Anthology from 1998 of alternate histories based on different
decisions by military leaders; edited by Harry Turtledove, Roland
Green and Martin H. Greenberg.
Most of the stories, I have to say, are quite forgettable, can be
summed up in a sentence and don't really have much to offer beyond
that summation: Nelson fought for the French. Custer lived at Little
Big Horn, and became president. Caesar decided to reject kingship, but
was still assassinated. Joshua Chamberlain ends up fighting for the
Confederates. And so on. A few left a more lasting impression.
The reason I picked up this collection was Tradition, by Elizabeth
Moon: it deals with the
pursuit of Goeben and Breslau
in the early days of the Great War. Craddock replaces Troubridge, and
ignores his orders so as to go after the fleeing ships. It certainly
feels like a reasonable set of consequences, and the seriousness of
contemplating an act of mutiny is given its due weight (possibly
assisted by Moon's military background). I don't know enough about the
period to pick holes in it, but I found the story most enjoyable.
Two Second World War stories go together, though they're not adjacent
in the book; in both William Sanders' Billy Mitchell's Overt Act and
R. M. Meluch's Vati, an air leader does a better job than the
historical one… only to find that, in one case, preventing the
disaster of Pearl Harbor means the USA's entry into the war is much
less whole-hearted, and in the other, that delaying Overlord and
bringing jet fighters into Nazi service in large numbers merely
prolongs the war and makes the end worse when it comes. It's always a
temptation for a writer of alternate history to make things better
(unless you're Steve Stirling who seems to glory in making things
worse), and it's most pleasing to see an acceptance that sometimes a
tactical victory can lead to a major strategic error.
The other stand-out story for me is Lois Tilton's The Craft of War,
told as a Socratic dialogue, in which Sun Tzu is exiled from China and
ends up organising the army of Xerxes. Here, yes, it can still be
summed up in a sentence, but the joy is mostly in the writing style.
Recommended if you can get it very cheaply second hand, and you're
interested in alternate histories anyway. But it's very slight, and
would be hard-put to justify its original cover price.
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