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alternative history

Pirates of the Electromagnetic Waves Book Review

Pirates of the Electromagnetic Waves is a sweet, nostalgic book about a world that never was. And radios. There is some impressively nerdy stuff about electronics here. Much like the non-existent European setting of Kiki’s Delivery Service, the Yankee Republic almost seems more real than the world we live

The Long View 2007-02-14: Happy Non-Existence; Who Lost Britain; AH Mag; The Longer Boom; Carl Sagan; God & Logos

I would have definitely read this magazine. Happy Non-Existence; Who Lost Britain; AH Mag; The Longer Boom; Carl Sagan; God & Logos This study may have implications as unnerving as a trapdoor, if you think about it: LONDON (Reuters) - Britain is the worst country in the industrialized world in

The Long View 2007-01-17: Franco-British What-Ifs; Steyn on Children of Men; Obsolete Doomsday Clock

A Franco-British Union is the kind of alternative history that John J. Reilly loved to post about, except this one was seriously proposed more than once in mundane history. Franco-British What-Ifs; Steyn on Children of Men; Obsolete Doomsday Clock This is not one of the great "What-Ifs" of

The Long View: The Translator

John J. Reilly’s book review of John Crowley’s The Translator comes up at an apropos time: I am digesting a history of science fiction in the twentieth century, and The Translator seems to be a good example of science fiction as a kind of secular scripture. There is

The Long View 2006-12-13: Waiting for the Mahdi; AH and Iraq; Christmas Kitsch

I note that Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi did win election to the upper house in Iran in 2006, but that his party did not gain a majority in the legislature. The Wikipedia article is broadly consistent with Dr. Timothy Furnish’s description that John J. Reilly quotes here, but as this is

The Long View: Something Rotten

To start the New Year off, let’s jump into a book review by John J. Reilly of a series I am entirely unfamiliar with! Something Rotten: A Novel By Jasper Fforde Viking, 2004 385 Pages, US$24.95 ISBN 0-670-03359-6 A Review in Dialogue By John J. Reilly ----------

The Long View: Tokugawa America

Tokugawa Japan is one of the more remarkable societies that have ever developed. It produced most of the culture that both we Americans and the Japanese find distinctive, and managed to be relatively stable and resistant to the outside world for nearly 250 years. When the outside world finally barged