Re: Counterfactual

Don't forget "If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg" by Churchill
himself:

http://www.unz.org/Pub/Scribners-1930dec-00587

Regards,
M.R.F.

On Wed, Feb 22, 2017 at 10:07 AM, Fischer, Dennis@CDCR <
[email protected]> wrote:

> Another great alternative history novel is Pavane by Keith Roberts, which
> speculates what if the Spanish Armada had defeated the English, and gives a
> different view of the Elizabethan period.
>
>
>
> *From:* Charley Seavey [mailto:[email protected]]
> *Sent:* Tuesday, February 21, 2017 1:28 PM
> *To:* Science Fiction and Fantasy Listserv; Fischer, Dennis@CDCR
> *Subject:* Re: [SF-LIT] Counterfactual
>
>
>
> Great list. The mention of Robert E. Lee reminded me of a collection of
> short stories, *Alternate Generals *(turns out there are now three of
> them). Anyway in the first one, the Colonies never broke away from the UK,
> and one Robert E. Lee is the cavalry commander at the charge of the light
> brigade. The only other one I can remember is an alternate take on the
> pursuit of the *Goeben* in WWI, with a rather different outcome that I
> found really kind of unlikely.
>
>
>
> charley
>
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 12:27 PM, Fischer, Dennis@CDCR <
> [email protected]> wrote:
>
>
>
> What if Napoleon had won the Battle of Waterloo, Robert E Lee triumphed
> at the Battle of Gettysburg, or James Callaghan managed to hold off Mrs
> Thatcher's challenge in the General Election of 1979? Writers love these
> exercises in the historical subjunctive, and the counter-factual novel
> offers a panorama of alternative worlds in which tiny twitches on the
> chronological thread find the past rearranging itself into unexpected
> shapes. As for strict definition, critics usually try to establish clear
> water between the counter-factual and its distant cousin the dystopia. The
> latter is usually a future shock scenario in which something has gone
> horribly wrong, while the former generally resembles a gigantic chessboard
> in which the removal of a single piece has radically changed the alignment
> of the other 31.
>
>
>
> Read more
>
> There have been counter-factual novels about the Reformation, or the
> survival of the Stuart dynasty, but the most substantial cluster is set
> during or after a re-imagined second world war. Novelists as varied in
> their techniques as Robert Harris, CJ Sansom, Philip Roth and Len Deighton
> have produced alternative histories in which the Nazis invade Great Britain
> or the Americans opt to sit the war out. Hitler has a whole sub-genre to
> himself, seen wandering around Liverpool in Beryl Bainbridge's Young Adolf
> (1978) and, as a 92-year-old survivor of thethe Berlin bunker, at large in
> South America in George Steiner's The Portage to San Cristobal of AH
> <http://www.counter-currents.com/2011/01/george-steiners-the-portage-to-san-cristobal-of-a-h/> (1981).
> Here are 10 outstanding examples of the counter-factualist at work.
> 1. *The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken*
> <https://www.theguardian.com/books/data/book/unclassified/9780099456636/the-wolves-of-willoughby-chase>
>  (1962)
>
> One of my favourite children's books, set in an alternate early
> 19th-century England where the Stuarts were never overthrown. A
> newly-completed Channel Tunnel linking Dover and Calais has allowed hordes
> of wolves from continental Europe to scamper west and supply a grim
> backdrop to this eerie tale of scheming governesses, plundered fortunes and
> captive children.
> 2. *The Alteration by Kingsley Amis*
> <https://www.theguardian.com/books/data/book/fiction/9780099461081/the-alteration>
>  (1975)
>
> The mid-1970s UK, where King Stephen III has just been succeeded by King
> William V. It turns out that Martin Luther was persuaded to tone down his
> views, reached a rapprochement with Rome and became Pope Germanius I. No
> Reformation, in other words, and a half-millennium of Catholic domination
> in which democracy, socialism and nationalism never reached the political
> agenda. Amusingly, three of the functionaries at the Holy Office are named
> "Foot", "Redgrave" and "Lord Stansgate", in testimony to Amis's dislike of
> three well-known 1970s lefty ideologues.
> 3. *Fatherland by Robert Harris*
> <https://www.theguardian.com/books/data/book/fiction/9780099527893/fatherland>
>  (1992)
>
> One of the very best of a clutch of novels predicated on the idea that the
> Nazis won. Harris's alternative history begins in April 1964, shortly
