Interested in diving intoalternate historyfiction ? The Onion AV Club has an strange passport : point clear of both Philip Roth andHarry Turtledove , and start up with a Pulitzer - nominated but seldom - discuss 1972 novel alternatively .
The AV Club ’s “ Gateways To Geekery ” series recommendsRobert Sobel‘s Pulitzer Prize - nominate 1972 novel For lack Of A Nail : If Burgoyne Had Won At Saratoga as the gateway drug for alternate history virgins :
This effective blending of the notional and the banal is what make For Want Of A Nail such a good place to start . The piece of writing manner , by its very sobriety , achieves a grand balance between the counterfactual chronicle - which work into terrific depth , with sempiternal variations take form away from the most minor historic divergences - and the fabricated admiration , to the point that when a huge corporation , the invented Kramer Associates , ends up as a nuclear power near the remnant of the book , it seems like the most fair thing in the existence . For those concerned in the “ story ” part of “ alternating chronicle , ” the book is incredibly well - researched and meticulous in its presentation of real - earth historical figures ; for those who like the “ alternating ” part , it ’s entrancing for how those name act a totally dissimilar character in this always plausible , yet entirely unpredictable , divergent route of American history .
BooksMichael Chabon
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