Rating: 
Summary: The best of all possible worlds
Review: This is good stuff. I haven't read any of Steve Stirling's other novels (yet), but I know who he is and I've had him on my to-read list for quite a while. I'm glad I started with this one.Murray Leinster launched this whole alternate-history thing a half-century and more ago with his short story 'Sidewise in Time'. Since then there have been lots of attempts -- some successful, some not so much -- to render convincing alternate and/or parallel histories; Ward Moore's _Bring the Jubilee_ is probably one of the best known, and Harry Turtledove is generally regarded as the reigning king of the genre. Stirling holds a place of honor as well, and this book illustrates why. It's a well-researched, well-paced, well-told adventure tale that involves a good deal of plausible alternate history but doesn't depend on it at the expense of characterization and plot. The setup is nice. In 1946, John Rolfe VI, a WWII veteran living in California, does something in his basement with a shortwave set -- and suddenly one end of his basement is covered with what looks like a wall of liquid mercury. On the other side is . . . well, you'll just have to read it and find out, won't you? Suffice it to say that what happens next has some long-term consequences. We check in on them in 2009, when fish and game warden Tom Christiansen is investigating some illegal activities involving a whole lot of ivory and a live California condor. Among the evidence he and his team collect, there's an odd photograph (clearly a fake, right? Riiiiiight) of some Aztec priests wearing Grateful Dead T-shirts . . . And the rest is (alternate) history. No spoilers; all the stuff I've mentioned here is in the first twenty pages of the book. I like Stirling's style, too. He makes me think of Jerry Pournelle (who is credited in the acknowledgements, and who has previously done some cowriting with Stirling). In fact the narrative tone reminds me a bit of Pournelle and Niven in _Lucifer's Hammer_, although I'm not sure I could say exactly why. Anyway, a nice read and one of the finer entries in recent SF. If you like well-written alternate history novels, this will probably be your cup of tea.
Rating: 
Summary: just a comment
Review: This is my first Stirling book and I'm not through with it yet. I've read a lot of sci-fi and I guess this is fairly good but his references to popular culture are kind of annoying. Al Stewart for heaven's sake? This is supposed to be set in 2009! But the funniest one is his continued reference to "safari wear" from Banana Republic. Someone needs to tell Mr. Stirling that Banana Republic dropped the safari format many years ago! As far as "alternate history" goes I'm not sure this even classifies in that category since it really involves an alternate world, not what might have been in this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Solid Parallel Worlds Story
Review: This is solid entertainment from the prolific S.M. Stirling. As with several of his other books, this is an adventure story set in a parallel history. In this case, the parallel world is one in which Alexander the Great lived until he was elderly and neither Europe nor China developed technologically advanced civilizations. The Western Hemispheres remains untouched by invaders from the Eastern Hemisphere until an accident propels someone from our timeline (or one very similar to it) into the equivalent of California. This individual founds a semi-feudal society but based on low population density and modern technology. Knowledgeable readers will recognize echoes of other parallel worlds stories, particularly H. Beam Piper's Kalvan series, which is referred to several times in his story. The idea of a technologically advanced second chance at civilization on Earth which offers humans a high standard of living and preserves much of the natural worlk is a recurrent theme in Stirling's books. This is at least the third time he has used this idea. This is an enticing idea which he examines well. Unfortunately, Stirling's recycling of themes and plots is becoming repetitive. He is a very competent writer and an imaginative thinker, but is perhaps writing too many books.
Rating:
Summary: Two very different histories threaten to crash together
Review: This novel of alternate history is set in 1946, in an alternative America where the white man is about to discover America. Oakland ex-soldier John discovers a portal between alternate worlds, a 21st century game warden discovers an impossible historical juxtaposition, and two very different histories threaten to crash together in this story of discovery and challenge.
