Weekly Update #125

Editor's Note

SF has been accused of being a boys-only club and alternate history is no exception. With a few exceptions, many female writers in the genre stick to the steampunk side. Most protagonists in our favorite stand-alone stories are men (although Turtledove and Stirling have both made efforts to include important female POV characters in their longer series). Fans of the genre as well tend to be men in the 25-34 age range (if the Alternate History Facebook page I administer is any guide).

Do I have any hard evidence to prove this? No, but it is something I am interested and I am hoping to learn more about in the future. Stay tuned.

And now the news...

Update: If Kennedy Live by Jeff Greenfield

The big news from last week was the release of If Kennedy Lived by Jeff Greenfield (author of The Everything Changed and 43*). For those who missed it, here is the description from Amazon:

From one of the country’s most brilliant political commentators, the bestselling author of Then Everything Changed, an extraordinary, thought-provoking look at Kennedy’s presidency—after November 22, 1963. 

November 22, 1963: JFK does not die. What would happen to his life, his presidency, his country, his world? 

In Then Everything Changed, Jeff Greenfield created an “utterly compelling” (Joe Klein), “riveting” (The New York Times), “eye-opening” (Peggy Noonan), “captivating” (Doris Kearns Goodwin) exploration of three modern alternate histories, “with the kind of political insight and imagination only he possesses” (David Gregory). Based on memoirs, histories, oral histories, fresh reporting, and his own knowledge of the players, the book looked at the tiny hinges of history—and the extraordinary changes that would have resulted if they had gone another way. 

Now he presents his most compelling narrative of all about the historical event that has riveted us for fifty years. What if Kennedy were not killed that fateful day? What would the 1964 campaign have looked like? Would changes have been made to the ticket? How would Kennedy, in his second term, have approached Vietnam, civil rights, the Cold War? With Hoover as an enemy, would his indiscreet private life finally have become public? Would his health issues have become so severe as to literally cripple his presidency? And what small turns of fate in the days and years before Dallas might have kept him from ever reaching the White House in the first place? 

As with Then Everything Changed, the answers Greenfield provides and the scenarios he develops are startlingly realistic, rich in detail, shocking in their projections, but always deeply, remarkably plausible. It is a tour de force of American political history.

Greenfield, of course, has been promoting the heck out of his new novel. Check out the interviews he did on msnbc and The Daily Caller. I'm not too happy with msnbc interview. I don't like it when people use the word "obsession" with alternate history. Its not like someone who writes a cook book is accused of having an "obsession with cooking. Meanwhile, you can also check out an article written by Greenfield on Yahoo where he discusses his book and the history behind it.

Not everyone, however, finds this book plausible. H.W. Brands' review on The Washington Post argued that the popular scenario that Kennedy would have prevented increased American intervention in Vietnam is implausible because "the American effort in Vietnam looked promising to most observers until very late in what would have been that second term. Of course, Greenfield’s Kennedy is blessed with the author’s hindsight. Real presidents aren’t so fortunate."

How do you think Kennedy's presidency would have played out if he had lived? Does Greenfield get it right?

Dark Quest’s Clockwork Chaos Out Now

Fans of steampunk might be interested in this new anthology from Dark Quest Books. Edited by Neal Levin and Danielle Ackley-McPhail, Clockwork Chaos is an anthology of steampunk stories currently available on Amazon. Here is the description from the press release.

Finding Order Out of Chaos… 

History, invention, the power of deduction… Clockwork Chaos is more than goggles and gears. It is about order and structure and timing striving for mechanical perfection. But in an era where mass production does not yet exist, the unique machinery brought forth into the world is at times bound to fall short of the goal. This chaos turns the science into mayhem and when the gears spring forth this mechanical viscera is indicative of a world turned inside out. Join us in our journey through the shine of society to the dark steamy underbelly of grit and crime. 

Thirteen stories of steam-driven genius plumb the depths of human intrigue even as they raise our vision to the skies. Patrick Thomas’s Spellpunk tale Deadly Imitation turns the Ripper into a tourist attraction. Gail Gray’s The Foxglove Broadsides uses the power of the press to bring down the political machine. And Jeff Young’s Ambergris in Ice gets to the grist of the matter on the issue of smuggling. Necessity may be the mother of invention, but read on to discover how mods make the man. 

