wot i red on my hols by alan robson (scientia figmentum)

Nothing But SFF – Goodness Me!

Whenever people discuss alternate history novels, the name of Harry Turtledove immediately overwhelms the conversation. He seems to have cornered the field and made it his own. The magazine Publishers Weekly once christened him the master of alternate history and few people would argue with that conclusion. He has dominated the field for what seems like forever and he has a huge number of alternate history novels to his name.

But I think that Robert Conroy is at least as good at writing alternate history stories as is Harry Turtledove and in some cases (sorry for the heresy) he might even be better at it. Unfortunately he is nowhere near as well known as Harry Turtledove, possibly because he was a much less prolific author. Furthermore, his writing career was quite short – his first novel was published in 1995 and he died in 2014.

His novel 1920 - America’s Great War is perhaps one of his best. It assumes that the first world war began and ended in 1914 with a German victory that left the Kaiser in control of most of Europe. After a brief pause to lick its wounds, Germany then uses Mexico as a base from which to launch an invasion of the United States. Setting Germany on a literal path to world domination. It’s an intriguing concept which is nowhere near as outlandish as you might think.

As with all the best alternate history novels, Conroy starts with an event that went one way in the real world and another way in his alternate scenario, and then he builds his story up from there. In this case he assumes that the Battle of the Marne in early 1914 resulted in a victory for the Germans and that they stormed through the allied lines and took Paris. With the French completely defeated and the British armies in a straggling retreat, Europe was effectively under German control and the first world war came to an end.

That almost happened in real life. The Battle of the Marne was a very close run thing indeed -- so close in fact that at one point Parisian taxi cabs were actually drafted to ferry reinforcements and supplies by ones and twos to the front line. That’s how desperate the situation had become. The battle could easily have gone the way that Conroy suggests it did in his novel, and if it had we’d probably have really seen something very similar to the events that Conroy dramatises so effectively in his story. All of this adds to the novel’s air of verisimilitude.

One of the major attractions of reading alternate history novels is the way that the author weaves events and personalities from the real world into the tapestry of the fiction. Conroy is particularly brilliant at this.

In the timeline of the novel (and to a certain extent in real life as well) in the years leading up to 1920 America was quite unprepared for conflict. America’s army, navy and air force were almost non-existent. The pacifistic (and very deluded) President Woodrow Wilson had reduced the armed forces to a bare minimum because he sincerely believed that there would never be any more wars and that peace would now reign eternally. And even when Germany involved itself in the revolution in Mexico and sent troops to fight there, Wilson turned a blind eye to what was happening, remaining convinced that the future would be peaceful, rather than warlike because, of course, Germany was an ally, not an enemy.

In real life Wilson suffered an incapacitating stroke in 1919 and was no longer capable of governing the country. Officials kept the severity of his illness secret from the public and tried to pretend that all was well. He was confined to bed for many weeks and sequestered from everyone except his wife and his physician. His wife effectively took over his presidential duties during his illness to such an extent that some historians have dubbed her the first female President of the United States. Despite his severe ill health, Wilson still attempted to run for presidential office again in 1920 though the party came to its senses in time to prevent that from happening. Wilson died in 1921.

However in Conroy’s novel, Wilson dies in 1919 shortly after suffering his stroke, thus paving the way, after a lot of complicated political manoeuvring, for the more realistic and much more bellicose Secretary of State Robert Lansing to take over the presidency and attempt to undo the harm that Wilson’s pacifist policies had inflicted on the country. It is Lansing who is responsible for directing America’s response to the growing German menace.

One of the deciding factors that forced America enter the real WWI was the interception of the Zimmerman telegram. This was a secret diplomatic communication issued from the German Foreign Office that proposed a military contract between the German Empire and the government of Mexico. With Germany's aid, Mexico would invade and recover their lost territories of Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. The telegram was intercepted and decoded by the British intelligence services who passed details of it to the Americans. The Americans were incensed by this evidence of German perfidy and this direct threat, together with the indiscriminate U-Boat attacks on American ships (most notably the sinking of the passenger liner Lusitania) forced them into a declaration of war against Germany in 1917.

