Talk Back

[malabar]

This is a collection of 7 short stories based on the premise that Homo erectus wasn't outcompeted by H. sapiens in the Western Hemisphere, so that when Europeans arrived in the New World, they found not only those strangely familiar faces but also saber-toothed tigers and woolly mammoths. Turtledove has since made his name as a master of alternate histories, and this collection certainly boded well for his future when it appeared in 1988.

The stories are organised chronologically, with stories set in 1610, 1661, 1691, 1742, 1804, 1812, and 1988. From the first English settlement at Jamestown (much more difficult with no native Americans to tell them what could and couldn't be eaten) to Samuel Pepys's musings over what turns out to be evolutionary theory in 17th-century England, through the first stem engine replacing the woolly mammoth train and a fur trapper starting a Homo erectus rights movement, all of the stories take a fascinating look at what life might have been like in the Federated Commonweaths of America (USA) if just a few things had been different. Loads of fun.