Update: PayPal Decides to Play Fair

The good news is that PayPal has now reversed its decision to censor the works it sells. It has now agreed with Smashwords not to censor and allow the sale of uncensored "legal" fiction. This is a not only the smart move by PayPal, but it is also the correct one.  I congratulate them for this.  Our civil rights just got a little safer today.

So PayPal Wants to Play Censor...

I wrote this in response to this article in today's Globe and Mail where PayPal is telling the vendors it deals with to ban books PayPal deems "obscene:"

As an author with books published via Smashwords - no, not that sort - I find this attempt at corporate censorship disgusting. Free speech is an absolute right. Yes, you may find what other people are saying and writing to be juvenile, stupid or even disgusting  - but you don’t have to look at it or read it do, you? And for every idiot who stands up in a crowded movie theatre to shout “fire,” there are also hundreds who will stand up and say, “No, you idiot, there is no fire.” That’s your right.

At a time when our civil rights are increasingly under pressure (our right to privacy for example, through the Conservatives’ electronic spying legislation) we should not yield so lightly our most precious of civil rights – free speech to cold, grey corporate interests. 

My Romance with Alternate History… continued

In an earlier article on this blog, I confessed to my love to the niche genre of alternate history.  I also reviewed some of my early influences on my writing.  It occurred to me afterwards, that a survey of the field would be helpful. (First, I’d recommend the website Urchonia, that lists all things alternate history – it is a terrific reference tool.)

In terms of books, this time around, I’d like to look at how different authors covered off the same narrow topic.  For example, in Harry Harrison’s A Rebel in Time (1983), a time traveler goes back in time to supply advanced weaponry to the Confederacy – a Sten Gun. Ultimately, the plot is foiled by another time traveller, a government agent, but all the mucking around with history does succeed in creating a new timeline where the South still loses.  In Harry Turtledove’s The Guns of the South (1992), the weapon of choice is the AK-47 and the time travellers are disaffected South Africans who wish to establish the Confederacy as a future ally.  The plot, largely told from the point of view of Robert E. Lee, has all the hallmarks of a Turtledove novel being well researched and believable (if you had a time machine). This time, the South wins the Civil War, largely due to the influence of the AK-47.

Another pairing of narrow alternate history topics concerns the Japanese invasion of Hawaii in the Second World War. (I’ve done this while playing Axis and Allies – it tends to piss off the U.S. player something bad.) The indomitable Harry Turtledove wrote a two-volume series Days of Infamy (2004) and the End of the Beginning (2005.) Both books are meaty and epic in scale with a wide cast of historic and fictional characters. The invasion follows on the same day as the attack on Pearl Harbor. The series makes for satisfying reading. In 1942 (2009) by Robert Conroy, the Japanese invade some months after crippling the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor. The novel is rousing enough, also featuring historical and fictional characters aplenty. There is also a heroic band of guerilla fighters (something missing from Turtledove’s novels, whose characters flatly state guerrilla-style resistance is impossible.).

So that’s it for my little episode of compare-and-contrast. I’ll just end it with a reminder that my own two contributions two the genre, Elvis Saves JFK! and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History,  are available for just $0.99 and $2.99, respectively.  Of course, they're both free to preview.  Both books are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.

Another Preview From Elvis Saves JFK!

Here's another preview from Somerset House Press's latest e-book, Elvis Saves JFK!  I wrote Right of Return over a two day period during a break from teacher's college and it's still one of my favourites. It was also the last story my great friend and writing mentor Juan O'Niell saw before he died all too soon. He called it "fucking little masterpiece." 

Right of Return

The sun shone in a brilliant blue sky, as SS Obergruppenfuehrer Karl Dietz stepped smartly up the broad white marble steps that led to SS High Command. He smiled as he looked at the red and silver banners that hung from the lampposts on either side of him. They marked the 100th anniversary of the final triumph over the plutocratic Western Allies and their traitorous Japanese lackeys. He stopped at one swastika-and-eagle tipped lamppost, where a foreign guest worker—a South Slav by the cast of his brow—struggled to hang one of the banners.

“You,” snapped Dietz, “take care with that! The warriors of the Greater Reich did not sacrifice themselves so that you could sully their memory.”

