Any good Alternate History authors?

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

If it's alternate history you're looking for, you may want to contact the Texas School Board. That's one of their areas of expertise.

[Guns4Hire]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

If it's alternate history you're looking for, you may want to contact the Texas School Board. That's one of their areas of expertise.

No reason to derail this thread with politics.

We were having a nice discussion about AH, lets keep it that way.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Guns4Hire

No reason to derail this thread with politics.

We were having a nice discussion about AH, lets keep it that way.

Have ye no sense of humor man? Sheesh!

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by Guns4Hire

No reason to derail this thread with politics.

We were having a nice discussion about AH, lets keep it that way.

Duly chastised. I'll be good now.

[GlenBarrington]

Originally Posted by Guns4Hire

No reason to derail this thread with politics.

We were having a nice discussion about AH, lets keep it that way.

It's not politics when you feel contempt for all sides of an issue! That's just common sense! And I don't think there was any politics in that post since there was no hint as to which side of the issue the poster was on!

*/ Soapbox on! */
Besides - Politics is a part of life and life is what books are about. And let's be honest, AH is just someone's politics made just a little more concrete than normal. You simply can't create (or discuss) a book, ANY book, ANY genre, without some level of politics creeping in. Without it, you have Soviet style art. A North Korean parade!

I'd much rather have knock-down political arguments in a thread where people sob and call each other names than have a thread where everyone simply nods their collective heads and comment, "oh yes, that's quite good".
/* Soapbox Off! */

[Guns4Hire]

I actually laughed when I read it. But it wasn't that it was or wasn't funny. Its that I am sure there is someone on the board who is interested in AH that supports what the TSB did. And would probably be offended by it. And while being offended by it isn't what bothers me (obviously that person is very thin-skinned). But the part that would bother me is if that said person or persons choose not to be involve themselves in the thread over said politics.

And while I agree that the knockdown drag-out political discussions are fun (yes even with the sobbing and dripping snot). Ive been in a few myself regarding copyright/copy infringement/drm.

Its one thing for a political discussion to naturally arise from us talking about a specific book and some thin-skinned person to find themselves being offended. But its another for someone to just throw in some off topic politics randomly (no matter how funny or witty) and turn off people to the thread. I'm all for the discussion wherever it leads. Just not the artificial kind.

I guess its all in how you look at it. /me shrugs.

[Guns4Hire]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Have ye no sense of humor man? Sheesh!

Actually I found it very funny and witty. But that has nothing to do with my point.

[Guns4Hire]

I just finished making The Salvation War: Armageddon by Stuart Slade into an epub (proper chapters, proper toc etc). I haven't read the story yet so I don't know how good it is. And even if it isn't good...how can it not be good, invading hell. Sounds great lol. Actually I have seen quite a bit of praise for it. Heaven runs out of room and gives over humanity to the devil. Humanities survivors have other thoughts.

I guess the second story is a third of the way finished (The Salvation War: Pantheocide). Supposed to be a trilogy. Don't know what the third story is going to be called.

https://commerce35.pair.com/mrwong/w..._Salvation_War

The Salvation War is a highly popular story series currently in production in the Fanfics forum on SDN. The chief author is Stuart Slade, although both Stravo and Surlethe have contributed. Briefly, the story follows an alt-universe story wherein heaven and hell are real, and heaven declares that, from now on, all humans who die will go to hell, and orders all humans to lie down and die. Satan consequently declares Earth a conquest; however, the surviving humans will not go under lightly and declare war on hell. The story explores themes of betrayal, self-reliance, and especially the dichotomy between inflexible dogmatic thinking and flexible scientific analysis.

[erib]

Although it leans more toward scifi/fantasy, Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series definitely has some alternative history going on (Britain and Russia still at war over the Crimea? That's some long term alternative history). Plus the literary humour makes me giggle

[Zetmolm]

Ada by Vladimir Nabokov

From Wikipedia:

The story takes place in the late nineteenth century on what appears to be an alternative history of Earth, which is there called Demonia or Antiterra. Antiterra has the same geography and a largely similar history to that of Earth, however it is crucially different at various points. For example, the United States includes all of the Americas (which were discovered by African navigators). But it was also settled extensively by Russians, so that (actual) western Canada is a Russian-speaking province called "Estoty", and eastern Canada a French-speaking province called "Canady." The three languages are all widespread in North America. Russia itself, and much of Asia, is part of an empire called Tartary, while the word "Russia" is simply a "quaint synonym" for Estoty. The British Empire, which includes most or all of Europe and Africa, is ruled (in the nineteenth century), by a King Victor. Aristocracy is still widespread, but some technology has advanced well into twentieth-century forms. Electricity, however, has been banned nearly since its discovery following an event referred to as "the L-disaster", so that airplanes and cars exist, but television and telephones do not, or are replaced with similar devices powered by water. The setting is thus a complex mixture of Russia and America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

[obs20]

While were on the topic of AH and politics, how about 1984 by George Orwell.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by obs20

While were on the topic of AH and politics, how about 1984 by George Orwell.

I would say that's more in the category of what could be rather than what may have happened; but it's been my experience that a great number of alt history fictions usually contain a political element, either in the form of "here's what would have happened had my side won," or "here's what would have happened had my side lost."

[obs20]

But it had also been suggested by the book that he had just taken out of the drawer. It was a peculiarly beautiful book. Its smooth creamy paper, a little yellowed by age, was of a kind that had not been manufactured for at least forty years past.
George Orwell, 1984, Chap 1

I don't think that Orwell could have imagined that one day this would be read on an e-book.

[GlenBarrington]

Hmmm! I'm going to have to look that up!

[kennyc]

In case no one has suggested it, how about the Bible.....that's pretty much alternate history as far as I'm concerned.