Draka Volume III should be in the post. Meanwhile, Bryan Talbot presents a kind of alternative history that is not to be found in any work by Poul Anderson or SM Stirling: Britain lost the Napoleonic War (OK, so far) and the world is inhabited by anthropomorphic animals! (See image.)
Maybe funny animals histories make more sense in visual media? Alan Moore attributes familiar animal characters to Doctor Moreau. Talbot has Rupert Bear's father gardening in the background of a few panels.
Thus, I was mistaken to postulate that Anderson and Stirling had covered every aspect of the alternative timelines idea - but maybe writers and readers of prose sf do not want talking animals in their texts? Anderson and Gordon R Dickson came close to it with their Hoka.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I grant that understanding why Andrew von Shrakenberg turned out as he did might be unclear on first reading of UNDER THE YOKE. But I think a second reading might show a slow, gradual "uneasiness" about what his people had become and were doing. A perhaps inchoate sense of disgust which Andrew himself might find hard to understand. I think one telling incident is the raid in which the Draka captured an underground resistance agent. Note how Andrew shot him to end the man's suffering after being interrogated by torture.
Perhaps this was too subtle? I would say, however, this was another means taken by Stirling to stress that the Draka were not cardboard monsters or cliches.
Sean
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