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Jan. 6th, 2006 10:08 am![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
For Thea Gilmore fans, Compass Records has released a two disc version of her "Songs from the Gutter" with a bonus 11 track disc.
Alternate history is a subgenre of science fiction that asks "what if" with history, that something didn't happen the way we know it happen. What if the Germans won WWII? What if an assassination attempt on Elizabeth I succeeded? What if Richard the Lionhearted didn't die in 1199?
Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy series, recently reprinted in full by Baen Books, supposes the last idea. Instead of dying, Coeur de Lion went on to form a large stable Plantagenet empire. And that magic has been codified and explained as a science. The series focuses on Lord Darcy, the chief investigator for Duke Richard of Normandy, and his master sorcerer assistant Sean O'Lochlainn.
My father is *not* a fantasy fan. He is an old school science fiction of the first stripe, having old issues of Analog in his collection. He even tends to avoid alternate history fiction that strays too close to fantasy. The only reason he accepted Lord Darcy's universe was because they explained them in scientific terms.
And then there's me, the girl who never quite left Oz all together.
[P.S. For the record, a *lot* of alternate history books focus on the Germans winning the war, most notably "The Man in High Castle" by Philip K. Dick. And Keith Roberts' collection "Pavane" shows a Catholic dominated world after the early death of Gloriana.]