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Alternate history explores the many possible directions our world could follow if certain seminal events didn't occur at all or were changed in some crucial way. Is our Earth the only Earth, our reality the only one that exists? Or are there many parallel worlds and societies, some very similar to ours, some barely recognizable? What if Lincoln never became president, and the Civil War never took place? What if Columbus never discovered America, and the Inca developed a massive, technologically advanced empire? What if magic was real and a half-faery queen ruled England? What if Hitler and Germany won the war because America never got involved? What if many of the world's religions were totally commercialized, their temples run like casinos, religions designed purely for profit? These are just some of the possible pathways that you can take to explore the Other Earths that may be waiting just one event away...... .… (more)
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So I read Other Earths, a collection of new AH stories, with eagerness. Edited by Jay Lake and Nick Gevers, Other Earths includes stories by authors well versed in the genre, including Stephen Baxter, Paul Park and Robert Charles Wilson.
Like all anthologies, though, anthologies can all too often be very uneven in their quality. The very variety of the authors presented here means, necessarily, stories with wildly divergent styles, aims, and themes. Paul Park's story, "A Family History", has an almost dream like quality to it that is very alike to his Roumania novels. It is very different than the rigorous "The Unblinking Eye" by Baxter, which is really a puzzle story wrapped in the trappings of an alternate history. Liz William's "Winterborn" adds an element of fantasy to the alternate history.
And so all of the stories range in this way. What this meant for me, though, and likely will mean for you is that while you will undoubtedly find stories here you will like, its just as certain there are stories in this set of 11 stories that you will dislike, perhaps intensely.
It is a good line up of authors in the book, however, and if you are at all interested in Alternate history, I do recommend the book to you.