Weekly Update #186

Editor's Notes

You know what I think about the Hugos...sorry, not going to read it here. I decided not to jump into that debate with this blog. Perhaps things would be different if some major alternate history work of 2014 was involved, but as far as I know, none is. Hopefully the Sidewise Award announcement is a lot less dramatic.

And now the news...

Stephen King's 11/22/63 Gets a Cast

Last week multiple actors were cast to join James Franco (Jake Epping) in Hulu's adaptation of Stephen King's 11/22/63. For those who don't know, this time travel novel follows our hero as he attempts to prevent the assassination of JFK in order to make a better world. Here is the cast we know of so far:

• Sarah Gadon: Sadie Dunhill, outspoken 1960s librarian at a school where Jake teaches at
• Chris Cooper: Al Templeton, the owner of Al’s Diner who convinces Jake to travel back in time to save JFK
• Daniel Webber: Lee Harvey Oswald, the man destined to assassinate JFK
• Cherry Jones: Marguerite Oswald, Oswald’s mother and all-around awful person
• George MacKay: Bill Turcotte, 1960s bartender who befriends Jake
• Lucy Fry: Marina Oswald, Oswald’s Russian wife who is abused by Oswald
• Leon Rippy: Harry Dunning, mentally challenged janitor at Jake’s school in 2015 who Jake decides to help while in the past

Kevin Macdonald has also been chosen to direct. Stay tuned to The Update for more 11/22/63 news.

Update: The Diamond Conspiracy by Philippa Ballantine and Tee Morris 

For steampunk fans, you have the next Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences novel, The Diamond Conspiracy by Philippa Ballantine and Tee Morris to check out. Here is the description from Amazon:

For years, the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences has enjoyed the favor of Her Majesty the Queen. But even the oldest loyalties can turn in a moment…

Having narrowly escaped the electrifying machinations of Thomas Edison, Books and Braun are looking forward to a relaxing and possibly romantic voyage home. But when Braun’s emergency signal goes off, all thoughts of recreation vanish. Braun’s street-wise team of child informants, the Ministry Seven, is in grave peril, and Books and Braun must return to England immediately.

But when the intrepid agents finally arrive in London, the situation is even more dire than they imagined. The Ministry has been disavowed, and the Department of Imperial Inconveniences has been called in to decommission its agents in a most deadly fashion. The plan reeks of the Maestro’s dastardly scheming. Only, this time, he has a dangerous new ally—a duplicitous doctor whose pernicious poisons have infected the highest levels of society, reaching even the Queen herself...

Regrettably, one of the reviews I found wasn't great. Melanie of The Qwillery says she was "disappointed" even though she still thought it was a good book. Nevertheless, if you are still interested in The Diamond Conspiracy, check out an interview with Ballantine at Eating Authors.

Links to the Multiverse

Books & Short Fiction

AURELIA cover image! by Alison Morton.
Battalion 202: The Sheep and the Goats by Jonathan Doering – Free Extract at Alt Hist.
'Before Tomorrowland': A deep-dive into the new alt-history novel by EW's Jeff Jensen at EW.
Doug Molitor (Memoirs of a Time Traveler) Explores Time Travel Logic in SFF at SF Signal.
Five Books about Time Travel by Karen Akins at Tor.
Review: 1636: Commander Cantrell in the West Indies by Eric Flint and Chuck Gannon at BCPL.
Review: Joe Steele by Harry Turtledove at Bookwraiths.
Review: The Sound of His Horn by John William Wall at Graeme Shimmin.
What if Petunia Dursley Had Been a Good Person? at Tor.
WINNERS: 2014 James Tiptree, Jr. Award (+ Honor List) at SF Signal.

Counterfactuals, History & News

The Civil War After the Civil War by Eric Herschthal at Slate.

Film & Television

5 Famous Movies With Insane 'What If' Scenarios by Daniel Dockery at Cracked.
Lost in Animeland: Strike Witches and KanColle at SF Signal.
Review: 12 Monkeys Season 1 Finale at Paul Levinson's Infinite Regress.
Review: Outlander 1.9 at Paul Levinson's Infinite Regress.

Games

Age Of Empires II, A Game From 1999, Is Getting Another Expansion at Kotaku.

Interviews

Lavie Tidhar at The Gutterbound Stargazer.

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Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update and a blogger on Amazing Stories. Check out his short fiction. 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 3/25/14

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

Hardcovers

Truth and Fear by Peter Higgins

Investigator Lom returns to Mirgorod and finds the city in the throes of a crisis. The war against the Archipelago is not going well. Enemy divisions are massing outside the city, air raids are a daily occurrence and the citizens are being conscripted into the desperate defense of the city.

But Lom has other concerns. The police are after him, the mystery of the otherworldly Pollandore remains and the vast Angel is moving, turning all of nature against the city.

But will the horrors of war overtake all their plans?

Paperbacks

Age of Shiva by James Lovegrove

A team of godlike super-powered beings based on the ten avatars of Vishnu from Hindu mythology is assembled, but are they in fact a harbinger of apocalypse?

The latest standalone novel in the best selling Pantheon series.

Zachary Bramwell, better known as the comics artist Zak Zap, is pushing forty and wondering why his life isn’t as exciting as the lives of the superheroes he draws. Then he’s shanghaied by black-suited goons and flown to Mount Meru, a vast complex built atop an island in the Maldives. There, Zak meets a trio of billionaire businessmen who put him to work designing costumes for a team of godlike super-powered beings based on the ten avatars of Vishnu from Hindu mythology.