> before Hitler's 75th birthday, with a Reich detective named Xavier March
> uncovering the first hints of a conspiracy that goes all the way to the
> top. My father, who spent the second world war in the RAF, always reckoned
> that this was the most plausible counter-factual he had ever read.
> 4. *The Plot Against America by Philip Roth*
> <https://www.theguardian.com/books/data/book/fiction/9780099478560/the-plot-against-america>
>  (2004)
>
> The second world war from the other side of the Atlantic, where the
> aviator Charles Lindbergh rallies the nation's isolationists, defeats
> Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election and concludes an entente with
> Hitler (known as "the Iceland Understanding") which allows the US to stand
> aside from the war. All this naturally has dire consequences for America's
> Jewish population.
> 5. *1941/A by Kingsley Amis* (1993)
>
> Amis again. This is strictly speaking a short story (it can be found in
> the posthumously published Complete Stories
> <http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk/BerteShopWeb/viewProduct.do?ISBN=9780141195292> (2011))
> purportedly written by the "Josef Goebbels Professor of Modern History in
> the University of Oxford". Here America is unexpectedly undone by Japanese
> and German forces on the west and east coasts and the destruction of the
> Panama Canal, after which Roosevelt signs a peace treaty.
> 6. *Autumn Manoeuvres by Melvyn Bragg*
> <https://www.theguardian.com/books/data/book/fiction/9780340518564/autumn-manoeuvres>
>  (1978)
>
> A political "what-if" from the late 1970s. Historians often wonder what
> might have happened if James Callaghan had decided to call an election in
> the autumn of 1978, rather than waiting to be swept aside in the tumult of
> May 1979. Bragg's novel features a moderate Labour MP named Jimmy Johnston,
> disillusioned by party in-fighting and darkly aware that the the manifesto
> has little relevance to his Cumbrian constituents. History is confounded as
> both Jims win a small majority.
> 7. *Brothers of the Head by Brian Aldiss*
> <https://www.theguardian.com/books/data/book/science-fiction/9780007482047/brothers-of-the-head>
>  (1977)
>
> The counter-factual brought into the realm of pop culture, with
> illustrations by Ian Pollock, in which Tom and Barry Howe, a pair of
> conjoined twins with a third dormant head, are sprung from their home by
> entrepreneurs and fashioned into a combo called the Bang Bangs. The
> post-Beatles pop landscape looks set for a radical re-make, until head
> number three starts to make its presence felt. See also the quirky 2005 film
> adaptation by Keith Fulton and Lou Pepe
> <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0432260/>.
> 8. *The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon*
> <https://www.theguardian.com/books/data/book/fiction/9780007150939/the-yiddish-policemens-union>
>  (2007)
>
> Another version of mid-century American history in which Roosevelt neither
> loses to Lindbergh nor signs a peace treaty but recommends that a Jewish
> state should be established not in Israel but Alaska ("Alyeska"). Cue an
> inspired criminal caper, written in the style of 1940s noir, in which
> detective Meyer Landsman pursues a murder enquiry back to what looks like a
> Jewish version of the mafia.
> 9. *Idlewild by Mark Lawson*
> <https://www.theguardian.com/books/data/book/fiction/9780330344500/idlewild>
>  (1995)
>
> More Americana, taking its title from the original name of John F Kennedy
> airport, and following two great early 1960s American casualties – JFK and
> Marilyn Monroe – on through the rest of a tumultuous decade.
> 10. *Dominion by CJ Sansom*
> <https://www.theguardian.com/books/data/book/thrillers/9780330511032/dominion>
> (2012)
>
> The latest despatch from a British mainland overrun by Nazi invaders, in a
> tradition that includes not only Harris but Len Deighton's SS-GB
> <https://www.theguardian.com/books/data/search/results?query=Len+Deighton+SS-GB&searchBy=all> (1978).
> In Sansom's version the story is wound on to 1952, in a world where Britain
> sued for peace after Dunkirk, a stooge government along Vichy lines keeps
> the populace in line and Churchill is busy masterminding a resistance
> movement.
>
> • DJ Taylor's counter-factual novel, The Windsor Faction, which examines
> the "lost reign" of King Edward VIII, is published by Chatto & Windus.
> Since you’re here …
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> --
>
> Charley
> Desert Sailor
>