Halting State and Cowboy Angels

It strikes me as esp. odd that it was not published in the U.S., but was published elsewhere. All else being equal, I would have expected that the market for alternate histories of the U.S. was not very large outside the States. Am I mistaken? My knowledge of SF publishing outside the U.S. is not what it should be (thank you, Internet, for giving me cause to write sentences like that last).

So far as I can tell, American readers of alternate history are all over the political map. Both readers and writers range from fairly far left to fairly far right.

By coincidence, I just picked up Halting State here in Australia, which is in the UK imperial zone for such things (matching our de jure but not de facto status). I endorse Henry’s recommendation, though it will be hard for Stross to match Accelerando, I think.

Stross’s “Atrocity Archives” – a mixture of Len Deighton, Dilbert, and Lovecraft, is well worth the time, even for those disappointed by Iron Sunrise. Though I must register astonishment that “pure pulp” is anything other than a sterling recommendation.

I am in the middle of Halting State, and greatly enjoying it. I also recommend Vinge’s Rainbows End, which also concerns how “distributed forms of collective action are likely to collide with more traditional kinds of state-based politics”.

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.

ajay@10: Accelerando was a collection of short stories, originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, just as Asimov’s original Foundation novel was published in “Astounding Magazine” as a series of shorts.

But maybe you already knew that…

You know, I liked “A Colder War” more than the “Laundry” books: the Lovecraftian Horror has rather more of a punch, with the Laundry books striking me as more comic-bookish and often too far from Lovecraftian canon in ways that sort of suck the tension out of it for me – I mean, the UK’s close circuit television spy camera setup as an Old One bug-zapper using “petrification-vision” or whatever it was?

Still pretty good, though…

As for the others, Accelerando is very impressive, but I couldn’t entirely warm to it – I found that I was reading it more for the infodumps than the plot development. I prefer his “Merchant Princes” series which has less bells and whistles, but does a better job in my opinion of combining plotline with sociological speculation.

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.

Hi Henry,

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.

The alternate history crowd tends to be right to very right wing. Steve Stirling anyone? Or ‘Watch on the Rhine’? If you encounter them on the net, you certainly find that.

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.