Featuring the work of Jeff Young, Richard Marsden, Matt Dinniman, Bernie Mojzes, R. Rozakis, Patrick Thomas, Angel Leigh McCoy, Gail Gray, Patricia Puckett, James Chambers, N.R. Brown, C.J. Henderson, and James Daniel Ross.

As always, if you read any of the books we mention on The Update, let us know. We can post your review and help promote any of your alternate history projects as well. Just remember to contact us at ahwupdate at gmail dot com.

Crusader Kings II: Sons of Abraham Announced

Listed as one of the top video games for researching your alternate history by Daniel Ottalini (author of Brass Legionnaire and Copper Centurion), Crusader King II has a new expansion coming out called Sons of Abraham. The expansion will introduces new features focusing on the big three religions of Medieval Europe: Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

As explained from the press release: "Plunge into the powerful and profitable world of Papal politics, appointing your bishops, gaining influence with the College of Cardinals and reap the rewards of the Pope’s money and favours. Show your devotion with the Holy Orders; their clout will come in handy when you want to expel troublesome relatives to a monastery!  Pick sides of the Islamic debate, choosing to follow the rationalist Mutazili or opposing Ashari or play as a Jewish lord and restore the Kingdom of Israel (now this scenario I liked). Crusader Kings II: Sons of Abraham features hundreds of new religious events no matter what doctrine you follow!"

You can learn more by checking out the recent developer diary. Crusader Kings II: Sons of Abraham will release on all major digital-download portals on November 18, 2013.

Video Gallery

There are a whole host of YouTube videos for alternate historians to check out. First up, Epic Rap Battles of History returns with Al Capone vs. Blackbeard:

Next up, the trailer for Aerena - Clash of Champions, a steampunk turn-based combat game, now in the alpha stage:

Enjoy!

Calendar

Nov 1: Valley Catholic High School of Oregon drama department begins its run of the steampunk version of "As You Like It".

Dec 31: Last day to send unagented submissions to Angry Robot.

Links to the Multiverse

Articles

10 Historical Figures We're Sick of Seeing in Science Fiction by Annalee Newitz at io9.

Books

DJ Taylor's top 10 counter-factual novels at The Guardian.
Einstein Must Die! - A novel with a steampunk twist on US history at The Sacramento Bee.
Free Steampunk Reads by omgrey at Steamed!
How to write the world of INCEPTIO and PERFIDITAS by Alison Morton at Let us Talk of Many Things; of Books and Queens and Pirates, of History and Kings...
The Martian at the Parthenon by Matthew Buchholz at Slate.
Tales of the Wold Newton Universe, Part 1 of 4 by Christopher Paul Carey at Black Gate.

Counterfactual and Traditional History

An Alternate History of the Government Shutdown by Rick Klein at Taegan Goddard's Political Wire.
A Baseball Counterfactual: How Will Red Sox Fans Remember the Tigers Series? by Gavriel D. Rosenfeld at The Counterfactual History Review.
President Romney's Obamacare Problem by Christopher Flavelle at Bloomberg.
So here’s an interesting historical counterfactual scenario at CAMaraderie.

Films

Steampunk Meets Deep Ocean Creatures In This Eerie Short Film by Sarah Barness at The Huffington Post.

Games


InSomnia is a diesel-punk MMO but you wouldn’t know it from this trailer by Julian Benson at IndieN.
Screenshots of PS4 exclusive The Order: 1886 remind us of Gears of War by Wesley Yin-Poole at EuroGamer.net.

Interviews

Gail Carriger at SF Signal.
Katina French at The Masquerade Crew.
George Mann at SF Signal.

Reviews

After Earth at Amazing Stories.
The Alchemist of Souls by Anne Lyle at Bookworm Blues.
Cold Magic by Kate Elliott at Staffer's Book Review.
The Cowboy and The Goliath by Iann Robinson at Crave Online.
Elementary 2.5: Ancient History at Thinking about books.
Fiendish Schemes by KW Jeter at Locus.
Fires of Alexandria by Thomas K. Carpenter at Carole P. Roman.
The Harker Legacy by Teel James Glenn at Innsmouth Free Press.
Liverpool Fantasy by Larry Kirwan at NJ.com.

