Long Live King Frederick!

Guest post by Joseph T. Major.

I decided to go back a little in time.

A passionate defense of an exiled prince leads to changes that shake the course of European and world history, and lay the stage for a wider and wider yet monarchy.

In our world, the Electress Sophia of Hanover, sister of the gallant Prince Rupert of the Rhine, was made heir to the British throne, only to die just too soon, leaving the succession to her son.  Once, though, she got a little too exercised about the poor exiled Pretender . . . and if she had been just a little more exercised, William of Orange might have changed his mind.

Such a change could put a strange and striking monarch in reach of the British throne.  But the heirs of the Stuarts were not yet gone, and they could strike back.  The result of this bold decision would mean wars across the world, involving people from lands spreading from Poland to Virginia, from Scotland to Naples.  It would mean battles in the Cockpit of Europe, in the wilds of Saxony, and indeed on the green fields of England itself.

Not all is war.  Literary figures such as Swift, Johnson, and Voltaire have strange and different meetings.  The universal genius Benjamin Franklin, Printer, has an entirely new field of endeavor.

The opposed royal houses, and the other princes of Europe, face off in new and strange alliances in this novel.

It is interesting to write about Frederick the Great, particularly when you realize how close he was to the British throne.  His grandmother, Sophia of Hanover, was the heir designated by William III after his nephew the Duke of Gloucester, Anne’s only surviving son, died so young.  And if the line of the Georges died out, or was excluded . . .

Frederick despised slavery, even though he forcibly drafted people into his army.  He was a patron of the arts but he found German writers and indeed the German language barbarous.  He restricted Jews, and had a Jewish general in his army.  He spoke several languages, including English, and misspelled all of them.  In short, he was a man of many contradictions, and yet very modern.

The hopes of the exiled Jacobites are also interesting to note.  Reality was bad enough for them; in later times all sorts of romantic notions have been attached to the exiled royal house.  And yet, they were interesting and intriguing people.

It’s a pleasure to get to write about them, and I hope enough people buy my new book, The Sun Never Sets, for me to write the second one.

Out from Amazon Kindle Distribution, $2.99.

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Joseph T. Major learned to read at the age of two and a half and is reported to have stopped to sleep occasionally, if you can believe rumors. Check out his new book The Sun Never Sets,

The Road to the Sea

Guest post by Joseph T. Major.

It seems like every series has to have a middle book, but going from a troubled beginning directly to a triumphant ending is somewhat unrealistic.  So, here is the middle book of my alternate WWII, titled The Road to the Sea.

By now the little changes from the point of departure are beginning to take effect. It’s not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning (to steal from Churchill, always steal from the best) is done, and we can see how the characters and the war situation are both beginning to change and develop. The Allied superiority is beginning to take effect, but there are still problems and difficulties both within and without.

The Allied war effort is beginning to tell, but the enemy is still capable of resistance and of surprises.  I am trying to avoid both the “Victorious Axis Arms” problem, where the Germans and Japanese can pull off all sorts of tricks, and the Allies can’t respond, and the Brute Force problem, where everything goes right for the Allies.  How well I’ve succededed is up to the reader.

Much of the action here is at sea; reading too much Dan Gallery, I suppose.  I am trying to reflect the shift in how naval action went.

As for the secret and covert world . . . One advantage of this is that there were some real colorful characters in that line of work.  There were more covert warriors at that time than just Otto Skorzeny, and British intelligence did have more people working for it than just Kim Philby.

Let’s discuss a few minor matters. Is anyone noticing the “Easter eggs”? The very first book had my lead character have some very strange dreams, and there are more yet to come.  Also General Patton has a few more comparisons to uncork, some of which the widely-read reader will see where they were put on – if you catch the drift before it drives you mad.  (That’s another one.)  Also, I tried to put in references to existing culture, mainly science fiction but others. Having a protagonist who is a wealthy man engaged in spy work makes him look critically at Upton Sinclair’s Pulitzer-Prize winning Lanny Budd series – about a wealthy man engaged in spy work.

Which leads to another matter. I once wrote an essay complaining about how protagonists in science fiction and fantasy never seemed to have any families.  So I gave my protagonist a family. This had the side benefit of making it possible to examine many facets of the war without having to have one character rush about the world seeing everybody and doing everything.

The war is building to a dramatic and surprising climax, so keep a lookout for the next book, which is coming soon with its own set of surprises, references, and family.

Thank you, and everyone please buy the new book The Road to the Sea, available from Amazon.com for a very reasonable price, along with my other works..

