Fiction
‘The Foresight War’ by Anthony G. Williams
This is a well rated alternate history book which envisages
what would have happened if two military historians one from Britain, called Dr
Erlang who seems to be a version of the author and one from the former East
Germany were transported back to 1934.
The two men are soon advising their respective leaders, Dr. Herman, the
German historian, seeking to at least hold back the Soviets so that East
Germany is not created which his son died trying to escape from. The book is very technically focused which is
probably unsurprising given the focus of Williams’s non-fiction books. There is much discussion of calibres of guns
and the engines of aircraft. Both men
successfully advance technology so that fruitless projects are abandoned and
developments that only appeared at the end of the war in our world are in place
by the outbreak of war in this.
There are political changes too. The British are persuaded not to give up
their naval bases in the Irish Free State and not to make any commitment to
supporting Poland. No British Expeditionary
Force is sent to France and instead Norway is successfully taken over by the
British. Later there is no invasion of
Italy. In the Far East, Hong Kong is
abandoned but Malaya and Singapore successfully defended. The war ends in 1943 when with the Allies
having invaded northern France through western Normandy, Herman kills Hitler
with a suicide bomb.
The book is very interesting on these grounds and has
substantial appendices to outline the differences from our world. However, it is clear that Williams is a
historian and not a novelist. The main
characters are not developed a great deal, despite the fact that Erlang has a
relationship with the woman assigned to oversee him and they marry and have a
child who is called Hope, which seems anachronistic for Britain; she might have
been Faith or Hester. I am content,
unlike some readers for there to be no explanation of why the two men went back
in time. However, to be a novel rather
than a technical book, these men have to be developed more. One technique that Williams uses that is commendable
is dropping in on particular commanders and their troops or civilians mixed up
in specific conflicts. This might seem
to lead to fragmentation, but it allows him to look at the differences that the
changes are making whilst avoiding lengthy exposition and I would suggest other
alternate history authors look at this approach for their own work.
I understand that Erlang and Herman are able to overcome
official suspicion, but they also seem to be able to push against official resistance
to innovation. Notably Erlang is able to
stop the RAF obsessing about strategic bombing and to focus instead in
protecting convoys across the Atlantic.
He is able to overcome Churchill’s obsession with the Mediterranean and
the British under-estimation of Japanese abilities in particular in terms of
defending attacks on Singapore from the land.
He is also able to break the British concern for defending France. I think he is too successful too often and
more resistance to his ideas would have seemed credible. Herman experiences this much more especially
his failure to get the German forces to encourage states in the western USSR to
break away and ally with the Germans. He
is able to temper Hitler’s enthusiasm for exotic vehicles and have a focus on
creating jet fighters sooner.
Overall, this novel feels like a first draft that needs
work to be a proper novel. It is not a long book and unlike
many would have benefited from being longer.
As some reviewers have noted there is minimal tension; Erlang and Herman
face too little resistance to their ideas.
In addition, once Hitler is dead the book stops abruptly as if Williams
has lost interest. However, handling a
post-Hitler Germany in 1943 even with the Allies not having insisted on
unconditional surrender is an interesting aspect. Would a civil war have broken out in the way
the SS was preparing for? The book has
many fine and interesting ideas, but it would have been better, given his ‘trainspotter’
approach to weaponry if Williams had gone down the Tsouras path and gave a kind
of ‘battle report’ style approach. If he
had favoured the Turtledove approach of an actual story with developing
characters then he needed to put in more work.
The Authors publishing company seems to be a low budget outfit that seem
to lack editors and this again will have had an impact. Williams has a website on which he lists
numerous reviews of his books and refutes some of them.
This book is interesting for anyone into alternate history. However, it is more like the raw materials
for an alternate history novel rather than being a novel in its own right. I have not read subsequent books by Williams
but I hope his fiction writing skills have developed.
Non-Fiction
‘One Way Or Another’ by Richard Meredith
I bought my copy of this book from the author himself. It was self-published and he travelled the
country marketing it. I admire him for
that. It is also clear that he is a
modern day adventurer. This book
published in 2002 was about him as the ‘balding backpacker’ travelling around
the world becoming involved in a range of adventures including anti-capitalism
riots in Canada, the US Presidential election and an attempted coup d’etat in
Fiji. Meredith is a former journalist
and the style of this book is really like a collection of articles and there is
an appendix of articles he wrote during his travels. He has subsequently driven right across Asia
in an Aston Martin.
The book is witty and gives an interesting perspective. However, I found it very fragmented. He covers the stories almost in reverse
chronology. There are large chunks of
his journey that only are mentioned in passing, so you have little sense of the
year-long adventure as whole. It would
really have helped if there was linking text to contextualise where every
component fitted into the broader story.
Something along the lines of ‘having spent three weeks travelling from
the Atlantic coast to the Pacific coast of Canada, I headed South into the USA
where this next big thing happened to me’ or ‘by this time it was May and I
decided to head into Egypt where I encountered …’ There is no conclusion to the book about how
he got back home or how he reflected on what he had experienced. As a result you feel this was put together to
make money rather than as a result of capturing personal experiences.
This was an interesting read which would have been better
for me to reach nearer the time it was written but I am currently on a
decade-long lag in my reading. It shows
that shifting from being a journalist to being an author is not always straight
forward. Articles can be chapters but the
book needs to be more than a sum of its parts.
This was another book that would have benefited from being longer and
having much more ‘mortar’ between the different chapters.