Television

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell Cast Announced by Jordan Farley at SFX.

* * *

Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update and a blogger on Amazing Stories. His new short story "Road Trip" can be found in Forbidden Future: A Time Travel Anthology. 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 10/22/13

Hardcovers

If Kennedy Lived: The First and Second Terms of President John F. Kennedy: An Alternate History by Jeff Greenfield

Description from Amazon.

From one of the country’s most brilliant political commentators, the bestselling author of Then Everything Changed, an extraordinary, thought-provoking look at Kennedy’s presidency—after November 22, 1963.

November 22, 1963: JFK does not die. What would happen to his life, his presidency, his country, his world?

In Then Everything Changed, Jeff Greenfield created an “utterly compelling” (Joe Klein), “riveting” (The New York Times), “eye-opening” (Peggy Noonan), “captivating” (Doris Kearns Goodwin) exploration of three modern alternate histories, “with the kind of political insight and imagination only he possesses” (David Gregory). Based on memoirs, histories, oral histories, fresh reporting, and his own knowledge of the players, the book looked at the tiny hinges of history—and the extraordinary changes that would have resulted if they had gone another way.

Now he presents his most compelling narrative of all about the historical event that has riveted us for fifty years. What if Kennedy were not killed that fateful day? What would the 1964 campaign have looked like? Would changes have been made to the ticket? How would Kennedy, in his second term, have approached Vietnam, civil rights, the Cold War? With Hoover as an enemy, would his indiscreet private life finally have become public? Would his health issues have become so severe as to literally cripple his presidency? And what small turns of fate in the days and years before Dallas might have kept him from ever reaching the White House in the first place?

As with Then Everything Changed, the answers Greenfield provides and the scenarios he develops are startlingly realistic, rich in detail, shocking in their projections, but always deeply, remarkably plausible. It is a tour de force of American political history.

Paperbacks

Perfiditas by Alison Morton

Description from Amazon.

Captain Carina Mitela of the Praetorian Guard Special Forcesis in trouble - one colleague has tried to kill her and another has set a trap to incriminate her in a conspiracy to topple the government of Roma Nova. Founded sixteen hundred years ago by Roman dissidents and ruled by women, Roma Nova barely survived a devastating coup d'etat thirty years ago. Carina swears to prevent a repeat and not merely for love of country. Seeking help from a not quite legal old friend could wreck her marriage to the enigmatic Conrad. Once proscribed and operating illegally, she risks being terminated by both security services and conspirators. As she struggles to overcome the desperate odds and save her beloved Roma Nova, and her own life, she faces the ultimate betrayal...

To fans, authors and publishers...

Is your story going to be published in time for the next New Releases? Contact us 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.

* * *

Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update and a blogger on Amazing Stories. His new short story "Road Trip" can be found in Forbidden Future: A Time Travel Anthology. 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.

Military Channel Will Air Documentary on an Alternate History of the Cuban Missile Crisis

Hot on the heels of ABC's announcement regarding The Thirteen, a drama about a failed American Revolution, comes the Military Channel's special on an alternate Cuban Missile Crisis called What If...? Armageddon 1962.

Most Americans aren't aware that a deranged political fanatic named Richard Pavlick plotted to murder JFK with a suicide bomb in Palm Beach, Fla. Pavlick came within seconds of carrying out his plan just weeks before President-elect Kennedy was to take office. The Military Channel (in collaboration with NBC News' Peacock Productions) asks what if Pavlick had carried out his plot to assassinate Kennedy? What If...? Armageddon 1962 will premier on Tuesday, October 22 at 10/9c.

"In What If...? Armageddon 1962, the Military Channel shines a light on what is arguably the most important political event of the 1960s -- the Cuban Missile Crisis -- and how, with different leadership, much of the world might have been destroyed in a nuclear war," said Henry Schleiff, Group President, Investigation Discovery, Military Channel, and Destination America. "The film is a departure from the typical conspiracy theories that exist around the assassination of John F. Kennedy, resulting instead in a very plausible 'what-if' scenario that truly illustrates the pressure cooker of an unprecedented international crisis and its potential consequences for life and death."