The Zimmerman telegram is also a pivotal event in Conroy’s novel, though it appears a little later in the story than it did in real life. This time it is the Americans who intercept it rather than the British. Again though, the hard evidence of German perfidy is a direct cause of Lansing committing troops to fight against the Mexicans and their German allies.

Once things really get going, a lot of familiar people appear on the scene – MacArthur, Patton and Eisenhower all have significant roles to play in the conflict and Conroy makes very good use of their well-known idiosyncratic traits and warlike personalities. Several other real life people also play a small part in the conflict – both Winston Churchill and Amelia Earhart make cameo appearances.

On balance, the novel is a very accessible and very readable page-turning story. Its characters, both real and imaginary, are plausible and easy to identify with. The historical world of the story feels genuinely lived in, the reasons for the events are well justified and clever enough that the story never seems at all far-fetched. The whole thing is pitched perfectly, very down to earth, very real, and very absorbing.

Although the British are effectively neutral in Conroy’s world, having been soundly trounced at the Battle of the Marne, they remain unofficial allies of America and they are quick to deliver the war supplies that the Americans need so desperately after Wilson’s drastic cuts to the armed forces. If America was left to itself it is quite clear that Germany and Mexico would have easily walked all over them. Among the munitions that the British deliver to the Americans are some quite advanced aeroplanes and also a brand new and very secret weapon, the tank!

In real life the British developed these things quite late in the first world war in an attempt to break the stalemate of trench warfare on the Western Front. Tanks first appeared in small numbers at the Battle of the Some in 1916 but they didn’t really come into their own until the Battle of Cambrai in 1917. Of course in the world of Conroy’s novel, neither of these battles ever took place and because WWI was such a quick, decisive action, which was over almost before it had begun, it never metamorphosed into the static stand-off that the trenches imposed upon the fighting. Consequently, in this world, the British have no real incentive to develop these awesome weapons of mass destruction because, of course, they themselves are no longer at war. Conroy clearly recognises this paradox because he does do a bit of political and economic hand waving to try and justify the work the British have put in to their development, but it’s only superficially convincing at best.

However in the final analysis such overly nit-picking criticisms really don’t matter at all. The willing suspension of disbelief carries a lot of weight in novels like these and Robert Conroy handles that aspect beautifully. 1920 - America’s Great War is an absolute tour de force, one of the best alternate history novels that I’ve ever read. Harry Turtledove, hang your head.

* * * *

Gareth Brown has only written two novels (so far) but both of them are so brilliantly clever that I’m really quite overcome with amazement and awe.

In The Book of Doors we meet Cassie Andrews who works in a bookshop in New York and who lives a pretty uneventful life. One of her favourite customers is an old man she knows as Mr Webber. They talk about books a lot and they grow quite close to each other. One day Mr Webber gives Cassie a gift, a small book called The Book of Doors which is full of odd drawings in strange perspectives together with pages covered with words written in an incomprehensible language. In the front of the book Mr Webber has written a note gifting the book to Cassie and telling her that any door is every door. But Mr Webber’s inscription soon disappears. Words that people write in The Book Of Doors really don’t last very long.

Shortly after giving her the book Mr Webber dies and Cassie is left heartbroken.

Cassie soon discovers that The Book of Doors is literally just what Mr Webber’s inscription said it was – with the book in her hands, any door that Cassie opens can be made to open up on to any place at all. All she has to do is picture where she wants to be in her mind and whatever door she opens will take her there. Initially Cassie is thrilled with the power that the book gives her. She and her room-mate Izzy have a wonderful time exploring the places and possibilities that have now become available to them, though right from the beginning Izzy has her doubts. She is sure that there is a hidden danger involved in using the book and she remains dubious about what they are doing. We soon learn that she isn’t wrong...

Clearly, I thought to myself as I read the scene setting paragraphs that begin the novel, this is going to be a fairly standard portal fantasy story. Cassie and Izzy will do lots of travelling and have adventures in the far-flung and sometimes exotic places that they visit. When the book is long enough the adventures will come to an end and they will live happily ever after.

