The Best Alternate History Stories of the 20th Century: Stories

Book Overview

Explore fascinating, often chilling " what if " accounts of the world that could have existed--and still might yet . . . Science fiction's most illustrious and visionary authors hold forth the ultimate alternate history collection. Here you'll experience mind-bending tales that challenge your views of the past, present, and future, including: - "The Lucky Strike" When the Lucky Strike is chosen over the Enola Gay to drop the first atomic bomb, fate...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345439902
• ISBN13: 9780345439901
• Release Date: October 2001
• Publisher: Del Rey Books
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Not Free SF Reader

I am not much of a fan of Alternate History, particularly the terribly over common world war two or American civil war variety, given the whole world of possibilities you could use. However, this is a fine anthology, coming in a bit below the magic 4.00 mark at 3.89. Turtledove gives a brief introduction to the subgenre. Best Alternate History Stories 20th Century : The Lucky Strike - Kim Stanley Robinson Best Alternate History Stories 20th Century : The Winterberry - Nick DiChario Best Alternate History Stories 20th Century : Islands in the Sea - Harry Turtledove Best Alternate History Stories 20th Century : Suppose They Gave a Peace - Susan M. Shwartz Best Alternate History Stories 20th Century : All the Myriad Ways - Larry Niven Best Alternate History Stories 20th Century : Through Road No Whither - Greg Bear Best Alternate History Stories 20th Century : Manassas Again - Gregory Benford Best Alternate History Stories 20th Century : Dance Band on the Titanic - Jack L. Chalker Best Alternate History Stories 20th Century : Bring the Jubilee - Ward Moore Best Alternate History Stories 20th Century : Eutopia - Poul Anderson Best Alternate History Stories 20th Century : The Undiscovered Best Alternate History Stories 20th Century : Mozart in Mirrorshades - Bruce Sterling and Lewis Shiner Best Alternate History Stories 20th Century : The Death of Captain Future - Allen Steele Best Alternate History Stories 20th Century : Moon of Ice - Brad Linaweaver Japan nuke near miss punishment. 4.5 out of 5 Not quite dead president. 4 out of 5 Muslim, that is, Constantinople. 3.5 out of 5 Vietnam family politics. 4 out of 5 Murder maybe multiverse. 4.5 out of 5 I see bad things for the SS. 3.5 out of 5 Mech battle. 3 out of 5 Many worlds crew. 4 out of 5 Southron Indepence time physics ancestor shooting accident. 4 out of 5 Not my kinda place, boyfriend. 4 out of 5 Shakespeare good at shaking spears. 3 out of 5 Let them wear leather bikinis and crave recording deals. 4 out of 5 A poignant satire, if you will. A story of the hard graft of a spacer's life, and a deluded rich man that wants to be a hero, and just about believe he is Captain Future. Everyone thinks he is pretty much crazy, and won't work for him, so a man stuck for a job agrees to what he thinks is a one way trip. It becomes more than that when they are the closest to an accident with a mass driver, and unless they do something about the distressed ship, something really big will hit Mars, wiping out most of the colony there. Enter Captain Future. No dropoff for his new crewman/Futureman. Finding the ship, the second mate realises : ...Theres no such thing. I bent over the keypad and went to work accessing the main computer, my fingers thick and clumsy within the suit gloves. No Planet Police, no asteroid pirates. Just a ship whose air ducts are crawling with the Plague. Youre . . . Im Captain Future! declaims his captain. They manage to stop it, but Captai

An Enjoyable but Inaccurate Collection

This is a mostly enjoyable collection of innovative stories, but the title of the anthology is far from accurate. Of course anyone can argue about what the "best" stories are in a certain category, but the bigger problem here is that this collection is not entirely Alternate History (AH). This is surprising for a collection compiled by Turtledove, who of course is one of the great practitioners of that genre. This appears to be an editorial challenge as the publisher may have requested a collection applied to the "category" of AH, only to reveal that this is a very difficult label to define. Some tales like Jack L. Chalker's "Dance Band on the Titanic," Bruce Sterling and Lewis Shiner's "Mozart in Mirrorshades," and others are merely time travel stories with the familiar don't-alter-the future theme. "The Death of Captain Future" by Allen Steele is a fun story but an inexplicable addition to this anthology, as it is straight sci-fi without the slightest hint of AH. The stories that really are AH are high quality and make this collection mostly a success, but they only make up a distressingly small percentage of the book. In fact, the story of his own that Turtledove contributes to this book (perhaps suspiciously), "Islands in the Sea," is one of the best and actually sticks most closely to the supposed theme of AH. Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Lucky Strike" is surely a classic of straight-up AH, while the most enjoyable story here is William Sanders' "The Undiscovered," a comic tale of Shakespeare trying to put on a production of Hamlet with an adopted tribe of New World Indians. Rest assured that most of the stories here are good and even great, but the title of the anthology is not entirely accurate.

