Book Review: The Alteration

Alternate History novels have always been pretty interesting to me, whether the classic "What if World War II" had gone the other way of Phillip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, or having the alteration to history occurring further back like in Keith Robert's Pavane.

Kingsley Amis' 1976 Alternate Fiction novel The Alteration asks (sorry for the mild 38-year-old spoiler here) what if The Reformation hadn't occurred? How would our modern world (modern being the 1976 the book was published) look like?

The novel follows a ten-year-old protagonist called Hubert Anvil, a talented singer who is chosen by his church authorities to be altered (castrated) so as to protect his God-given talent from the damage puberty may bring it.

The novel follows Hubert as he attempts to decide whether he would like the procedure or not - looking at the world in general and attempting to find a rational solution to his dilemma.

The Altered world of 1976 lives largely under Papal control, although there is a cold war in existence between the Christian and Muslim world.  A free country of sorts exists over part of our America, but even it doesn't work quite as well as one may hope.

One of my favourite aspects of this book is Hubert's love for Alternate fiction stories (including The Man in the High Castle and a cleverly renamed Pavane), allowing Amis to acknowledge previous benchmarks in Alternate history (there are a number of similarities between the key historical event and contemporary worlds of The Alteration and Pavane).

An interesting read all around - not sure if I'd revisit it, but glad to have made its acquaintance.

Book Review: Pavane

Since I started reading through this list of classic SF novels a few years back, I'm pleased to say that with only one small exception (yes, I'm looking at The Cornelius Quartet), I've really enjoyed all of the works of SF I've come across. A lucky few have even cracked my top ten SF novels of All time (I'm looking at you Earth Abides) and a few, including the latest book on my list have introduced me to new areas of the genre.

Pavane, by Keith Roberts is the second Alternate History book I've read on the list, the first being the amazing Bring the Jubilee by Ward Moore, and I've got to say that the more I read Alternate History SF, the more I'm liking it.

Rather than a traditional novel, Pavane works as a sequential series of short stories following a (mild spoiler) family line in England from the 1960's to about the year 2000. The key difference is that during her reign, Elizabeth I was assasinated and therefore the Spanish Armada defeated Britain. The following five centuries are dominated by the Roman Church and the innovations in technology we live with today have actually been banned, so that the last half of the twentieth century still has steam engines and mass communication is transmitted by Semaphore rather than telephone, or even telegraph signals.

The stories are all pretty great (although some are definitely better than others), and all in all it does a remarkable job a painting a dark world of what might have been.

A seriously good book and strongly recommended.