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Joseph T. Major learned to read at the age of two and a half and is reported to have stopped to sleep occasionally, if you can believe rumors. Check out his new book The Road to the Sea.

Story of a Different World War II

Guest post by Joseph T. Major.

When I was in high school, I read Herman Wouk’s The Winds of War (1971), and later on its sequel, War and Remembrance (1978).  These feature the experiences of Victor “Pug” Henry of the U.S. Navy, an officer who deals personally with many of the leading actors in the Second World War, sometimes very closely on both sides. (As when he gets leave from his post as Naval Attaché at the US Embassy in Berlin, travels to Britain, takes part as an observer on a RAF bombing raid over Berlin, and then returns to see the effects.)

But Wouk had a predecessor.  For those who know Upton Sinclair through his connection with Robert Heinlein, where Sinclair was accused of planning to flood California with an army of Okie immigrants, come to get on his socialist gravy train, it will be surprising to learn that nine years later, he was a proud voice speaking for America, honored with a Pulitzer Prize for fiction, a novel of patriotic American participation in the war against Germany. In 1940, Sinclair began a series of very large and complicated novels about the current war, featuring a rich young man who participated in all the great events of the war, was a personal friend of all the Western leaders, trusted by all, and in on every great event.  He published ten in ten years, beginning with World’s End (1940) and including the Pulitzer Prize winning Dragon’s Teeth (1942).  (And a final one in 1953, The Return of Lanny Budd.)

I wanted to do an alternate history in that manner.  At the same time I had to be more realistic.  It seems to stretch credibility that Pug Henry could go from Berlin to London, take part in a bombing raid, and return to Berlin; or that Lanny Budd could help out in the Dunkirk evacuation, arrange to stay behind, and make connections with his German friends.

Another long-standing annoyance of mine is how the hero has no extended family.  He (or nowadays, more likely she) may have children, but that’s about it.  Now my wife and I found the Greek family in My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002), with the heroine having two siblings and some twenty-seven first cousins, to be quite credible; that’s a southern family.  And this was an advantage for the plot, because I could have a variety of people doing a variety of things.

The principal character has his own problems.  I had a man who was rich and accepted in British society, because I thought the best place to be informed about everything going on was in intelligence.  But that was only half the story; I made him unsure about his standing, half-American (thus bringing in the large American family), and to cap it off, shell-shocked (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) by having seen a massacre.  So he was a bridge, in two societies and not quite of either.  So he needed another half, who was also a bridge, a Jewish reporter who had the perfect way to report from Berlin without being found out; her mother was a German Jew, but her father was an Irish sergeant.

That part about intelligence had a good Point of Departure. In early 1941 a German agent was sent to Britain and then America with a harum-scarum list of things to find out, including a rather large number of questions about Pearl Harbor.  Nothing significant there, but when the agent was told that the Japanese naval attaché had been to Taranto, to see the result of the British attack on the Italian naval base there, someone should have put two and two together . . .

Which starts the changes rolling.

No Hint of War, which deals with the aftereffects of Pearl Harbor, some of which are quite different, is now out from Amazon.com.  The first one, Bitter Weeds, is available there, too.

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Joseph T. Major learned to read at the age of two and a half and is reported to have stopped to sleep occasionally, if you can believe rumors. Check out his new book No Hint of War.

New Releases 4/12/16

You can support The Update by clicking the banner to your right or the links below if you are purchasing through Amazon!

Hardcovers

A Murder in Time by Julie McElwain

When brilliant FBI agent Kendra Donovan stumbles back in time and finds herself in a 19th century English castle under threat from a vicious serial killer, she scrambles to solve the case before it takes her life―200 years before she was even born.

Beautiful and brilliant, Kendra Donovan is a rising star at the FBI. Yet her path to professional success hits a speed bump during a disastrous raid where half her team is murdered, a mole in the FBI is uncovered and she herself is severely wounded. As soon as she recovers, she goes rogue and travels to England to assassinate the man responsible for the deaths of her teammates.

While fleeing from an unexpected assassin herself, Kendra escapes into a stairwell that promises sanctuary but when she stumbles out again, she is in the same place - Aldrich Castle - but in a different time: 1815, to be exact.

Mistaken for a lady's maid hired to help with weekend guests, Kendra is forced to quickly adapt to the time period until she can figure out how she got there; and, more importantly, how to get back home. However, after the body of a young girl is found on the extensive grounds of the county estate, she starts to feel there's some purpose to her bizarre circumstances. Stripped of her twenty-first century tools, Kendra must use her wits alone in order to unmask a cunning madman.

