So what do you think? Should we?

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Priya Sharma’s “After Mary” is set in the mid-1800s and  is the story a scientist with dreams of greatness who lives alone in his country house with only his assistant, Isobel, and servant Myles.  Then his friend comes to the house and leaves a copy of Frankenstein, which changes everything.

“AD 1929” by Douglas W. Texter is a story describing a meeting of artistic guile and criminal muscle. This is a tale of what might have happened if the Italian Futurist F.T. Marinetti had come to America and gone to work for Al Capone.

Meredith Miller is the author of “The Stiff Heart” which draws its title from a poem by Emily Dickinson. Meredith’s piece is a story about life under the surface, in New England in the 1870s where secrets and fears and desires sometimes refuse to behave properly. Not everyone joins in the self-satisfied complacency of this prosperous post-Civil War community.

Micah Hyatt is the author of “The Bridge”. Throughout history men have risked their lives to achieve great feats of engineering: The pyramids of Giza. The Empire State building. The Panama canal. But those who build The Bridge risk their very souls.

“Rotten Parchment Bonds”, the latest story in the Battalion 202 series by Jonathan Doering, features Harold Storey, a quiet man praying for a quiet life after the horror of the First World War trenches. But his prayers are cruelly crushed by the German Invasion of Britain in 1941. As a police officer he is forced to co-operate with Nazi officials and is thrown into moral turmoil by the accommodations that start to be made. But perhaps there is one good man amongst the enemy ranks?

Following Tommy a novel by Bob Hartley

Review by Gordon O’Sullivan

• Paperback: 104 pages
• Publisher: Cervena Bara Press (2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN 978-0-9831041-8-6 

Purchase from:

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Following Tommy is a vibrant fictional portrait of the summer of ’62 by a teenager in Chicago. In a strong opening, the narrator, Jacky O’Day, establishes his family as a poor Irish American family living in a downtrodden part of the city.

Seventeen year old Jacky looks after the family, cooking and cleaning for his father Junior and his brother Tommy. His mother is dead and all that remains of her are the books she left behind.

His father is a shameless drunk, not dissimilar to the character Frank Gallagher from the TV series Shameless albeit without his humour. But it is from his older brother Tommy that Jacky takes his lead. Tommy is a violent, dominant and domineering figure who has a grudge against the world at large. And for Jacky, despite his nagging conscience, where Tommy leads Jacky feels compelled to follow.

Everything changes and the stakes are raised considerably for the O’Days when a black family, the first black family, move into the neighbourhood. Before this Jacky and Tommy were just a couple of teenage petty crooks but Tommy is determined to make a name for himself by driving the new arrivals out no matter the cost to himself of his brother.

Jacky has a clear but tortuous choice: he can continue to follow Tommy down an increasingly dangerous path or he can remove himself completely from Tommy’s orbit.

This debut novel attempts to cover a number of subjects; racism, class and Chicago politics but is at its most successful when Mr Hartley focuses his considerable linguistic fire on the political, social and emotional awakening of the teenage Jacky.

While this gritty narrative covers well-trodden territory with strong echoes for example of James T. Farrell, Hartley’s writing has great integrity and no easy or lazy resolutions are permitted.

While at times Jacky seems enlightened beyond his years, he is still convincing as an intelligent boy who recognises the danger of his situation but is reluctant to do what he knows innately to be right.

The characterisation generally is excellent, with seeming authenticity running through all the characters, especially the minor police characters who are delightfully flawed, pursuing lawbreakers without paying particular attention to the law they’re meant to uphold.

The language is precise, period sensitive and appropriately salty with dialogue that shines in often witty interaction between characters, in particular between the O’Day brothers and their cousin Hippo.

Following Tommy also has an authentic sense of time and place in its vibrant descriptions of the streets and markets of Chicago’s West Side and is a challenging, atmospheric and passionate novel of a teenager growing up while living the reality of the American Dream.

Dragonslayers, by Joseph A. McCullough

Order from: Osprey | Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

and

Jason and the Argonauts, by Neil Smith

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Here we take a brief detour from historical fiction into the neighbouring territory of myth and legend with these

two slim children’s volumes from Osprey Adventures. That is not to say that the appeal is strictly limited to children, however, since anyone with an eye for good design should appreciate just how well these books are put together.

Both books follow a similar format as far as presentation goes. Both are lavishly illustrated with photographs of ancient artworks depicting their mythological subjects, from sculptures to woodcuts to stained glass windows. The photographs are supplemented throughout by original art, and in the case of Jason and the Argonauts the standard is especially high. These ethereally beautiful paintings by José Daniel Cabrera Peña cleverly employ light and perspective to achieve some startling effects, and this volume would be worth buying for that alone.

As far as content goes, the two books necessarily differ in approach. Here Dragonslayers has the upper hand, as it gives a broad overview of dragonslayer myths from all over the world, from Siegfried to St George to the Song of Hiawatha. Some of the stories are unfamiliar to all but the serious student of folklore, and it is great to see figures like Dobrynya Nikitich given equal footing with Beowulf and John Lambton. The standard of the original artwork comes nowhere near to that of the other book (it looks just a little bit ‘Games Workshop’ in comparison), but this scarcely detracts from the whole. The little snapshots of various legends make it a great book to dip in and out of. Jason and the Argonauts is, on the other hand, a straightforward retelling of the familiar legend, and thus lends itself more to a single sitting.

