Review is up at http://www.sfrevu.com/php/Review-id.php?id=17520

Bring the Jubilee is one of the earliest alternate histories, set in a United States that lost the American Civil War after a decisive Confederate victory at Gettysburg. The South has gone on to forge its own empire sprawling across Mexico and Central America, a center of learning and culture that rivals the British Empire and German Union. Meanwhile, the impoverished North lies divided and embittered after the failures of their generals and Lincoln, having undergone its own Reconstruction to become a destitute nation of wealthy landowners ruling over indentured workers. Politics are divided between Whigs (promoting trickle-down Reaganomics) and incompetent Populists. Even though slavery has been abolished, minorities face persecution, unjustly blamed for defeat by way of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

Into this setting comes Hodge, a young man striving to become a scholar in a backwater village that offers him nothing but indentured servitude at the local mill. Directionless but with plenty of ambition, Hodge sets off with his few belongings for New York, a seedy and pale shadow if its real-world self. To follow his dream of becoming a historian of the War of Southron Independence, Hodge is pulled into the machinations of a subversive—almost terrorist—organization called the Grand Army, which eventually sends him off to an isolated research institute of higher learning. Little does Hodge know, but the experiments going on at this facility may unintentionally reshape his world…

The first half of Bring the Jubilee is something like a meandering travelogue; it reminds me of those future histories from the ’30s, in that it’s more interested in displaying its fantastic setting rather than developing a deep or complex character or plot. To be fair, the setting is well-realized and vivid, offering a cornucopia of ideas for its impressive setting without giving too little or too much detail. The world is lived-in and realistic, down to the petty cruelties heaped upon minorities in a run-down and decaying North. The story takes a sudden turn about halfway through, focusing more on Hodge, his love interest Catty, and the research station, which is where the real meat of the plot begins—it’s a spoiler, but realizing that the novel is also a time-travel novel gives you some idea where Moore is taking the story. He takes that path and does it well, and the end result is an impressive novel that offers plenty to think about.

Though I can criticize the novel for its thin plot and characterization—Hodge is something of an everyman turned passive narrator until nearly the end of the novel—I can’t under-emphasize how awesome its setting was. Moore’s brilliance here was a simple one: he took history and flipped it, switching the roles of the Southern and Northern halves of the United States after the culmination of the American Civil War. We don’t see every detail of this imagined world, but the snippets we do see are striking, and I’m still impressed by a post-Reconstruction North tearing itself apart during a 1942 election where Thomas E. Dewey (of “Dewey defeats Truman” fame”) wins the Whig nomination and election. It’s that attention to detail that impresses me as a history buff, though those who aren’t as familiar with the minutia should still find plenty to enjoy here.

Bring the Jubilee is a complex and thoughtful novel, and while it’s shallow in some places it has surprising depth in others. I would love to see a little more added to this novel—a little more insight into Hodge, more complexity, more world and setting details, more of everything—but alas, those fall beyond the limitations of 1950s publishing which limited most novels to under 200 pages. That desire to see more isn’t a condemnation of the novel, which is arguably in the top 20 of its era; it’s the wish from a fan to improve upon a novel already so close to perfection. Bring the Jubilee is the kind of novel that a non-SF fan would greatly enjoy, and those who read extensively in the genre could do worse than dig out this old gem and give it a go.

Alternate history is a fairly common element of today’s science fiction scene. It’s not unusual to read about a novel or encounter a short story that takes some key aspect of history as we know it and flips it on its head. From the lack of the Black Plague in Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt to Michael Chabon’s Jewish habitation of Alaska in The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, Jon Courtenay Grimwood’s exploration of a 21-st century Ottoman empire in the Arabesk trilogy to Adam Roberts’ wild, lilliputian Swiftly, the past decade or so has seen a significant number of such stories. But there was a vanguard—at least if the scattering of stories over several decades can be described as such. (‘First wave’ sounds just as equivocal…) One of the key, initial forays into history through an imaginary lens is Ward Moore’s 1953 Bring the Jubilee, which is being released in ebook form by Open Road Media in 2017.

Its Jonbar point the American Civil War, Bring the Jubilee looks into the idea ‘what if the South won’? The story of Hodge Backmaker, son of a poor farmer in what’s left of the United States of America (essentially the Union), the young man breaks free of his rural home at an early age and heads to New York City—an impoverished metro compared to the grand, lavish cities of the Confederate States of America. Getting lucky and finding work with a book printer, Hodge spends the next few years of his life learning the trade. And he learns much more. The book printer’s essentially a front, namely that of printing propaganda and counterfeiting money, Hodge learns of ongoing secret operations to build a Grand Army and restore the United States to its former glory.

While many readers might expect such an early effort of alternate history to go the black and white route of vilifying the South by portraying them as tyrannical victors while glorifying the North as honorable victims, instead, the South is not portrayed as a slave-loving region which stamps the poor further into the ground, rather simply an economically and politically aggressive government bent on empire. In other words, Moore spins the tables… to look something like the North. This is all a convoluted manner of saying Bring the Jubilee is more interested in finding common ground between reality and the alternate reality, than it is putting the 8 millionth nail in the coffin of ‘slavery is bad’.

