Type Like an Alternate Historian
In Which Our Typist Loses a Nail That Wasn't Wanting and Thereby Changes History
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
Sometime in the late 1300s a prescient poet wrote the above lines and thereby set out the working rules for the science fiction sub-genre known as Alternate History: lose a nail that didn’t drop and see how history turns out. (Or, alternatively, keep affixed a nail that should have dropped.)
Alternate history, allohistory, counterfactual—the alternate history sub-genre has many names, many definitions, and even many different sub-genres with in the sub-genre. Perhaps the best resource to explain all that is the Uchronia website (run by the same folks who administer the Sidewise Award for Alternate History.)
I started out as an alternate history writer. My debut professional story, “For the Strength of the Hills,” ended up named a finalist for the Sidewise (Short Form), not a bad way to debut. I've written a number of alternate history stories since then, stories such as "The Greatest Danger" for S.M. Stirling's Drakas! or "East of Appomattox" for harry Turtledove's Alternate Generals III or "Subject to Kings" for William Morris's States of Deseret or my more recent "From Whose Bays We Borrow" which puts the US airship fleet (Macon, Akron, Shenandoah, and others) northwest of the Hawaiian Islands on practice maneuvers on Dec 7th, 1941.
I’ve also written a number of secret histories, sort of an offshoot of alternate history, where history happens the way history books say it did but for reasons other than the ones historians ascribe—often fantastical or otherworldly reasons. My Civil War tales “Lump of Clay” (Battle of Ft. Stephens), and “And Dream Such Dreams” (the writing of the Gettysburg Address) as well as my Revolutionary War-era “New England’s God” (the Salem Raid and Battle of White Plains) are all secret history stories with supernatural doings.
I even had a story series that’s a weird hybrid of Lovecraft, espionage, pulp adventure, and alternate history in my Clockwork Deseret tales, all set against a background where America split into Four Americas after the Civil War, including an independent Republic of Deseret. I’ve five stories published in that series, three of those lengthy novellas.
But it’s been a number of years since I wrote a straight-up Alternate History story with no fantastical frills. I’m pleased to announce that story-drought has ended. “Surly Bonds of Earth” appearing in Raconteur Press’s brand new Hooves, Tracks, and Sabers anthology released just today, is a tale about the Battle of Monocacy during the American Civil War. As the anthology title and cover art suggests, it’s themed around cavalry operations.
Traditionally, cavalry had three roles: providing reconnaissance (“the eyes of an army”), quick-reaction forces, and shock troops. “Bonds” focuses on the first two. A new innovation provides cavalry-poor Union commander Lew Wallace unparallelled reconnaissance and reaction capabilities—which certainly shocks Confederate attacker Jubal Early!
In our timeline, Monocacy is known as the battle that saved Washington, D.C. and thereby saved the Union. In this story—well, there’re are far ranging repercussions. You’ll have to read it for yourself. And now that it’s in print today, you can!
Lee Allred's prose fiction has appeared in Asimov's SF as well as dozens and dozens of anthologies and various other fiction venues. He's also scripted for DC (Batman '66), Marvel (Fantastic Four), IDW (Dick Tracy), and Image Comics (Madman Atomic Comics).