Some Representative Stories About History

The Best Alternate History Stories of the 20th Century (2001) has fourteen stories and an introduction by Harry Turtledove. The introduction is an excellent review of the genre and the stories themselves are gems that have long been buried in moldy magazines or ancient -- to the younger fans -- anthologies. I have encountered several of the stories, but others were entirely new to me. Robinson's The Lucky Strike has the Enola Gay crash on takeoff. DiChario's The Winterberry has JFK live through the shooting in Dallas. Turtledove's Islands in the Sea has Constantinople fall to the Muslims in the 8th century. Shwartz's Suppose They Gave a Peace has McGovern winning the presidency. Niven's All The Myriad Ways has humanity facing the realization of a probability multiverse where all uncertainities are resolved in each and every way. Bear's Through Road No Whither has the Nazis winning World War II...temporarily. Benford's Manassas, Again isn't really alternate history so much as cyclic history, with robots instead of Negroes. Chalker's Dance Band On the Titantic has an intercontinual ferry boat. Moore's Bring the Jubilee has a historian accidently disrupting the timeline so that the Union wins the Civil War. Anderson's Eutopia has a universe in which Greece never declined. Sanders' The Undiscovered has Shakespeare captured by American Indians. Sterling and Shiner's Mozart in Mirrorshades has 18th century Europe invaded by contemporary American culture. Steele's The Death of Captain Future is not so much an alternate history as the story of the birth of a folk myth. Linaweaver's Moon of Ice has another story of the Nazis winning WWII, but with a future much more different than they imagine. Some prior reviewers have pointed out that not all of these stories are alternate history. I must agree with this in two cases (see above) but the time travel stories do impact subsequent events to produce an alternate history and the intercontinual travel stories are tours of other histories. These stories could be classified differently but history is a prominent theme in ALL of them. This volume could have been titled "Some Representative Stories About History From a 20th Century Perspective", but you couldn't get all that on the spine in any reasonable size type. The publisher probably had something to do with the "Best" part of the title. These stories are not history per se, but they demonstrate some truths about history. They make you think about the consequences of accident and error, suggest that we can't ever know all about the past, and question whether we are any good at predicting the future. This volumes, and others like it, remind us that the past is unchangeable, but is also the source of today and tomorrow. Do we really know what our options are? Read and consider. -Arthur W. Jordin

A mixed bag, but very good overall

This book is a collection of fourteen short stories, all revolving around an alternate history, one where an event changed the world we know. As with all anthologies, this one is something of a mixed bag. Personally, I liked Islands in the Sea by Harry Turtledove for its fascinating grip on how things might have been. Suppose They Gave a Peace by Susan Shwartz is probably my favorite, as it does exercise the mind, showing how a change in history might have made things not necessarily better, but certainly much different.I suppose that it is for that reason that I did not like The Lucky Strike by Kim Stanley Robinson. It is a look at what might have been had the Enola Gay crashed, leaving its deadly mission to another plane; with this change one man stands against the evil Democrat in the White House, stopping America from sparking the nuclear arms race. The story was gripping, but the ending was clichéd and frightfully predictable. One change gives me the world I want--a mindset that I find irritating in some alternate history stories. The rest, however, fall somewhere in between.I must say that though there was one story that I did not like, they very all very well written. Though my taste may be different than yours, I can definitely say that if you like alternate history, then you will like this anthology!

Excellent! A Keeeper

Like most readers, this reviewer finds it incredible that the "Best Stories ... of the Twentieth Century" still has genres to cultivate. The latest anthology centers on alternate history and like the other collections includes a wonderful spread of tales covering a what if scenario on a wide range of eras and events written by mostly famous authors. All fourteen stories attain a high quality including those from lesser-known writers. Each contribution provides as Mr. Turtledove describes a "funhouse mirror that lets us look at reality in ways we cannot get from any other type of story". Sub-genre fans will not want to miss the short stories that allow THE BEST ALTERNATE HISTORY STORIES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY to live up to its title.Harriet Klausner