|
Crazy Joe Wilson posted:I read Harry Turtledove a lot in high school. His Southern Victory series started off very strong, but the last section of it (WWII) was too much of a play-by-play of the actual WWII but just in America. (Sorry for thread necromancy) oh yeah agreed on Southern Victory. I think How Few Remain is his strongest work as he challenged himself to imagine a war without a clear historical analogue. The intro where the South wins after there’s no Antietam and McClellan gets trapped against a river and wiped out was plausible, and Lincoln launching the socialist party in the US was well handled. The Great War series was also enjoyable if not high literature, but agreed on WWII falling apart badly. Exactly what you said. Kinda like the Hot War series is one good book stretched into three with some of his worst characters. 1950s America with serious nuke damage? Give us a civil rights organizer in the Deep South when his state’s congressional slate is vaporized, or an FBI agent in the middle of a case when Bureau HQ goes up in smoke, or maybe a French Louvre worker trying to save masterpieces from the rubble. Instead by the end I think two characters were making refrigerator deliveries in LA. Great thread, I got to meet Turtledove when he was on a book tour for Ruled Britannia and he was nice and patient with my goony questions about Worldwar sequels, and afterwards signed my copy of How Few Remain.
|
#
¿
Sep 8, 2021 02:23
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 19, 2024 14:40 |
|
|
Gnoman posted:I'm thinking about restarting this and skipping to Guns of The South. It turned out that Ruled Britannia is a very boring book to dissect because of the large number of chapters where nothing much happens. Yes please. That was interesting for teaching me a lot mundane stuff like what winter quarters were like, and while the forgiving portrayal of Lee hasn't aged well it didn't seem like Turtledove was trying to make the south sympathetic. It's a fun read but I didn't understand the AWB plan near the end. They have modern tech and wealth but zero support among the general CSA population. Forrest accepts their political support but that's totally gone after they take a shot at Lee. Their numbers were far too limited to be trying to make a coup, then afterwards they hole up in Rivington with no ability to project power. I guess it could reflect them being fanatics who hadn't made a plan for the post-war if Lee pushed back and allowed for a big final battle but did seem a bit underdeveloped.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 8, 2021 16:55
|
|
|
Charlz Guybon posted:If you're going to do a World War series you have to do the World War series! I want to talk about Lizards! It’s a fun series, though I’m a Turtledove apologist and struggle with why even a very cautious race would bring such vast quantities of air to air missiles (and Patriot missiles) when expecting enemies on horseback.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 10, 2021 05:19
|
|
|
Gnoman posted:They actually so that - the conquest fleet has organic manufacturing capability. They just need way more than any reasonable person would expect when bringing T-72s to fight knights on horseback. Yeah, Turtledove makes some good calls in setting the premise like not mentioning an exact number of spaceships or invaders to give him some leeway. One part that was a bit off was how devastating poison gas was against lizard infantry as they don't carry masks or wear clothes. Their efforts to begin producing masks are slow (and I don't think they ever start wearing skin protection) so at that point dunno how they could hold any positions if a basic mustard gas attack would force them to retreat every time. I've thought too much about this.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 10, 2021 15:21
|
|
|
Lawman 0 posted:
Yeah. On a different note, as Turtledove is Jewish his work did a lot to help young dumb me learn a lot about that culture like what a Kaddish prayer is, how Hanukkah isn’t a major holiday, or what Shtetls were in Eastern Europe. Also meant in his WWII books never gets into sympathetic portrayals or admiration of the nazis or downplays the horrors of the Holocaust. I know these are space lizard books but reading about a character trying to survive in a Warsaw ghetto helped young me understand what really happened. And while the Colonization series was weak I did like how Turtledove had Germany start an ill advised war in the 60s and got wrecked, which Turtledove mentioned including as he really hates those guys.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 11, 2021 16:29
|
|
|
Gnoman posted:Chapter 1: Robert E. Lee Thanks for write up, this is excellent. One minor point regarding the letter Lee was writing, you are right that Lee wasn't commanding the troops for that battle. But in the real timeline he did write that letter on 1/20/1864, so it being included wasn't a mistake by Turtledove but more of an exact moment to show when history was diverging. https://books.google.com/books?id=v...erne%22&f=false Sorry minor quibble, looking forward to more please.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 13, 2021 17:20
|
|
|
Gnoman posted:The letter is historical, but the narration implies that Lee was the guy who came up with the plan of attack, which I don't think is accurate. Oh you're right, missed that part about his inner thoughts. My mistake.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 13, 2021 20:05