Rating:
Summary: Good...boring...ok
Review: Well,
That's how I viewed this book. Basically in 3 parts. The first part of the book is pretty darn good. The history of the discovery of the "Gate" into an alternative America. How it happened, and what was done when its potential was realized is pretty fascinating. Then, later...how a couple of pretty interesting game wardens who are fighting illegal trade in exotic animal species, happen onto the discovery. Very, suspensful and intriguing...just like advertised on the cover. Things are going good, I can't quit reading. They have just went through the "gate" and are now in this alternative world...and then, things...just...slow...down. I had read the first 276 pages in one or 2 days. I found myself on page 400 about a week and a half later (it's a 600 page book.) I know exactly when things started slowing down, because I looked back to try and figure out where I lost interest. Right around page 277, chapter 10. When they get into this new world, the next 200 pages involve..."Wow, look at that huge redwood"..."So, this is what things would look like with no cities"..."I could get used to this"..."beautiful hollyhocks, sycamores, live oaks"..."Would ya look at the size of that fish"..."I could really like it here"..."Man, the food is really good"..."Wouldya look at those marshes"..."I could get used to this"..."look at those wild grasses and flowers, they are pretty much extinct now"... 200 pages. Thats a whole book! I know, cuz I remember when I got interested in the book again...Chapter 19. Now, I understand Mr Stirling is trying to show what America woulda been like if there were no white men just mucking up everything. Ok...Make your point, and move on. 200 pages of "wow, wouldya just look at the size of that tree," gets a little old. Don't try and impress me with your horticulture knowledge...hell, I own a landscape business fer chrissakes! Get on with the story. The environmental sermon, or fantasizing...I can do without. Well, I coulda prolly done without 150 pages of it. Almost stopped reading the book altogether...but, I sucked it up and it finally got better...a little. The last section was ok. Not as good as the first 277 pages, but, much better than the middle 200 pages. Things started getting interesting with an internal power struggle going on with the "families" who now resided on this side of the "gate." Conflicts and alliances with several Indian tribes. A trek to an outpost training insurgents, a final battle for control of the gate, etc. Not the greatest action or drama I ever read. But, after the horticultural/zoological tour in the middle section...at least you didn't fall asleep, right away. Environmentalists might like this. Basically it's their dream come true. "If there just weren't so many humans around, what a much better world this would be." So, if you've ever thought that way...that the world would be much better off without those "other humans" around, you prolly would enjoy this. Personally, I think the world is better off, because of all the people in it. A sacreligious viewpoint with some of my environmentalist friends. I want to give this 2.5 stars, cuz it aint a horrible book. Just a little boring. I decided to round down cuz it really didn't keep me interested in the outcome. Anyway, I have read his "Island in the Sea of Time" series. Thought they were great. Much better than this.
Rating:
Summary: Intriguing and morally challenging
Review: When California game preserve officer Tom Christiansen comes across a smugglers warehouse that includes a California Condor unrelated to any other Condor, he is suspicious, but dismisses his theories as science fiction dreams. But when he follows up with another raid and finds a long-extinct dodo, he knows that his SF readings haven't been completely in vain. There's something out there and he intends to get to the bottom of it. Unfortunately for Tom, what there is out there is a parallel universe where Columbus never sailed to the new world, but where twentieth century dimension travellers have relaunched the diseases and wars of conquest that parallel the genocide European explorers created in our own universe. To preserve their secret, the conquistadors of this parallel world abduct Tom and his friend Tully across the dimensional gateway. Once in the new universe, Tom faces a problem. His abductors have created a pirate kingdom, genocided the native population, and created an almost all white fantasy world of a near-pristine California. Worse, many of the settlers were disgruntled whites fleeing African, Indochinese, and Algerian colonial ventures. Yet, Tom's abductors are the goodguys. A cabal of Africaneers dreaming of a return to South Africa, and of Russians looking to dominate both universes, threatens to overthrow the (mostly American) pirate government. Can Tom justify throwing in his lot with the Americans--especially as he has fallen in love with one of them? CONQUISTADOR gives a different slant on the parallel universes story. Rather than the single heroic individual (e.g., Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen (see our review)), an entire population migrates. According to the inhabitants, the diseases they introduced were largely involuntary--as was primarilly the case in our own universe. Based on this different approach, CONQUISTADOR is a very different story. Tom Christiansen's vaguely negative feelings toward what he calls the 'pirate kings' allows the reader to cheer him on through an exciting adventure that makes up the final third of the novel. Careful readers, however, will note that the resolution remains a racist white world that continues to commit genocide against the native peoples. Tom has been coopted (by marrying the princess, of course). Finding an even more definite evil has allowed him to assage any moral guilt. I also had some problems with the action sequence. First, once Tom's raiding party discovered proof of the conspiracy, why couldn't they have notified the authorities at once, rather than shooting it out with dozens of heavily armed soldiers? Whether Adrienne's final action at the gate is morally justified can certainly be argued. Author S. M. Stirling has created an intriguing world--a world where ex-soldiers play at hunting, genocide, and cowboys-and-Indians. Perhaps Stirling's message is that even basically good people like Tom can be coopted by evil, as long as they see that they are doing some good. Or perhaps the message is that a feudal militaristic dictatorship would create a world where the environment was preserved (except the people, of course, who were eliminated) and manly men would prevail. It certainly gives the reader pause.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting alternate history novel with a few twists
