Adventures
in Alternative History
Eric
Leif Davin
ericdavin@hotmail.com
Winston S. Churchill, yes the British PM,
wrote a great piece of alternative history where he speculated on what the
United States, and the world, would have looked like, “If Lee Had Not Won the
Battle of Gettysburg.” (Yes, that’s correct.)
The story appears in If It Had Happened Otherwise, edited by Sir John C. Square,
published 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 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 the
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? 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 (the power behind the throne) quickly sent me a nice
check, along with a contract for me to sign and return. Sweet! But Greenberg
didn’t send me a contributor’s copy of the book, darn it!
