Why not Turtledove

Why do so many people consider Turtledove's work implausible? I mean, the man has a doctorate in history and seems like he knows what he's talking about. Also, I know how some people may have trouble following along with so many different pov characters, but doesn't that just help to offer a better understanding of what the timeline is like?
 
Why do so many people consider Turtledove's work implausible? I mean, the man has a doctorate in history and seems like he knows what he's talking about.
Because his books are for normal people and not us nerds, he adds parallelism and analogies and massacres butterflies to his books largely because the reader can follow what he is saying. However, us AH nerds are more knowledgeable about history than normal people and so we nitpick about his implausibility.
Also, I know how some people may have trouble following along with so many different pov characters, but doesn't that just help to offer a better understanding of what the timeline is like?
It makes the book hard to follow because we have to adjust to different characters and keep track of it and so we have to use more of our brains.
 
Why do so many people consider Turtledove's work implausible? I mean, the man has a doctorate in history and seems like he knows what he's talking about. Also, I know how some people may have trouble following along with so many different pov characters, but doesn't that just help to offer a better understanding of what the timeline is like?

I think this is a pretty simple answer. Turtledove's primary purpose is what most author's and publisher's primary purpose is.

Make money.
 
Personally, I find Turtledoves grasp of history and willingness to tweak it to make an engaging "what if" (which is in effect what any alternate history, popular or academic is) his strong point. Also, in fiction, I have absolutely no problem with parallelism (making the AH events mirror events in our TL for effect) or introducing historical figures into the story in different capacities. Most of his AH work suffers more as "fiction" than anything. Works from WorldWar to the TL-191 series to Joe Steele all suffer from too many PoV characters, sometimes laughable dialog coming from their mouths, and little or no narrative drive. As many point out, his single or two volume novels generally work better, and his short stories are often really good alternate histories AND really good fiction. The man just needs an editor.
 
Pretty much because we're picky as hell. I personally enjoy most of his work because I see he's a writer first and historian second, so I forgive take the butterfly massacre and parallelism as long as the story itself is good.
Which is why I hate the freaking War That Came Early series so much.
 
Wow, aren't we special.

Agreed. We are the "special class". But what do we mean, we?

I found alternative history through Harry, with a dusting of Stirling. I'm tired of Stirling, and Harry has let me down once or twice, mostly with that volcano. But as Frank used to say, that's life.
 
Wow, aren't we special.

No, a lot of us just happen to be a generally detail-oriented and plausibility focused group. More casual fans are not. Its not a case of being special, just having different tastes.

Why do so many people consider Turtledove's work implausible? I mean, the man has a doctorate in history and seems like he knows what he's talking about.

The man has a doctorate in BYZANTINE history, not history in general. I made this comparison yesterday in response to this point, so here it is again:

Just because I'm an accountant doesn't mean I can do a corporate tax return, heck as a governmental auditor I'm not sure I could do a CORPORATE audit. A chemist wouldn't be able to give an astrophysics lecture, etc. People specialize, and someone whose specialty is completely unrelated to the topic at hand are not automatically going to know about something in the general subject area.
 
For me it is the ignoring of butterflies in a lot of his works. You have a p.o.d. a hundred years in the past but many of the same people show up. He seems to like replaying wars that happened in our world with a twist, but not enough of one for me at least to be plausible. I would say the worst of that is his Atlantis series.
 
For me it is the ignoring of butterflies in a lot of his works. You have a p.o.d. a hundred years in the past but many of the same people show up. He seems to like replaying wars that happened in our world with a twist, but not enough of one for me at least to be plausible. I would say the worst of that is his Atlantis series.
His parallelism is awful. I agree that Atlantis was the worst. It was basically early American history...but in Atlantis. Either he is in love with the Recycled..IN SPACE trope, or owes it money.
 
His parallelism is awful. I agree that Atlantis was the worst. It was basically early American history...but in Atlantis. Either he is in love with the Recycled..IN SPACE trope, or owes it money.

I forgot about Atlantis. You are right. Parallelism carried to a ridiculous extreme!
 
His parallelism is awful. I agree that Atlantis was the worst. It was basically early American history...but in Atlantis. Either he is in love with the Recycled..IN SPACE trope, or owes it money.
Except the Americans were extra good guys because all the slave owners were French.
 
