
The Second Stage: With a New Introduction
| Author | Betty Friedan |
| ISBN | 0674796551 |
First published in 1981, The Second Stage is eerily prescient and timely, a reminder that much of what is called new thinking in feminism has been eloquently observed and argued before. Warning the women's movement against dissolving into factionalism, male-bashing, and preoccupation with sexual...
| Author | Sophia McDougall |
| ISBN | 0752877097 |
The first of a projected trilogy, Romanitas is an interesting novel, even if it's one that I don't think entirely works. Set in a world where the Roman Empire fell, where Christianity never took hold, slavery is still legal, and where the pax romanum holds sway from America to China, the possibilities...
| Author | Allen M. Steele |
| ISBN | 0425259749 |
With a gift for visionary fiction that “would make Robert A. Heinlein proud” (Entertainment Weekly) three-time Hugo Award-winning author Allen Steele now imagines an alternate history rooted in an actual historical possibility: what if the race to space had occurred in the early days of WWII?
It's...