The documentary (which will use archival film footage and photos) will focus on what might have happened if Lyndon B. Johnson was in office instead of JFK during the Cuban Missile Crisis. If this scenario sounds familiar to anyone, you are right. It is actually based off of one of the short stories in Sidewise nominated author Jeff Greenfield's Then Everything Changed. Greenfield will also provide commentary during the documentary along with historians John Gresham and Timothy Naftali, plus Sidewise winning author, and friend of The Update, Eric Swedin (author of When Angels Wept).

Wait a second...are they actually using alternate history writers in their alternate history documentary instead of the guy who founded Wikipedia?!?! Holy crap! This is the real deal. Everything I have been complaining about seems addressed by this single documentary. Excuse me for a second, I need to check to see if my cable provider gives me the Military Channel...

* * *

Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update and a blogger on Amazing Stories. His new short story "Road Trip" can be found in Forbidden Future: A Time Travel Anthology. 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.

Review: 43* by Jeff Greenfield

Guest post by Kieran Colfer.

It was a familiar refrain from the political left all the way though the Bush years and ever since: "Everything would be different if only Gore had won the election". There would be no budget deficit, no Iraq War, everyone would still love the USA and we'd be well on our way to solving global warming. There have been many fantasies about this, including even a Saturday Night Live skit by Al Gore himself, but here it finally gets the full book treatment.

Normally the "President Gore" fantasies begin with the election night count itself, but here the author does something a bit cleverer, he moves the butterfly back a year to a little boy being washed up on a Florida beach. As a result, the Florida election turnout is slightly different enough to not need a recount, and so Al Gore returns to the White House as The Man rather then The-Man-In-Waiting. This isn't the only butterfly in the book, however, the second one blows the whole "9/11 was as bad as things can get" idea right out of the water. This particular twist sends subsequent events off on a direction totally different from our timeline - or does it?

The book itself takes a little bit of time to get used to - most alternative history books you read are about events and characters long since consigned to the pages of history, but here you are reading about events that you have lived though (or "would live through" maybe?), so it was slightly strange seeing characters and saying "ah yeah, I remember him".  One nice touch here is in the battle between the recently defeated Republican power players and the newly elected Gore -  a lot of the quotes here will look very familiar, as they are quotes used by the Republicans after Obama won in the 2008 election. For those who look back on the Post-Bush days through rose-tinted glasses and imagine a Gore presidency as a halcyon time of bi-partisan co-operation, this book may come as a rude awakening, but politics was never a gentleman's game, and we see this here in spades.

My one big issue with this book is the ending - in the context of the book itself, it's a good place to end, but it's a bit abrupt, you're left hanging wondering what will happen next. Will a second order counterfactual kick in for Iraq, or wont it? This is a book that begs for a sequel, although it is a clever move by the author to leave the public wanting more.

* * *

Kieran Colfer is a member of the AH Weekly Update Review Team.

Review: 43* by Jeff Greenfield

Guest post by Andrew Schneider.

Few historical events have presented themselves so quickly as fodder for the game of “What If?” as the 2000 U.S. presidential election.  The race between George W. Bush and Al Gore is often oversimplified as having come down to a single vote. Had one Supreme Court justice switched his or her ruling and allowed the vote counting in Florida to continue, the argument goes, Gore would have ultimately carried the state and won the White House.

In his introduction to 43*, political commentator Jeff Greenfield (author of the Sidewise Award nominated Then Everything Changed) observes a Gore win in the Supreme Court wouldn’t have ended the matter. Florida’s Republican-run legislature was prepared to award the state’s votes to Bush in any event.  Instead, Greenfield gives Gore the win by using an earlier point of divergence. He imagines a different outcome to the case of Elián González, the six-year-old Cuban boy rescued from drowning off the coast of Fort Lauderdale on Thanksgiving 1999.

