What Might Have Been : Volume 1

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Summary: A collection of "What If" stories about Alternative Empires
Review: From the Introduction to ""What Might Have Been: Volume I" that the first example of what we know call "alternative history" (the genre formerly and also known as "parahistory," "metahistory," and "uchronia") was invented in 1836 by Louis-Napoleon Geoggroy-Chanteau's "Napoleon and the Conquest of the World, 1812-1823" that told how Napoleon's decision not to stay in Moscow as winter drew near saved the French army and allowed him to establish the first world empire. Fittingly, this first volume in the "What Might Have Been" series is devoted to alternate empires, although there is a wide latitude for deciding what that term means.

Poul Anderson's "In the House of Sorrows" has Jerusalem falling to the Sennacherib's siege in 701 B.C.E. so that the Disapora occurs before the start of Christianity. The story follows a courier from North Markland (America) who visits a Palestine where a multitude of religions compete for believers make an ironic point about the Holy Land today. Kim Stanley Robinson's "Remaking History" starts with Operation Eagle Claw successfully rescuing the American embassy hostages in Tehran in 1980 and ends with a film company on the moon remaking the classic DeNiro film "Escape from Teheran." Harry Turtledove's "Counting Potshards" goes back to ancient Greece where this time Xerxes leads his Persians to victory, which prevents the spread of democracy. Several centuries later a member of the Persian court is sent to Greece to learn the name of the forgotten Greek king that Xerxes defeated. George Alec Effinger tells the requisite American Civil War story with "Everything But Honor," in which Robert E. Lee accepts the command of the Federal army offered him by Abraham Lincoln. This means that the Civil War is quickly over with the Confederacy being defeated and Lincoln never gets around to issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. A black physicist, living in the Imperial Germany of 1938, goes back in time to make Lee follow a different path to make things better. This is my favorite in this collection.

Editor Gregory Benford's effort, "We Could Do Worse," goes back to 1952 and has Senator Richard Nixon throw the support of the California delegation at the Republican Convention behind Robert Taft instead of Dwight Eisenhower. Instead of becoming Vice President, Nixon gets Joe McCarthy to be Taft's running mate. When Taft sudden dies, "Tailgunner Joe" is now the president and institutes a police state. A nice idea but Benford basically makes this one more of a bad joke. "To the Promised Land" by Robert Silverberg is a story where the Exodus failed in 1270 B.C.E. and now 4000 years later the few remaining Hebrews in Egypt plan to leave earth to find their promised land in space. "Bible Stories for Adults, No. 31: The Covenant" has a computer attempting to put back together the shards from the broken tablets that Moses brought down from the mountain with God's commandments. The interesting point here are the problems the computer finds with the Ten Commandments.

Nixon pops up again in Barry N. Malzberg's "All Assassins" where Nixon is elected president in 1960 but Lyndon B. Johnson wins in both 1964 and 1968. Now it is and the "Senator" is running again. But because he no longer supports the war in Vietnam, a man named "Lee" has big plans for when the candidates comes to Dallas. Clearly this is one of those alternative histories where what really happened happens, but later. Karen Joy Fowler's "Game Night at the Fox and Goose" has a modern women traveling to a time when the world was more equitable. "Waiting for the Olympians" by Frederick Pohl is a world where Jesus was not crucified for sedition and the Roman Empire never feel. Now, two thousands years later, with aliens about to show up a science fiction author cannot understand why he should be writing a "What If?" book. Larry Niven's "The Return of William Proxmire" provides a fitting conclusion for the volume. Here the big twist is that Robert Heinlein did not resign from the navy, so Senator Proxmire, concerned with the money being spent, tries to destroy NASA by going back in time to stop Heinlein from becoming a Science Fiction writer. A nice tribute to Heinlein for having inspired a generation of scientists to shoot for the moon and beyond, even more fitting because the author gave Niven permission to use his name in this story shortly before Heinlein died.

This is the first of several volumes in the "What Might Have Been" series, the next of which is devoted to alternate heroes. As always it is a mixed bag, but for fans of alternative histories that is pretty standard. Digging through Volume I for the good ones is worth the effort.