Those Pesky Butterflies

Guest post of Dale Cozort.

If you visit the AH forums, you'll quickly figure out that alternate history has its own vocabulary. ASB. OTL, ATL and Butterflies are terms that get tossed around a lot.

The Butterflies bit comes from weather forecasting and refers to the claim that weather systems are so interconnected that a butterfly in Mongolia can cause a cascade of events that leads to a hurricane in the North Atlantic.

What does that have to do with Alternate History? Alternate history butterfly advocates claim that history is similarly connected, that major changes, or even minor ones, from real history anywhere in the world would rapidly cascade, making the resulting world unrecognizable within a surprisingly short time.

For example, if someone went back in time and stepped on a bug, the impact on history might appear to be trivial. The bug dies a few hours or days earlier than it would have and the world goes on without much change. Don't count on that though. Let's say that in reality the bug dies an hour after the time traveler would have stepped on it. No big deal, right? Well, actually it could be a big deal. As a matter of fact, the odds are pretty good that it would eventually be a big deal, though it might take a thousand or ten thousand or even a million years before that's apparent.

Whenever it dies, the bug's body would be recycled, feeding some kind of predator or scavenger. The molecules of that bug's body get recycled time and time again throughout the rest of the life of the planet, but if it died an hour earlier and in a slightly different location it goes along a different set of pathways. How many recyclings does it take before the bug's molecules are or aren't part of something important, like the sperm or egg of the ancestral wolf that either did or didn't kill one of Columbus's remote ancestors? It probably takes thousands of recyclings, but given enough time those molecules will probably be involved in something crucial.

Also, the bug has a more direct impact. Something ate the bug or didn't eat it. Maybe a predator doesn't survive long enough to mate as a result of not eating the bug--it continues foraging and something bigger eats it. Or maybe it survives and has offspring whether or not it eats the bug, but at subtly different times--which, given the low likelihood of any given sperm being the one that fertilizes the egg, means that it has different offspring depending on whether or not the time-traveler stepped on the bug. Whatever ate the bug has a different life trajectory, probably chasing and eating different prey at different times than it did in real history. Each of those chases starts a new cascade of changes from historical reality. So does anything the bug's descendants and the predator's descendants do. Actually changes start cascading from two sources, not one, because something probably ate the bug that wouldn't have without the time traveler and something didn't eat the bug that otherwise would have.

The time traveler walks across a field, with every step starting a cascade of changes from his reality. Some of those changes may damp out, though the odds are against it. Some may be apparent only at the microscopic level for years or decades or even hundreds of years before changing something noticeable.

It's even possible that the time traveler's changes don't become noticeable until after his own time. That's a nightmare scenario: Go back a million years from 2016, take a walk in a field and come back to a seemingly unchanged world of 2016 where the microscopic changes you made eventually, long after your departure date. cause a nuclear war that wouldn't have happened if you hadn't gone back.

The structure of how things happened in reality is fragile. A point of divergence starts a cascade of changes, probably unpredictable beyond a decade or two at the most. Unfortunately, that takes a lot of interesting questions out of the realm of "hard" alternate history.

What would Columbus have found if most of the big North America animals hadn't died off at the end of the ice age? An interesting question, but all those animals existing over thousands of years would have almost certainly butterflied Columbus out of existence. They would probably take  Spain and even a recognizable Europe with him. Too many fragile events went into the existence of that Europe. A Europe would undoubtedly exist and probably parallel the historic one in some ways, but with different languages and genetics.

Butterflies make it difficult to get to a lot of interesting questions. What if there had been a natural sea level Panama canal? No Columbus. No Spain. Probably not the same human species, though they might look a lot like us. The natural Panama canal closed several million years ago, changing climate across the world. If it hadn't closed, our ancestors might not have survived. Even if they survived, they wouldn't have gone along exactly the same path we did and genetic drift would mean that they probably couldn't produce fertile offspring with us after so many years.

That spoils a lot of alternate history (and time travel) doesn't it? How can we get to the interesting questions that butterflies make impossible? As a science fiction writer I don't let butterflies kill a good story. I get as much as I can right and ignore the logical holes butterflies rip in the story.

