Terry Bisson (1942–2024)

"How close the past looms, circling the present like a dead moon, lifting slow repetitious tides on the living planet."

Alternate history has, itself, a long history. I've not been particularly a fan, but Bisson's short novel from 1988 is the best I've ever read of the genre.

In an alternate year of 1959, North America includes the nations of Nova Africa and the United Socialist States of America - plus Mexico, and one or more Native nations, mentioned briefly. Clean cars cruise the roads, show more nonpolluting airships amble through the skies, and the Pan African Space Administration is about to land humans on Mars.

Yasmin Abraham Martin Odinga crosses the now-peaceful border, from Nova Africa into Virginia, with much on her mind - the death of her husband on a space expedition five years earlier, and an awkward bit of news to convey to her 12 year old daughter, Harriet. Also, in the car with her, Yasmin carries the 50 year old, typed manuscript of the memoir of her great-grandfather, Dr. Abraham, who, from when he was himself 12, served under John Brown and Harriet Tubman in the Independence War - for the historical turning point in Yasmin's world is that John Brown's raid on the Federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia succeeded, igniting the slave revolt that he had hoped for.

In our history, Harriet Tubman became ill as the time for the raid approached. When Brown finally attacked, in October, she was no longer involved. The raid failed and Brown was hanged. In Yasmin's world, the raid happened on July 4th, 1859 as originally planned, and Tubman's contribution was crucial. The raiders escaped into the surrounding mountains, and every night burned a great beacon fire, taunting the slave holders and shining like a star in the eyes of free and enslaved Black people.

The story of the revolt is told partly through the thoughts of the contemporary characters, but mainly via textual sources. Of Dr. Abraham's recollection of his younger self, we mostly get the first year of the war, before young Abraham fully joins the fight. We see very little of Brown and Tubman themselves. We also get some of the letters of Thomas Hunt, MD, a young heir to a Southern plantation who is convinced of the evil of slavery. There is no direct narration set in 1859; the past may be known only through what history has preserved.

I enjoyed imagining the alternation of texts and present day bits as a Ken Burns documentary - seeing the panning camera and hearing the voiceovers representing combatants in a long-ago war. Long ago, but not gone - the echoes of Independence continued in Yasmin's world, as those of the Civil War do in ours. One of the characters is a disabled veteran of the 1948 civil war that added that "Socialist" to the name of the USA. Bisson is unsparing about the brutality of the Independence War, from both sides. Be warned that there are many uses of the n-word, as quoted by Dr. Abraham.

Bisson contrasts his story with rosier views of the Civil War. One character owns a trashy novel, John Brown's Body, which lays out an alternate story that is, of course, our own: a war, not for Black freedom, but for preservation of the Union, in which the freed slaves find their bondage continued in new modes. Yasmin finds this prospect quite dystopian and white-supremacist. She knows Abraham Lincoln as a freebooter who tried to reconquer the freed territories; his is remembered as the Lost Cause. It's my understanding that current historians have moved toward Bisson's 1988 view, but there's a lot of history here, both real and imagined, that I don't know nearly well enough to critique. Nova Africa is helped by brigades from Haiti, Garibaldi's Italy, and Native American nations. The world's leading nation appears to be a united, socialist Africa. Credible? Don't know.

Mumia Abu-Jamal contributed an introduction to the 2009 edition I have.

As Yasmin's world feels the tides of history raised by her Independence War, so ours is pulled by the gravity of the long contest between racism and justice. The American Civil War is possibly the most popular subject for alternate history fiction in the USA. Frequently these are fat triologies of novels, or even longer. Yet for such a huge subject, whole libraries would not suffice. Bisson's short novel captures all that vast sweep in 155 pages, by refracting an implied epic through the eyes of a handful of people. Outstanding. show less

So. I loved this book, but I'm not sure yet whether I can call it a "great" book or add it to my all-time favorites list; but that's not exactly damning with faint praise or a backhanded compliment. The novel is a joy to read, full of language and time and humanity and mess and poetry and music and love and cars and war and politics and more humanity on top, presented in (sometimes very) short scenes. Read this book! But there are some sections I might need to re-read, or at least think show more about -- let me see if I can explain at all: (NOTE: AFTER HERE LIE MINOR SPOILERS FOR TWO OF BISSON'S BOOKS, SO, BE YE WARNED.)

So in alternate history, the two big joys for me are:

1. being knowledgeable enough of the actual history to know where and how history diverges
2. watching a very small change dovetail into larger changes, without overly stretching credulity

In Bisson's absolute classic of alternate history, Fire on the Mountain, both of these obtain. One must only accept one change -- that John Brown delayed his attack on Harper's Ferry until Harriet Tubman's illness passed, and his later attack was successful -- and, while the ensuing events range from the mundane to spaceflight, there isn't a major series of events which strains credulity.

Here, I'm not entirely sure about a few things. I absolutely loved the delicious, delicious way the micro level changes are introduced, and even the combining two of them into one of the most amazing moments in the history of alternate history on stage at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. But things get a bit messy in that a half-dozen (at least) significant events pop up all over the globe, leading to a mild muddling of cause and effect. But this is absolutely a minor, minor quibble on the whole; it's an alternate history novel, so who cares if a half-dozen events all change, or just one or two? The consistency of the resulting world is what matters.

And it is here where I'm just not sure yet, though the more I really sit and think about it the less unsure I am. Perhaps it is just hard for me, here in 2010 and having grown up under the ramping-up military of Reagan, to understand why the US government is so impotent in the face of absolutely massive (yet not exactly highly militarized?) chaos within its borders in the late 1960s; how a few deserting regiments lead to such complete fragmentation. (And such a powerful UN?) Hm. Was the state of the US really on this much of a precipice in the turmoil of Vietnam?

Anyway. Read this book. It's lovely. show less

"How close the past looms, circling the present like a dead moon, lifting slow repetitious tides on the living planet."

I admit to being very partial to this, even before starting - it would be hard for me not to like a story about a New Africa forming in the USA. But I think the book is good even leaving aside my biases. It's told through 3 perspectives - the letters of a radicalising white abolitionist from the time of the revolution, the recollections of a Black doctor who was enslaved at show more the time, and a modern day perspective in a world where there's an attempted landing on Mars and a widespread socialist international and pan-African league. The book doesn't go into super detail on the "contemporary world" - enough to know it's mostly Good - but quite a lot on the Tubman/Brown army. There's a decent amount of the n-word, although it's understandable given the historical context it's about. show less

"Bears Discover Fire" and "Necronauts" are two of the most beautiful stories I have ever read, in very (very (very)) different ways.
The rest of these stories are funny, fascinating, thought-provoking, and since Bisson is a master of just telling what needs to be told, none overstay their welcome like some authors who get a little too wordy.