Skyline by Zach Milan

In an instant, a blinding flash of light carved New York City into pieces and a million people died. The disaster remained a mystery until seven years later, when newly minted time travelers Charlotte, Monroe, and Bill discover The Blast was caused by one of their own. The Blast shouldn't have happened--history has been rewritten--meaning millions of lives can be saved, but at what cost? Even if they can defuse every bomb that caused the disaster, their own history will be rewritten in unpredictable ways. They could come back to a future where Charlotte never had a son, where Monroe and Bill never fell in love, or even where one of them died years ago.

Paperbacks

Insurrectio by Alison Morton

'The second fall of Rome?' Aurelia Mitela, ex-Praetorian and imperial councillor in Roma Nova, scoffs at her intelligence chief when he throws a red file on her desk. But 1980s Roma Nova, the last province of the Roman Empire that has survived into the twentieth century, has problems - a ruler frightened of governing, a centuries-old bureaucracy creaking for reform and, worst of all, a rising nationalist movement with a charismatic leader. Horrified when her daughter is brutally attacked in a demonstration turned riot, Aurelia tries to rally resistance to the growing fear and instability. But it may already be too late to save Roma Nova from meltdown and herself from entrapment and destruction by her lifelong enemy...

Masks and Shadows by Stephanie Burgis

The year is 1779, and Carlo Morelli, the most renowned castrato singer in Europe, has been invited as an honored guest to Eszterháza Palace. With Carlo in Prince Nikolaus Esterházy's carriage, ride a Prussian spy and one of the most notorious alchemists in the Habsburg Empire. Already at Eszterháza is Charlotte von Steinbeck, the very proper sister of Prince Nikolaus's mistress. Charlotte has retreated to the countryside to mourn her husband's death. Now, she must overcome the ingrained rules of her society in order to uncover the dangerous secrets lurking within the palace's golden walls. Music, magic, and blackmail mingle in a plot to assassinate the Habsburg Emperor and Empress--a plot that can only be stopped if Carlo and Charlotte can see through the masks worn by everyone they meet.

E-Books

alt.sherlock.holmes: Three New Visions of the World's Greatest Detective by Gini Koch, Jamie Wyman and Glen Mehn

THREE VERY DIFFERENT BAKER STREETS. THREE VERY DIFFERENT SHERLOCKS. THREE EXTRAORDINARY NEW CASES.

Brilliant, distracted, sarcastic, abrasive, superior, fiercely loyal and—above all—ferociously principled, Sherlock Holmes is a hero for all times. Every era has its thieves and monsters, its exploiters and abusers, and in every era the detective of Baker Street will piece together the clues and bring the guilty to book.

In alt.sherlock.holmes, the creators of Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets have invited three talented writers to bring startling visions of the Great Detective and the redoubtable Doctor Watson to the page: as a carnival owner and fortune teller in the ’thirties American Dust Bowl, as a drugged-up, tuned-out weirdnik in ’sixties New York City, and as the most irregular consultant in present-day Hollywood.

The game’s afoot! Whether hunting a vandal, a killer, or a shadowy conspiracy, in Indiana, California or New York, Holmes and Watson are on the case.

Far Enough Away by Dusk Peterson

"He came down the mountain one early summer afternoon, toward the end of what had not yet been dubbed the Hydrogen War. He was just in time to catch the climax of the war."

He knew he wasn't normal. Now he must save others who have been left behind.

For two years, since his parents left for the west coast of the continent, Phillip Schafer has lived in a mountain home, as far as he can get from society. But when the loss of his beloved companion forces him out of his refuge, he finds that the world is on the cusp of change. And he may be one of the few people left who is able to outrace that change.

Accompanied by two unusual allies, Phillip must escape from his nation before disaster strikes. But with no jet-car, he must somehow reach the skyport before the last rocket blasts off. . . .

It is a time of jet-cars, Astroware parties, and microfiche newspapers. It is our future as it was envisioned in the 1950s and 1960s. This retrofuturistic short story of disability and friendship can be read on its own or as part of the "Atompunk" volume of Young Toughs, an alternate history series about the struggles of youths in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Young Toughs is part of Turn-of-the-Century Toughs, a cycle of alternate history series (Young Toughs, Waterman, Life Prison, Commando, Michael's House, The Eternal Dungeon, and Dark Light) about adults and youths on the margins of society, and the people who love them. Set in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the novels and stories take place in an alternative version of America that was settled by inhabitants of the Old World in ancient times. As a result, the New World retains certain classical and medieval customs.