I did that to some extent in my novel All Timelines Lead to Rome. In All Timelines, primitive humans similar to the Flores Hobbits survived on a large Mediterranean island long enough that when Neolithic settlers reached the island around ten thousand years ago, those settlers decided to enslave the primitives rather than killing them off. So far, so good. The next step requires hand-waving though. The primitive humans remain slaves but don't spread through the ancient world and don't change the processes that led to the Roman Empire. Rome spreads them throughout the empire and remodels the empire around them, using them as crosses between slaves and pets. It's an interesting idea, but the chances of Rome creating a recognizably Roman Empire with a point of divergence over seven thousand years before the founding of Rome are slim.

I introduced a way to get around the butterflies in my novel Snapshot. Extraterrestrials with godlike powers make backups "snapshots" of Earth continents for tens of millions of years. Each Snapshot is an exact copy of a continent at some time in history. The Snapshots are each in a separate but interconnected universe. How does that get around butterflies? If you want a North America with Indians and big ice age animals, just time the Snapshot right. I'm currently writing stories set in a Snapshot taken of North America including Mexico in 1519, in the middle of the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs. The Snapshot cut off Spanish West Indies and Mexico from the Old World. Result: independent conquistador kingdoms in Mexico, which are hard to realistically get any other way. Future stories may involve a Snapshot of Europe taken in the summer of 1942--Europe isolated from the rest of the world and forced to cope with the Nazis on their own, Rainforest Australia, Africa before the dinosaurs went extinct and enough others that I can't do them all justice to in a lifetime.

The bottom line: Butterflies are a real issue if you're serious about your alternate history. They make some types of questions unrealistic. At the same time, we shouldn't allowed them to keep interesting questions from being explored, especially if they lead to interesting story settings.

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Dale Cozort is a novelist, editor of Point of Divergence, the alternate history APA, and a long-term Chicago area fan and writer. Check out his website, blog, Facebook and Twitter profiles.

Point of Divergence Celebrates Its 75th Issue With a Short Story Contest

Friend of The Update, Dale Cozort (author of All Timelines Lead to Rome, American Indian Victorious and "Alternate History Versus the Prime Directive") has a special announcement to make. Point of Divergence, a kind of Do It Yourself Alternate History zine/writers'workshop/slow-motion forum, has been quietly publishing issues for over sixteen years now. Their 75th issue is coming up soon. To celebrate, they're having an alternate history short story contest. Here is the official announcement:

The Prize:

•  $25 Amazon gift card
•  Your choice of one of the following alternate history books Exchange or All Timelines Lead to Rome or American Indian Victories
•  Winning story (and possibly up to two (2) runners-up) will appear in Point of Divergence issue #75 and winners will receive a copy of that issue.

The Deadline:

• Entries Must Be Received By midnight Central Standard time on April 6th
• However, only the first 75 entries will be accepted, so when the 75th entry arrives, the contest will be closed to further entries.

The Story:

• Length: 2000 to 6000 words, with less than 5000 words strongly preferred.
• Other requirements: Alternate History must be a central part of the story--the story would not work without the AH.
• Must be a complete, standalone story, not a chapter or an excerpt of a larger work.
• Must be original, set in a universe of your creation using characters you created.

The Details:

• Current members of POD and past members who were in the APA within one year of the contest deadline are NOT eligible.
• One entry per person.
• The minimum number of entries will be set at twenty (20). If fewer than twenty entries are received, the contest may, at the discretion of the contest organizer, be cancelled.
• Depending on the number and quality of the entries, up to two (2) runners-up prizes may be awarded. If awarded, they will be a subset of the first prize
• Void where prohibited or taxed.
• Entries should be submitted to Althist1atAOLdotcom as attachments to an e-mail in Word format (.doc, .docx, or .rtf) --substitute @ and a dot for the AT and DOT in the e-mail address.
• E-mail with the entries attached should be titled “Contest Entry”
• Include your name and mailing address in your e-mail
• A US winner may receive their copy of the prize book in trade paperback format or in a variety of e-book formats. Due to high overseas postage costs, overseas winners may, at the sole discretion of the contest organizer, be restricted to e-book formats.
• No purchase is required. You may find it helpful to stop by www.DaleCozort.com to get an idea of the contest organizer’s tastes, but mainly just write or polish a good story.
• Decision of the judge is final.
• Stories that have been previously posted at online forums remain eligible, as long as the author retains full rights to the story. However stories that have been published as part of an agreement where money or other tangible items of value flowed to the author in exchange for publication rights are not eligible.
• Contest rules may be modified or clarified at the sole discretion of the contest organizer.

Good luck!

