Archive for the ‘Alternate History’ Category

THE ASTOUNDING, THE AMAZING, THE UNKNOWN by Paul Malmont

THE ASTOUNDING, THE AMAZING, THE UNKNOWN by Paul Malmont is a celebration of science fiction’s golden years via the pulp magazine ethos. Taking place in 1943, it recounts a story partially based in fact about how the guiding lights of science fiction’s heyday were brought together by the military and tasked with making science fiction real in order to defeat the Nazis. Virtually all the authors who were the mainstays of science fiction and fantasy from 1930’s through the 1960’s are there.

July 22, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: Alternate History, Mystery/Suspense, Real Event Fiction, Speculative (Beyond Reality)

THE TRAGEDY OF ARTHUR by Arthur Phillips

The very first thing I did after finishing The Tragedy of Author – Arthur Phillips’s ingenious faux-memoir – was to Google to see what was true and what wasn’t…only to find that much of Phillips’s traceable past has been erased.

Did he really have a gay twin sister named Dana, a scam artist father who spent his adult life in prison, a Czech wife and twin sons of his own? Methinks not. What I do know is that Arthur Phillips shares his birthday with the Bard himself, that he was born in Minnesota, and that he is indeed a writer to be watched very carefully. Because what he’s accomplished in this novel – er, memoir – is sheer genius.

June 24, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , , ,  Â· Posted in: 2011 Favorites, Alternate History, Contemporary, Identity

ON STRANGER TIDES by Tim Powers

My review is of a paperback reprint of a Tim Powerss novel, ON STRANGER TIDES, first published to a good deal of critical acclaim in 1987. No doubt the success of the new movie, “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” inspired the reprint.

June 12, 2011 · Judi Clark · Comments Closed
Tags: , , ,  Â· Posted in: Alternate History, Award Winning Author, Caribbean, Speculative (Beyond Reality), Time Period Fiction

JANE AND THE MADNESS OF LORD BYRON by Stephanie Barron

In JANE AND THE MADNESS OF LORD BYRON, by Stephanie Barron, Jane and her brother, Henry, embark on an expedition to the seaside to recover their spirits after the passing of Henry’s wife, Eliza. In the spring of 1813, Brighton was a “glittering resort and “the summer haunt of expensive Fashionables,” including the profligate Prince Regent and his cronies. Although Jane is at first is aghast at the thought of staying in a vulgar place devoted to “indecent revels,” she realizes that “Henry would never survive his grief by embracing melancholy.” In fact, “Brighton, in all its strumpet glory, was exactly what he required.”

December 26, 2010 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , , ,  Â· Posted in: Alternate History, Sleuths Series, Time Period Fiction, United Kingdom

MASTER SIGER’S DREAM by A. W. Deannuntis

Reading A.W. Deannuntis’ debut novel, MASTER SIGER’S DREAM, put me in mind of the John Kennedy Toole masterpiece A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES. The epigraph for that book – When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him – could easily do service here. In the role of the genius is 13th century philosopher Siger of Brabant, with the dunces being played by the Bishop of Paris, Etienne Tempier, the Papal Legate, Simon De Brion, and various anonymous sadists of the Roman Catholic Inquisition.

November 16, 2010 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: ,  Â· Posted in: Alternate History, Character Driven, Debut Novel, Humorous, Real Event Fiction, Unique Narrative

CHALCOT CRESCENT by Fay Weldon

Two things about British novelist Fay Weldon: she will always be controversial and she will always be relevant.

October 15, 2010 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: Alternate History, Award Winning Author, New Zealand, Political, Satire, Speculative (Beyond Reality)