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Title: The Guns of the South
Author: Harry Turtledove
Genre: Alt-history (Civil War)
Thingummies: 3
Synopsis: Time-travelers give the Confederates AK-47s.
Thoughts: I've been trying to decide why I was so lukewarm on this book. (Minor spoilers below.)
It's a clever idea: time-traveling racist Afrikaners try to rewrite history by ensuring that the South wins the Civil War. The research is exhaustive, and Turtledove plays out the scenario in great detail (down to figuring out how the electoral college votes would look for the subsequent presidential race). The protagonists are likeable and show some character growth.
But it left me cold, despite being well-written, and I've been puzzling out why.
I think part of the problem is the pacing. This is a book about following the consequences of an action, so it meanders along discovering ramifications instead of charging along a plot line. It drags in places. Turtledove has an unfortunate habit of including snippets that neither advance the plot nor the characters, but that nag at you as you try to figure out why they were included. (For example, on the way to a ceremony, much ado is made over someone's ring. The ring plays no further part in the story.)
Also problematic is the attempt to make racist Southerners palatable to modern audiences. It's been suggested elsewhere that Lee himself opposed slavery, so it's not much of an anachronism for him to find himself embracing abolitionism after the war. But somehow, all the sympathetic characters find their way to modern views on race by the end of the book, and even many of the less sympathetic Southerners see the logic. Only a few years after they won the war, mind you.
To take the place of real racists, we have the Afrikaners. Who are so uniformly despicable that even the racist Southerners deplore their methods. The Afrikaners are the bogeymen, unrelentingly evil so that the Americans can redeem themselves in record time. Their continued meddling prevents the more interesting ramifications of a Southern win from coming about.
The actual time-travel mechanics are deliberately left vague, which I support in general. However, a couple questions remain. They seem able to travel back and forth, which implies that the future they come from remains stable despite the changes in the past. How do they know if they succeeded? Or is there just a new, different timeline? The time machine is stolen--why has no one else from the future tried to interfere? Finally, their menace seems ended when this side of the machine is destroyed. But the machine had to have worked without a receiving platform the first time. What prevents them from coming back?
It's not a bad book. But while the ideas are fun to ponder over, I feel as if it ultimately undercuts its own premise.
Author: Harry Turtledove
Genre: Alt-history (Civil War)
Thingummies: 3
Synopsis: Time-travelers give the Confederates AK-47s.
Thoughts: I've been trying to decide why I was so lukewarm on this book. (Minor spoilers below.)
It's a clever idea: time-traveling racist Afrikaners try to rewrite history by ensuring that the South wins the Civil War. The research is exhaustive, and Turtledove plays out the scenario in great detail (down to figuring out how the electoral college votes would look for the subsequent presidential race). The protagonists are likeable and show some character growth.
But it left me cold, despite being well-written, and I've been puzzling out why.
I think part of the problem is the pacing. This is a book about following the consequences of an action, so it meanders along discovering ramifications instead of charging along a plot line. It drags in places. Turtledove has an unfortunate habit of including snippets that neither advance the plot nor the characters, but that nag at you as you try to figure out why they were included. (For example, on the way to a ceremony, much ado is made over someone's ring. The ring plays no further part in the story.)
Also problematic is the attempt to make racist Southerners palatable to modern audiences. It's been suggested elsewhere that Lee himself opposed slavery, so it's not much of an anachronism for him to find himself embracing abolitionism after the war. But somehow, all the sympathetic characters find their way to modern views on race by the end of the book, and even many of the less sympathetic Southerners see the logic. Only a few years after they won the war, mind you.
To take the place of real racists, we have the Afrikaners. Who are so uniformly despicable that even the racist Southerners deplore their methods. The Afrikaners are the bogeymen, unrelentingly evil so that the Americans can redeem themselves in record time. Their continued meddling prevents the more interesting ramifications of a Southern win from coming about.
The actual time-travel mechanics are deliberately left vague, which I support in general. However, a couple questions remain. They seem able to travel back and forth, which implies that the future they come from remains stable despite the changes in the past. How do they know if they succeeded? Or is there just a new, different timeline? The time machine is stolen--why has no one else from the future tried to interfere? Finally, their menace seems ended when this side of the machine is destroyed. But the machine had to have worked without a receiving platform the first time. What prevents them from coming back?
It's not a bad book. But while the ideas are fun to ponder over, I feel as if it ultimately undercuts its own premise.
