Read The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories Online

Authors: Ian Watson,Ian Whates

Tags: #Alternative Histories (Fiction), #Alternative History, #Alternative histories (Fiction); American, #General, #fantasy, #Alternative Histories (Fiction); English, #Fantasy fiction; American, #Fiction, #Fantasy Fiction; English

The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories

 

 

* * * *

 

The Mammoth Book of

Alternate Histories

 

Edited By Ian Watson

& Ian Whates

 

Scanned & Proofed By MadMaxAU

 

* * * *

 

Contents

 

 

Introduction

 

James Morrow

THE RAFT OF THE TITANIC

 

Ken MacLeod

SIDEWINDERS

 

Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman

THE WANDERING CHRISTIAN

 

Suzette Hayden Elgin

HUSH MY MOUTH

 

Harry Harrison & Tom Shippey

A LETTER FROM THE POPE

 

Esther M. Friesner

SUCH A DEAL

 

A. A. Attanasio

INK FROM THE NEW MOON

 

Pat Cadigan

DISPATCHES FROM THE REVOLUTION

 

Fritz Leiber

CATCH THAT ZEPPELIN

 

Paul McAuley

A VERY BRITISH HISTORY

 

Rudy Rucker

THE IMITATION GAME

 

Keith Roberts

WEINACHTSABEND

 

Kim Stanley Robinson

THE LUCKY STRIKE

 

Marc Laidlaw

HIS POWDER’D WIG, HIS CROWN OF THORNES

 

Judith Tarr

RONCESVALLES

 

Ian R. MacLeod

THE ENGLISH MUTINY

 

Chris Roberson

0 ONE

 

Harry Turtledove

ISLANDS IN THE SEA

 

George Zebrowski

LENIN IN ODESSA

 

Pierre Gévart

THE EINSTEIN GUN

 

Robert Silverberg

TALES FROM THE VENIA WOODS

 

Gregory Benford

MANASSAS, AGAIN

 

Pamela Sargent

THE SLEEPING SERPENT

 

Frederik Pohl

WAITING FOR THE OLYMPIANS

 

Stephen Baxter

DARWIN ANATHEMA

 

* * * *

 

Introduction

 

 

“There is an infinitude of Pasts, all equally valid,” wrote Andre Maurois, the French novelist and biographer. “At each and every instant of Time, however brief you suppose it, the line of events forks like the stem of a tree putting forth twin branches.” This is quoted in
Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals,
edited by historian and political commentator Niall Ferguson. These days alternative history is almost respectable amongst historians, leading to such other recent well-received volumes of essays as Robert Cowley’s
What If? Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been
or Andrew Roberts’
What Might Have Been: Leading Historians on Twelve “What Ifs” of History.
Some other historians frown at counterfactuality; although, if the “Many Worlds” interpretation of Quantum Physics is correct, all possible alternatives might indeed occur in a branching multiverse. What’s more, was our own world’s history in any sense inevitable, or even highly plausible, simply because it actually happened? Who, for instance, in 1975 might have imagined that a few years later a female British prime minister would be sending a nuclear-armed armada all the way to the South Atlantic in a quarrel about some remote islands full of sheep? Who could have supposed that British counter-terrorism laws, provoked by planes flying into the World Trade Center, would be used for the first time bizarrely to seize the assets of a mild-mannered Icelandic bank, on account of mortgages stupidly sold to poor house buyers in the United States?

 

Essays about What Might Have Been are already fascinating, but it has long been a delight of science fiction writers to put flesh upon the bones. Consequently, here you’ll find what might have happened if the Roman Empire had never declined and fallen; how Islam might have triumphed much more widely; how the Native American Indians might have repelled the European invasion; how the other Indians, of India, might have forged an empire in place of the British Empire; how the civilized Chinese might already have been ensconced in California when the uncouth Europeans first arrived there; how the Pope might
really
have offended King Alfred of the burnt cakes; and much much more that has surely happened elsewhere (or elsewhen) in alternity, even if it didn’t happen quite that way in our version of reality. You’ll find award-winning classics of the sub-genre nestling alongside equally worthy nuggets that might previously have escaped your notice and more recent gems, including three splendid, brand-new stories by special invitees James Morrow, Stephen Baxter and Ken MacLeod. These feature the alternative truth about the
Titanic,
the trial for heresy of Darwin’s bones along with one of his descendants, and a near-future Scotland that begins as far south as London.