No Hint of War: An Alternate WWII: Volume 2 by Joseph Major

As America is flung into the World War, a troubled man and a secretive woman are brought together across the world, while they and their families find themselves engaged all over the world. Against their struggled, the United States girds itself for war, the United Kingdom and its Empire settle down to meet their fate, and battles take place by sea, air, and land. The great and the small are set on the course to victory, the long struggle that must be won, In this second novel of the series, the story continues with its characters going forward to triumph or disaster.

Rough Riders #1 by Adam Glass and Pat Olliffe

Led by a young Theodore Roosevelt, a motley crew of soon-to-be American legends must work together to solve a mystery that threatens life itself. Harry Houdini — street magician and master of misdirection. Annie Oakley — a washed-up entertainer, eager for a chance to prove herself in a real war. Jack Johnson — an undefeated brawler and the son of ex-slaves, determined to get his shot at the heavyweight championship…When a terrifying alien technology destroys the USS Maine, these unlikely allies set sail for bloody Cuba, into the heart of a brewing conflict, to wage a shadow war against the greatest threat mankind has ever known. Before they were famous, they were… ROUGH RIDERS.

Audio

The Plot Against America by Philip Roth

In an astonishing feat of empathy and narrative invention, our most ambitious novelist imagines an alternate version of American history.

In 1940 Charles A. Lindbergh, heroic aviator and rabid isolationist, is elected president. Shortly thereafter, he negotiates a cordial "understanding" with Adolf Hitler while the new government embarks on a program of folksy anti-Semitism. For one boy growing up in Newark, Lindbergh's election is the first in a series of ruptures that threaten to destroy his small, safe corner of America - and with it his mother, his father, and his older brother.

To readers, 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.

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Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update, a blogger for Amazing Stories, a volunteer interviewer for SFFWorld and a Sidewise Awards for Alternate History judge. When not exploring alternate timelines he enjoys life with his beautiful wife Alana and prepares for the day when travel between parallel universes becomes a reality. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Learn how you can support his alternate history projects on Patreon.

The Red Baron Lives

Guest post by Joseph T. Major.

I started reading Alternate History in the sixties, when it was rare, works like The Man In the High Castle and Bring the Jubilee. This may have influenced my interest in history.

When the Internet got going, I found out about UseNet, which had the soc.history.what-if group; a source of much intrigue and interest. As that slowly faded away, like many, I graduated to the AlternateHistory.com board.

I’d contributed to both, and hoped eventually to write a novel, helped by the fact that alternate history was getting more popular. But I wanted to be counter-trend: Instead of the Nazis winning, I would have them become a footnote in history. But how?

Well, there was someone who could have been suited to turn aside the tide, but he had inconveniently died in 1918. Now I felt that Manfred von Richthofen had not always got a fair shake in alternate history. His portrayal in Richard Lupoff’s Circumpolar! was not particularly fair, but that was admittedly a very fantastic alternate history. As for the one in The Probability Broach, as with that novel as a whole, the less said the better. Fortunately for my plot I had read several books about him and one by him (well, I suppose he had done something, but I know all too wall about celebrities who plan to read their own autobiographies some day).  But this needed a lot more; finding out about German politicians who were or became obscure, the development of aviation in the twenties and thirties (Richthofen was a test pilot as well as an air ace) and so on.

What I wanted to do was to do an alternate history; a story of the world as it developed after a change. Some events changed directly, others less so; there were trends in history and I wanted to have them develop in accordance with the change caused by my point of departure. There is a war; some sort of conflict was likely given all the personalities involved and one different ruler wasn’t going to change things that much, but it is a different war. There is, and some may not go for it, some politics, but that was also part of the world at that time and place (and, really, every other) and there were enough interesting people involved to make it more than just vote totals.

As for that, I did find two different incidents in Richthofen’s life from just before his death that could have changed his life. Add to that an Easter Egg (no, read the book and find out, but it does involve someone often linked to Richthofen) and there is a point of departure.

I will confess to having some references and jokes, that while not plot-breaking, do add a bit of humor to the story.

I hope that our editor and everyone else enjoys the work. As the man says in the Beatles’s “Paperback Writer”: “It’s a thousand pages, give or take a few, I’ll be writing more in a week or two.” Maybe not that much, but I have more (and different) works and hope people want to read them.

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Joseph T. Major learned to read at the age of two and a half and is reported to have stopped to sleep occasionally, if you can believe rumors. Check out his new book A Man and a Plane: An Alternate Germany.