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From: brucec@tekecs.UUCP (Bruce Cohen)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Alternate time zones
Message-ID: <1943@tekecs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 26-Aug-83 17:02:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: tekecs.1943
Posted: Fri Aug 26 17:02:46 1983
Date-Received: Mon, 29-Aug-83 00:43:38 EDT
References: utcsrgv.2093
Lines: 41

Odd coincidence, that Stephen Perelgut just re-read "Paratime", since
I finished re-reading it just before starting reading this series of
articles last week.

Anyway ...  as long as we're talking about history-changing stories.
I thought I'd mention a few more of the ones that I consider
classics.  First and foremost in my mind, though I haven't even seen a
copy in years, is Ward Moore's "Bring the Jubilee," about a secret
plot to change the history of Confederate-dominated 20th Century America.
The thing that makes this story so good is the detail in the
differences in history, and the care with which the characters are
developed in the context of those differences.

On a somewhat less literary plane, there is the trilogy by Richard
Meredith: "At the Narrow Passage," "No Brother, No Friend," and (oops,
forgot the title of the other one).  This is the story of a man
recruited from a time-line similar to ours into a war between two
forces moving into the human-inhabited time lines from opposite sides.
These books (as Meredith acknowledges) are indebted to Piper's Paratime
stories for much of the concept of the (para)physics of timelines.
Where Piper seems to have had an idea of a linear segment of timelines
(or maybe a ray, it's not clear),  Meredith's idea is an infinite line,
with timelines stretching off to the Temporal East and West (political
analogy may have been intended).  He also wrote a story called "Run,
Come See Jerusalem," which I have not read, but from the cover blurb,
it would seem to be about trying to erase the history of a future
theocracy.

Hmm ... there are a lot more than I though when I started.  OK, I'll
mention one more: a short novel called "Two Dooms," by Cyril
Kornbluth, written shortly before he died.  It investigates the
question of what would have happened if the Axis powers had won the
Second World War, and may have been the first story to do that [you'll
correct me if that surmise is wrong].  I'm fairly sure that it was
part of the inspiration for "The Man in the High Castle" which was
published 5 years later.

				Bruce Cohen
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