Alternate History Book Recommendations

Otto · #1 (**permalink**) August 13th, 2003, 06:23 AM

Alternate history has always been a topic of interst for me, heck most WWII Films are alternate history aren't they? I've heard of some decent books like Disaster at D-Day, Lightning in the Night or Fox on the Rhine. (To be precise Lightning in the Night is a speculative story written in 1940 about the coming world war.)

In any case, I'm looking for any recommendations that anyone might have regarding alternate history. I'm not looking for anything outlandish like an alien invasion during WWII, (like Tilting the Balance). I'm looking for a good read and a reasonably plausible storyline.

Any suggestions from the good membership?

[ 13. August 2003, 01:37 AM: Message edited by: Otto ]

Mahross · #2 (**permalink**) August 13th, 2003, 11:05 AM

Try 'What if' and 'More What ifs' by robert cowley. Its got a series of essays in it by eminent historians who says what might have been.

Heartland · #3 (**permalink**) August 13th, 2003, 01:42 PM

"Cryptonomicron" by Neal Stephenson

A great romp on codemakers/breakers and a military outfit tasked with covering up the things revealed by Enigma and other broken codes, so they can be taken advantage of.

Headed by a dedicated but not-so-clever US Marine, the unit recieves various odd orders they fail to see the point of. For example, when Enigma reveals that the Allied merchant shipping code have been broken by the Germans, the outfit is handed an old merchant ship, dressed in civilian clothes and given orders to "ram Norway" and make sure their code-book fall in German hands. Thus, the allies can plausibly issue new merchant marine codes! And so on...

In the parallell story various grandchildren of people in the WWII storyline goes looking Japanese/Nazi war-gold in the present-day (and of course the stories are linked).

Most of the people in the present-day part of the story are computer and IT techies, so if like me you're interested in both computers and WWII history you are set for a great ride. Both hilarious, thoughtful and well-written. Weighs in at around 1,000 pages.

From Amazon.com:
"Cryptonomicon zooms all over the world, careening conspiratorially back and forth between two time periods--World War II and the present. Our 1940s heroes are the brilliant mathematician Lawrence Waterhouse, cryptanalyst extraordinaire, and gung ho, morphine-addicted marine Bobby Shaftoe. They're part of Detachment 2702, an Allied group trying to break Axis communication codes while simultaneously preventing the enemy from figuring out that their codes have been broken. Their job boils down to layer upon layer of deception. Dr. Alan Turing is also a member of 2702, and he explains the unit's strange workings to Waterhouse. "When we want to sink a convoy, we send out an observation plane first.... Of course, to observe is not its real duty--we already know exactly where the convoy is. Its real duty is to be observed.... Then, when we come round and sink them, the Germans will not find it suspicious."

All of this secrecy resonates in the present-day story line, in which the grandchildren of the WWII heroes--inimitable programming geek Randy Waterhouse and the lovely and powerful Amy Shaftoe--team up to help create an offshore data haven in Southeast Asia and maybe uncover some gold once destined for Nazi coffers. To top off the paranoiac tone of the book, the mysterious Enoch Root, key member of Detachment 2702 and the Societas Eruditorum, pops up with an unbreakable encryption scheme left over from WWII to befuddle the 1990s protagonists with conspiratorial ties."