I could not have been more mistaken. There is so much more going on behind the scenes than you would ever believe. The seeming simplicity of the opening scenes hides a lot of complexity and nothing, absolutely nothing at all, is what it seems at first glance to be. Again and again and again the rug was skilfully pulled from beneath my feet as the plot veered off in a completely unexpected direction. Time after time after time everything that I thought I knew turned out to be completely and utterly wrong. The depth and complexity of the plotting was astonishing.

It soon becomes clear to Cassie and Izzy that The Book of Doors is not the only magical book in the world. There are many other books which can do wondrous and sometimes quite dreadful things. The owners of these books form a secret subculture of shifting alliances, all of them eager to identify and obtain as many books as they can in order to consolidate and extend their power. And all of them, friends and foes alike, now have their sights set firmly on the book that Mr Webber gave to Cassie because, in a very real sense, The Book of Doors can be seen as the one book that rules them all, the one book that binds them. So to speak.

Suddenly Cassie and Izzy are confronted by violence and danger, and the only person who can perhaps help them seems to be a mysterious man called Drummond Fox. He is the curator and guardian of the Fox Library, a repository of magical books eagerly sought after by other book hunters. But Drummond Fox himself has his own demons to contend with. The friends who once helped him keep the Fox Library safe were cruelly murdered by a psychopathic woman (or perhaps Woman – nobody seems to know her actual name) and now Fox is on the run, in fear for his life. He has hidden the library away in shadows and he does not dare to return to it in case he should lose it to his enemies.

The major concerns that drive the plot are the linked questions of just how many magical books are there in the world, and how were they created in the first place? What powers do they have? Where did Mr Webber get The Book of Doors from and just what impelled him to give the book to Cassie on the day that he died? You won’t find the answers to these questions until almost the very end of this long, complicated and completely fascinating novel, and when you do find the answers they will take your breath away.

The Society of Unknowable Objects is not a sequel to The Book of Doors but it is set in the same world and the story has occasional oblique references to the first novel. The book is a stand alone story,  but I strongly urge you to read The Book of Doors first – if you don’t, you will completely miss the point of the epilogue at the end of The Society of Unknowable Objects.

Unknowable objects are magical items and the Society’s purpose is to collect as many objects as its members can find and store them safely away where they can do no harm.

The Society has four members who meet every six months to review the situation. Membership is by inheritance – the grandparents of the current members were the founders of the society. As the story opens, news has come to the Society that a new magical item has been found in Hong Kong, the first new unknowable object to have been discovered for many years. Frank Simpson, the Society’s president, nominates the newest member, Magda, to travel to Hong Kong to retrieve the object.

At first all goes swimmingly. Magda meets James, the man who now owns the object, and finds herself quite smitten with him. But just as they are getting down to brass tacks a man she has never seen before bursts into the room, kills James (temporarily) and takes the object for himself. Magda barely escapes with her life as she flees using an unknowable object of her own. Heartbroken, she returns to London to confess her failure. Here she learns that the purpose of the Society is not all that she thought it was and it isn’t long before she finds herself on the road again in pursuit of the killer who cornered her in Hong Kong. She tracks him down in the deep south of the USA where he himself is in pursuit of a man who cannot die, a man who stole a precious object from him many years before, a man who complains that he has no wings.

Magda soon learns that the man who cannot die was also the man who had killed her own mother ten years before (though he insists it was an accident) and who confiscated her mother’s magical artefacts. Now that he is aware of Magda and her own unknowable object(s) he pursues her relentlessly, attracted by her magic and by her access to so many  other magical items.

The plot is rather more straightforward than that of the first novel, but that does not mean it is not without its surprising twists and turns. There are complications within complications, riddles wrapped in mysteries inside enigmas and the slow unravelling of these is utterly fascinating. The empty secrets of the clockwork cabinet are revealed to be important as is the strange nature of the impossible box and the open ended power of The Book of Dreams. These are terrible secrets that Frank has been hiding from them all. And the man who cannot die is getting closer.

