Alternate Generals III is, as the name
suggests, the third volume of the Harry Turtledove edited alternate
history series. The stories
cover a wide range of generals, from Marc Antony to Westmoreland, and take
the readers from the Philippines to Kenya. Although two stories deal
with an alternate Douglas McArthur and two with an alternate Jesus,
however the stories are different enough from each other that they offer
good perspectives of their subjects.
Joan of Arc wasn’t burned at the stake in A.M.
Dellamonica’s “A Key to the Illuminated Heretic,” which is set after
she is freed from a nine year imprisonment.
Told through the aid of descriptions of iconography depicting
Joan’s history, the story tells of Joan’s difficulties with Charles,
the king she crowned, and the Papacy after she branches off to form her
own heretical branch of Christianity.
Dellamonica’s story is a strong way to begin the book.
Jim Fiscus looks at the world in which Marc Antony
won the battle of Actium in “The
Road to Endless Sleep.” Mostly
set five years after the battle, the story is less about Antony or
Cleopatra, but rather about Cleopatra’s head of bodyguards and his more
personal story. While this
may mean the story doesn’t follow the traditional alternate history
form, it does make for an interesting and strong story.
William Sanders provides a story of Douglas MacArthur
in “Not Fade Away,” MacArthur
and several other officers in the Philippines find themselves in a
Japanese POW camp following a cataclysmic defeat.
Sanders avoids falling into the all too frequent trap of recreating
either “The Great Escape” or “Stalag 17” in his story of life in a
Japanese camp, a much more hopeless situation than in a German one.
Douglas McArthur also appears as a support character
and in less than complimentary light in John Mina’s “I Shall
Return.” Focusing on the
Japanese invasion of the Philippines on December 8, 1941.
McArthur’s support in Mina’s story included George Patton,
James Doolittle, and Dwight Eisenhower, making for a much stronger defense
of the islands. Unfortunately,
Mina’s story is among the weakest in the collection, not because of his
extrapolation, but because of the elementary dialogue between his generals
which tends to drop the reader out of the story.
“Shock and Awe” is the second story by Harry
Turtledove which takes events in the Middle East and swaps them, causing
the reader to see the politics of region in a fresh light.
In the first of these stories, “Next Year in Jerusalem,” Israel
has become an Muslim state and Jewish terrorists are trying to reclaim it.
In “Shock and Awe,” Turtledove presents the land’s rulers as
the Romans and the terrorists trying to gain their freedom through combat
as Jesus and his disciples, although Turtledove refrains from using their
names. The story is
reminiscent of Turtledove’s earlier story of liberation, “The Last
Article,” although while that one is told from the point of view of the
freedom-fighting Gandhi, “Shock and Awe” looks at the revolt from the
point of view of the occupiers.
Brad Linaweaver looks at General Sir Francis
Younghusband in “A Good Bag,” a story set at a séance run by Helena
Blavatsky in which the “Great Game” of central Asia are the stakes on
the table. This is one of the
stories which would have been greatly enhanced by the sort of introduction
available in Alternate Generals II
which provided a background to the point of divergence.
Linaweaver’s story brings in tales of Atlanteans and reveals the
truth of Blavatsky’s psychic abilities, eventually setting the stage for
the twentieth century struggles between Germany and England.
Jomo Kenyatta uses nontraditional tactics to win
Kenya’s freedom in Mike Resnick’s “The Burning Spear at Twilight.”
As many stories can be read in a direct relationship to modern
politics, Kenyatta’s techniques of propaganda to make his enemies, in
this case the British, look bad, can be seen in today’s headlines in
which many feel that the United States is being framed regarding treatment
of detainees. At the same
time, Resnick’s story is an indictment of the liberal media which abets
this sort of misplacement of guilt. Whether
the reader agrees with Resnick’s statements in these regards, “The
Burning Spear in Twilight” works well as a story of a general who fights
his battles against an overwhelming force he can’t hope to defeat
militarily.
Roland J. Green’s epistolary story of the War of
1812, “‘It Isn't Every Day of the Week…’” creates a sense of
distance between the related events and the readers by the second hand
narrative of the exploits of General Andrew Jackson and Commodore Stephen
Decatur. The letters are not
from the two commanders, but rather between brothers, one of whom serves
under Decatur and the other under Jackson.
The brother’s personal lives as shown in the letters are more
interesting than the details of naval maneuvers and troop movements, but
Green puts too little focus on the personal to really make the characters
come alive.
Judith Tarr presents an alternative view of a
militaristic Jesus from Harry Turtledove’s in “Measureless to Man.”
Mirroring the new testament account of the life and death of Jesus,
Tarr uses many of the incidents and words in a completely different
context, occasionally altering them slightly in light of the more
militaristic approach taken by Tarr’s Jesus. Although the question of a more war-like Christianity does
arise, Tarr is really looking at the current situation in the Middle East
with Jesus and his followers cast in the role of the Palestinians and the
Romans cast as the Israelis.
“Over the Sea from Skye,” by Lillian Carl, is the
only story in Alternate Generals
III which provides an
explanation of the point of change, in this case a reversal of battled
between Cumberland and Bonnie Prince Charlie.
The story is told as a flashback and works reasonably well,
although in the end, when the ultimate effects of the point of divergence
are shown, the reader may be excused for wondering what the point was.
Esther Friesner provides a humorous respite in
“First, Catch Your Elephant,” in which she focuses on the logistical
problems of Hannibal taking a herd of elephants and an army of men over
the Alps to attack the Romans. Friesner’s
characters use the language of cinematic British officers and must deal
with Hannibal’s anger when a Tyrian soldier oversteps his rank for a
story which works well, in part because of Friesner’s borrowings and the
anachronisms she introduces.
All too many alternate history stories focus on a
Southern victory in the Civil War. Lee
Allred sets “East of Appomattox” in London between General, now
ambassador, Robert E. Lee and a mysterious representative of the British
Empire following the war. Lee
learns that while some things can be overlooked during a war, in the
battles’ aftermath, they are not so easily dismissed.
Allred offers a freshness to the scenario and his protagonist and
antagonist are well matched and both likable.
Chris Bunch is
a Viet Nam veteran, so his story is sensibly set in Viet Nam.
A group of special forces are given the task of “Murdering Uncle
Ho,” Ho Chi Minh. Not an
easy task in any event, their job is made more difficult by the appearance
of two politicians, Richard Nixon and John Connolly (Nixon isn’t
President in this timeline), on a fact-finding aggrandizement mission.
While Bunch occasionally lapses heavily into military-speak, the
story generally moves along well with an interesting ending.
