Worlds that Weren't - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0451458869 ISBN 13: 9780451458865

Publisher: ROC, 2002

Synopsis

Presents a collection of four novellas which explore alternate history, including "The Daimon," in which Sokrates leads his soldiers to victory over the Spartans, and in "The Last Ride of German Freddie," Nietzsche finds himself in Tombstone, Ariz.

About this title

About the Author

Harry Turtledove is the author of numerous novels including Guns of the South and How Few Remain. Nominated for the Hugo and Nebula several times, he's won the Hugo, The Sidewise Award, and the John Esthen Cook Award.

S. M. Stirling is the national bestselling author of Island in the Sea of Time, Against the Tide of Years, and On the Ocean of Eternity. He was born in France and raised in Europe, Africa, and North America. He currently lives in Santa Fe.

Mary Gentle has two MAs in 17th century studies and war. Mary won The Sidewise, plus the British Science Fiction Association Award. Her novels include The Book of Ash quartet and Grunts!

Walter Jon Williams has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards, and has won The Sidewise Award for short fiction. His books include the collection Frankensteins and Other Foreign Devils and the novel City on Fire.

Reviews

What if, in any single moment, history had taken a different turn? In the engaging Worlds That Weren't, bestselling author Harry Turtledove imagines a different fate for Socrates (which he spells Sokrates); S.M. Stirling envisions life "in the wilds of a re-barbarized Texas" after asteroids strike the earth in the 19th century; Sidewise winner Mary Gentle contributes "a piece of flotsam" from her epic Ash a story of love (and pigs) set in the mid-15th century, as European mercenaries prepare to sack a Gothic Carthage; and Nebula nominee Walter Jon Williams pens the tale of Nietzsche intervening in the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
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This hardcover gathering of four alternate-history tales confirms that alternate history is indeed riding high. Turtledove's "The Daimon" is a carefully researched piece featuring the philosopher Sokrates as he considers joining the Athenian expedition against Sicily in 415 B.C.E. The stirring western that S. M. Stirling contributes is set in a Texas that is an outpost of the imperial army of India and has become the center of civilization after the destruction of the British empire. Mary Gentle's anything-but-gentle "The Logistics of Carthage" is about a fifteenth-century female warrior, Yolande, who during a lull in battle is visited by an archaeologist from the far future. Walter Jon Williams' "The Last Ride of German Freddie" is the gunfight at the O.K. Corral--kind of. In it the Earps play minor roles and Doc Holliday, quite the philosopher, is good friends with Friedrich ("Freddy") Nietzsche. All four novellas unfold with almost mathematical precision and are flawlessly executed. Of course, in another way they are all quite mad, and thus hardly for every non-alt-history reader. John Mort
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Edition details

• Publisher: ROC
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0451458869
• ISBN 13: 9780451458865
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 295
• Editor: Walter Jon Williams, Harry Turtledove, Mary Gentle, S. M. Stirling