Dave’s Comments (group member since Oct 18, 2009)

Dave’s comments from the Alternate History group.

Loren wrote: "Guns of the South and How few Remain are the best to start. I do agree with The Two Georges and with Ruled Britania, two of my favorite independent ones he did along with 'in the presence of mine e..."


I think his stuff is getting worse by the year. He's writing too many series and publishing far too often that it's all become quite pedestrian.

I am not sure it was a possibility. They simply did not have the manpower to make a breakout move on the Western Front nor did they have the naval power to contest the Royal Navy. That said, Imperial Germany certainly could have fought to a stalemate and as Britain bled itself white with incompetent generalship and the French army was rocked with massive mutinies this is exactly would have happened - EXCEPTING of course the warmonger Woodrow Wilson looking out for the Wall Street bankers who had ill-advisedly backed the British and French with unsustainable war loans. Wilson's intervention (in spite of a US electorate that firmly against involvement in the bloodbath of the Western Front) set the table for the dramatic turn in fortunes for Great Britain and France and the revenge orgy that became the Versailles Treaty and thus paved the way for just about everything else that went wrong for the remainder of the 20th Century.

Funny how Wilson's "I will not send American boys to fight in a European War" campaign rhetoric of 1916 sounds so similar to FDR's 1940 promises and LBJ's 1964 promises.

Suggested follow-up (albeit NOT Speculative Fiction):
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62...

I can't say I was impressed enough the 1st 'Atlantis' story to bother picking up any more. Very pedestrian & methodical.

Hey Josh, here's an idea that came to mind while I ruminated on your alt-Teddy/Bull Moose theme. 1968 without its infamous (and yet dubious in official byline) assassinations. A Bobby Kennedy/MLK ticket that would have been decidedly anti-war. No mass riots of the disaffected at Chicago, immediate de-escalation in Viet Nam, no incursions into Cambodia & Laos.

Josh wrote: "Exactly my point. TR tended to be more aggressive in foreign policy, such as showing the flag with the Great White Fleet and intervention in such things as Panama. Plus his criticism of Wilson's ..."

Sounds like something you ought to work on if you consider yourself to have any talent or inclination towards the writer's craft. The first step to telling a compelling story is to have a personal interest (nee, passion) in the story to be told. That said getting a publisher to buy such a work of the heart is another task altogether. I think that is where the web can play favorably. Self-published under Creators Commons on the internet would likely be the best way to get a story told without the slimy feel of selling out your soul to corporate media.

Josh wrote:Personally, I find it a little sad that plausible alternate histories like this get ignored by authors who prefer to write impossible sci-fi stories in the guise of alternate history (ex: towns being transported to ancient times)."

:) taking Sterling to task for his Nantucket series? There's another one that outlived its usefulness. The first volume read quickly with a vigor but by volume 3 I found myself cringing at some of the depictions.

Harry dragged out his alternative North/South storyline far too long to the point that it is more cliche than "alternative". The 4-volume set has been tedious beyond belief. I took a one-year hiatus between Book 2 & Book 3 and might take as long before the final intallment even though I am partially of the mind to just nut-up and plow into it so I can be done with it once-and-for-all.

That said, the stand-alone How Few Remain and the first 3-book set, The Great War were compelling and enjoyable.

Josh, you made the hypothetical assertion that a "3rd Term" by Teddy Roosevelt would make for an interesting reading. I was simply contending that nothing he did in prior 7 years would have necessarily proved the point that a 3rd Term was deserved. Teddy seemed to be following the time-honored tradition of only sitting for two terms (counting McKinnly's unfinished 2nd as his first) at which point he was willing to hand off the reigns to someone who was a trusted lieutenant in his administration. Obviously he had some sort of epiphany during the next 4 years and decided to buck tradition and run for a then unprecedented "3rd Term".

Hypothetically, I don't suppose his regime would have been much different that one we got with Wilson. One could speculate that Teddy might have jumped on-board with the Tripartite Alliance much sooner than Wilson (not waiting for a 2nd term) which would likely have caused some ripples over the actual history as we know it now.

I not sure such a book would be all that pleasurable of a read... [akin to self-flagellation with a cat-o-nine-tails?:] Rough-Rider Teddy just barely falls out of the Top-5 WORST POTUS ever simply because the competition in front of him is virtually unassailable. Actually 1 & 2 are themselves a toss-up; each being equally (and imminently) qualified for the top rung for reasons that are exclusive to each.

1) Franklin Delano Roosevelt
2) Woodrow Wilson
3) Abraham Lincoln
4) Lyndon Baines Johnson
5) Harry S. Truman
6) Theodore Roosevelt


The nearest alt-hist novel I read to that time frame was Robert Conroy's 1901. While better than a few others by him it is rather 2-dimensional and fairly unhistorical in its presentation.