I read a Harry Turtledove book last night
- Thread starter Burton K Wheeler
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Burton K Wheeler
Moderator
The one where Stalin became President. I hadn't read any Turtledove since the WWI with the Confederacy ones 8 years ago or so, but I remembered the frustration of reading his books. There's a lot of stuff that could be really interesting, but he doesn't really work through the implications of it and just fits more lazy parallelism in. He's a decent writer and I really liked the two viewpoint characters, but it was really rushed in pace and lacked dramatic tension.
Turtledove could have written 5 excellent AH books with his skill, instead he's chosen to write 10,000 mediocre ones. It's a shame, especially considering how good his short fiction is.
Pkmatrix
Monthly Donor
Ah, okay. I haven't read that one but I know exactly what you mean: his good stories are good, but you always have this nagging feeling that he was capable of making them better. I've not read as much Turtledove as I should have, but the worst I read was probably one of the Colonization books - those were such a wasted opportunity, IMO, and as they stand are SO DULL. T_T
I love his short stories, and he really got me into AH, but this site's stories are of far better quality now.
Never understood why it was that popular among you people, frankly.
Okay, it's about matters that are popular history in America, hence the interest and it's not exactly awful...but you certainly have alternatives?
Thande
Donor
The first three Worldwar books are great, I think it went downhill after that.
How Few Remain was good, American Front was OK, after that it devolves into parallelism.
His short stories really do have some hidden gems though. The frustrating thing, as Baldie mentions, is that it's clear he could write better AH, he has the ability to do so, but for the past decade or so he's mostly been writing what sells.
Burton K Wheeler
Moderator
How Few Remain was very good, because he had to think through how the war was going to turn out and not just change the names on existing history. The WWI books after it were basically redundant, since it's pretty clear what the US is going to become as a result of the two wars it lost.
As much as we make fun of Sam Carsten's sunburn and the like, Turtledove is great at characterization, which is one reason his short stories are so good.
I almost wonder if it's the pace of what he cranks out. I feel like I was reading an outline he then hung some scenes on rather than a story he'd worked through and fleshed out. If he'd worked through the story properly a few more times, the book could have been a lot better.
Or maybe he's just not a writer who should be producing novels. There is a really good novella lurking inside this book, where you can ignore the lazy parallelism and just focus on the well-done characterization and the basic premise, which wasn't terrible so long as you don't look too hard at it.
Burton K Wheeler
Moderator
One could say his reasons are Byzantine.
Justinian and Agent of Byzantium were outstanding books, by the by.
Thande
Donor
Probably so, yeah. Novellas would arguably work better for his stuff. The short story compilations on a single theme (Agent of Byzantium, A Different Flesh, etc.) are also better for this reason, though they have the usual problem of repeating details about the setting because they were originally published separately. (Though at least there's an excuse in this case, unlike his repetition within brick-thick novels we like to complain about).
I always thought HT was a better Historical fiction and sci fi writer than AH (because AH requires dumbing down to be appealing mainstream wise , hence all the CSA and Nazi victories), though Justianan falls into the sex trope like all his books do, and for what it's worth, I picked up the former at a flea market and after reading it typed his name and eventually found this web site.
Actually, I liked Homeward Bound better than all the other WorldWar books except the First. Read the first one and end with Homeward Bound you don't miss much. Race invades, they aren't as superior or intelligent as they think they are, humans band together to resist with technology not all that inferior, and guess what is going to ultimately happen...Humans aren't crushed, they eventually surpass the Race, and arrive at Home to dictate a new order to Lizards. You can skip all the pointless PoV stories, quasi character developments, and irrelevant side-plots and get right on with the big picture. Like all of Turtledove's big series, you could pretty much tell the same story in two or three books, max.
I will always appreciate Turtledove because he is the first AH author to break into mainstream SF fiction in a big way, and because of his mass production of novels that filled shelves in bookstores he pretty much DID create AH as its own genre. Also, If it hadn't been for Turtledove, I would probably have never discovered other AH writers like Sterling, Birmingham, Conrad, and others.
I will always appreciate Turtledove because he is the first AH author to break into mainstream SF fiction in a big way, and because of his mass production of novels that filled shelves in bookstores he pretty much DID create AH as its own genre. Also, If it hadn't been for Turtledove, I would probably have never discovered other AH writers like Sterling, Birmingham, Conrad, and others.
I've never read his Agent of Byzantium stuff, but 'Between the Rivers' and 'The Case of the Toxic Spell-Dump' were entertaining yarns.
I feel like I am the only person on this site who has never read any of his books.