In our world, Elián was the sole survivor of an escape from Cuba involving his mother and her lover.  A prolonged struggle ensued over whether Elián would be returned to his father in Cuba. It ended only in June 2000, when federal agents seized Elián from the home of his Miami relatives. If Florida’s historically Republican-leaning Cuban-American community needed a reason to vote against the Democratic Vice President, they had one now, and they came out in force on Election Day.

Greenfield posits that if Elián’s mother had lived, and her lover had drowned, the last thing she would have wanted would have been to stay in Little Havana with the family of her estranged ex-husband. Had mother and son returned to Cuba of their own accord, he suggests, enough Cuban-Americans would have sat out the 2000 election to give Gore a clean win.

What happens next in this world, though, is anything but the dream scenario that many Gore partisans held to during the eight years George W. Bush occupied the White House. Like Bill Clinton throughout his last six years in office, President Gore is faced with Republican majorities in both houses of Congress.  Gore, lacking his predecessor’s charm or flexibility, finds much of his domestic agenda stymied -- particularly his environmental and clean energy policies.

The crux of 43* is how President Gore would have faced the threat of al Qaeda.  The Clinton Administration took years to come to grips with how serious a danger Osama bin Laden represented. But by the time Bill Clinton left office, his national security team classed bin Laden as the single greatest threat to the security of the United States. Those individuals went to great lengths to try to convince the incoming George W. Bush Administration that this was the case and were ignored.

A President Gore, Greenfield argues, would have taken the threat of bin Laden much more seriously. But Gore’s national security bureaucracy would have been hampered by the same lack of interagency communication that Bush’s did.  The result in 43* is that the 9/11 hijackers still make it into the U.S. undetected. And by having Gore take steps to make air travel more efficient -- steps that George W. Bush ended up taking towards the end of his own time in office – 9/11 turns into an even bigger catastrophe than it was in our own history.

One of the great strengths of 43* is that the author interviewed many individuals who worked closely with Gore and likely would have been part of his transition team, if not his actual administration. Greenfield says in his epilogue that these conversations gave him insight into how Gore would have behaved in office. The results are convincing to anyone who followed Gore as vice president and as a presidential candidate.

What is less than convincing is the degree of influence Greenfield attributes to the neoconservatives over not just the Republican opposition but American public opinion.  In 43*, as in our world, the neoconservatives blame Saddam Hussein for the 9/11 attacks. Soon, the public is clamoring for an invasion of Iraq. President Gore’s determination to keep the focus of US military efforts on Afghanistan and rooting out al Qaeda wind up costing him dearly.

Numerous accounts of the Bush Administration, notably Barton Gellman’s Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency, have debunked the notion that the neocons drove U.S. foreign and security policy going into the Iraq War. The views of Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and others gained prominence not because of the neocons themselves but because those views happened to coincide with those of Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. It was these two, with their influence over the Bush White House, that led the U.S. to all but abandon the Afghan War and build the dubious case for war with Iraq. Subtract Cheney and Rumsfeld, replace George W. Bush with Al Gore, and the neocons would have had as little influence shaping US policy as they had either under Clinton or under the first President Bush.

It’s tempting to imagine that much of the pain of the past dozen years might have been avoided with a simple change of leadership.  Greenfield’s account reminds us that history is rarely that simple. But it’s possible to overdo things. Trying to argue that the Iraq War was as unavoidable for a President Gore as deeper involvement in the Vietnam War was for, say, a President Kennedy who survived assassination in 1963, is perhaps a step too far. Greenfield’s reluctance to stray too far from the script of our own history is perhaps the greatest weakness of 43*.

Had Al Gore actually won the presidency in 2000, he would now have been out of power for only four to eight years. A more plausible account of a Gore presidency will require some greater distance on events for reflection.

* * *

Andrew Schneider is the business news reporter for KUHF Houston Public Radio. 

Weekly Update #72

Editor's Note

Got our first visitors from Sri Lanka and Ethiopia. Welcome! I really need to post a new reader map soon.

Thanks to all of our fans who provide feedback to our posts. While hearing your opinion is great, the best way to thank me and all the other contributors to AHWU is to share our work through social media. If you follow us on Twitter, please RT. If you like us on Facebook, hit share on one of our articles. Help spread the word and keep this window to the multiverse alive.

