Re: RI October 2024

In article <vhlul0$b1ed$1@dont-email.me>,
William Hyde  <wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:

Lynn McGuire wrote:

On 11/19/2024 1:21 PM, William Hyde wrote:

Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:

In article <vhgg0u$1f9mv$1@dont-email.me>,
William Hyde  <wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:

Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:

Here we are again, possibly less late than usual with books from
October.
As is traditional (and possibly required): The links below are Amazon
affiliate ones which could potentially earn me something should you
choose to buy through one.
>
====
>
Acts of War: A World War II Alternative History
(The Usurper's War Book 1)
by James Young
https://amzn.to/3UAZsmc
>
Collisions of the Damned: The Defense of the Dutch East Indies
(The Usurper's War Book 2)
by James Young
https://amzn.to/3AryUx3
>
Here's the first two books of what I believe is to be an alt-hist
WWII trilogy.
>
The jumping off point for this universe is that the British take
out Hitler in a bombing raid on Berlin.  They had no idea where he
was -- it was just one of those lucky accidents of war.  Or, in
this case unlucky accidents of war.
>
Unlucky because taking out Hitler proved a very good thing for the
Germans.  Himmler came in after sidelining Goering (possibly fatally,
I don't quite recall),

>
Plausible enough, but I suspect that "Der Treue Heinrich" would have
been dead in the same ditch as Goering and the generals would have
taken
over, in effect at least.  Perhaps with a nonentity like Hess as
titular
leader.
>
Of the leaders only Goebbels had any talent for backstabbing, but I
don't think the army would put up with him.
>
Besides, if the author wants a German leader who is keen on peace
Goering is the ideal choice.  Having looted to his heart's content, he
was happy to enjoy his wealth and status (and morphine) without the
risks of war.
>
  and said to the Brits basically: Look Hitler

was really a loose cannon and things got out of hand.  What's done
is done, and we're not giving back anything our boys died for, but
is there really any reason we still need to be at war?
>
Churchill said 'yes', but was eventually turfed out in favor of
Eden

>
Let me guess, the author looked up a list of UK cabinet members and
threw a dart?  Eden was well down the list of possible PMs at this
point, with only the war having restored him to the leading circle from
the pariah status he was consigned to in the late 1930s.
>
And if peace broke out certainly an appeaser like Halifax would have
been handed the job.  Might as well say they gave the PM position to
Brendan Bracken.
>
>
  who turned out to be what some people have always suspected

and made peace.

>
And some people think that Washington was George III's illegitimate
son.
>
Or at least I could convince some of that.
>
Sounds like an author to avoid.
>
William Hyde
>

>
No, this is entirely my fault.  Rather than going back to the book
while I was writing the review, I was going on my memory which was
entirely wrong on at least two issues: battle cruiser vs battleship
and Halifax vs Eden.  I don't know why I had Eden on the brain when
I was definitely familiar with Halifax, but it was Halifax who was
the accommodationist PM in this setting, not Eden.

>
Makes sense then.
>
An author not to be avoided.
>
I'm still going to run with the George III thing as soon as I can find
a likely victim.
>
>
>
William Hyde

 
Seeing as George III was born in 1738 and George Washington was born in
1732, that did not happen.

>
So says fake history.
>
William Hyde
>
>

"There is the leaky past, but it cannot leak out fast enough
for safety," Barnaby had taken up his tale again. He always
came as directly as possible to a point, but the point was
often a tricky one. "The staggering corpus of past events,
and of non-central or nonconsensus events, is diminished
swiftly. More and more things that once happened are now
made not to have happened. This is absolute necessity, I
suppose, even though the flesh between the lines (it is, I
guess, the supposedly expunged flesh) should scream from
the agony of the compression.

"Velikovsky was derided for writing that six hundred years
must be subtracted from Egyptian history and from all ancient
history. He shouldn't have been derided, but he did have
it backwards. Indeed, six times six hundred years must be
added to history again and again to approach the truth of
the matter. It'd be dangerous to do it, though. It's crammed
as tight as it will go now, and there's tremors all along
the fault lines. As a matter of fact, several decades have
been left out of quite recent United States history. They
should be put back in for they're interesting, and we
ourselves lived through parts of them--if it were safe to
do so."

"How about the count of the years and their present total?"
Harry O'Donovan asked. "Are they right or are they not? Is
this really the year that it says it is on that calendar
on the wall? And, if it is, doesn't that make nonsense about
leaving out recent decades?"

"The count of the years is true, in that it is one aspect
of the truth," Barnaby said a little bit fumblingly. "But
there are other aspects. They call into question the whole
nature of simultaneity."

"What doesn't?" Harry O'Donovan said.

"There are taboos in mathematics," Barnaby tried to explain.
"The idea of the involuted number series is taboo, and yet
we live in a time that is counted by such a series. And
when time is fleshed, when it puts on History for its
clothes, it follows even more the involuted series in which
there are very, very many numbers between one and ten."

"Just what do you have in mind, Barney?" Cris Benedetti asked him.

"I have never discovered any historical event happening for
the first time," Barnaby said. "Either life imitates anecdote,
or very much more has happened than the bursting records
are allowed to show as happening. As far back as one can
track it, there is history: and I do not mean prehistory.
I doubt if there was ever such a time as prehistory. I doubt
that there was ever an uncivilized man. I also doubt that
there was ever any manlike creature who was not full man,
however unconventional the suit of hide that he wore.

"But when you try to compress a hundred thousand years of
history into six thousand years, something has to give.
When you try to compress a million years, it becomes
dangerous. An involuted number series, particularly when
applied to the spate of years, becomes a tightly coiled
spring of primordial spring-steel. When it recoils, look
out! There comes the revenge of things left out.

"Were there eight kings of the name of Henry in England,
or were there eighty? Never mind: someday it will be recorded
that there was only one, and the attributes of all of them
will be combined into his compressed and consensus story.
--
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..