For me it is the ignoring of butterflies in a lot of his works. You have a p.o.d. a hundred years in the past but many of the same people show up. He seems to like replaying wars that happened in our world with a twist, but not enough of one for me at least to be plausible. I would say the worst of that is his Atlantis series.
The problem I have with people constantly harping on the issue of butterflies is that it only applies to mainly European and American leaders. People seem to gloss over the issue of butterflies when someone sticks an Emperor Pu Yi in an ATL with a POD in the 1420s. No one seems to notice if Mahatama Gandhi appears in an ATL with the POD in the 1840s. And surely mo one talks about Shaka Zulu appearing in ATLs where the POD is as far back as 1400. This happens with supposedly more detailed authors as Kim Stanley Robinson, Mike Resnick, George Alec-Effinger and S.M. Stirling.
 
Because we're historical nerds nitpicking books designed to be followable by non-historical nerds.

Pretty much this. He's trying for popular appeal, which is good because it introduces non-historical nerds to alternate history. But to do that you can't stray too far from OTL.
In my YA novel the POD is that the Spanish Flu was far worse than OTL and devastated the world, leading to a CP victory and a 2nd and 3rd Mexican-American Wars. I still massacre butterflies to make the story understandable for regular leaders, though.
 
Pretty much this. He's trying for popular appeal, which is good because it introduces non-historical nerds to alternate history. But to do that you can't stray too far from OTL.
In my YA novel the POD is that the Spanish Flu was far worse than OTL and devastated the world, leading to a CP victory and a 2nd and 3rd Mexican-American Wars. I still massacre butterflies to make the story understandable for regular leaders, though.

A story could still include butterflies plenty if the gist is there. I mean people like stories about fantasy stand ins for real nations, so a butterfly filled AH could still be engaging.

A story about what's clearly a communist USA fighting *Nazi Russia could still be popular even if you don't name drop.
 

Sideways

Donor
I don't think it's so much that we know more, or care more about details. We have a whole set of conventions, standards, and ways of doing things. By our standards, Harry Turtledove novels often fall short. But that's because he's writing in a different genre with its own standards and conventions.

As a writer - I loved his stuff growing up but I'm not so fussed about re-reading it. Nothing in my memory of it makes me think I'll enjoy it very much now.
 
I have no objections per-se to parallelism or the appearance of OTL personalities in a AH works, when used sparingly, in plausible context for the scenario, like an Easter-Egg for the more observant/informed reader. The trouble with Turtledove is that in many of his stories these are central plot points. Now to be fair ‘World War’ wasn’t too bad in this regard, yes there were lots of OTL characters, but because the POD from OTL was just as the series started, it made sense in that context. The ‘Great War’ series started off ok, but as soon as you realise Featherstone= Copy/paste= Hitler, it became annoying, and made what had been quite an interesting alt-WW1 Scenario sadly predictable.

My quick summary:
CSA has a harsh & unfair peace treaty: check…. Lots of unemployed Veterans: check….. Anton Dresser=Anton Drexler, (didn’t even bother changing the name).. Hyper-inflation: check,…. Tin Hats=Stalhelm… There’s “Goebels”… Plebescite and Anschluss (Kentucky=Austria): Check… aand war is coming…. NOW! “Red Beard=Barbarossa” (again didn’t bother changing the name…even launched on the same date!!!!)... Pittsburgh=Stalingrad… Gas Trucks/Gas chambers…. V weapons… and Yep Americas gets Nukes right on schedule!!... Aaand Featherstone’s dead! (But to be fair, at least he didn’t shoot himself in his bunker. So there is that.)

Those aren’t ‘Easter Eggs’ that is smashing you over the head with a chocolate Wrecking Ball!!!

“The Man with the Iron Heart” and “In the presence of Mine Enemies” are even worse:
- Post War Germany=Iraq.
- Fall of the USSR=Fall of Nazi-Victory Germany.
I found that last one was particularly irritating because I had studied Gorbachev and the collapse of the USSR at University, so for me, his lazy copy/pasting of events and personalities just seemed even more blatant!

And I think the real shame here is that in both those books, there were nuggets of interesting and original scenarios (How would the Allies have reacted to an organised German resistance campaign post WW2 and what life would be like for ‘Undercover Jews’ in a Nazi-Victory Germany) And I would have loved to have explored those ideas in more depth in a more plausible and original way.

I enjoy Alternate History because, if it is done well, it is original and unpredictable and thought provoking. But sadly with his copy/paste approach Harry Turtledove sometimes makes Alternate History as predictable as Regular History!
 
“The Man with the Iron Heart” and “In the presence of Mine Enemies” are even worse:
On the former, I certainly agree. It makes the assumption that someone in the Nazi party predicts defeat early enough in the war that they and others can siphon off resources to build the secret bunkers. Even in the divide and rule approach used by Hitler to govern Germany someone else is going to notice the siphoning and pass the information along to the Fuhrer at an inopportune time (for the siphoner that is). The least those involved can then expect is to be shot for sabotage.
 
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