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Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update, a blogger on Amazing Stories and a volunteer editor for Alt Hist magazine. His fiction can be found at Echelon Press, Jake's Monthly and The Were-Traveler. When not writing he works as an attorney, enjoys life with his beautiful wife Alana and prepares for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. You can follow him on Facebook or Twitter.

New Releases 9/18/12

New paperbacks (and e-books)

The Madman Theory by Harvey Simon

Description from Amazon.

It is 1962 and there are children at play in the White House for the first time since the presidency of William Howard Taft. Richard Nixon, the vigorous 49-year-old president, has been in office less than two years, having won election by a razor-thin margin over Senator John Kennedy. In Moscow, the wildly unpredictable Nikita Khrushchev is looking forward to visiting his cherished revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro. Just 90 miles from American shores, Khrushchev will announce an audacious and dangerous nuclear stunt to abruptly shift the balance of power: a secretly-built network of missiles across Cuba that put American cities in the atomic crosshairs. But President Nixon has his own announcement planned. A U.S. spy plane has discovered the missiles being set up in Cuba and Nixon will soon address the nation to announce his response. Meanwhile, First Lady Pat Nixon is in California to look at a San Clemente house the first couple may purchase. Seeing shoppers crowd around a store-window television, Pat gets her first inkling of trouble. Dick has always insisted she not listen to the news and she is happy, for now, to return to her correspondence. In the coming days, the confrontation between the U.S. and its nuclear foe will escalate. The president will weigh his determination to overthrow Castro against the risk of all-out war as Pat struggles to reconcile her proper role as a wife with her estrangement from the man who thrust her into a public life she despises.

New e-books

43* by Jeff Greenfield

Description from Amazon.

At 5:00 p.m. on September 11, 2001, an ashen-faced but composed President Al Gore stepped into the East Room of the White House to deliver a televised address to the nation. With him were former presidents Clinton and Bush, as well as Texas governor George W. Bush—flown to Washington from Dallas on a military jet, his first visit back to the capital after the close race that lost him the presidency just months before.

That’s not how you remember it?

Imagine if the 2000 presidential election had turned out differently and Al Gore had defeated George W. Bush to become the 43rd president of the United States. How might events have played out? Would Osama bin Laden have loomed as large? Would the 9/11 attacks have been even worse? Would we have invaded Iraq? Would the economy have plunged into recession?

This is the provocative alternate universe of "43*," a riveting thriller by veteran political commentator Jeff Greenfield. Richly reported and anchored in actual events, “43*: When Gore Beat Bush” is the fascinating follow-up to Greenfield’s bestselling “Then Everything Changed,” which imagined what-if scenarios for the Kennedy, Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations.

Greenfield takes readers deep inside the Gore administration and reveals high-level meetings, top-secret programs, and ego-fueled battles that forever altered the global landscape. And in Greenfield’s hauntingly plausible parallel universe, the law of unintended consequences has a dramatic effect on the fate of the United States.

“It’s the ‘butterfly effect,’” writes Greenfield, “where one dead butterfly millions of years ago leads to a contemporary world immeasurably more coarse, less kind. It’s the notion of the old nursery rhyme: ‘For want of a nail the kingdom was lost.’”

All Timelines Lead to Rome by Dale Cozort

Description from Amazon.

A dead woman’s cell phone chip leads to a mystery spanning the U.S. rustbelt, a surviving Roman empire and a North America without Europeans.

See our preview and review of the novel, plus our earlier interview with Dale.

By Force of Arms by Billy Bennett

Description from Amazon.

North America 1869: It has been six years since the South won the Civil War on the bloody fields of Gettysburg. An icy peace has descended across the continent. In the economically devastated North, war hero William Tecumseh Sherman has just been elected President of the United States. He is determined to pick up where the North left off six years ago, and restore the Union no matter the cost.

Using Confederate and French military involvement in Mexico as a pretext for war, Sherman lights the fuse that once again causes America to explode into the fires of battle. The fragile peace is shattered and armies in blue and gray once again slaughter one another on an epic scale. In the South, the aging Confederate President Robert E Lee once again summons his daring strategic mind, his audacious spirit and his last reserves of strength to once again lead the embattled Confederacy. But the weapons of war have grown evermore terrible. The introduction of breech loading rifles and lethal Gatling Guns has made the battle field deadlier and more horrendous than ever before in history.