|
|
|
That's interesting about how the details of the different rifles. I didn't know the Springfields fired in a parabolic arc or why AKs have the curved clip.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 21, 2021 21:25
|
|
|
ninjahedgehog posted:Obviously the real answer is that the AK is more iconic than possibly any other firearm in history and makes for a better book cover, but in-universe I bet AWB also chose it for its legendary reliability. Like you said, they're severely underestimating how savvy the Confederates are and probably wanted something that, from their perspective, even these backwards hillbillies would be hard pressed to break. Yeah that makes sense. I agree it would be more plausible for them to use early 1900s rifles but it would have been hard for them to obtain those and their ammo in large numbers, while for the AK-47 they seem to just be buying them by the shipping container and sending them through the time machine. Plus they’d have familiarity and could be trainers. One of my favorite little things in the book are hints about how the north is starting to adapt the AK-47, especially as they wound up with hundreds of captured rifles and have far more engineers and factories than the south. Not something the Rivington men are shown to care about but as the north is already starting to use an early model of the AK against the UK, interesting to imagine how odd the timeline will get. Especially as by the end plenty of people know about the time travel and the houses in Rivington were loaded with books and tech, good chance lots of that would go missing and end up north. The Rivington men were all over the south, good odds a few of them didn’t feel like joining the last stand and put on different clothes or sailed for Europe. Definitely agree they don’t bother much to have a real cover story, especially in Rivington where they build houses with electricity and AC and don’t turn those off when they have visitors, and anyone can visit the town pre-insurrection. As those men all seem focused on living in big houses with lots of slaves seems like they don’t care about maintaining the masquerade and it might have been hard for their leaders to make everyone live in primitive conditions indefinitely and not risk an internal coup. Gnoman posted:Out of universe, the inspiration for the book was supposedly a complaint from another author (I'm finding conflicting information on precisely which author it was - some sources are saying Tanith Lee, others Judith Tarr) that the cover of her latest novel was as anachronistic as "Robert E. Lee holding an UZI". Turtledove was taken by the idea, but decided that the Uzi was not the proper weapon and substituted the AK. That said, speculating on in-universe reasons is entertaining. I didn’t know there were conflicting sources on that, the thanks section at the end of my copy says Judith Tarr. They also teamed up to write Household Gods about an LA woman who inhabits a Roman woman’s body. Pretty good.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 26, 2021 16:31
|
|
|
Great thread. I re-read the short work Must and Shall and it holds up with the interesting premise of if Lincoln had died in 1864 while observing a battle and the Union still won but was far more vengeance prone than in our timeline. In the 1940s an FBI agent travels to New Orleans to investigate insurgent plans. Interesting twist on the usual "Confederates win" alternate history, similar to Ready for the Fatherland where a separate peace on the Eastern front in 1943 means the nazis didn't win but are still a major power in the late 70s.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 6, 2021 17:04
|
|
|
Reread Forty, Counting Down and Twenty-one Counting Up, premise of man who is 40 in 2018 going back to 1999 to try to change his past life. Was written in 1999 and had some stuff stand out for where Turtledove thought world would be in 2018: -Idea of Rolling Stones still touring considered a joke -South Park no longer culturally relevant -Inflation significant enough that $150k would only buy a compact car -Oil running out Weird moment when the guy in 1999 is 100% convinced his future self is for real as he is presented with a quarter from 2012, as such a relic would be unthinkable to counterfeit. Also has the unintentional oddity of someone going back to 1999 with no restrictions on what information he can share for several months and deciding not to mention a few things.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 8, 2021 18:11
|
|
|
Another good write up. Although the war concludes quickly, seems likely the Union would have had significant mutinies if it had continued much longer. Kinda wonder how long CSA’s tech advantage would have held, as so many people know about the time travel gotta assume USA and European powers would be crawling the south offering cash for Rivington artifacts.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2022 19:34
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 19, 2024 14:40 |
|
|
Everyone posted:That point or one like it is addressed later in the book. Oh yeah you’re right, fun to get hints like how the US is already deploying their own AK-47 primitive prototypes against Canada but it’s not helping them against the Royal Navy.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2022 21:50
|
|