 

Ian Watson and Ian Whates

 

<>

 

* * * *

 

The Raft of the Titanic

 

James Morrow

 

 

15 April 1912

Lat. 40°25’ N, Long. 51° 18’ W

 

The sea is calm tonight. Where does that come from? Some Oxbridge swot’s poem, I think, one of those cryptic things I had to read in tenth form - but the title hasn’t stayed with me, and neither has the scribbler’s name. If you want a solid education in English letters, arrange to get born elsewhere than Walton-on-the-Hill. “The sea is calm tonight.” I must ask our onboard
litterateur
, Mr Futrelle of Massachusetts. He will know.

 

We should have been picked up - what? - fourteen hours ago. Certainly no more than sixteen. Our Marconi men, Phillips and Bride, assure me that Captain Rostron of the
Carpathia
acknowledged the
Titanic’
s CQD promptly, adding, “We are coming as quickly as possible and expect to be there within four hours.” Since the Ship of Dreams sailed into the Valley of Death, sometime around 2.20 this morning, we have drifted perhaps fifteen miles to the southwest. Surely Rostron can infer our present position. So where the bloody hell is he?

 

Now darkness is upon us once again. The mercury is falling. I scan the encircling horizon for the
Carpathians
lights, but I see only a cold black sky sown with a million apathetic stars. In a minute I shall order Mr Lightoller to launch the last of our distress rockets, even as I ask Reverend Bateman to send up his next emergency prayer.

 

For better or worse, Captain Smith insisted on doing the honourable thing and going down with his ship. (That is, he insisted on doing the honourable thing and shooting himself, thereby guaranteeing that his remains would go down with his ship.) His gesture has left me
en passant
in command of the present contraption. I suppose I should be grateful. At long last I have a ship of my own, if you can call this jerry-built, jury-rigged raft a ship. Have the other castaways accepted me as their guardian and keeper? I can’t say for sure. Shortly after dawn tomorrow, I shall address the entire company, clarifying that I am legally in charge and have a scheme for our deliverance, though that second assertion will require of the truth a certain elasticity, as a scheme for our deliverance has not yet visited my imagination.

 

I count it a bloody miracle that we got so many souls safely off the foundering liner. The Lord and all His angels were surely watching over us. So far we have accumulated only nineteen corpses: a dozen deaths during the transfer operation - shock, heart attacks, misadventure - and then another seven, shortly after sunrise, from hypothermia and exposure. Grim statistics, to be sure, but far better than the thousand or so fatalities that would have occurred had we not embraced Mr Andrews’ audacious plan.

 

Foremost amongst my immediate obligations is to start keeping a record of our tribulations. So here I sit, pen in one hand, electric torch in the other. By maintaining a sort of captain’s log, I might actually start to feel like a captain, though at the moment I feel like plain old Henry Tingle Wilde, the Scouser who never got out of Liverpool. The sea is calm tonight.

 

* * * *

 

16 April 1912

Lat. 39°19 N, Long. 51°40 ‘W

 

When I told the assembled company that, by every known maritime code, I am well and truly the supreme commander of this vessel, a strident voice rose in protest: Vasil Plotcharsky from steerage, who called me “a bourgeois lackey in thrall to that imperialist monstrosity known as White Star Line.” (I’ll have to keep an eye on Plotcharsky. I wonder how many other Bolsheviks the
Titanic
carried?) But on the whole my speech was well received. Hearing that I’d christened our raft the
Ada
, “after my late wife, who died tragically two years ago”, my audience responded with respectful silence, then Father Byles piped up and said, so all could hear, “Right now that dear woman is looking down from heaven, exhorting us not to lose faith.”

 

My policy concerning the nineteen bodies in the stern proved more controversial. A contingent of first-cabin survivors led by Colonel Astor insisted that we give them “an immediate Christian burial at sea”, whereupon my first officer explained to the aristocrats that the corpses may ultimately have “their part to play in this drama”. Mr Lightoller’s prediction occasioned horrified gasps and indignant snorts, but nobody moved to push these frigid assets overboard.

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