Product Description

Trapped in 1877, a historian writes an account of an alternate history of America in which the South won the Civil War. Living in this alternate timeline, he was determined to change events at Gettysburg. When he's offered the chance to return to that fateful turning point his actions change history as he knows it, leaving him in an all too familiar past.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #126730 in Books
• Published on: 2001-06-14
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Ward Moore wrote few SF novels, but Bring the Jubilee (1953) instantly became a classic of alternate history. It's the definitive story of a timeline where the South won the American Civil War--known in this different 20th century as the War of Southern Independence.

Crippled by war reparations that must be paid in gold, the 26 Northern states are seedy and run-down. Slavery, disguised as corporate indenture, is commonplace for whites as well as blacks. There's no worse insult than "Dirty Abolitionist". Life goes on as always, and 1938 New York has a certain provincial charm, swarming with bicycles and horse-drawn carts, while dirigibles float over skyscrapers of 14 or even 15 storeys, and telegraph wires are ...

a reminder that no urban family with pretensions to gentility would be without the clacking instrument in the parlor, that every child learned the Morse code before he could read.

Newly arrived from the sticks, Hodge Backmaker picks up an education as apprentice to a cynical printer who supports the underground "Grand Army" (the North hopes to rise again). Eventually our hero, a self-taught historian, joins an eccentric community of scholars and has a turbulent affair with a brilliant female physicist working on the mysteries of Time.

She offers Hodge his big research opportunity: to visit 1863 and study the Battle of Gettysburg from a safe vantage point. Fortunately or tragically, the place he chooses is rather crucial ...

Moore writes lovingly and movingly of America as it was and might have been. This is number 42 in Gollancz's high-quality SF Masterworks reissue series. --David Langford

Synopsis
Trapped in 1877, a historian writes an account of an alternate history of America in which the South won the Civil War. Living in this alternate timeline, he was determined to change events at Gettysburg. When he's offered the chance to return to that fateful turning point his actions change history as he knows it, leaving him in an all too familiar past.

About the Author
SALES POINTS * #42 in the Millennium SF Masterworks series, a library of the finest science fiction ever written. * 'Seminal . . . concise and elegiac' Encylopedia of Science Fiction * 'A classic alternative world story' Brian Aldiss * 'One of the best American writers' Ray Bradbury

Customer Reviews

A good alternative history
If you like reading about late 19th century America (in the style of the age) then you will like this book. It is not really science fiction, more of an alternative history that has a story woven into it. It probably appeals to American readers more for that reason.
I enjoyed it, but if you are after SciFi this may disappoint.
However, if you liked Huckelberry Finn you may like this - the story line is kind of similar (a young man's journey).

Interesting? Yes. Masterpiece? No.
This is an alternate history of a U.S. where the South won the Civil War and the North is its vassal/client-state-which results in the industrial revolution never occurring. Set in the 1930s to 1950s, the story follows a young boy growing up in rural Pennsylvania who moves to New York (which is still "the big city") where he does a little growing up. Unfortunately, too much time is spent in his head, and not enough detailing the alternate world around him. He becomes a autodidact Civil War scholar and eventually is accepted in a sort of academic commune. Moore concentrates a bit too much on showing how things might have been, and pounding the fickleness of history into the reader's head, at the expense of a decent story. It's somewhat interesting to see how the hero develops, but he's kind of frustrating character, and in the end you know what he's going to do. The book is OK, but not as special as it's made out to be.

Heavy on words, low on action
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.