Alternative History

British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill wrote a great piece of Alternate History where the South won the American Civil War and he speculated on what the world would have looked like if the North had won. It’s a nice twist on the usual approach to the alternative history of the Civil War which speculated on what the world would look like if the South had won. The story by is, “If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg.” It can be found in the anthology, “If It Had Happened Otherwise,” edited by Sir John C. Square, pub. in the UK in 1972 & by St. Martin’s Press in the USA in 1974. It was perhaps the first, certainly a pioneering, alternative history anthology.

Other speculations in the anthology include: “If the Moors in Spain Had Won,” by Philip Guedalla; “If Don John of Austria Had Married Mary, Queen of Scots,” by G.K. Chesterton; “If Louis XVI Had Had an Atom of Firmness,” by Andre Maurois; “If Drouet’s Cart Had Stuck,” by Hilaire Belloc; “If Napoleon Had Escaped to America,” by H.A.L. Fisher; “If Byron Had Become King of Greece,” by Sir Harold Nicolson; “If Booth Had Missed Lincoln,” by Milton Waldman; “If the Emperor Frederick Had Not Had Cancer,” by Emil Ludwig; “If It Had Been Discovered in 1930 That Bacon Really Did Write Shakespeare,” by Sir John Squire; “If the General Strike Had Succeeded,” by Ronald Knox; “If Napoleon Had Won the Battle of Waterloo,” by Sir George Trevelyan; and “If Archduke Ferdinand Had Not Loved His Wife,” by A.J.P. Taylor. A distinguished roster and fascinating thought experiments.

My own contribution to the alternative history genre, “Avenging Angel,” can be found in Far Frontiers, edited by Jerry Pournelle and Jim Baen, Summer, 1985, reprinted in The Fantastic Civil War, edited by Frank McSherry, Jr., Baen Books, 1991. In it, the Confederacy develops a V-2 type rocket which takes out President Lincoln and almost his entire Cabinet at Lincoln’s Second Inaugural in March, 1865.

I had no idea Baen Books had reprinted my story until I chanced upon the above mentioned Civil War anthology in my local university bookstore. Cool! I thought. Wonder who’s in it? I picked up the book and glanced down the TOC: “For the Love of Barbara Allen,” by Robert E. Howard; “Bring the Jubilee,” by Ward Moore; “The Valley Was Still,” by Manley Wade Wellman; “The Long Drum Roll,” by Harry Turtledove; “Quit Zoomin’ Those Hands Through the Air,” by Jack Finney; “Quarks at Appomattox,” by Charles L. Harness; “Time’s Arrow,” by Jack McDevitt....

Oh, yeah!, I thought. I gotta get this! Hey? What’s this? “Avenging Angel,” by Eric L. Davin? Wait! That’s my story! McSherry never asked to publish my story!  And I never sent it to him! And he certainly didn’t pay me for it!

I quickly turned to the copyright page and found this instruction after the notice saying my story had first appeared in Far Frontiers: “The author is asked to contact Baen Books to receive payment which is being held for him.” I sent proof of my identity to Baen Books and Martin H. Greenberg quickly sent me a nice check, along with a contract for me to sign and return. But he never sent me a contributor’s copy of the book!