Alternate Histories

I have been having some interesting conversations with Chas on novels of alternate history-- you know, the ones where a slight change in events results in, eventually, a very different world. He sent me this link to an interesting but ultimately unsatisfying discussion (do read it, perhaps skipping the Hegel, Walter Benjamin, Freud et al-- it IS a bunch of academics-- for some interesting book leads). But I think they find alternate history "right wing" because it is not progressive.

I replied to Chas:

"[The post] Started good, but degenerated-- Walter Benjamin, Hegel, academicism generally, and this priceless line: "Ugh - this is degenerating the same way things always do around here." I probably still will blog it. It has some good notes of books that are forgotten but wonderful, like Keith Roberts' Pavane (gee, I always thought that was rather Catholic [ and can't believe it's still in print!]) and some I haven't heard of but want to see, like the one with the Stooges and Zero Mostel and Peter Lorre working for Brecht...

"Does one consider Steve Stirling "right wing"? He is AFAIK a moderate Democrat, but in the Draka trilogy (easiest to get as The Domination and its sequel) he imagined a society of fascist posthumans so well that a writer who appears to be a Nietzchean neo- fascist insists Stirling is an advocate! Milton & Satan? Stirling ... tempts... those of us with discomforts with industrial civilization. He also shows the possible costs of building a post- human one, in slavery and waste. I don't think I'd like his "fan", though he gives a perversely intelligent analysis..."

Chas replied:

"I thought he reminded me of Heinlein, the one book I read (Conquistador), and Heinlein definitely had romantic-fascist tendencies, if not the full economic policy... I don't think Heinlein is Mussolini, but he likes uniforms (Aphrodite likes Mars) and exults a romantic individualism that some lefties read as quasi-fascist".

Granting that I am more conservative than Chas, at least nominally, I think Stirling tries on different faces. I think Conquistador is a conscious tribute to Heinlein and people like Poul Anderson (he says either in or somewhere about the book how different the attitudes and values of those who fought WW II were from those of us who came after). His semi- fantasy- catastrophist last two novels ( Dies the Fire (excellent) and its sequel that I haven't read yet) show more how the post- WW II generations would react to the loss of our civilization.

The way to approach the Draka stuff is to read the inexpensive pb Drakon first, in which a magnificent female of the master race falls through an artificial wormhole into our world (or one close enough-- Stirling is tricky) and decides to take it over and bring her kind through. ("Something wicked this way comes", as a reviewer said). He really makes anybody with an ecological conscience think "maybe this wouldn't be so bad", despite the overtones. And it is actually funny in places.

Then read the big HB Domination (link above) that collects Marching through Georgia, Under the Yoke, and The Stone Dogs, to see just how hideous the process that resulted in the re- greening of Earth was-- and why it is necessary to oppose-- I don't know, "hard transhumanism"? (For a good treatment of the same meme from the nominal left, try Ken MacLeod's The Cassini Division). "Order the guns and kill!", as Kipling said.

One of the heroes of the second volume of Domination is a martyred Catholic nun.

Also re Stirling-- if , as I am, you are a sucker for anything to do with the Raj and the Great Game, try Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers, a rousing one- off set in still ANOTHER timeline with many knowing winks to fans of the literature of that time and place...