One method Moore uses to illustrate the point is to take a portion of Backmaker’s story into what some might decry a mundane love triangle. On one hand, indeed, Backmaker’s woes are the stuff of standard romance. But on the other, it illustrates that regardless the winners or losers in war, there are aspects common to all humanity that make us rebel based on principle, not geography . Thankfully, the triangle occupies a minor section, as along beside it are the book printer’s agenda and the other sectors of society the young man encounters. (Interestingly enough, Moore also adds a time travel element which, thankfully, is used for illustrative, thematic purposes rather than a dog and pony show.

It’s possible in today’s age to write a grocery list of novels and short stories wherein the Nazis won WWII or some variation thereof. It’s able possible to write a list, though much shorter, of stories which have the South winning the Civil War, from Maureen McHugh’s simple-minded “The Lincoln’s Train” to Ben Winter’s likewise simple-minded Underground Airlines to the more ambitious Fire on the Mountain by Terry Bisson or “Custer’s Last Jump” by Steven Utley and Howard Waldrop. In this context, Bring the Jubilee must be considered one of, if not the most significant contribution to alternate history stories, as well as the broader spectrum of humanity’s relationship to rebellion and war. Eschewing the standard fireworks of rehashing grand battles or portraying the South as irrational, slave-owning tyrants, Moore puts a spin on the alternate scenario that shows, in the end, the distance between the North and the South might indeed just be a thin red line. In short, an intriguing novel worth going back for a read.

This is an old favorite. The current political climate added an entirely new dimension to the story -- how easy it is to see what-might-have-been!

This 1953 novel is both an alternate history and time travel science fiction. In the years since, it has been in print through a succession of publishers, and will now be released in ebook format by Open Road Media. I received a kindle format version at no cost, prior to release, in return for publishing an honest review.

American Civil War alternate histories are a staple of the genre, probably the best known being MacKinlay Kantor’s If The South Had Won the Civil War (1961), and more recently Harry Turtledove’s Southern Victory series (1997-2007). There have been numerous stories which employ versions of this concept, and even anthologies thematically focused on it. But Bring The Jubilee predates all of the above, has been cited as inspiration for Philip K Dick’s The Man in the High Castle (1962), and should be seen as critical in the popular establishment of alternate history as a subgenre.

In the novel, the point of departure (POD) from our own universe is the Battle of Gettysburg turning to a Confederate victory. But rather than reading like a faux history book (If The South Had Won the Civil War), and rather than giving a blow-by-blow of the conflict itself (Southern Victory), Moore immerses his story immediately in the resulting rump 3rd world United States two generations after the conclusion of the “War of Southron Independence.” In the person of young Hodge Backmaker, we first see his native backwater Wappinger Falls, and a much-diminished New York City where he works in a bookstore/printer shop. Eventually he finds his way to a semi-utopian community in the Pennsylvania countryside, where time travel capability is developed.

As a character, Hodge is believable and interesting. While not the central focus of the story, his sexual relationships with women are surprisingly forthright for 1950s writing. At the time of the book’s release, critics referred to it as “Bohemian”, which of course had nothing to do with Bohemia. As a result, the narrative has a much more contemporary feel. But this brings us to the character I found to be outstandingly not believable – Barbara Haggerwells. She is a brilliant physicist, but also seems to be a sexual predator who has cowed the entire Haggershaven community to her will. I guess there just was no good model for a polyandrist female character at the time; she comes across as irrationally needy and always gets her way.

I enjoyed the exchanges between characters regarding the philosophical nature of time and cause/effect, as well as some political observations that seem as true today as at the time this was written. This is a read for thinkers, and while the ending was what I was expecting, the getting there was most entertaining. If only, if only, Barbara was written better.

It didn't interest me as much as I thought it would. There was too many characters to follow. The one plus was that it was historical about the post war plans for the confederacy .

Bring The Jubilee by Ward Moore- From 1953, an Alternative History/ Time Travel novel set in and around an America where the Southern states won the Civil War. The United States has become a backward, impoverished relic of the war by 1930. Our narrator begins his story by saying he was born in 1921 but he is writing this account in 1877. Then without further explanation goes into great detail about how Robert E. Lee's successful campaign at Gettysburg went on to the surrender of the Union forces and victory for the Confederate States. Much information is passed during that first chapter as we are given a history lesson on what the world has become from this momentous calamity. Our narrator is a country boy, who dreams of the possibility of higher learning which will certainly be denied him. His dissemination reminds me of Theodore Sturgeon's colorful characters in their awe of the strange and new things. How he moves to escape his poverty and gain the education he desperately desires becomes his tale, and also becomes a backdrop for us to learn more about his world. After falling in with a group of like-minded people, he meets someone who has a strange, new invention, a time machine. This sets up a series of evens in which he is instrumental in changing the world as he knew it. What he does and the consequences shape the last part of the book. I found the story to be compelling if a bit slow moving and redundant at times, but certainly one of the best thought out time travel scenarios.