Five Bubble Book Club discussion

A sub-genre (or at least near cousin) of alternative history is the "Secret History," a story that does not contradict existing history as we know it, but expands upon it in ways that would not be publicly known.

Two of the best authors of this genre are also among the originators of Steampunk: K.W. Jeter and Tim Powers.

In Infernal Devices, Jeter tells the story of George Dower, the talentless son of a clockmaker, who is gradually drawn into a strange secret world of automata, fish-men, and the "Royal Anti-Society" -- which coexist with the Victorian London we know. This is an absurd, if tense, romp. If you like Victoriana and the deeply weird, this is for you; otherwise, perhaps less so.

Tim Powers actually plays with secret histories semi-regularly: he will take historical oddities and elaborate them with fantasy until they makes sense. In Declare, Powers takes on the some strange historical facts about British mole Kim Philby, who defected to Russian in 1963, and explains them with djinn (as well as delightful references to T.E. Lawrence, Soviet politics, etc.). In On Stranger Tides (partially adapted into a Pirates of the Caribbean movie), some of Edward Teach's (Blackbeard) truly weird actions, as well as those of other Caribbean pirates, are explained with reference to Ponce de Lion and the "fountain of youth" in Florida. Both are also outstanding books:Declare is also a genuine spy thriller, and On Stranger Tides is a rollicking good pirate yarn.

Another of my favorite "Secret History" writers is Paul Malmont, whose books The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril: A Novel and The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown set American pulp fiction writers into pulp fiction adventures. The first is the better of the two, but the second (primarily featuring early science fiction writers) is still very good. Part of the fun of these two books is spotting the walk-on characters, e.g. Bob Heinlein gives a bag of pulps to a travelling soldier from Indianapolis named Kurt, who muses over the phrase "So it goes..." (view spoiler)[ Kurt Vonnegut (hide spoiler)] If you loved the pulps -- Doc Savage, The Shadow, etc. -- then there books are very, very good; without some background in the pulps though, they might be cryptic.

Anyway, the "Secret History" is a fun sub-genre. If you know of other books in it that you liked, please add them!