Harry Turtledove is Completely F_ng Shameless

[B_Munro]

From http://www.randomhouse.com/delrey/DRIN/articles.html

"We were lucky that that didn't happen in Germany after the 1945 surrender. There was a resistance there, but it was poorly organized; too many organizational cooks spoiled that broth. It also started late, because the Germans didn't want to see what was coming their way. They could have given us much more trouble than they did if they'd geared up sooner, started salting away weapons and pulling out key men to continue the struggle after the Wehrmacht went out of business.

How would we have responded if they did? How would the Russians? If a GI couldn't drive down a road without worrying about a guy with a Panzerfaust in the bushes, if truck bombs and suicide bombs were common, how would the Allies have handled them? Makes you wonder, doesn't it? Makes me wonder, too.

(Note: What might have happened if Germany had mounted any kind of insurgency will be explored in Harry Turtledove's next book, The Man With the Iron Heart, coming in 2008 from Del Rey.)"

I guess the Kratman and/or Ringo collaboration will be announced shortly...

Bruce

 

[Faeelin]

I wonder if he'll give us the example of how Stalin responds as an interesting analogy?

 

[Redem]

I wonder if he'll give us the example of how Stalin responds as an interesting analogy?

why do I have the feeling it involve mass murder

 

[ThomasG]

why do I have the feeling it involve mass murder

Oh it will, but by Stalin's standards it is pretty small. Only a million put in camps and tens of thousands shot.

 

[Ian the Admin]

I await the explanation of why the Allies were unprepared for a prolonged occupation, lacked adequate troops and could not conscript more, and how violence became intractable once a civil war was triggered between Germans themselves.

 

[Archangel Michael]

I await the explanation of why the Allies were unprepared for a prolonged occupation, lacked adequate troops and could not conscript more, and how violence became intractable once a civil war was triggered between Germans themselves.

Well obviously.

 

[Psychomeltdown]

Jesus. For a guy who's supposedly written nigh on three SERIES that have paralleled WW2 so closely you could also pull out a timeline of the war and compare them, you'd think he'd understand some of the history behind the friggin thing.

 

[B_Munro]

I wonder if he'll give us the example of how Stalin responds as an interesting analogy?

One possibility: the USSR is Iran, which will take over if we pull out. Perhaps he will make the Republicans the ones who want to bring the troops home, thereby showing the sort of mad writerly skillz and clever reversals that gave us the blond "Jews" in the "Darkness" series.

Not sure what he'll do for the Kurds, though...

Bruce

 

[Archangel Michael]

One possibility: the USSR is Iran, which will take over if we pull out. Perhaps he will make the Republicans the ones who want to bring the troops home, thereby showing the sort of mad writerly skillz and clever reversals that gave us the blond "Jews" in the "Darkness" series.

Are you mocking Turtledove's mad skillz?

 

[GTD Aquitaine]

Perhaps he will make the Republicans the ones who want to bring the troops home, thereby showing the sort of mad writerly skillz and clever reversals that gave us the blond "Jews" in the "Darkness" series.

Under the leadership of Robert A. Taft, no less.

Not sure what he'll do for the Kurds, though...

Hmm... the Bavarians, maybe? Or possibly Austrians.

 

[SunilTanna]

Are you mocking Turtledove's mad skillz?

I suspect that he's got some kind of automatic AH generating software that he's been using for the last few years. If this machine exists, he writes one novel in a series manually, and then the machine just churns out successive volumes of the series.

Not convinced? Compare How Few Remain to the rest of the series (it's shorter and better)... or the first WorldWar novel to later volumes.

 

[Flocculencio]

I suspect that he's got some kind of automatic AH generating software that he's been using for the last few years. If this machine exists, he writes one novel in a series manually, and then the machine just churns out successive volumes of the series.

Not convinced? Compare How Few Remain to the rest of the series (it's shorter and better)... or the first WorldWar novel to later volumes.

That's why I have no respect for Turtledove. He proved himself able to write fun pulp fantasy/sci-fi, then he developed pretensions of being a good writer and started excreting multi-volume nonsense. I realise his kids are going through college but even so, that's no reason for him to piss on all the people who liked his earlier work. His publishers are also a bunch of wankers- they really should have given him a strong editor to actually make his work readable.

 

[Archangel Michael]

I suspect that he's got some kind of automatic AH generating software that he's been using for the last few years. If this machine exists, he writes one novel in a series manually, and then the machine just churns out successive volumes of the series.

Not convinced? Compare How Few Remain to the rest of the series (it's shorter and better)... or the first WorldWar novel to later volumes.

Either that or Harry Turtledove is the pen name for a collective group of shitty writers.

 

[Ghost 88]

Either that or Harry Turtledove is the pen name for a collective group of shitty writers.

Or he died like the authors of the "Mack Bolon series" and "Flowers in the Attic" and its being written by ghost writers.

 

[Strategos' Risk]

I have to say, though, reading about insurgents should be interesting.

Additionally: Werewolves.

 

[Shimbo]

Either that or Harry Turtledove is the pen name for a collective group of shitty writers.

You might be on to something there. See Tom Clancy's spin off's (Op Centre, Net Force etc.) for example, or Arthur C Clarke's later 'collaborations'. There may be a real Turtledove but now the publishers have realised there is a market for AH novels they use ghostwriters, under the brand name of Turtledove.

Looking at this in a bit more detail I checked his wikipedia site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_turtledove According to that he wrote seven books in 2004. Homeward Bound, Return Engagement, Out of the Darkness, Owls to Athens, Curious Notions, Days of Infamy, Conan of Venarium. Either the guy is an unbelievably prolific workaholic and his publishers have abandoned all pretence of editing his work, or there is a cottage industry operating there.

Let's start a rumour.

 

[Flocculencio]

Alas, the writing style is too consistent and very distinctive.

 

[aktarian]

How is this article HT's fault? It's reviewer that is drawing parallels between HT's TL and OTL. While up to "The grapple" events followed OTL closely in Grapple they don't anymore. There is no "Kursk" after "Stalingrad" and Us offensive is more like Sherman's drive to the sea then anything Soviets pulled off in 1943. Plus in 1943 Germany were still east of Soviet border while US crossed into CSA already.

 

[MarkWhittington]

Then again, I suspect that the WWII won't be the walk over that the initial Iraq Campaign was. We lost more in the first few days starting with Normandy than in the entire Iraq theatre to date. So a Nazi insuregency on top of the tens of thousands of KIA we lost just in 1944-45 (forget Sicily, North Africa, and so on) might prove a little stressful, even if we would likely have used harsher measures (not to speak of what Stalin would have done.)

 

[Strategos' Risk]

Did no one see the book review I linked to about the Nazi post-war terror unit? Fine, here's the Wikipedia article.