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alternative history

The Long View: Anno Dracula

It helped that John and I shared similar tastes in fiction. John was a fan of Jerry Pournelle, one of my all time favorite authors, and in general I found his reviews and suggestions interesting. I decided to read Anno Dracula [Amazon link] after reading John's review of

The Long View: Hitler's Thirty Days to Power

More Nazi Germany alternative history from John. The occasion for his speculations this time is a sober historical analysis of the political fecklessness that brought Hitler to the Chancellorship of Germany in 1933. In short, the responsible adults in Germany felt that a dictatorship was a good idea, and they

The Long View: World War III

Vault Boy checking the size of a mushroom cloudIn the 1950s, there really wasn't any reason to be terrified of nuclear weapons. The Soviets had them, but they didn't have very many, and it took a long time for a bomber to fly across the Arctic

Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen Book Review

I picked up this volume because it was mentioned in Armageddon: There Will be War volume VIII. Pournelle cited Piper as a great influence on his own work, especially his Janissaries series, and included in volume VIII was a sequel to Piper's trandimensional adventure story written by John

The Long View: Alternative History

The Long View: Alternative History

I put up the first of John's subject matter indices today: Alternative History. Since I am proceeding in roughly chronological order, most of what you see here is not yet uploaded. However, there are some pages filled in at later dates, because John intensively curated his website, and

The Long View: The Pity of War

Niall Ferguson's book on the Great War was written 16 years ago, but his style fits in well today. There is a constellation of quant bloggers that center around Steve Sailer who use a similar style of analysis to Ferguson, heavy on economics and demographics, and looking for

The Long View: The Man in the High Castle

The Long View: The Man in the High Castle

Phil Dick was a friend of Tim Powers. Thus this book review is really favorite authors squared. John Reilly reviewed a seminal novel by a man who influenced one of my favorite fiction writers. I think I first read this review before Powers became one of my favorite writers, but