The poor fellow gulped as he looked at the SS runes and the rank tabs on Dietz’s black uniform lapels. “J-Jawhowl, Herr oberst!”

Dietz straightened his high-peaked cap as he marched to the top of the stairs. He was in a good mood, not because of the anniversary celebrations, which were still a few days away, but because he had received a rare personal summons from the Riechsfuehrer SS, second in line to the Fuehrer himself.

Dietz paused long enough under the wide marble columns of the front entrance to take in the view. From the top of the steps he looked out at the broad expanse of the Welthauptstadt Germania, the world capital that the legendary First Fuehrer, Adolph Hitler had built out of the bomb-shattered ruins of Old Berlin. His eyes travelled with pride along the long broad avenue, busy with midday traffic. The avenue passed under the enormous Victory Arch that, as legend had it, the First Fuehrer had sketched as an art student, and around the world’s largest building, the 290 metre high dome of the Volkshalle, now covered in the respectable green patina of age. Atop the dome, perched the symbol of imperial might, a golden Nazi eagle with a globe in its talons remained untouched by time, an enduring symbol of the Thousand Year Reich.

So much more to do. Dietz turned around and entered the building, returning the black-uniformed guard’s whip-crack salute. His jackbooted heels clicked on the marble floor as he walked down the long corridor and into the darkness.

“Sit down, Dietz.” The Riechsfuehrer’s cough echoed in his darkened office that reeked of stale cigarette smoke. The curtains had been drawn and the only light came from a small green bankers’ lamp on the Riechsfuehrer’s broad mahogany desk. His condition surprised Dietz. While he knew the Riechsfuehrer was an old man, he had not known that he was this far gone. When he smiled the Riechsfuehrer looked like a living skull. “Come, sit.”

“Yes Herr Riechsfuehrer.” Dietz sat down in a leather armchair.

The second most powerful man in the Reich took a cigarette from a wooden case on his desk, struck a match, and lit it, the match-head briefly flaring before he touched it to the cigarette. The cigarette tip glowed red as he inhaled. “It’s been a while since you were attached to the Ministry of Space, now hasn’t it?”

“Yes . . . I did tours of duty at both the Lunar and Martian stations.”

“Are you familiar with the Von Braun Lunar farside array?”

“It’s our deep space communications post for the Jupiter missions . . . I’ve not been there recently.”

“Very good.” The Riechsfuehrer coughed as he exhaled from his cigarette. “What I am about to tell you is a State Secret.”

 “I am honoured.”

“Spare me your gratitude. Have you any other cases pending?”

“Just the resurgence of some writings of a lunatic Dutchman who was sent to the camps about sixty years ago. His writings about the earth being visited by ancient astronauts have been gaining some measure of popularity among the lower classes.” Dietz sniffed.

“Give it to one of your subordinates.” The Riechsfuehrer coughed again. “I have something far more fitting your station.” He smiled, the lines in his skeletal face showing in the dim light. “Two weeks ago, Lunar farside picked up a deep space signal. It wasn’t one of ours.”


Preview copyright 2010 Michael Cnudde

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You can buy Elvis Saves JFK! by going here for just $0.99 and is free to preview. And of course, War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History,  is on sale for $2.99, and as always, it's free to preview.

Both War Plan Crimson and Elvis Saves JFK! are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.

Why Alternate History?

That’s a good question that I’ve been asked many times. Why do I choose to write this “genre fiction” rather than attempting the Great Novel? Traditionally, it's been the Rodney Dangerfield of the genres, garnering no respect from non-genre audiences.

I enjoy reading it - and writing it - because alternate history often poses questions in ways others can't.  I’ve also always been a fan of history and find its twists and turns (often on something minuscule) fascinating.
        For Harry Turtledove, in How Few Remain, that miniscule incident is the recovery of Lee’s Special Order 191, lost prior to the Battle of Antietam in September, 1862, which outlined his plans for the forthcoming battle. In our history, the lost orders were picked up by Union troops and the Union scored a decisive if bloody victory. As a result, Lincoln was able to add a moral dimension to the Civil War by making it war on slavery through his Emancipation Proclamation. In Turtledove’s history, Lee’s orders are recovered by the Confederates, not only leading to a Confederate victory at Antietam but also, with the intervention of the British Empire and France, an eventual Southern victory.

