What if Hitler won the American Civil War? : Alternate History Megathread

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > What if Hitler won the American Civil War? : Alternate History Megathread

Grifter: Jul 24, 2003; I do this technique called a suplex. You probably haven't heard of it, it's pretty obscure.

The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon is a good book. In it the US created a haven for European Jews in 1940, in Alaska. In this timeline Israel was created and then destroyed a few years later in a pretty grim sounding manner. The novel itself pretty dark, with some similarly dark humor.

�Like 90 percent of the television they watch, it comes from the south and is shown dubbed into Yiddish. It concerns the adventures of a pair of children with Jewish names who look like they might be part Indian and have no visible parents. They do have a crystalline magical dragon scale that they wish on in order to travel to a land of pastel dragons, each distinguished by its color and its particular brand of imbecility. Little by little, the children spend more and more time with their magical dragon scale until one day they travel off to the land of rainbow idiocy and never return; their bodies are found by the night manager of their cheap flop, each with a bullet in the back of the head. Maybe, Landsman thinks, something gets lost in the translation.�

There's a lot of Jewish culture and beliefs in the book. I am not Jewish so I feel like I missed a lot - I think maybe if I had better knowledge of certain things (like the Jewish Messiah belief), it could have worked better for me, but I thought it was pretty great anyway. If you're enthusiastic about Judaism, mobsters and chess, it's your kind of book.

# ¿ Jun 12, 2014 21:50

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 15:26

Grifter: Jul 24, 2003; I do this technique called a suplex. You probably haven't heard of it, it's pretty obscure.

Earwicker posted:

I've been meaning to read this book for years and I'm not sure why I haven't yet. The one thing I know about it (aside from what you mention) is that Landsman is named after the same actual detective Jay Landsman who also inspired characters of the same name on both Homicide and The Wire. You can read about the real Landsman in David Simon's book Homicide which unlike the show is entirely non-fiction and is a very good read.

As a big wire fan, this is very cool and I did not know it before.

Stravinsky posted:

There is so much that could of made this book really terrible and yet it avoids being kitschy and dumb pulp. I am really surprised at how well he used slang and yiddish phrases without making it corny or awkward like you will often find in say a science fiction book or something (chummer) and instead really does some real world building with it. Are any of Chabon's other books worth checking out?

I read and enjoyed Summerland, but it's definitely a YA book, or maybe even a children's fantasy book written to the length of a YA book. Also, baseball. Don't bother if you don't like baseball. I will pick up Wonder Boys sometime too, as I do like Chabon's style.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2014 02:37

Grifter: Jul 24, 2003; I do this technique called a suplex. You probably haven't heard of it, it's pretty obscure.

nucleicmaxid posted:

I'm reading these books and I'm on the third one. The only thing I don't really like is the Prince Harry character, who is sort of needlessly there unless his grandmother getting killed by the Nazi Superman assassin and he takes over England as its newest monarch or something is a future plotpoint.

The writing is mediocre to me, as it has a lot of miltech masutrbation, but that's sort of par for the course in any book about historical wars. I'll also second, heartily, that the 1940's contemporary reaction to the 2021 attitudes towards race, sex, sexuality, freedom, equality, and even stuff like copyright law is actually really interesting to read about and is the best part of the book.

That and Slimjim, that dude owns.

I too read the Axis of Times books as a result of this thread. I agree about Prince Harry. I also found him mildly irritating mostly because the author obviously has a massive hardon for him. You're right on about the culture being the most interesting part. I wanted to know what would happen next, with the progressive cultural elements being fueled by all the money coming out of the Zone, plus all the important counterculture figures being really attracted to that way of life.

RE: Slimjim - I was convinced he was one of the murder/rapists.

Tomn posted:

I seem to remember that one thing I found irritating about the series is the tendency to skip over important events between books - like near the end of one book it ends on a cliffhanger and seems like it's setting up for a major battle, and then in the next book "Oh, yeah, we won that battle, we're moving on with the campaign now. Try to keep up, would you?" It was fairly enjoyable otherwise, though.

Yes, it was real bad when that happened. It was pretty nonsensical when Dan Black died between books, and with Hawaii being retaken. The author also almost completely dropped the murder mystery from the first book through like 98% of the following two. He's way more interested in milporn than solving the crime. I could do without knowing how awesome frangibles, drones, Nemesis, et cetera are.

The book series is clearly leading into another sequel, which would feature at least some of the following. (This is my speculation but I'm spoilering it because it gives away contents of the first three.

War with Stalin
Kolhammer entering politics
The Zone being preserved due to lobbying from Slim Jim/control of Kennedy.
The persecution of that MoH guy who turned out to be the rapist/murderer, and possibly pursuit of those who enabled him.

Did anybody else think the cultural values espoused by this book were a little odd? It's a mix of very liberal equal-rights-for-everyone, gays-are-cool, combined with "gently caress Muslims, it's totally cool for us to sew dead muslims in pigs as a military sponsored sanction".

# ¿ Aug 14, 2014 17:43

Grifter: Jul 24, 2003; I do this technique called a suplex. You probably haven't heard of it, it's pretty obscure.

Tomn posted:

Actually, I think you just reminded me of another thing I disliked about the book - every baddie is cartoonishly, mustache-twirlingly evil, acting sometimes almost for the sake of evil. I don't recall that there was any real effort to humanize any of the leaders of Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, or Imperial Japan - it was bastards all the way down.

I felt this way too. There's the Japanese guy who is the ruler of Hawaii when it is held by the Japanese, and he talks about enjoying raping the captive women, and specifically talks about how he enjoys making their husbands watch. It just felt like they wanted him to be really evil. The only person who escapes this is Isoroku Yamamoto. Does anyone know if the thing about Stalin basically torturing his senior leaders with horrible dinner parties actually happened, or is that more mustache twirling?

quote:

That said, I don't think their "gently caress Muslims forever" stuff was actually supposed to be condoned. It felt like it was supposed to present a mirror to our own society, just as '40s society did. While we could laugh about how backwards the social views of the '40s were, we could also look at the radicalism and extremism of the near-future heroes and feel kinda uncomfortable about it all - "Yeah, we've made a lot of progress, but that doesn't mean we're incapable of sliding into bad habits just because we're from the future."

Mind you, it's been ages since I read the series so I don't recall how well the execution of the theme went, but I seem to remember feeling like that was the intention, not "YEAH gently caress MUSLIMS WOOHOO!"

I am open to this, because we never really see much of muslims in the actual book. I think I may be bringing my own influences into this too much, as I tend to associate milporn with right wing notions (See: Clancy, Tom) and so through that filter I felt like I was getting more anti-muslim notions out of this than may have really been in there. Your view of it does fit if you just think of the future people as more hardened, such as their rules allowing for in-field no trial executions of war criminals. This particular practice backfires on them in that it tends to motivate the axis into more savagery.

# ¿ Aug 14, 2014 22:25

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > What if Hitler won the American Civil War? : Alternate History Megathread