The Guns of the South
                         by Harry Turtledove
		
                 Review copyright (c) 1995 by Doug Ingram

[Bibliographic information at the end of the article.]

	Harry Turtledove is probably most well-known to readers of this
newsgroup for his alternate history novels.  Most of the people I've
heard from who recommended this author to me suggested I try this book
first, and if it is any indication of Turtledove's writing, I'll be on
the lookout for more.

	Much of the premise of _The_Guns_of_the_South_ can be derived
from the cover, which shows Robert E. Lee (commanding general of the
Confederacy in 1864) holding an AK-47.  A group of white supremacists
from an organization they call "America Will Break" (AWB) have come back 
to 1864 from the future in order to provide the Confederacy with
enough firepower to reverse the tide of the Civil War.

	This story is told largely from two viewpoints.  First, as 
the Confederacy starts to reap the benefits provided by AWB, the
implications of AWB's actions start to sink in for General Lee, who
tries to find out more about them.  Meanwhile, another perspective
is provided by a sargeant in the Confederate army named Nate Caudell,
who fights his way through several battles with his new weaponry and
then ultimately must find a place for himself in the post-war Confederacy.
The reader is rewarded with two very different and very insightful
views of the way the alternate history is played out, both before
and after the Civil War.

	Summarizing the plot any further isn't really necessary, other
than to say that the Civil War's resolution itself takes up only half
the book, and what happens to the Confederacy afterwards is just as
interesting as the events of the Civil War.  This very fact leads me
to one of the things I like about this new "genre" of speculative
fiction (and allows me to avoid providing more spoilers).

	Typical SF is set in the future, and the author often times
attempts to predict and analyze the effects of some current or new
aspect of our society (either an invention, a social change, or a 
major event such as alien contact) by extrapolating from current
society into an unknown future.  This leaves the author with a little
extra baggage, as it can take a long time to set up the framework for
the story.  Often, authors either get so involved with descriptions
of the details of this new society that the book either drags or 
suffers from "name-itis" in which the reader is asked to commit to
memory the names of dozens of people and/or places in the first few
chapters.

	"Historical SF", on the other hand, presents the reader with
a familiar background.  Turtledove can dive right into his story
without too much in the way of introduction.  We already know who
Robert E. Lee is, and we know what the historical setting of the time
was.  Everything is familiar, yet with the twist from the future, we
find that life is just different enough to be extremely interesting
and unpredictable.  

	You will probably find that the deeper your knowledge about
the Civil War, the more you will appreciate this book.  Implicit in
this novel is Turtledove's interpretation of Lee's personality as well
as the social conditions of that era.  It is interesting to see the
way politics worked back then (almost depressingly familiar, I might add)
and also somewhat educational.

	I will admit that the book dragged a few times, as the
attention to the details of everyday life for both main characters
(Lee and Caudell) started to bog me down, in spite of the fact
that I realize this was just a way to "back door" more information
about society back then.  In a few cases, I would have preferred
a little less education and a little more action.  But this is only
a minor point.  The bottom line is:  I strongly recommend this book.

--
Doug Ingram // d.ingram@tcu.edu // "Carpe Datum"
	http://personal.tcu.edu/~dingram/books.html (for more reviews)

%A Turtledove, Harry
%T The Guns of the South
%I Del Rey
%C New York
%D 1992
%G ISBN 0-345-38468-7