By Force of Arms is an epic novel of the Second American Civil War. From Ironclads battling in the Gulf of California to the horrors of trench warfare in Virginia, from black Buffalo soldiers fighting for the Union in the wild west to Confederate partisans in Missouri led by the notorious and daring outlaw Jesse James, By Force of Arms shows the most horrible war in American history through the eyes of those forced to fight it. With the fate of a nation, a continent and ultimately the world itself in the balance, both sides struggle to win the victory by force of arms.

The Eternal Empire by Geoff Fabron

Description from Amazon.

A novel of alternate history, set in a world where the Roman Empire never fell, where the Emperor rules from Constantinople and the Legions still guard the Rhine and Danube. In the early 20th century a network of railways criss-cross the provinces of the Empire and instead of swords and spears the legionaries are equipped with rifles and artillery, the cavalry with armoured vehicles.

In ‘The Eternal Empire’ it is 1920 and the Roman Empire is in a deep economic recession following years of expansion and growth. A package of political, social and economic reforms coupled with austerity measures to deal with the crisis leads to revolts and bloodshed which hands power to a reactionary senator with his own agenda. Protective, punitive tariffs and taxes on trade and transport routes with neighbouring states generate unrest within the Empire and outrage outside it.

As civil war begins to breakout, Saxony, the largest of the German States, sees an opportunity to gain revenge for a humiliating defeat decades before.

Cornelius Petronius, a Roman diplomat in Saxony find himself in the centre of events through his relationship with Katherine, the sister of a Saxon Minister. Tensions between the Empire and Saxony increase as a revolt breaks out in Britain and a war starts with the Arab Caliphate. When evidence of an impending attack across the Rhine frontier by Saxony is discovered by Katherine, Cornelius endeavours to prevent it.

To fans, authors and publishers...

Do you want to see your work given a shout out on our New Releases segment? Contact Mitro at ahwupdate at gmail dot com.  We are looking for works of alternate history, counterfactual history, steampunk, historical fantasy, time travel or anything that warps history beyond our understanding.

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Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update, a volunteer editor for Alt Hist and a contributor to Just Below the Law. His fiction can be found at Echelon Press, Jake's Monthly and his own writing blog. When not writing he works as an attorney and enjoys life with his beautiful wife Alana.

Alternate History Versus the Prime Directive

Guest post by Dale Cozort.

When you think about it, a lot of alternate history is about violating Star Trek-style prime directives. Think about the iconic stories of alternate history. Sidewise in Time by Leinster has a couple go to a primitive timeline to change it into their own image after a timequake gives them access to it. De Camp's Lest Darkness Fall has a guy from the late 1930s go back to just after the fall of the Roman Empire and prevent the Dark Ages.

The Federation would be displeased with both sets of protagonists if they did what they did in a Star Trek universe.  But what about outside that universe? What about alternate history situations? Is it realistic to apply something like the Prime Directive in contact between timelines with different tech levels? In certain circumstances, maybe. It depends on how hard it is to get from the technologically advanced reality to the primitive one.

There are two issues here. First, could something like the Prime Directive be applied in Alternate History situations?  Second, is it ethical to do so?

It’s possible in certain situations.  Rules similar to the Prime Directive are applied in my novel All Timelines Lead to Rome (due out at the end of September). In the near future, we create portals between our timeline and an alternate reality where the Roman Empire froze in the political and economic patterns of the early empire. A few hundred years later, the rest of the Old World stopped changing. There is a reason for that freeze, which I won’t get into here.  As a result, the Old World never colonized the Americas.

The portals set up a situation tailor-made for the Prime Directive. Two continents full of Indians are even more vulnerable in this setup than they were when Chris Columbus sailed over from Spain. On the other hand, we know what will happen if we allow free access to the alternate reality. Indians will certainly die of disease by the tens of millions, and even the alternate reality's Old World is vulnerable to technological disruption and disease.

Given easy access to the alternate reality, it would get colonized in spite of the  problems that would cause.  I made keeping the realities apart feasible by making the portals energy hogs that only governments or very wealthy individuals can afford to keep open, and even then only in a few weak spots in the walls between the realities.  The weak spots are detectable from a distance and the world’s governments know where they are. That makes a Prime Directive sort of manageable, but only given the political will to maintain it.

Political and economic pressures build. Technological advances threaten the isolation.  The sharks circle.  The issues are discussed in government and academia, but also by bartenders at redneck bars.

Bill Dickey brought their drinks. “Did I hear the word scandal?”

