Alternate history is one of my favorite subgenres in Science Fiction, and it is a subgenre that lends itself as well to the short story as to the novel. The sting in the tail in realizing just where the divergence lies in a story's world and how it lies changed with our own often works better in a short story than the expanse of a novel. An AH novel explores an alternate history at length; a story is about the sting in the tail.

So I read Other Earths, a collection of new AH stories, with eagerness. Edited by Jay Lake and Nick Gevers, Other Earths includes stories by authors well versed in the genre, including Stephen Baxter, Paul Park and Robert Charles Wilson.

Like all anthologies, though, anthologies can all too often be very uneven in their quality. The very variety of the authors presented here means, necessarily, stories with wildly divergent styles, aims, and themes. Paul Park's story, "A Family History", has an almost dream like quality to it that is very alike to his Roumania novels. It is very different than the rigorous "The Unblinking Eye" by Baxter, which is really a puzzle story wrapped in the trappings of an alternate history. Liz William's "Winterborn" adds an element of fantasy to the alternate history.

And so all of the stories range in this way. What this meant for me, though, and likely will mean for you is that while you will undoubtedly find stories here you will like, its just as certain there are stories in this set of 11 stories that you will dislike, perhaps intensely.

It is a good line up of authors in the book, however, and if you are at all interested in Alternate history, I do recommend the book to you. ( )

http://booklog.molehill.org/2009/04/15/other-earthsother-earths/ ( )

A collection of alternative history stories by some of the best authors writing at the moment (2009).