            If you happen to be one of the three people in the world who has not read the ensuing "Southern Victory" series, I encourage you to do so. It’s clearly the best of his work. Why this series works so well is that the reader can easily imagine it happening exactly that way. 

            When it’s done right, the genre makes you think. Novels such as Robert Harris’ Fatherland (and the subsequent HBO movie) offer a spooky guided tour of a victorious Third Reich where the Holocaust has been brutally swept under the rug.  Len Dieghton’s brilliant SS-GB (my first exposure the genre as a 16 year-old) shows how ordinary people in Great Britain find their own ways to get by in the face of a Nazi German occupation. Of course, there’s Philip K. Dick’s classic The Man in the High Castle, which works on so many different levels.

             There are two more examples – but little known. I refer to William Overgard’s The Divide that posits a defeated America cut in two by Nazi Germany and the Japanese Empire. The novel has been singled out by how it shows the willingness of everyday people to collaborate.  In David C. Poyer’s The Shiloh Project, it’s over a hundred years after Lee defeated Meade at Gettysburg. I find this novel fascinating for the detail it goes in to show the Confederacy’s slide into decay and the steps some would do to stop that from happening.

            The victory of the Confederacy and the Third Reich are perhaps the most popular “what-ifs” of alternate history, but by no means are the only ones.  For example, Harry Harrison’s  jaunty A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! posits a world where the Revolutionary War failed, Washington was hung as a traitor and an enlightened British Empire continues to thrive into the 20^th Century.  Similarly, the survival of the Roman Empire until the 20^th Century is discussed in Kirk Mitchell’s  superb Procurator trilogy.

            At its best the genre of alternate history helps illuminate our own past from a different aspect.  It is this very part that makes the very best of it worthy of the title “great novel.”  I’ll talk more about this aspect in a future article.

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My two contributions two the genre, Elvis Saves JFK! and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History,  are available for just $0.99 and $2.99, respectively.  Of course, they're both free to preview.  Both books are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.

A Sample from Elvis Saves JFK!

A belated "Happy New Year" to all fans of Somerset House Press.  I thought I would share with you a sample of the short story "Chasing Fate," from Somerset House Press' latest release Elvis Saves JFK!. Chasing Fate, the story of what happens to famed aviator Amelia Earhart if her life went in a well... different direction:

Chasing Fate:
It was not even 7:30 am, and she already felt the warmth of the sun on her face. That’s what you get out here, even in early December, thought Amelia, as she swung the jeep out onto the flight line, past a long line of olive green P-40s, parked wingtip - to – wingtip. Stupid really: those planes were sitting ducks that could be blown to bits by a monkey throwing dynamite from a balloon.

She drove up to her plane, a brand-new Curtiss P-40E, with more engine power and a heavier armament, a damn improvement over the P-40Bs and Cs stationed here at Hickham Field and elsewhere around Pearl Harbor.  Amelia drove the jeep around to the side of the plane and stopped it where the ground crew was finishing pumping fuel from the back of a tanker into the ship’s fuselage fuel tank. “Did you arm her?” she called, walking over. She slung her parachute over her shoulder.

The crew chief nodded. “The Colonel’d kill me if he found out I was doing this, Miz Earhart.”  The tanker crew reeled the hose back to the truck.

“Can’t demonstrate the plane without a full combat load, sergeant,” she said, climbing onto the fighter’s wing.  “And that includes both fuel and ammunition. At least that’s what the good people at Curtiss-Wright are paying me to do.”

The crew chief handed Amelia her goggles and helmet. “How many more of these demonstration flights they paying you to do, anyhow?”

“One more; that’s on Monday, when I’ll be showing the pilots just what this new plane of theirs can do. You can call this my check ride,” she said, taking her goggles and fitting them over her short curly hair.  She settled into the cockpit and looked around her. “Clear!” Amelia touched the starter switch and the big Allison in-line rumbled to life on the first try.