Turns out YouTube actually keeps track of the videos I post on this blog. If you want to find all of the videos we link to on Weekly Update, then subscribe to our feed on YouTube. Perhaps one day we will even have our own channel...

And now the news...

43* by Jeff Greenfield

Big news last week was the publication of a new short story by columnist and author Jeff Greenfield (Then Everything Changed). The story is called 43* and asks a "what if" many liberals I assume ask themselves a lot: what if Gore won the presidency in 2000? What if Gore was president during 9/11? What would he have done differently? You can read excerpts from the short story at Yahoo and at the publisher's website. You can also watch Jeff discuss his story on msnbc.

ABC Developing Steampunk Drama Gaslight

ABC made waves last month among speculative historians by announcing a steampunk detective series featuring Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. ABC has done it again when last week they announced a new steampunk tv series called Gaslight. It has been described as a "soapy drama set in a modern steampunk San Francisco where three rival families battle each other for control." The show will be produced by Ian Sander and Kim Moses of Sander/Moses Productions and written by Michael Cooney. Not everyone, however, is pleased by this announcement. Margaret Lyons over at Vulture said "Oh, lord. A steampunk San Francisco? Can't we just let Burning Man be Burning Man?"

Nevertheless, I am excited, especially if this alternative San Francisco actually has a different history. What do you think?

Guns of Icarus Online Ready for Pre-Order

Guns of Icarus, the online dirigible combat game, is now available for pre-order through Steam. Set in a steampunk inspired, post-apocalyptic wasteland, this team-based co-op game allows you to play as one of three character classes: Captain, Gunner and Engineer. The Captain steers the ship, the gunner keeps enemies at bay and the engineer keeps the ship flying. There are a variety of missions to perform and air pirates are as thick as flies to keep things exciting. Good news, there will be no subscription fee, just a one-off retail purchase with in-game monetization elements.

Guns of Icarus will launch October 29th. You can check out the trailer below:

More on NBC's Revolution

By now most of you read Seb's excellent review of Revolution (spoiler alert: he didn't like it). Despite Seb's review, Revolution actually did well on its opening day. It had the best debut of any new drama in the last three years according to Pat Hauldren at Examiner.com who believes the SF/drama elements and the strong female lead have made it a hit among audiences.

Nevertheless, like Seb, most reviews of the show have been poor with some reviewers either lambasting the ridiculous premise, bad acting or reminding everyone that S.M. Stirling wrote a better story with the same premise. Yet Charlie Jane Anders at io9 still remains optimistic about the show pointing out the excellent actors in the show, the potential medieval action sequences and a Lost-esque plot development.

Is Revolution worth another chance? Episode 2 premiers tonight, will you be watching?

Things to do

Are you bored living in the real world? Take the next wormhole to one of these fine destinations:

Oct 5 to Oct 7: OctopodiCon 2012 in Oklahoma City, OK.

Oct 12 to Nov 3: The Starkweather Arts Center's upcoming exhibit "The Steampunk Show" in Romeo, MI. And they are still looking for submissions.

Nov 30 to Dec 2: TeslaCon: A Trip to the Moon at Middleton, WI.

Links to the Multiverse

Articles

An Alternate History: If the RIAA Was Innovative by Alan Cross.

Do Black People Really Read This Stuff? II: Science Fiction, Steamfunk & More! by Balogun at Chronicles of Harriet.

Imagining an alternate Big East history where Miami, Virginia Tech and BC never left by Jeff King at The Uconnblog.

Steampunking Fairytales by Kaitlin Branch at Steamed!

Books

1635: The Papal Stakes by Eric Flint Snippet 43.

New Novel Adapted From Rush's Steampunk Album by Kevin J. Anderson at Huffington Post.

Review of Alt Hist 4 done by Kelly Jensen at SFcrowsnest.

Steampunk III: Steampunk Revolution Coming 12/1/2012 by Book News Desk at Talk Books World.

This week's New York Times Bestsellers (September 17th) by Pat's Fantasy Hotlist.

Comics

The Arrival: graphic introduction to steampunk ARG by Cory Doctorow at boingboing.

