Tales From Alternate Earths - featuring eight authors exploring alternative history - is now available for pre-order on Amazon. You can pick it up here: myBook.to/Alternate
Ahead of the launch, we sent out advance review copies to several readers - and the first review, by author E.M Swift-Hook, is already here!
So, don't take our word for what the new anthology is like... take hers. Without further ado, welcome guest blogger E.M. Swift-Hook:
Tales From Alternate Earths - Inklings Press. Pre-Publication Review. My Rating - 5 Stars
There is surely no other step-child in the weird and wacky
family that makes up the genre known as 'Speculative Fiction', which is better
suited to the short story format than alternative history. It allows an author
to hone in on a point, even a single moment, in history and ask 'what if
something different happened?' The answer is often not one that needs volumes
to explore, but is better left to clever tending by an expert of bonsai
literary expression. This anthology is a veritable greenhouse of such
well-shaped bonsai.
Nuclear war actually having happened is the theme taken up
by two of the authors, but with very different time points: 'September 26th,
1983' by Jessica Holmes and 1962 for 'One World' by Cathbad Maponus. One
explores how Britain might be today if a Russian officer had not used cool
headed common-sense back in the Eighties and the other is set in an America
where the Cuban Missile crisis reached another possible conclusion.
"So, you said Oxford Street. This is Oxford Street.
Anything special you want to see?"
Meteor strikes impacted enough to inspire the work of three
of the authors in the anthology. 'Stargazing on Oxford Street' by Rob Edwards, has
a view of how London could be which is very different to the one we have today.
'Tunguska, 1987' by Maria Haskins provides a totally original take on the
cataclysmic event that flattened miles of forest in an isolated corner of the
vast Siberian hinterland. 'Twilight of the Mesozoic Moon' by Brent A Harris
& Ricardo Victoria is set in an almost unrecognisable alternative present
day earth, but then the timeline as it is pictured here diverged in geological
not historical time.
Away from the terrors of technology or the impact of astronomical objects, 'Treasure Fleet'
by Daniel Bensen and 'One More Dawn' by Terri Pray both pose interesting and very human 'what-ifs?'.
'Treasure Fleet' considers the idea of a medieval China converted to Islam and
'One More Dawn' is set in Ancient Egypt as a dying Pharaoh is tended by his
loving wife.
“Um,” said Ogilvy, “I would say the chances are around a
millio...”
Having a favourite in such a strongly written anthology as
this is almost as impossible as having a favourite child - and may even be just
as unethical, I am not sure. But I have to admit that I do have one: 'The
Secret War' by Leo McBride. It is the one story that does the utterly
unexpected and turns the idea of alternative history as approached by all the
other stories in this collection completely on its head: what if a famous
fictional story was really true? And then, when we have been brought to realise
the impact of that, the author cleverly - and seamlessly - ties it into an
equally famous real world event.
This collection of historical 'what ifs?' are each a
near-perfect miniature cameo and a genuine delight. I can highly recommend it
to all connoisseurs of speculative fiction, no matter which branch or
sub-branch of the genre is their preferred regular perch. I think the only negative criticism I could offer
is that the anthology includes more than one story drawing on the same actual
event or very similar scenario. I think I might have possibly enjoyed the book
just that little bit more if each story was tackling something unique from all
the others - and the stories I appreciated the most were those that moved away
from the more explored post-apocalyptic tropes and offered unexpected, unusual
'what-ifs?'.
I really enjoyed how
many of the authors pulled in a second - and sometimes even a third - historical
variable, to help expand and explain the events of their stories. All the
contributions are well written and polished, all impacting in their own unique
ways, offering thought-provoking glimpses of how things could have been - IF....
E.M. Swift-Hook
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