Roads Not Taken

Rating:
Summary: GREAT STORYTELLING
Review: A brilliant collection of unforgettable short stories that transports the reader to fascinating scenarios of alternate history. Every single one of these stories entices our imagination and create plausible alternate timelines that seem alien yet oddly familiar.

Rating:
Summary: Some real gems
Review: A broad introduction to the genre and authors of speculative history writing, where the emphasis here is on speculative events rather than technologies. Several superb stories that touched my emotions include Silverberg's sensitive love story where a modern Roman Imperia backstory is hardly the issue. A disturbing time travel situation in "Colonial" America, leisurely developed by Flynn, has a real feel to it because description of nature gives a solid context for the philosophizing. An hilarious twist on "war games" of every sort by Wolfe (in the vein of the free-associating style of Douglas Adams) is, as with all stories here, the more enjoyable the more you know of history. One of my favorite "alternative" authors, Turtledove's story unfortunately exhibits his stiff dialogue in an academic's leftist view of "fascist" America, as especially does Prof. Benford's trifle about the left's whipping boy, Nixon. Between those alphas and omegas are five other stories among which you are sure to find striking twists and ironies. Also, if you want to get the "feel" of an old "pulp book," this will do fine.

Rating:
Summary: A good collection
Review: A good sampling of alternate histories, Gene Wolfe's contribution especially, but not the best out there. I enjoyed it but not enough to keep for myself and passed it on to a friend, prefering other, meatier collections.

Rating:
Summary: A good collection
Review: A good sampling of alternate histories, Gene Wolfe's contribution especially, but not the best out there. I enjoyed it but not enough to keep for myself and passed it on to a friend, prefering other, meatier collections.

Rating:
Summary: Didn't catch
Review: After about 100 pages, I just simply found a lot of the stories hard to follow. I kept asking myself "What happened that led to the events that I'm reading about to occur?" For example, the one what if "What if the South wasn't defeated in the Civil War?" I was wondering the exact sequence of events, and was left hanging. In short, there's better out there.

Rating:
Summary: Didn't catch
Review: After about 100 pages, I just simply found a lot of the stories hard to follow. I kept asking myself "What happened that led to the events that I'm reading about to occur?" For example, the one what if "What if the South wasn't defeated in the Civil War?" I was wondering the exact sequence of events, and was left hanging. In short, there's better out there.

Rating:
Summary: Fine introduction to alternate history style
Review: Although some of these stories are pretty good, the majority are either boring, corney, or even distasteful. I am an avid AH reader and I would not recommend this book to anyone new to AH or even those like me who have read other books on the subject.

Rating:
Summary: Not Recommended
Review: Although some of these stories are pretty good, the majority are either boring, corney, or even distasteful. I am an avid AH reader and I would not recommend this book to anyone new to AH or even those like me who have read other books on the subject.

Rating:
Summary: Great intro to Uchronia for me
Review: By far, the two best stories were among the book's longest: Michael F. Flynn's "The Forest of Time" and L. Sprague de Camp's "Aristotle and the Gun." A couple of the shorter ones were forgettable or incomprehensible. Several were merely above average. I loved the premise of Harry Turtledove's "Must and Shall," but the execution was not on par with the ones I cited above.

Rating:
Summary: Some great stories.
Review: Dozois is known for editing Asimov's & the year' best series while Shmidt is the editor of Analog. Anyway this experience makes them pretty good at choosing great stories. From masters of alternate history like DeCamp & Turtledove, to others better known for other kinds of work. Stories for all sorts of taste & if you like their tastes maybe you'll like the magazines they edit. I bet that's what they are hoping for anyway, but I for one hope that their plan works.