Review: When John Rolfe VI (descendant of the Virginia colonist and Pocahantas) returns from World War II, he is wounded and dissatisfied with life. But when an accident creates a gateway to another California on a North America white men have never settled, he is quick to take advantage of the situation to lead his army buddies to settle the brave new world, and later, dissatisfied types from Russia to Rhodesia. Set in 2009, the book switches back and forth from the present, as Rolfe's world of New Virginia faces discovery by a wildlife warden (who almost inevitably is shanghaied through the gateway) as well as incipient revolt by some New Virginians to the past, giving us episodes in New Virginian history. As we explore a world which seems a conservative's paradise--quiet towns with patriotic citizens doing National Service, kids in school uniforms, etc.--the best that we can conclude that Rolfe is probably better than those who seek to overthrow him. This despite disease-generated genocide caused (often unintentionally) by the New Virginians among the native people, and the threat of ecological disaster caused by their introduction of exotic plants. Stirling lays these before our eyes and lets us draw our own conclusions. Contains several jokes for the Science Fiction fan--for example, the Afrikaners we meet late in the book share their names with Afrikaner characters from Turtledove's "The Guns of the South" and the sign outside Ralph's restaurant is a play on the sign outside Hugh Farnham's establishment at the end of Heinlein's "Farnham's Freehold". The appendix is very useful, not only for laying out the basis of the alternate history, but also in telling us one fact about Rolfe's original world that the careful and knowledgeable reader might figure out--but might not. It is not necessary to the plot, but interesting to know--but I won't disclose it here, though there is a clue to it in this review. But you get the clue very early in the book, so I'm not giving away anything. Recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Thrilling and thought-provoking
Review: With Conquistador S.M. Stirling maintains and builds on the standard his readers have come to expect from the author of the Draka and Island in the Sea of Time series. Like Stirling's last offering, The Peshawar Lancers, Conquistador is essentially an Alternate History, although partaking also of elements of other genres such as techno-thriller, action-adventure, crime, utopian romance and even Western. It will be of interest therefore not just to diehard SF and AH fans, but to those who enjoy these other genres.
The tale opens in 1946, when John Rolfe VI, wounded WWII combat veteran and scion of an old (by US standards!) if now impoverished Virginian colonial family accidentally creates a mysterious shimmering silver gateway in the cellar of his Oakland, California, house, whilst tinkering with his radio set (a fine vintage 1940s SF plot device this!) A gate which opens on another America, undiscovered by Europeans, through which Rolfe and those he lets in on his secret can go back and forth at will, even if they have no idea how it works.
It is typical of Stirling's impressive historical erudition and worldbuilding skills that he supplies a detailed, convincing allohistorical rationale for this. A timeline in which Alexander the Great did not die young, but went on to found an empire from the Atlantic to the Bay of Bengal. Whilst Poul Anderson in Eutopia built a hi-tech Hellenistic scientific-industrial 20-Century civilization on this premise, Stirling equally convincingly goes the opposite way. His Hellenistic Eurasian empire has stagnated by 1946 at a medieval level, with quarrelsome successor states surrounded by barbarian tribes, and thus has yet to cross the Atlantic. An Appendix describing in some detail the world thus created is a fascinating addendum to Stirling's tale.
Rolfe and his old Army buddies build their own society on the other side of the Gate, financed by its resources, such as unRushed Californian gold, sold on our side. And peopled by assorted disaffected elements seeking a bolt hole, from postwar East European and German refugees, through French and British colonials dispossessed by the end of Empire in Africa to Boer and Russian malcontents today. Whilst the Native American inhabitants are decimated by European diseases accidentally introduced by 20th Century Americans rather than 16th Century Spaniards.
The society John Rolfe and his associates build in their New World is the latest in Stirling's series of thought-provoking fictional alternatives to that of the modern America he inhabits. Like its predecessors, the Domination of the Draka and the societies of the Island series, the socio-political structures are carefully worked out, plausible and interesting. Stirling is clearly fascinated by environmentally-friendly, hierarchical alternative societies. As he has progressed, the dystopian downside of the alternative societies he devises has steadily grown less, to the extent that many will feel that in his latest book it is outweighed by the positive side. Unlike the nightmare slave-state of the Draka, the New Virginia Rolfe builds may well seem to many readers, this reviewer included, a better place to live in many ways than its counterpart on our side of the Gate. Although, as we discover, its inhabitants include villains as evil and ruthless as any.
Then a US Fish and Wildlife Service agent investigating an apparent illegal trade in endangered wildlife products stumbles upon a mystery, One that starts from an inexplicable extra specimen of the extremely rare Californian condor in a blown-up warehouse. That continues via his meeting and becoming involved with Adrienne, the glamorous and talented wild card of the Rolfe family pack. And ends in the secret of her other world, and its own secret enemy within, an enemy that menaces both her world and ours.
En route escaping death at the hands of post-Soviet mafiya hoods, and their Sicilian originals, on the mean streets of our America and at the guns of hostile Indians in a desert canyon of another world's West. Passing from the humdrum offices of US Government bureaucrats to the elegant mansions of the aristocrats of another America, from the polluted urban sprawl of our LA to the small towns, yeoman farms and wildlife-filled wilderness of an alternative California.
S.M. Stirling's latest book managed the not inconsiderable feat of keeping this reader on the edge of his seat whilst making him think. Heartily recommended, both as an exciting, page-turning adventure story and a thought-provoking exploration of historical, social and political alternatives to our own world.
| 