The crew chief smiled. He’d almost forgotten today was Sunday. Nothing happened around here on Sundays.

Amelia kept the canopy open as she climbed over Pearl Harbor in the humid morning air. Between the engine pounding in her lap, and the wind blowing in her face, the feeling was almost… sexual.  Below her, the slumbering dreadnoughts along Battleship Row, then Ford Island and Luke Field, where she and Fred Noonan had taken off, back in ’37 to start the Pacific leg of their west-to-east round-the-world flight. Almost ground-looped the Lockheed, there and then. She shuddered. Can you imagine what would’ve happened if we’d crashed and had to postpone the flight? There was some thought at the time of making the flight from the opposite direction, east-to-west. Sure glad we never faced the prospect of going down because we’d gotten lost or ran out of fuel if we’d made the last leg over the Pacific…  

Over the harbor, she turned northwest and pointed the plane’s nose west and began to fly along the southern coast, the rich green hills merging with the brown sand below her. And then blinked.  There was something on the horizon. She blinked again. It seemed to be a swarm of black dots. Planes. And lots of them. She keyed her radio. “Hickham Tower, this is Curtiss Test. I’ve got a large formation of unidentified aircraft approaching Pearl from the west. Over.”

For a second, nothing. Then a burst of static in her ear. “Ah, those are probably that flight of B-17s coming in from the mainland, Curtiss. Over.”

“Roger, Hickham. But those should be coming in from the east. I say again: these are coming in from the west. And there looks to be a lot more than just a flight of ‘em.” Amelia felt a rising sense of dread in her gut. 

Silence, then: “Curtiss, this is Hickham. Can you try for a visual intercept? Over.”

“Can do. Roger.” Amelia opened up the throttle and pulled back on the stick. The P-40 began to climb, its engine revving louder. She flipped a switch and charged the fighter’s six wing-mounted .50 machine guns and slid the canopy shut with a clunk.  The plane climbed to 10,000, and then, through a layer of light cloud, to 15,000 feet, where she leveled off.

Her earphones crackled. “Curtiss, this is Hickham. Can you see anything, over?”

Amelia looked though the canopy and through the plane’s nose-mounted ring gunsight. “I count multiple single-engined aircraft inbound, Hickham. These are not, repeat  -are not –B-17s. Over.”

“Uh… understood.”

“Hickham, if I were you, I’d call an alert and fast! Those planes’ll be on top of you in minutes, over… Hickham?”  But she couldn’t wait for a reply. The black dots were quickly resolving into full-fledged aircraft. Even as she imagined sailors manning battle stations and pilots dashing to their planes below her, more out of faint hope than anything else, she could see several of the closer aircraft peel off towards her. They’ve seen me. She pushed back on her stick and poured on the power, her fighter clawing for more height. Have to get above them.  She banked the plane, even as the first radial-engined fighter slid by her, close enough for her to see the round red circle of the rising sun glinting on the wings.

Japanese? Here?

She reeled as if she was slapped in face.  Japanese.  Gripping her stick, Amelia rolled away, even as she saw flashes of light over the nose and on the wings of the second Japanese fighter, coming head on. They’re firing, dammit  Amelia could imagine the bullets buzzing by her canopy, like a swarm of angry bees. Lining the enemy up the ring-sight, she gripped the trigger button on top of her stick for all she was worth.

The acrid smell of fresh cordite filled the cockpit.

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Elvis Saves JFK!, a collection of original short fiction exploring the different routes history could've taken, is for sale for just $0.99 - that's ninety- nine cents, folks! And of course, it's free to preview. Click here to buy.

And of course the original juggernaut that started it all, War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History,  is on sale for $2.99, and as always, it's free to preview.

Both War Plan Crimson and Elvis Saves JFK! are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.

Elvis Saves JFK! Approved For Smashwords Premium Distribution

More good news! Somerset House Press's newest e-book, Elvis Saves JFK! has been approved for premium distribution by Smashwords. This means the book has met exacting design and publication standards to be distributed among such fine on-line retailers as Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.

Elvis Saves JFK! which is a collection of original short fiction exploring the different routes history could've taken, is for sale for just $0.99 - that's ninety- nine cents, folks! And of course, it's free to view