Ward Moore (1903–1978)

Published in 1952 this novel has been collected in the SF Masterwork series. I have read that it is the earliest book in the alternative history sub genre, but whatever its claims it is a very good novel and excellent science fiction.

“Although I am writing this in the year 1877, I was not born until 1921. Neither the dates nor the tenses are error - let me explain:”

So Hodgins Backmaker starts the account of his extraordinary life. During his adolescence he lives in a small rural show more community in the United States - United States with just 13 member states because the Union lost the American Civil war. The Confederacy agreed to the union keeping much of its territory but extracted a huge indemnity that beggared the Union for the foreseeable future. This has not only resulted in the United States becoming a third world country, but also hindered the development of science and engineering on a world wide scale. There are still no aeroplanes and no electricity and many of its citizens are indentured to international companies, there are repatriation schemes for the black population and the country suffers not only from poverty, but also from mean spiritedness. Hodgins must find his own way in a difficult world and at 17 years old starts his four day walk to New York.

The story continues with a lucky encounter in the big city and he gets a position working in a book store. He is fascinated by books and wants to learn and so agrees to work for bed and board for a little pocket money and free access to the books. The book store is also a front for the rebel Grand Army and Hodgins faces a steep learning curve involving his education, life in the city, romance and steering clear of trouble. His studying leads to a dream of an academic life, he wants to be a historian, but there are no worthwhile academic centres in the Union, however he manages to become involved in a self supporting academic community who live out in the countryside, where he continues his education and becomes a leading historian specialising in the American Civil war.

Ward Moore writes well and easily, his characters are particularly well drawn and the novel for much of its length is a very good bildungsroman. It switches smoothly between its story telling to being a novel of ideas and a tableau of an alternative world. The world building itself is not attempted in any detail, but just enough to create a fascinating backdrop for the story. This is not anything like a typical male oriented 1950’s science fiction, it has an egalitarian undertow that sets it apart from much science fiction and probably much popular writing of that era.

It builds to a good climax and I was interested enough to do a bit of research on the battle of Gettysburg before the final denouement. Of course any member of the reading community would guess the ending, but it might have been different in 1952 when this book was published. No matter there is plenty enough in this novel even for non science fiction readers to enjoy. A bit of a gem this one and so 4 stars. show less

This is a strangely compelling and powerful alternate history novel, where the South has won the American Civil War. It has a leisurely pace, spending time developing the lead character, a historian named Hodge Backmaker. He is a not-entirely likeable character, and a rather passive one, which may turn off some readers. However, his character traits are essential to the novel's conclusion, which is extremely, but quietly, powerful.

This classic alternative world/time travel novel, which I last read over forty years ago, begins with one of sf's classic sentences: "Although I am writing this in the year 1877, I was not born until 1921" (p1). This is possible because, to begin with, our narrator was born into a world where the South won the Civil War; where he dwells is in an economically backward 26-state United States, the rump of the Union, which can only envy the good fortune and prosperity of the Confederate show more States.

Young Hodge Backmaker, restless in back-end-of-nowhere Wappinger Falls, sets off to New York to seek his fortune. There he soon falls in with and is employed by the bookseller Tyss, seemingly an enlightened man but in fact doing much covert work to support the violently terrorist Grand Army, which seeks to . . . well, as with many Liberation Fronts, the aims of the Grand Army are not entirely clear. Hodge keeps his nose clean of this clandestine activity as much as he can during his eight years with Tyss, during which he devours practically every book in the shop and decides his vocation in life is to be a historian; his ambitions are focused by his friendship with the Haitian ambassador, Enfandin, a man of enormous intellectual ability, knowledge and sagacity who's nonetheless sneered at as Sambo and Rastus by most of New York's populace: the people of the Confederate States are beginning to move out from under the shadow of racism but those of the US, blaming the slaves for having caused the ruinous war, are still in the full throes of the racist atavism. Hodge fires off application letters to all the universities he can think of, hoping for a place to read history; but the only response he gets is from Haggershaven, a strange, utopian community of scholars. He is summoned there by Barbara Haggerwells, daughter of the man who runs the place. She proves to be quite seriously psychologically damaged, yet a brilliant physicist; once at Haggershaven Hodge enters into a semi-destructive, almost masochistic off-on relationship with her that will last for years. But, while traveling to Haggershaven, Hodge rescued from a murderous gang a young Spanish girl, Catalina, and as she grows up she captures his heart -- a development disliked by the paranoidly jealous Barbara.

Barbara succeeds in building a functioning time machine. Various Haggershavenians take trips into the past, always obeying as near as possible Barbara's strict instructions that they should do nothing to change things in the world of the past. When it comes to Hodge's turn, he chooses to go back to witness the Battle of Gettysburg to determine at first hand if the historians are right about the precise wrinkle of chance that won the battle -- and the war -- for the Southrons. As Barbara throws the lever:

The expression on her face was the strangest I'd ever seen her wear. I could not, then or now, quite interpret it. Doubt, malice, suffering, vindictiveness, entreaty, love, were all there as her hand moved the switch. (p173)

Needless to say, Hodge inadvertently alters the course of the battle and brings into existence the timeline we know. And, in a delicious irony, it seems not to occur to him -- despite the sentence cited above -- that Barbara knew all along something like this would happen, and that she was in effect murdering her world, herself included, as vengeance against the man she perceived to have spurned her.

The bulk of this novel concerns Hodge's life in the world into which he was born; by the time he makes the trip back to Gettysburg we're just twenty pages or so from the end. I've seen people complain about this: that the book's boring because nothing much happens until the last few pages. All I can really say is that such critics should hang up their spectacles and go do something else more commensurate with their talents, like listening to Britney Spears. Although he has an annoying tic of missing out apostrophes from some but not all contracted words (with no rhyme or reason that I can see: it's "can't" but "couldnt", for example), and although I could have done without the various cutesy references to major figures in our own timeline having minor roles in the alternative US, Moore is a fine enough writer that he makes Hodge's tale an absolutely absorbing one . . . to the point that I was actually pretty fed up when the time-travel stuff started: I could have gone on reading about Hodge, Catalina and Haggershaven for a long while yet. This is one of those rare and precious books that really does transcend genres. I'd feel happy recommending it to people who'd normally shy away from a piece of sf; at the same time, devoted skiffers who've not read this classic should definitely make the effort -- if only because this must be among the three or four best-written novels of sf's (late) Golden Age. show less

The unearthing of a paltry pension for a war veteran sends two rival congresspeople on a quest either to rescue a forgotten and neglected hero from penury or to expose a ruthless criminal enterprise defrauding the US government. What they find is Joyleg, a veteran of an altogether older war than expected. Joyleg's archaic speech and historical references fill the pages with delightful puncturing of cherished myths, but arguably his accidentally resolving the nuclear standoff between the US show more and the USSR has aged out in a way the 18th century stuff hasn't, and it's a pity they didn't go all-in on Joyleg's story a la Little Big Man or some other weighty literary tome, rather than focusing on the clash with (then modern) modernity. show less