Bring the Jubilee (Millennium SF Masterworks S.) [Paperback]

I always enjoy reading the 'What If?' scenarios of alternative histories, and this book eventually proved to be no exception, although it was a close call. The pace is very calm and slow, and at the end of the day, nothing much takes place, beyond the discussion of a few philosophical points about reality and destiny. This book is not for you if you want to read about events, rather than theories.

My only big complaint is that the author hasn't done much to flesh out the alternative routes his world has taken. A brief mention of a talented captain called 'Eisenhower' is about as much as we get - I would have liked to read more along these lines, if only for the novelty value of recognising familiar objects in an alien setting.

An interesting foray into the world of alternative history, but by no means the best.

I approached "Bring the Jubilee" as one of the classic works of sf in general and alternate history in particular. I came away with a vague sense of disappointment. Perhaps the defects register with me more because I read the book length version first, and only later found the original (and far superior) novelette. This may have brought the difference in quality into sharp relief.

The story is set in an alternate world where the South won the civil war. As a result, the defeated North suffered a hyperinflation similar to 1920s Germany, which aborted the industrial expansion and scientific progress of the later 19th Century. Three generations later, the "rump" United States is a backward, rural country very much akin to William Faulkner's South, whose people are similarly fixated on "The War" which ruined everything for them. In this world the North, not the South, is where the lynchings are (negroes have been scapegoated as the cause of the war), where the poor folks live by share cropping or indentured labour, and the Grand Army (read "KKK") engages in terror tactics. Its women still don't vote. The Confederacy, OTOH, is booming, prosperous and has expanded over the Americas into a vast Empire, whose non-whites are humanely treated but denied full citizenship.

Well, fair enough, even if debatable, as far as the United States is concerned. But Moore doesn't leave it there. The United States' backwardness has somehow "infected" the whole world. The telephone was never invented (they use morse code telegraphy instead) and heavier than air flight is still a dream. The dirigible balloon is the latest thing. Such cars as exist are steam-powered, and of limited value due to the lack of roads. Electricity has never been harnessed, though the biggest cities have gas lighting. This could do with explanation. Men like Bell and Edison were already well into their teens in 1863, and even if they couldn't pursue their careers in the ruined US, could they not have done so in Canada or elsewhere? And even if they did not, could the same or similar inventions not have been made in Britain, or Germany or even France, all of which made important contributions to science and technology in this period? Germany, in particular, turned out scientists and technologists by the busload, despite having a social system in which Jefferson Davis would have looked like a dangerous radical. 19C America was no doubt a land of opportunity, but the only one? If this Limey may be so bold, that is surely carrying American exceptionalism a bit too far.

Thus the novelette. Despite the grumbles above, it made an interesting yarn and would probably merit four stars if not five. But the book is another matter. It has been "padded" out to novel length and the padding shows. It is clumsily done in a manner sometimes inconsistent with the original material. Perhaps the most glaring example is the Holocaust. In this world, Germany is booming and powerful, with none of the traumas of our 20C which brought Hitler to power, yet the Holocaust still happens (and still in Germany, not the more probable Tsarist Russia), and indeed contrives to happen a generation earlier, when Hitler, if born at all, would be still an adolescent. This might be ok if some rationale for it were offered, but we get none - just the bald statement, totally without explanation. The problem is compounded by our being told, some chapters earlier, that the Confederacy welcomes immigrants. Why did the Jews not flee there? Perhaps the welcome did not extend to Jewish immigrants, but again we aren't told so, and it is not obvious that the country which had Judah P Benjamin in its Cabinet would take such an attitude.

To crown it all, mention is made of a parallel genocide of Chinese and Japanese Americans, of whom apparently only a handful survive. Yet California, where the vast majority of them lived, is in the Confederacy, where such things allegedly didn't happen.

Moore's problem, I suspect, lay in trying a bit too hard to make the alternate world unmistakably worse than ours, as indeed, in many ways it is. But if its defects were offset by not having the Holocaust, then our world's superiority would be far less clear cut. Moore, I think, avoided this at the expense of consistency and credibility.

One final complaint. Apart from its own defects, this new material is added at the expense of useful parts of the novelette, which included helpful information about the growth both of the CSA and its rival, the German Union, and about the recent Emperors' War. In the book, these omissions make the history harder to follow.

Sorry to be so negative about what is, overall, a fair novel, but that's the problem. It is only good when with a bit more work it could have been great. My advice would be to get the novelette (in "The Fantastic Civil War" and maybe elsewhere) and go on to the novel if you're a completist.

this is one of the better alternate history stories that i have read but the problem with all of these stories is the seemingly unstoppable desire to show how this alternate history is created. to be sure it is an engaging book and perhaps i have just read too much but the ending was oh so obvious.

but it was a good if quick read, in my opinion not as good as dick's 'man in the high castle' but better then robert's 'pavane' cos at least i understood the ending of this one! defintely deserving of the rather backhanded compliment on the inside cover of "...minor classic". to me that's about right.