While these books are certainly aimed at children, they would be an attractive prospect on any bookshelf, and I can see them appealing particularly to comic book fans. They are also pleasingly inexpensive for what they are, and would make a great birthday present or stocking filler for your nieces and nephews. Strongly recommended.

Cover of Franz Kafka

This blog post is written by Séamus Sweeney. Séamus is the author of Dublin Can Be Heaven from Alt Hist 3.

Writers often write about writers and writing.  This is hardly surprising for many reasons. One is the simple fact that writers generally like books, and that books therefore feature prominently in stories. Another is the postmodern turn of literature in the last number of years, in which allusion, reference, and even recapitulation of texts play a more prominent role in modernism or in the traditional realist novel. And specifically in alternate history, as the genre is by definition a literary rewriting and subversion of the historical record, literature and its power to reshape reality is a theme with a clear appeal and relevance.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, literature and literary figures feature prominently in alternate history fiction. In Bruce Sterling and William Gibson’s The Difference Engine, the great romantic poets of the early 19th century Keats and Shelly  do  not die young of consumption or drowning, but live on as a “kinotropist” (an operator of pixelated magic-lanterns) and a Luddite  respectively. The Man In The High Castle prominently features Hawthore Abendson’s The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, in which Roosevelt is not assassinated in 1940 (as in the reality of  Dick’s novel) and the Axis is defeated (although not quite in the manner of our own history).

John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly’s Kafkaesque (which I did a general review of here: http://www.sfsite.com/01b/ka360.htm) is a sparkling anthology of stories inspired in various ways by the works of Franz Kafka. Some stories are “Kafkaesque” in the literal sense of Kafka-like. Some echo specific Kafka stories, or are rewrites of them. Some stories are from now-deceased, writers highly-influential beyond speculative fiction, such as  Jorge Luis Borges and J G Ballard

Several of the stories concern themselves with alternate history. These play upon themes of Kafka’s own life and work to thought-provoking effect. I personally found the stories never strayed into irritatingly clever-clever allusion, even though many postmodern tics were on display.  For instance Johnathan Lethem and Carter Scholz’s “Receding Horizon” features Kafka surviving his tuberculosis, crossing the Atlantic (which the author of “America” never did in his own life), writing scripts for his near-namesake Frank Capra under the name “Jack Dawson (Kafka/Capra . This story could easily have tipped over the edge into arch literary knowingness; “kavka” is Czech for “jackdaw” and  Lethem and Scholz insert themselves into the narrative. There is a punch to the story, an emotional resonance in what becomes a sort of mirror of Capra’s most celebrated film.

Carter Scholz’s “The Weight To Carry” again brings Kafka to America, this time to attend an insurance convention. The image of Kafka as self-torturing neurotic is somewhat belied by his known competence at his day job. In Scholz’s story, Kafka is not the only conference delegate whose later fame extends far beyond insurance; the poet Wallace Stevens and the composer Charles Ives also attend.

Philip Roth of course is the author of the alternate history novel of recent years most respected by the literary establishment, The Plot Against America, and here another excursion into the shifting of historical timelines, “”I Always Wanted You To Admire My Fasting’, or Looking At Kafka” explores familiar Rothian themes, with the twist of Kakfa moving to America rather than dying in Europe. Personally I find a little Roth goes a long way as he is rather one-note writer, but there is no doubting his craft.

Paul di Fillipo’s “The Jackdaw’s Last Case” is the wildest reimaging. Yet again we have Kafka in America, this time as a mild mannered reporter by day, crime fighting superhero (“The Jackdaw”) by night. Kafka writers for one of the papers of Bernarr MacFadden, media mogul, proponent of physical culture, muscle man and generally a historical figure I had never heard of whose acquaintance I was very glad to make.

The word “jew” never occurs in Kafka’s writing, yet his work has been seen by many as foreseeing the fate of European Jewry. Tamar Yellin’s “Kafka In Brontëland”, which may or may not be fully alternate history , but does locate a mysterious Mr Kafka in the English countryside , is the most explicit treatment of this theme (which is present in many stories here, especially Roth’s). Once again, however, this is primarily an excellent and affecting story whose literary concerns do not overwhelm the narrative effect.

Not a lot of activity recently on the blog for Alt Hist, but we will rectify that soon with some more book reviews and other news. Behind the scenes we have been working hard on the next issue of Alt Hist – more news to follow soon I hope.

Here’s an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 24,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 6 Film Festivals

Click here to see the complete report.

If you like tales of medieval intrigue and crime then it sounds like C. B. Hanley’s book might well be of interest to you. Please go and read Chris’s review to find out more!

Reblogged from Fantasy Short Stories: the New Magazine of Fantasy:

The first issue of Fantasy Short Stories was only available as an eBook. However, print is not dead, so for subsequent editions we will be making Fantasy Short Stories available in a print edition as well as an eBook. Hopefully that will give it an even wider readership than currently as there are a lot of people out there (myself included actually) who prefer to read in print.

Read more… 26 more words

However, we don’t have enough stories yet for the issue. Currently there are three stories accepted for the issue, but we need another two or three to get the issues up to the right size. So that means we are probably looking at publication sometime in the New Year – so hopefully you should be seeing something in early 2013 from Alt Hist.

Until then don’t forget that there are four wonderful issues of Alt Hist available – so why not make sure you have the full collection! Check our our How to Get Your Alt Hist page for details.