I would guess there is a nexus of ‘right wing’ publishers and readers around David Drake (although I like his classical allusions, almost ripoffs to forgive him and I devour most of what he writes), Steve Stirling, Janet Morris, Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven etc. (Janet Morris was an adviser to Newt Gingrich).

I guess Harry Turtledove is more of a Truman-style Democrat? Someone told me Eric Flint (Belisarius novels, also 1631/1632) is a real labour-leftist, but I don’t know.

The genre has some sublime books: my lasting interest in Byzantium comes from L. Sprague de Camp’s ‘Lest Darkness Fall’. Drake and Flint have picked up Belisarius again, but no one can match de Camp for humour and a deft touch (the same is true of his fantasy novels).

And there is ‘The Man in the High Castle’ by PK Dick, and ‘The Iron Dream’ by Norman Spinrad. I think Algys Budrys did one too—about a US under German and Japanese occupation?

Stross. I liked Singularity Sky not so much, and Iron Sunrise very much, in the sense it was an almost EE Doc Smith ‘I cannot put this down’ read. He even makes truly creepy space Nazis. (you know it’s space opera, when you have space Nazis). He’s a good society-builder too.

Stylistically he needs work. Too much explication. Characters not all believable or even rounded. I’ll get to Accelerando. His ability to seque from humour to horror and back again is quite special.

I think the concept behind Atrocity Archives/ Jennifer Morgue (ironic spy, trapped in bureaucracy, fighting Cthulu?) is so brilliant that I’ll stick with it, through and thin.

Stross I think may get better. He has had an incredible burst of productivity (something like 7 books in 4 years?) and his style needs polishing. Almost too many ideas, and too little development of the implications.

18: I am so, so not rising to that one.

Actually—and as I know Dan Goodman knows—there’s a rather tight cluster of jingo authors and wannabes within the alternate history genre who fit your description rather well. Most are Republican-Glibertarian, but there’s a Lieberman Democrat and a bellicose Trot in there too. They’ve made an active effort to drive away alternate history readers who disagree with them ideologically. (Although one has pandered to the Wicca and SCA sets in order to make up the difference.) If you follow Charlie’s blog, they’re some of the more barking mad commenters.

Wish I could agree with you more about Charlie’s stuff. I like Charlie, and he’s a fun guy online, but if this were the 1980s, he’d be somewhere between Barrington Bayley and Crawford Kilian.

Poor, poor devils.

(I would say the same of those who are so hostile to well-executed space opera to discount the Iron Sunrise/Singularity Sky books, but I’m a polite fellow. Especially to my host.)

So you did, Henry, when I searched for it. So I retract my previous comment about “no love”. I am looking forward to the new one coming out at the end of this month. I don’t buy too many novels in HC (too expensive). The Merchant Princes are among those few that I do.

Still pretty good, though…

Posted by Henry

A Colder War is great; the best of his horror/SF/fantasy mixture to date.

But maybe you already knew that…

Stross’ success seems to be that he simply just up and does it. Every day.

And no one has given any love to his “Merchant Princes” novels, which are science fiction with alternate histories and a strong grounding in, of all things, economics.

That is what introduced me to Stross, and I still need to catch up on his full oeuvre.

BTW, I agree with the criticism of Iron Sunrise, but I would like to find out what happens to the Eschaton.

And I would really like to know how Stross writes so much.

We can dream, can’t we?