Harry Turtledove - WORLDWAR

After a grumpy morning at work, I found myself driving to Borders during lunch. I hate spending money at Borders, but I just wanted to look and browse and flip, and maybe buy a comic or two. I was sadly disappointed after browsing through but found myself turned about and there was a huge display for some new Harry Turtledove book. If the copy was to be believed, this man was THE KING OF ALTERNATE HISTORY! I poked around, read the backs of some of them and I was willing to drop my eight bucks(EIGHT DOLLARS???).

In The Balance – book one of Turtledove’s four book World War series seems written for me. It is written in a manner reminiscent of one of my preferred reading materials – 50s pulp sci-fi. It’s updated, though, with a decent assessment of physics, social interaction, and bits of believability.

The concept is World War II interrupted prior to Pearl Harbor and nuclear power by an alien invasion. The aliens are hampered by their assessments of Earth technology and capabilities being 800 years out of date. They bring a show of power that would have crushed medieval humanity, but run into tanks, tactics, and much larger populations.

The narrative is done in a hopscotch manner that keeps things moving along quickly. Characters from America, Japan, Russia, Germany, England, and other bits of Europe, as well as alien POVs lay things out well.

The one drawback, which I am easily overlooking, is the contrived nature of the story. The aliens arriving as they are any earlier or any later would have either completely overpowered humanity or been completely nuked to hell. In addition, the psychology of the aliens is exactly as is needed to be undermatched against humanity in all ways but technological. Their adaptability and creativity are almost non-existent. If they were able to roll with punches or come up with new tactics on the fly, the story wouldn’t be interesting or last 4 books. Ah well. It is what it is, and stuff blows up.

I greatly recommend it, but if you’re short on time, maybe cutting straight to Guns of the South would be better, though I haven’t read that one yet.