“Probably,” Scott said.

“I told you she was trouble. You’ve been here twice, so you’re regulars. Any time you want to get drunk and tell me your darkest secrets, I’m here for you.”

“We’ll keep that in mind,” Scott said. He gestured to the stage. “No ‘UDE’ girls.”

“You’re not drunk enough to appreciate the girls I get here,” Bill said. “Speaking of deep, dark secrets, when are they going to bring oil through the Portals?”

“Hopefully never.”

Bill grinned. “Ah, tree hugger. Leave the Indians alone? Well your money spends as well as anyone’s, but remember, screwing over Indians made this country great.” 

“That’s one way of looking at it.” 

Bill stretched his long arms. His shirt rode up, revealing a pot belly. “We’re a plague of locusts, all of us, Americans and Europeans, Asians. We eat the land bare. Stop moving and we starve to death. Now we have the portals—a whole new world to ravage. We’re a Biblical plague. No use pretending we aren’t.” He strolled away, grinning.

“Cheery thought.”

It’s not just economic pressure. There are also religious ones
.
Scott barely noticed the handful of demonstrators near BTI’s underground garage, a tiny remnant of the thousands that gathered there when the portals opened seven years ago. As he drove his four-year-old green Chevy past them, they chanted, “Close the Portals. Timeline X for the Indians.” A tall bearded guy brandished a sign that read, “Jesus Died For TimeLine X Too.”

If you’re from any one of dozens of religions that believe in souls and saving them, keeping your missionaries away from millions of souls is a crime of enormous proportions.

So the pressures build. The price of natural resources goes up. Jobs get scarce. And the path to the promised land leads through those portals. How long could a Prime Directive hold up? What do you do if you think it’s going to fail politically? I had fun with the premise.

All of that assumes that a Prime Directive is a morally superior policy. There is certainly a case that it is, but that’s not the only way to look at it. Leaving a society to develop at its own pace is arguably healthier for the society, but if you have medicine that can save thousands of kids and thousands of young mothers from premature death on the other side of the portal, it’s tough to argue that it’s ethical to withhold that medicine.  Once you put a crack in the wall--sending medicine to save young lives, for example, it’s difficult to keep that crack from widening. Is it ethical to let children grow up malnourished when you know how to change that? Is it ethical to deny women birth control when child-birth is so dangerous and pregnancies deny them control over their lives?

That’s ethically tricky stuff. Uncontrolled entry into modern society often causes the majority of the technologically more primitive society to die or give up, yet not intervening is ethically questionable too.

What about manipulating the technological primitives so they adopt the useful parts of modern society and integrate them into their own society?  That’s not impossible. The Amish have arguably done a good job of it, though they started at the same level as the surrounding societies and simply were more selective at adopting new stuff. The Japanese and to an even greater extent the Cherokees and a few other southern Indian tribes were historically able to bridge very large technological gaps in remarkably short times, while maintaining  much of their traditional cultures.  The ideal way out of the dilemma would be to figure out what allowed those cultures to succeed where so many others failed and apply it universally. That’s easier to say than to do though.

Semi-spoiler alert: One of the characters in All Timelines tries to manipulate other timeline Iroquois cultures so that their technology advances rapidly. That ends badly, of course. We don’t know enough about our own culture to reliably change it for the better. Trying to manipulate somebody else’s culture for its own good is likely to fail badly.

By the way, this probably gives the impression that All Timelines is a “serious book”. It does address serious issues, but it also keeps a sense of wonder and adventure, and I promise that I don’t stick ‘serious’ down your throat. Wandering through a North America where Indians had an extra five hundred years to develop is a lot of fun, as is my version of the Roman empire.

The issues behind the Prime Directive aren’t easy ones.  There isn’t an easy way out. Would we stand by and watch people live short, hard desperate lives?  Is the only other choice the kind of mindless, exploitive, destructive invasions Europe did in the colonial era and that are still going on in parts of South America?

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Dale Cozort is a novelist, editor of Point of Divergence, the alternate history APA, and a long-term Chicago area fan and writer. Check out his website, blog, Facebook and Twitter profiles.

Review: All Timelines Lead to Rome by Dale Cozort

Grade: B

If you have explored the twisted halls of online alternate history, Dale Cozort is a name you will recognize. Computer programmer, teacher and writer, Dale was an early pioneer in the alternate history community, posting his works online during the days when everyone still used websites to showcase their works (remember GeoCities). Thankfully he is still writing and his recent work of fiction is the upcoming All Timelines Lead to Rome.