COMIC REVIEW: The Manhattan Projects, Vol.1 – Science Bad TP by theforgottengeek at Geek Syndicate.

Games

Without clues, Dishonored was too difficult by Geoffrey Tim at Lazygamer.

* * *

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.

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.

Review: "Then Everything Changed" by Jeff Greenfield

I've made no secret on how I disprove of America presidential alternate histories.  Next to the American Civil War, it is one of the easiest alternate histories to get wrong.  When an alternate historian changes the results of an election they are doing one of two things: either the world will be a utopia when the loser wins or the world will be a dystopia when the loser wins.  There is rarely any middle ground.

Then I read Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics JFK, RFK, Cater, Ford, Reagan by Jeff Greenfield.  The book is a collection of three novellas covering American politics from the 1960s to the 1980s.  An Emmy-award winning veteran of politics and news, Greenfield bring his first-hand knowledge of the American political system and supports it with detailed research.

The first novella diverges in 1960 when John F. Kennedy is killed by a suicide bomber days before the Electoral College would have voted to make him president.  After a short constitutional crisis, Lyndon Johnson became president in 1961. The start of his presidency is highlighted by forcing through the Voting Rights Act of 1961, but it is overshadowed by Soviet missiles that are discovered in Cuba.  Johnson's handling of the crisis is vastly different from how JFK did it in OTL, but thankfully I do not have to read When Angels Wept again.

The second novella diverges in 1968 when Robert Kennedy narrowly avoids his assassination by Sirhan Sirhan.  Kennedy's manages to defeat Humphrey for the Democratic nomination and Nixon for the presidency.  LBJ carries out the withdrawal from Vietnam and Nixon helps RFK open China to trade without making the president look like he is being weak toward communism.  Issues arise, however, when a Democratic supporter is caught attempting to steal documents from the Republican election headquarters...

The third and final novella diverges in 1976.  A unique POD for using historical characters that are generally ignored in most ATLs (especially my favorite jurist of all time).  History changes when Gerald Ford corrected himself after misspeaking during a presidential debate against Jimmy Carter.  He goes on to win the Electoral College vote for president, but not the popular vote, and then goes on to serve a full term complete with an economic meltdown and a very different Middle East (Iraq and Iran allied with Israel?).  The 1980 presidential campaign gives us a Ronald Reagan who is unable to run as the candidate for change and the long-shot Gary Hart seeking to overturn Ted Kennedy's presumed coronation as the Democratic nominee.

Greenfield has managed to craft an engaging tale of American politics, especially during a period of time when most Americans would ignore politics to watch Jersey Shore.  More importantly, he managed to capture the American political system, warts and all, without offering any apologies for it.  The idealists and crooks are presented side by side and treated the same by the author.  Then Everything Changed both informs us about the America political system and entertains us by once again proving that plausible, well-researched alternate histories are far superior than the "rule of cool" timelines that dominate the genre.

Is the book without faults?  Of course not.  Greenfield often uses events and people throughout the book to reference OTL political issues that would happen in the future.  At first they are entertaining, but they happen so often and lack any subtlety that the reader sometimes feels that Greenfield is standing behind bringing a hammer down on his head again and again shouting "GET IT!" Greenfield also spends the last 10% of the book discussing the research he did when crafting his alternate history.  The reader is presented with a series of short fact blurbs that interrupt the momentum of the book and could probably be skipped unless you have taken issue with one of Greenfield's assumptions and want to read his argument.  Perhaps Greenfield was simply trying to prevent the inevitable "this is ASB" comment on AH.com, but footnote/endnotes would have been more preferable in my opinion.

I still recommend this book, especially for the message contained in it.  Consider the fact that all three alternate presidents in Then Everything Changed are Democrats, yet they tend to be centrist, appealing to both liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats.  In our polarized society of American politics, where radical groups like the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street are competing for the attention of the American people, one can wonder whether the ideas of compromise and moderation can make a comeback.

There, now that I have violated my No Cross, No Crown rule, go and read the damn book.

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Matt Mitrovich is a long-time fan of alternate history, founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update and a volunteer editor for Alt Hist magazine. His fiction can be found at Echelon Press, Jake's Monthly and The Masquerade Crew. 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.