Do any of you read Harry Turtledove alternative history books?

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Do any of you read Harry Turtledove alternative history books?

Posted: 3/13/2006 6:46:06 AM EDT

I love this guys novels. I just got caught up on the series involving a triumphant south. The last novel is set during the second world war between USA, Germany, Austro-Hungary Vs. CSA, UK, France, Japan and Russia. I love th efct he doesnt rose color anything n his books. The world looks like a dirty shitty place. Anyone like his stuff?

Posted: 3/13/2006 6:49:02 AM EDT

[#1]

Yeah
I got the whole lot of them starting from the civil war
I like them
Although they do get long winded, but he's got a good mind and layout.

Posted: 3/13/2006 6:55:47 AM EDT

[#2]

try the ones where aliens invade during ww2. you'll love it.

Posted: 3/13/2006 6:57:09 AM EDT

[#3]

Guns of the South is a damn good read.

Posted: 3/13/2006 7:08:35 AM EDT

[#4]

Ive read both the World War series where the aliens invade during WW2 and i read Guns Of The South awhile back too. None of them hit me as hard and drew me in so well as the new series.

Posted: 3/13/2006 7:11:07 AM EDT

[#5]

Quoted:
Yeah
I got the whole lot of them starting from the civil war
I like them
Although they do get long winded, but he's got a good mind and layout.

Nope, but it's on my list.

Posted: 3/13/2006 7:16:35 AM EDT

[#6]

"Guns of the South" was AWESOME! I also REALLY enjoyed the World War series and the Colonization
series. Great stuff.

Sam

Posted: 3/13/2006 7:24:32 AM EDT

[#7]

I liked Guns of the South pretty well, though IMHO he could have done better then a mysterious group of time-travelling South African nationalists with a trainload of various AKs. I also read one of the WWI with CSA vs USA and found that to be pretty interesting. I'd like to get the entire set in order one of these days.

BTW, does he say how the Confederates won the war in the WWI and WWII alternate histories?

Posted: 3/13/2006 4:31:35 PM EDT

[#8]

Quoted:
I liked Guns of the South pretty well, though IMHO he could have done better then a mysterious group of time-travelling South African nationalists with a trainload of various AKs. I also read one of the WWI with CSA vs USA and found that to be pretty interesting. I'd like to get the entire set in order one of these days.

BTW, does he say how the Confederates won the war in the WWI and WWII alternate histories?

The messanger that had lost a copy of Lee's orders which were later found by the Union in our history did not lose the orders.

Posted: 3/13/2006 4:33:53 PM EDT

[#9]

Quoted:
Quoted:
I liked Guns of the South pretty well, though IMHO he could have done better then a mysterious group of time-travelling South African nationalists with a trainload of various AKs. I also read one of the WWI with CSA vs USA and found that to be pretty interesting. I'd like to get the entire set in order one of these days.

BTW, does he say how the Confederates won the war in the WWI and WWII alternate histories?

The messanger that had lost a copy of Lee's orders which were later found by the Union in our history did not lose the orders.

actually if it the orders i am thinking of they really were lost and were found by the union, they just didnt followup on it

Posted: 3/13/2006 4:38:49 PM EDT

[#10]

I really liked the World War and Colinization series, but I thought it got repetive after a while.

Posted: 3/13/2006 4:44:18 PM EDT

[#11]

Aliens?

We wouldn't stand a chance. Look at how the US trounced a military just a couple generations behind us in Desert Storm. If they were hundreds of years ahead, we wouldn't have a prayer.

Posted: 3/13/2006 4:57:17 PM EDT

[#12]

Quoted:
I really liked the World War and Colinization series, but I thought it got repetive after a while.

Exactly my problem. 3/4th of the every new book was stuff we already knew from the last books.

I was starting to wish he would just get on with the story by the colonization series.

Posted: 3/13/2006 4:59:17 PM EDT

[#13]

Guns of the South is an excellent book. In one of the alternate histories the Confederate courier near Frederick, MD recovers Lee's lost orders and smokes a cigar with the privates who found it while philiosophizing on how discover of the orders by MacClellan could have changed the course of history.

Apart from Sharpe's Rifles, Turtledove is some of the only fiction I have read in years. Turtledove does seem too liberal for me though and some of his history ideas are a huge strech. I don't think antebellum black-white relationships in the South are the way he assumes. I don't think Lincoln would have become a Marxist. And I don't like the gay stuff especially the gay sex he puts in his books.

GunLvr

Posted: 3/13/2006 5:18:25 PM EDT

[#14]

You might check out The Wild Blue and the Gray by William Sanders.

www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1587156482

1916, in an alternative world. The independent Confederate States of America has gone to the aid of its old ally Britain, and become bogged down in the stalemate on the Western Front. At a Confederate airfield in France, a new pilot reports for duty: Lieutenant Amos Ninekiller, of the independent Cherokee Nation, come to see how the white people wage war. He isn't going to like it...

"THE WILD BLUE AND THE GRAY is a tragicomic alternate look at the first great catastrophe of the twentieth century. Laughter is often the only way to shield ourselves from pain that would otherwise be intolerable. Sanders understands this well--and also that, the more things change, the more they sometimes look the same." --Harry Turtledove

The first edition is one of my favorite books. He's published a revised edition -- supposedly to correct a couple of historical inaccuracies -- which I haven't seen yet.

Posted: 3/13/2006 5:23:27 PM EDT

[#15]

Quoted:
Aliens?

We wouldn't stand a chance. Look at how the US trounced a military just a couple generations behind us in Desert Storm. If they were hundreds of years ahead, we wouldn't have a prayer.

In the story the aliens were very slow developing beings as were all the other civilizations they had discovered and enslaved (only 3-4 of them). FTL travel was not possible so the aliens intel on Earth showed the most advanced weapons were the mounted knight and the catapult. So they sent a smaller force than they should have. Their most sophisticated weapon seems to be the nuclear bomb and they are otherwise not much more advanced than the current US military.

GunLvr

Posted: 3/13/2006 5:27:04 PM EDT

[#16]

He has interesting concepts and story lines, but I just can't get past the fact that he writes like he gets paid by the word. And he ain't no Dickens, who DID get paid by the word.

Posted: 3/13/2006 5:35:25 PM EDT

[#17]

Quoted:
"Guns of the South" was AWESOME! I also REALLY enjoyed the World War series and the Colonization
series. Great stuff.

Sam

"Endless repeaters" kick ass!

Posted: 3/13/2006 5:39:37 PM EDT

[#18]

Good books, I made it through the alien ones, which are lighter reading than the continuing North v. South series. I read most of the rest but have not finished them.

Posted: 3/13/2006 5:39:38 PM EDT

[#19]

I've tried to get into the books a time or two, just too wordy for my liking. He didn't make me care about the characters.

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Do any of you read Harry Turtledove alternative history books?

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