good Alternate History novels?

[Atridis]

Another thread got me to thinking about good alternate history books that I've read.

I loved "Fatherland" by Robert Harris, and a friend recommended Harry Turtledove's "American Empire" series. "What If?" by Robert Cowley et al had some good parts, but I prefer novels to essays. I also tend to prefer the plausible to the fantastic, although I enjoyed Turtledove's "World War" series, when aliens invade Earth during World War Two.

Any other good ones out there?

 

[LightPhoenix]

I recently read Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt, which was based around the idea that the Black Death killed off almost everyone in Europe. However, that's not really what the story is about, it's just a backdrop, so I'm not sure it counts as an alternate history.

What I mean is, it does go through from the plague to today, and history is explained in some places, but really it's not about the history.

 

[takyris]

Modessit's Ghosts series is interesting, although not really realistic -- it's an alternate history based on ghosts being real. Large-scale wars cause a LOT of ghosts, and ghosts mess up people's heads, so as a result, there haven't been as many wars.

The United States is about half Danish and half Mormon, I think. Can't remember it completely clearly.

Uddernat -- what are you looking for? Character or plot? I mean, Turtledove's characters are usually pretty cardboard, but I don't care, because he's so good at weaving together history and narrative structure.

 

[Umbran]

J Gregory Keys has written a 4 book series called "The Age of Unreason" - an alternate history in which Issac Newton's experiments into alchemy actually bore fruit.

Harry Harrison wrote a 3 book series entitled "The Hammer and the Cross", in which old Norse religion doesn't make way for Christianity. Also in his "Eden" series, he's asked what might happen if dinosaurs evolved a sentient race that live in the same world as humans.

Parke Godwin has written some stuff that falls close to alternate history - retellings of standard myths with much closer than usual attention paid to history, historical conditions and social structures and the like. He's treated King Arthur (in "Firelord" and "Beloved Exile") Robin Hood (in "Sherwood" and "Robin and the King"), Beowulf (in "The Tower of Beowulf") and Saint Patrick (in "The Last Rainbow").

 

[Nightfall]

Another slightly skewed alternate history type deal, is by Thomas Harlan's "Shadows of Ararat". It's more fantasy based BUT it's a lovely look at a Roman Empire still working even after the fall of Constinatine and the rise of the Persian empire.

 

[takyris]

For another almost-alternate-history, you could check out Jo Walton's "King's Peace" (or whatever the first one is). It's essentially a retelling of the Arthurian myths, but it's in a different world. Very very cool.

 

[gfunk]

Phillip Dick's classic "The Man in the High Castle" examines a future where the US stays out of WWII and is eventually conquered by Japan and Germany.

Harry Turtledove's "Guns of the South" has white South African separatists provide Robert E. Lee's Confederate forces with AK-47s so that they could win the Civil War and maintain slavery. The results, however, are not exactly what they planned.

 

[ArcOfCorinth]

There's book whose author's name escapes me. If I remember correctly, its titled 1632. It's about an Appalachian town from the current era suddenly being transported to the Holy Roman Empire. Unable to return, they carve out a American democracy in the middle of Europe. Not your typical alternate history though.

Anything by Turtledove though.

 

[Particle_Man]

Yet another Harry Turtledove book, "Agent of Byzantium" plays out what if Mohammed never founded a new religion, but joined the Christian church (and became one of its major saints)? about 600 years later, we have the Byzantine Empire and the Persian Empire in a "cold war" and secret agents are fighting over new technological discoveries, like telescopes, the printing press, and....................gunpowder! Actually, Turtledove does lots and lots of alternate history stuff.

Randall Garrett does a detective one where a) Richard the Lionhearted founded a proud royal line, and b) magic is discovered (ok, maybe that's a bit tooo alternate).

Another possibility is "The Iron Dream" which is a science fiction novel as if it were written by a version of Adolf Hitler that came to the states in the 1920's and became a hack sci-fi author (it was written to point up the fact that a lot of "us vs. them" "bug eyed monster" science fiction is pretty damned fascist in tone). I forget the author, unfortunately.

 

[Umbran]

Oh, and let us not forget Bruce Sterling and William Gibson's book, "The Difference Engine"