The Ten Avatars battle demons and aliens and seem to be the saviours of a world teetering on collapse. But their presence is itself a harbinger of apocalypse. The Vedic “fourth age” of civilisation, Kali Yuga, is coming to an end, and Zak has a ringside seat for the final, all-out war that threatens the destruction of Earth.

Dawn's Early Light by Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris

Working for the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences, one sees innumerable technological wonders. But even veteran agents Braun and Books are unprepared for what the electrifying future holds…

After being ignominiously shipped out of England following their participation in the Janus affair, Braun and Books are ready to prove their worth as agents. But what starts as a simple mission in the States—intended to keep them out of trouble—suddenly turns into a scandalous and convoluted case that has connections reaching as far as Her Majesty the Queen.

Even with the help of two American agents from the Office of the Supernatural and the Metaphysical, Braun and Books have their work cut out for them as their chief suspect in a rash of nautical and aerial disasters is none other than Thomas Edison. Between the fantastic electric machines of Edison, the eccentricities of MoPO consultant Nikola Tesla, and the mysterious machinations of a new threat known only as the Maestro, they may find themselves in far worse danger than they ever have been in before…

Computer Games

Crusader Kings II: Rajas of India by Paradox

Rise up from the ashes of turmoil and anarchy to rule over a land fragmented into petty fiefs. Now is the time to take control. Now is the time for greatness.

Crusader Kings II: Rajas of India is the sixth expansion for the critically praised strategy/RPG Crusader Kings II and will focus on Eastern Persia and India. The expansion Rajas of India extends the map to the east, including the entire Indian subcontinent, and allows you to play as a Hindu, Buddhist or Jain ruler. Can you defend Dharma against foreign invaders and bring order to the subcontinent?

Crusader Kings II explores one of the defining periods in world history in an experience crafted by the masters of Strategy where medieval times is brought to life in this epic game of knights, schemes, and thrones...

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.

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Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update and a blogger on Amazing Stories. Check out his short fiction. 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.

Is Steampunk the Next Big Thing?

If you have been following the Update for a while you may have witnessed the debate I and Sean had about whether alternate history would ever hit the mainstream. Well turns out we were both wrong. Alternate history will hit the mainstream...but perhaps not in the way Sean imagined.

Business News reported that IBM predicted steampunk will be the next major fashion trend in 2013. They based their prediction by having a supercomputer (presumably not a steam powered Babbage Analytical Engine) analyze "more than half a billion public posts on message boards, blogs, social media sites and news sources." I have to assume The Update is one of those posts based on all of the steampunk content I have reported on in the past. Turns out I am one of many because "[f]rom 2009 to 2012, IBM's researchers found, the amount of steampunk chatter increased eleven-fold."

Here are some of the most interesting data points from the IBM analysis:

• 33% of online fashion chatter around steampunk can be found on gaming sites;
• 2010 saw a year on year increase in chatter of 296%. This increase can be attributed to steampunk-inspired NYC ComicCon events in October of 2010;
• Twitter is the #1 social network for steampunk chatter; hosts six times the number of discussions as Facebook;
• 63% of fashion discussions around steampunk are initiated by individuals less than 30 years old;
• 55% of social sentiment chatter for steampunk fashion derived by blogs.

So what can we expect? The fashion of 2013 “kind of looks like engineering work clothes meets Victorian high fashion,” said Dr. Trevor Davis, consumer products expert of global business services for IBM. Davis described "more metallic, more use of woods" in jewelry and "military uniform" like clothing.

Of course not everyone is excited about IBM's analysis. Gabriel Bell at Refinery 29 said "fashion is too big and steampunk too clunky and specific for it to become a dominant style genre. Steampunk is a definitive subculture with a set of aesthetic norms that flourish only within that subculture." She took a shot at IBM by saying it "has all the tools to accurately predict what the fashionable will be wearing in two years, but not the situational awareness to apply them properly."

Steampunk fans are also not 100% on-board with IBM's prediction. Austin Sirkin of Steampunk R&D warned of "a massive influx of people who know nothing at all about Steampunk" who will "rehash a lot of the same discussions and arguments that we've been having for years about what Steampunk is." Then there are "the bad parts of the Victorian era, such as slavery, colonialism, imperialism, sexism, etc." which will come under fire by the media. More importantly, with the greater numbers of kids joining the steampunk movement, expect parents accusing the movement of corrupting their children (i.e. Dungeons and Dragons).

Of course he ended his article by mentioning how much money steampunk artists can make with the expanded audience. Tee Morris, co-author of A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences series, agreed by pointing out the larger audience he will have for his books and podcast. Tee also tried to reassure by saying "SyFy Crap of the Week we’re thrown, we also get The Avengers, The Hobbit, Serenity and John Carter" (I read his defense of adding John Carter to the list but personally we didn't need another "white guys gets super powers by doing nothing and saves the natives" film, regardless of how influential the original story was on future authors).

More importantly, it is not just the film industry that has a lot to gain from the explosion of the steampunk into the mainstream. The literary movement will benefit from a whole slew of professional and amateur writers who want to take their shot at creating a steampunk universe. Hopefully some will do more then rehash the usual story of the British adventurer and corset-wearing female partner fighting some clockwork menace. Some might even tweak the history of their universe to create a plausible reason for all of the weird tech and fashion that appears on the page. Such alternate histories might encourage some young readers to seek out other worlds where history went off on a different track...

Alternate history and steampunk might be only distantly related now, but I think what is good for steampunk, is good for alternate history.

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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.