Bad AH you just HATE!
- Thread starter Adam Parsons
- Start date
Alasdair Czyrnyj said:
Most of the answers on this thread really boil down more to the personal prejudices of the posters than on any intrinsic flaw in the AH. I personally am pretty liberal with regard to the POD, and even the flow of the AH from the POD. Just about anything MIGHT have happened, even if it was not likely to happen.
What I think makes for bad alternate history is not so much the ideas behind it...however unlikely those ideas might be...but careless research (or complete lack of research). It is really irritating to read an alternate history where the author gets basic details of history wrong. For example, the research in the "Stars and Stripes" series was just abysmal. Harry Harrison got things as simple as Jefferson Davis's middle name and where he was born wrong...things you could look up in any encyclopedia, for crying out loud. And the hash he made of basic technical details like saying the magazine of the Spencer Rifle held fifteen shots (actually it held seven) was just downright irritating. This is easily the worst-researched AH I have ever read. That is the kind of stuff that just makes me want to scream.
The Stars and Stripes series is utter crap in my opnion. Nothing seems realistic... nothing at all. SO terrible...
Give poor old Harrison a break- his first story was published when Truman was president.
Prunesquallor said:
Yeah...you would think he would have learned to do a better job of it by now.
And he did in his day- even apart from his short stories, MAKE ROOM, MAKE ROOM, the DEATHWORLD series, the first STAINLESS STEEL RAT book, BILL THE GALACTIC HERO, A TRANSATLANTIC TUNNEL HURRAH, for starters, are all books I've read with great pleasure.
My pet hate is the "Sealion is successful" scenario and a Nazi ruled UK. We seem to have had a rash of these on TV this year. I'd much prefer a documentary on what would probably have happened had the Germans tried an invasion in September 1940.
Hendryk
Banned
This thread has generated a lot of side-comments on Harry Harrison, most of it negative. I must admit I could not get page 50 or so of "Stars and Stripes", but what do you guys think of "The Hammer and the Cross"? I liked the idea of an organized Norse clergy taking over the Viking-occupied parts of Britain from Christianity, but as I'm no expert on early medieval history I probably overlooked a few inconsistencies. And the sequel, "One King's Way", was IMO quite disappointing, with the Bigfoot-like semihumans that show up in the woods of Finland taking the whole concept into ASB-land.
Also, do you know how consistent the "Eden" series is with paleontology? I haven't been able to get hold of a copy yet.
Also, do you know how consistent the "Eden" series is with paleontology? I haven't been able to get hold of a copy yet.
Well, in "West of Eden", most of the dinosaurs stay bascially the same for the next 65 million years or so, but a new species of land-dwelling sentient reptiles evolved from mosasaurs (big swimming reptiles around in the Cretaecous) takes over the planet (and becoming quite adept at biotechnology at the same time too). However in North America, seperated from the rest of the world, the dinosaurs die out, and are replaced by mammals, such as cats (who are actually from Eurasia), mammoths (ditto, I think), and Homo sapiens (from Africa). Interesting story, but as realistic as a Chinese invasion of America in 1920.
Hendryk said:
The 'Norse Neanderthals' have become quite popular lately. I blame Ibn Fadlan
But seriously, while it was an eminently fun read and had its good points, the storyline both underestimates the technological aboilties of the Anglo-Saxons and Franks and probably overestimates the organisational abilities of the Vikings at the time. Of course, an organised pagan clergy arising in response to Christian incursions is not at all improbable - it actually happened OTL - but I very much doubt the Vikings are good candidates.
There are some details in there, too, that I find dubious: the Frankish 'Crusade' (where do the theological foundations for that come from, a century before Cluny?), the strange design of the fire projectors and the incredible success of what is, essentially, a single prophet. Yes, he is using 'class consciousness', but the story still presupposes that that exists.
I'll have to re-read it, but I think the spearchucker design was also off the mark.
Prunesquallor said:
Yes, a lot of his pure sci-fi stories are quite good. It's just when he tries his hand at AH that he really sucks, apparently. I have read the Eden books and the book REBEL IN TIME, and they were equally as bad, IMHO.
I actually enjoyed REBEL IN TIME and the AH A TRANSATLANTIC HURRAH is a lovely pastiche of a 19th century novel.
Gwendolyn Ingolfsson said:
Yeah, I have to agree. Wouldn't happen because of the armed citizenry America had at that point.
Invincible?
No, not at all IMO, things just make conventional invasion very impractical...but it could happen, and screw things up badly, but it would ultimately fail, IMO. Not invincible, to me really, just unlikely.
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It would ultimately fail? In other words... the US is invincible?
There are quite a lot of ways for the US to lose in a lot of different timelines before nuclear missiles become available. The one I had about a victorious Japan was plausible, and not even unlikely; the only reason it isn't likely is because it didn't happen. Anything can happen, as industry isn't the ONLY thing that matters in the world.
Knight Of Armenia - industry isn't the ONLY thing that matters in the world.[/QUOTE said:
Oh, I agree wholeheartedly; however, the fact that it doesn't always go that way is enough to render a lot of criticism about US-defeating TLs null.
Besides, a lot of these PODs (and even invasions) occur at a time when US industry was pathetically inferior compared to Europe, and the US armed forces even more so. Take Germany vs America in the late 1800s/early 1900s. A lot of people here invariably say that US would win because the Germans couldn't invade; well, the US was able to invade. And it was far weaker than Germany economically, industrially, and militarily. The High Seas Fleet was strong enough to pound the US navy and also any shipbuilding facilities on the east coast (thus delaying shipbuilding), and with control of the seas, it could land an army. But responses to this one were wide, using ideas and actions that people just didn't do at the time (for example, American partisans; this just wasn't a concept in war yet. The francs-tireur were minor, very very minor, and notice that occupied France + Belgium didn't give Germany anything that can be considered "trouble" in WWI). But people just shrug and say "couldn't have happened," which really gets my goat.
Besides, a lot of these PODs (and even invasions) occur at a time when US industry was pathetically inferior compared to Europe, and the US armed forces even more so. Take Germany vs America in the late 1800s/early 1900s. A lot of people here invariably say that US would win because the Germans couldn't invade; well, the US was able to invade. And it was far weaker than Germany economically, industrially, and militarily. The High Seas Fleet was strong enough to pound the US navy and also any shipbuilding facilities on the east coast (thus delaying shipbuilding), and with control of the seas, it could land an army. But responses to this one were wide, using ideas and actions that people just didn't do at the time (for example, American partisans; this just wasn't a concept in war yet. The francs-tireur were minor, very very minor, and notice that occupied France + Belgium didn't give Germany anything that can be considered "trouble" in WWI). But people just shrug and say "couldn't have happened," which really gets my goat.
Everybody pretty much said what I hate except for one thing. I hate it when the main country of a tl is dominated by one political party or one side of the political spectrum and magically everything is a perfect utopia where everyone is happy. Or when a government is able to do off the wall stuff with the full support of its citizens.
Knight Of Armenia said:
You are forgetting that America had a lot of recent experience with partisan operations. Do the names John Singleton Mosby, William Quantrill, and Bloody Bill Anderson ring any bells? I think you are dramatically underestimating the resistance a German army would have met in America from irregular forces.