Customer Reviews
only 4 or 5 good stories out of 16! - By: , 11 Jul 2001 
This collection of 16 short stories was profoundly disappointing, if only because I expect better from something with Turtledove's name on it. There is a certain expectation when reading alternate history that either the the events and/or people being tinkered with are so familiar that they need no introduction, or that a small introduction will be given to set up the story (not to mention maps). Unfortunately that was not the case here, as a number of the stories used rather obscure incidents & people as their basis, & there was no corresponding supplementary material. It also doesn't help expectations when the jacket copy is about scenarios that aren'tin the book. Add some rather tepid writingin a number of cases, & the book got rather tedious.
If you're going to borrow it, there are a few stories worth checking out. Lillian Carl's "The Test of old," focusing on the Romans vs. Boadica, was one of the better stories, albeit somewhat roughly told via the memoirs of an old Roman. S.M. Stirling's, "The Charge of Lee's Light Brigade," has a somewhat interesting premise at least: that Gen. Lee of Civil War fame, instead fights with C.S.A. along with other British forces at Balaclavain a very different Charge of the Light Brigade. Somewhat slyly, Stirling seems to have inserted George MacDonald Fraser's legendary scoundrel & rouge "Flashman"in the story as an homage to the great Scottish writer, which works rather well as Flashman does campaign therein "Flashman at the Charge." Another of the best stories is William Sanders' "Billy Mitchell's Overt Act,"in which a military aviation pioneer manages to thwart the attack on Pearl Harbor. Told as a series of excerpts from books, interviews, & testimony, he manages to weave a very engaging tale. The final story, R.M. Meluch's "Vati" is probably the best of the bunch, showing what might have happened had a more imaginative & forceful man taken over German air operations & sped up production of jet aircraft, thus preventing D-Day. It's something the Germans did manage to do at the end of the war, but by then was too little, too late.
As for the rest: "Tradition," by Elizabeth Moon (who's "Deed of Paksenarrion" trilogy I love), suffers from an unknown main character, British WWI Rear Admiral Cradock, a slightly obscure setting, the Mediterranean (more interestingly treatedin the historical fiction of John Biggins), & the need to have detailed maps at hand to follow the action. Brad Linaweaver's rather silly "And to the Republic For Which It Stands" imagines an alternate Caesar. Lois Tilton's "The Craft of War" is annoyingly written as a dialogue between Socrates & a student about Sun Tzu's "The Art of War." Jody Nye's "Queen of the Amazons" is a terrible Crusader piece fortunately followed by a competent as usual WWII piece by editor Turtledove. Unfortunately, one then segues into an utter piece of dreck, Esther Friesner's "An Old Man's Summer" featuring the rambling reminisces of a dying Eisenhower. Bill Fawcett's "The Last Crusader" establishes the fun premise of Napoleon as a Cardinal, but doesn't take it anywhere. Even though it didn't particularly engage me, Janet Berliner's "A Case For Justice" is worth mentioning for taking as it's subject, the South African leader Jan Smuts. William Forstchen's "A Hard Day For Mother" folds a cliché "brother vs. brother" Civil War tale into the battle for Round Top Hill at Gettysburg. David Weber's "The Captain From Kirkbeam" is the first of two seafaring stories, his being about a commander trying to blockade French ships from sailing into the Chesapeake Bay during the War for Independence. "Vive L'Amiral," by John Mina imagines Nelson as fighting on the French side, rather than the British, with rather different results, of course. Brian Thomsen's "Bloodstained Ground," is a rather cheezy & weak attempt to show a drunken Samuel Clemens uncovering the hidden truth about "President" Custer & what really happened at Little Big Horn.
So, maybe four or five stories worth reading all told, mixedin with a few more interesting premises, & a lot of bad & just plain boring ones. You're better off checking out Robert Cowley's "What If?: The World's Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been."
Some stories illogical and not thought out - By: , 03 Apr 2000 Having read stories by the various authors I thought that a collection of short stories would have contained the best that was on offer, unfortunately I found that, like the curates egg, only some parts were good. There was no storyin the book that was outstanding, There were none that was not at some time entertaining. When I read a book I expect to be entertained, certainlyin a fiction I do not expect to have to conduct research for my own endings, which I had to do with two of the stories. This was not what I expected & I feel a bit cheated by the whole thing.
Good tales - but author let down by publisher - By: , 31 Mar 2000 
The publishers should hang their headsin shame over this one. Look at the cover artwork -- no Romans/Carthaginians-in-tanks stories are actuallyin the book. Also the lack of explanatory notes which should have accompanied the tales make it harder for the non-history buffs to work out why the alternate endings are just so important. The only good thing about this was it made me go back to my own reference books & check out the American War of Independence, & the flight of the Goebenin the Med at the beginning of WWI - among others. The other point is that too often with some of the stories, they end as a rather flat fleshing-out of a 400-word synopsis. But, yes, I'd still recommend it
It sucked, not a collosal screw-up, but still horrid. - By: , 25 Jun 1999 
Well there are a couple of good storiesin there. The Napoleon being a Cardinal, Nelson siding with Napoleon, Hitler getting jets, & USSR almost collapsing but fighting Nazisin 1947.
Still most stories ran from obscure bull-sh*t to "lets stop being a writer & summate". It featured some interesting premises, but used the familiar device of stopping the story to explain to the reader what happened & how & why.
If you want the truth, only four stories were any good. "The Last Crusdader" by Bill Fawcett. "A Hard Day for Mother" by William R. Forstchen. "Vive l'Admiral" by John Mina. And "Vati" by Meluch.
That's 4 good stories out of 16. Better odds than Vegas, but still a major stink-bomb.
Some deep stuff, but too deep? - By: , 07 Jan 1999 
Although the storiesin this anthology are on average much better than the storiesin the alternate history anthologies edited, e.g., by Mike Resnick a few years ago, the casual reader is nevertheless going to run into trouble when reading this collection. The problem is that the various authors have done too good a job, while the publisher has totally screwed up.
In other words, several of the storiesin this anthology are based on "too" obscure historical what-ifs. Unfortunately, as has become well-known by those who closely follow science fiction, it turns out that the introductory notes that were supposed to be included with the stories were left out by the publisher! >So... there is some decent stuffin here. But unlike other recent alternate history collections, the reader is going to have do some more thinking about the storiesin order to gather a better appreciation of what the authors put into the tales.