All seems hopeless. Until…

Read it. You’ll love it.

* * * *

Despite the fact that it involves time travel, it is perhaps stretching a point to claim that Keith A. Pearson’s novel In Lieu of You is science fiction. Nevertheless the story could not happen at all without the viewpoint character travelling back in time in an attempt to change course of his life. So perhaps we have to give it the benefit of the doubt.

Gary and Clare Kirk are set to celebrate their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary Gary is a very successful car salesman who is about to be given a businessman of the year award by the city council. His business is worth quite a lot of money and he is sitting pretty. Clare however has fallen down the rabbit hole of new age nonsense and she runs a shamanistic healing centre which is not a great money spinner. Although they were very much in love when they first got together, the years have eroded their feelings for each other. They have no children, and these days they have little in common with each other. Gary’s pragmatism is constantly opposed to Clare’s naive idealism. Perhaps there is no longer any good reason to remain married.

However, Gary’s idea of an amicable divorce settlement differs significantly from Clare’s, and tensions between the couple soon mount. Money, as is so often the case, is at the root of their disagreement. Clare needs money to invest in her shamanistic healing business. She is certain that with an injection of capital she can expand and upgrade the premises which will, she claims, make the business much more successful.

Gary, of course, is not willing to give her the money she is demanding. It will leave him almost destitute.

As Gary explores every possible option to evade (or at least ameliorate) his wife’s financial demands, he finds himself pursued by a rather enigmatic relationship resolution advisor called Edith Stimp who seems eager to give him her advice. She proposes a radical and unorthodox solution to his marital difficulties. She will send him back in time so that he can prevent his younger self from ever meeting Clare in the first place. If they never met then of course they would never have got married and if they never got married they cannot get divorced and therefore Clare will have no financial hold upon him. Perfect! What could possibly go wrong?

I doubt that you will be very surprised to find out just how much can go wrong…

While he is visiting the past, Gary comes up with a brilliant scheme to prevent Clare from meeting him, thus guaranteeing that they won’t get married. So far so good. Next he comes up with an even more brilliant scheme for ensuring that his younger self will become a multi-millionaire so that when he himself returns to the future (his "real" present) he will therefore find himself to be enormously rich and living in clover. To that end he writes a letter of instruction to his younger self and sets off to deliver it. Unfortunately…

When Gary returns from the past he finds that certainly he and Clare have never been married, so to that extent at least his trip to the past was completely successful. Other aspects of his plan however have gone rather awry. He himself is now as poor as a church mouse. He has just been released from prison after serving a sentence for money laundering, he has of course lost his business, and he is working in a minimum wage almost slave-labour job. Clare, on the other hand, has obviously intercepted the letter he wrote to his younger self and as a result of following its instructions she is now the multi-millionaire head of a hugely successful shamanistic healing business. Oh dear…

The obvious solution to this mess is to go back into the past again so that he can fix things up properly this time. Unfortunately that’s against the rules. Edith Stimp is adamant that a second journey into the past will be fatal and she point blank refuses to give him the opportunity. Gary is stuck with what he has and he will just have to make the best of it.

Who is Edith Stimp? How does she come to have access to a time machine? Why does she seem ever more frail and fragile every time Gary meets her? These are very important questions, the answers to which will eventually throw Gary a lifeline, giving him one last chance to recover from the messy situation he’s managed to put himself into in both of his lives.

Despite the SF trappings, this is really a rather romantic novel about relationships and the reasons why some relationships work and others do not. It’s gentle and funny as well as tragic, beautifully observed and very cleverly plotted. Like all the best time travel novels everything hinges on the avoidance of paradox and I could almost hear the clicks as every plot element gradually fell into place and the whole elaborate mechanism came alive and started to hum gently. The logic of the entire thing is brilliantly clever – the author never misses a trick, including some that you are convinced he hadn’t noticed at all, until of course he does.

If you approach this story as a romantic comedy rather than as an SF novel I think you’ll enjoy it hugely. I certainly did!