In the universe of All Timelines, there are two timelines, ours and a world where the Roman Empire still exists. In fact, the Old World is in a state of stagnation. Technology and culture has not progressed in over two thousands years and New World remains free from contact with the rest of humanity...until our timeline discovered it. Portals can be used to access "Timeline X" but only in the Americas and few other remote locales. Our chrononauts are extremely careful travelling to this alternate America since there are millions of people without immunity to our diseases. Meanwhile, there are theories on why the wall between realities is weaker there or why technological advancement halted in the Old World, but nothing is known for sure.

It might have something to do with a picture of bizarre humanoid creature discovered on a dead body. This leads Bureau of Timeline Integrity analyst Scott White to team up with FBI agent Darla Smith to track down the murderer. Their investigation leads them to suspect Jeni Burgen, the young and wealthy owner of Burgen Industries. She has her own reason to avoid government intrusion into her activities because she has opened an illegal portal to Timeline X to trade with the Romans. Yet there appears to be other players in this drama and the true mystery could put an entire civilization at risk.

All Timelines was an enjoyable story and interesting take on parallel worlds fiction. Dale's use of Native Americans is a refreshing change of pace when so many alternate history focus on American or European cultures. Dale's writing style is heavily dialogue driven with little reliance on background or inner monologue. While this avoids text dumps that are prevalent in the genre (us history nerds tend to be a wordy bunch) some readers might find it to be a tad unusual. That is not say the writing is bad. Dale has created a cast of colorful and witty characters who have moments of compassion and pettiness just like us.

Having read many of Dale's counterfactuals over the years, it was a good change of pace to read one of his fictional works. If you like strong dialogue in a unique alternate history setting then I can recommend All Timelines Lead to Rome by Dale Cozort.

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Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update, a volunteer editor for Alt Hist and a contributor to Just Below the Law. His fiction can be found at Echelon Press, Jake's Monthly and his own writing blog. When not writing he works as an attorney and enjoys life with his beautiful wife Alana.

All Timelines Lead to Rome by Dale Cozort available in paperback and e-book 9/30 from Stairway Press

I am pleased to announce a new unique alternate history by friend of the blog Dale Cozrot: All Timelines Lead to Rome. Originally Dale wrote the novel for NaNoWriMo, an annual challenge to write 50,000 words in the month of November.  He wrote over 73,000 words, but it was still not enough to finish the novel. Now he has completed his work and is preparing to publish it on Sept 30th.  Here is the description of the novel from the press release:

Newly created portals lead to an alternate reality where humans enslaved rather than wiping out an island race of hobbit-like near-humans. Alternate history Rome built their culture around these slaves, preserving the empire but causing stagnation. The Roman Empire has survived nearly unchanged since its peak. As a result, Europeans never discovered America and American Indians still control the alternate reality's New World.

Intertwined mysteries: A camera chip concealed on the body of a dead woman depicts a Roman scroll that could not exist in this reality. The subsequent murder investigation and the discovery of the chip leads to Detective Darla Smith to the Bureau of Timeline Integrity and analyst Scott White. Is the murder linked to smuggled Roman artifacts from the alternate timeline? When they discover the chip also contains photos of a creature who's not quite human, powerful forces step in to detour Scott and Darla. Undeterred, they continue their investigation, leading them further into dangerous territory and more tangled mysteries. What lurks in Darla's past and dogs the investigation? What is that peculiar creature in the photo, and how did it have such an impact on Rome? Why do Roman slave raiders suddenly appear in alternate history North America? And what does software giant Burgen Industries have to do with any of this?

A trail of clues leads Darla and Scott through cyberspace, decaying rustbelt towns, and an Indian-controlled alternate North America toward the final shocking answer as to why all timelines lead to Rome.

This is Dale's second novel, and a strong contender for reader attention. The New York Times Best Selling author S.M. Stirling said, "All Timelines is an intriguing and action-packed alternate history with an unusual point of departure. I like it!"

Dale was kind enough to send me a review copy, so stay tuned for a review in the near future. In the meantime you can read this excerpt from the novel.

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Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update, a volunteer editor for Alt Hist and a contributor to Just Below the Law. His fiction can be found at Echelon Press, Jake's Monthly and his own writing blog. When not writing he works as an attorney and enjoys life with his beautiful wife Alana.