Alternate Generals 3

Edited by Harry Turtledove

Hardcover - 320 pages
Baen; ISBN: 0743498976

When you start out with an image of General Grant and the Great General Grant in their uniforms, ready to wage war against each other in the Roman Civil War, you got to figure the stories are going to be pretty good.

Turtledove's third alternative military history anthology easily shows the talent and courage of this genre’s creators. Yes, I was sort of disappointed that there was no story of Grant and the Great General Lee in this book, there are a number of stories that are just as good as the one I envisioned in my head, including one with Robert E. Lee as the ambassador to Britain of a victorious but widely hated Confederacy, in Lee Allred's "East of Appomattox."

Chris Bunch's alternative Vietnam War story, "Murdering Uncle Ho" , makes some interesting parallels with a few very modern situations as well as providing some of the best action sequences of the book.

And Esther M. Friesner's "First, Catch Your Elephant" certainly gives a different view of Hannibal, as he gets ready to invade Rome.  

Harry Turtledove is the king of Alternate History; in this third book he has collected stories using characters as varied as Joan of Arc to Marc Antony to Westmoreland, and even Jesus Himself, and moves from the Middle East to France to the United States with an ease that keeps the reader deeply involved in each story.

And one of the things that always makes an anthology fun to read is the fact that almost no one can say the ‘love’ every story. Some you will like more, some less; some you will wonder why they were even written.

That is just as true here. While not all the stories were ones that I just have to gush over, I always knew that in just a few pages I would be involved in another adventure with another set of characters and heroes.

But, even with this Harry Turtledove almost never fails in his selections of stories for the Alternate History books he has done. Each tale offers a history buff a number of new ideas to toy with and tinker with and play with until they come up with their own alternate version of how things might have been, had this been different, or that horse been there or those three extra boxes of MRE’s been found in time.

And that is one of the true joys of Alternate History and one of the joys of reading a book like this. I just wonder now who the next one will be about.

List of contents:

A.M. Dellamonica  A Key to the Illuminated Heretic

James Fiscus  The Road to Endless Sleep

William Sanders Not Fade Away

John Mina   I Shall Return

Harry Turtledove Shock and Awe

Brad Linaweaver A Good Bag

Mike Resnick The Burning Spear at Twilight

Roland Green  "It Isn't Every Day of the Week"

Judith Tarr Measureless to Man

Lillian Stewart Carl  Over the Sea from Skye

Esther Friesner First, Catch Your Elephant

Lee Allred East of Appomattox

Chris Bunch  Murdering Uncle Ho