Weekly Reader: Alternate Warriors Edited by Mike Resnick; Alternate Universe Anthology Creates Interesting and Violent Scenarios

Weekly Reader: Alternate Warriors Edited by Mike Resnick; Alternate Universe Anthology Creates Interesting and Violent Scenarios

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews


PopSugar Reading Challenge: An anthology

Spoilers: Alternate histories are fun to speculate upon wondering if something had been ever so slightly altered, could things have been different? Many books are written about the possibilities of the Nazis winning WWII or the Confederate states remaining separated from the Union after the Civil War. So many possibilities can be entertained. What if Lee Harvey Oswald missed? What if the Manson Family knocked on the wrong door instead of Sharon Tate's home? What if The Beatles never formed? What if Princess Diana lived to see her sons get married? What if Hilary Clinton never married Bill or won the last election? What if any other President had won instead of the ones that did?


Science Fiction authors have entertained various possibilities in this genre and the projected time streams are as varied as the divergant points in history. Science Fiction author and editor, Mike Resnick, edited a series of anthologies that offer these intriguing possibilities. The first (and best) Alternate Presidents gives various failed candidates a chance to grace the walls of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Another book in the series is Alternate Warriors. The premise is that various figures known for their pacificism, or nonviolent displays of civil disobedience now stop turning the other cheek and instead start picking up guns and swords. These characters embrace more violent natures in stories that open up very dark, violent, fascinating possibilities in history.


The best stories are:


"Because Thou Lovest a Burning Ground" by Michael P. Kube-McDowell- Alternate warrior: Mohandas K. Mahatma Gandhi

In our timeline, Gandhi was known for his pacifistic nature and acts of civil disobedience against English colonialism. This story suggests what would have happened if he had a different guide in his path: Kali, the Hindu Goddess of Death and Retribution. The plot supposed that Gandhi, a young medical student is mentored by Jafir, the remnant of the Thuggee cult that worshipped Kali. Gandhi is enticed by the Thuggees's violent nature to strangle their enemies without remorse. He is also driven by an India in which natives are forced to be educated in English, refused admission to certain studies, and villages are destroyed by English soldiers for the slightest provocation. While the Thuggee are written as a violent bunch, it is easy to see why Gandhi would use violence against violence. Using his leadership skills and cult of personality, the story ends on a bone chilling note when Gandhi is surrounded by hundreds of Thuggee followers ready to meet bloodshed with bloodshed.


"Extreme Feminism" by Nicholas DiChario-Alternate warrior: Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Victoria Woodhull

A common thread in these stories are that as bad as the situations are in reality, the stories are far worse. Certain groups are treated even worse (if such a thing could be possible) causing those who speak out with little choice but to react with violence, creating an even worse cycle of violence in which history can never climb out from. This story presents the possibility of how women's status was changed if Abraham Lincoln was assassinated not by John Wilkes Booth but by Mary E. Surratt (in reality, the owner of boarding house in which Booth stayed. She was the only female conspirator in the Lincoln assassination that was executed. This story implies that Surratt acted alone.) Since it was a woman that assassinated the President, the men in charge of law and politics decided that all women must be punished. They are forced by law to wear constricting bodices, petticoats, corsets and bonnets that cover all parts of the body and limit movement and breathing. ("A comfortable woman is a dangerous woman," they reason.) They are unable to purchase anything including guns without written consent from their husbands. As for the right to vote, well that's never going to happen.

Besides the conflicts between the feminists like Susan B. Anthony and the male dominated society, there is also conflict between the feminists themselves. There are the older ones like Anthony who prefer to fight with words and harmless stunts to get attention, like women firing guns into the air after Anthony makes a speech. Then there are the younger ones like Victoria Woodhull, who call themselves "Extreme Feminists" and prefer to commit violent acts like shooting and kidnapping male soldiers. The violent and nonviolent approaches go beyond either Anthony or Woodhull's expectations when a shootout ends on a bloody note for the feminists but gives Anthony the chance to unleash the power she longs for and as the narration tells us: "what no woman ever had a choice."


"The Firebringers" by David Gerrold-Alternate warrior: Various Hollywood icons including Gregory Peck, Ronald Reagan, James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Bob Hope, Van Johnson, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy

In the introduction, Resnick describes author, David Gerrold's career as a Hollywood screenwriter allowed him to think big. This story proves that. The basic premise is that the atomic bomb that the Americans sent is not dropped in Japan, but in Germany. Besides the change in direction, there is also a change in personnel. The flight crew on this fatal trip is comprised of Hollywood actors including Gregory Peck, Ronald Reagan, Humphrey Bogart, and James Cagney.

The characters are amalgams of their real selves and the characters that they played, the personas more known to the public. The story is littered with inside references making it one of the cleverest stories in the anthology. There are several references to their movies and lives. Bogart talks about returning to Morocco and reopen his cafe (referencing Casablanca). Lieutenants Laurel and Hardy were piano movers before the war (like in their Academy Award winning short, The Music Box). Cagney, the narrator writes in first person normally but his dialogue is punctuated "Oh..uh ah," and other fillers mimicking every comedian's impression of him ever.

By far the strongest characters are Colonals Gregory Peck and Ronald Reagan, also playing their types. Channeling his future (real life) career as President during the last days of the Cold War, Reagan describes the Germans as an "evil empire" and is in favor of bombing them sky high. Peck however, speaks in the voice of his character, Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird and tries to appeal to the crew's decency and basic humanity. This story is also one of the few in the anthology which doesn't end in violence, and insteads shows that cooler heads can prevail.



"The Cold Warrior" by Jack C. Haldeman II-Alternate warrior: Marilyn Monroe

Another Hollywood performer taking a violent turn in this anthology, is Marilyn Monroe. Though unlike the boys in "The Firebringers", she is acting by her lonesome self. This story reveals that this alternate Marilyn is more than capable of doing just that.

While she is still an actress in this story, Monroe has more important things in mind like revenge against Fidel Castro after a failed romance with Castro's partner, Che Guevera. Monroe uses her looks, charisma, and various other attributes to spy on such notables as Castro, Jimmy Hoffa, the Mafia, CIA, and just about anyone else in her way. The real Monroe was considered a soft spoken, troubled, insecure actress who had been victimized by a Hollywood patriarchal system, a drug addiction, and her own worries about her screen image. This Monroe is a hard edged, cynical, tough talking spy/assassin who uses any man in her way before shooting him. Like many other characters in these stories, this story opens up the dark side that Monroe may have unleashed if given the chance.


"One by One" by Beth Meacham-Alternate warrior: Tecumseh

Most of the stories feature the direct cause of the violence, the moment when the character embraces their dark sides. This story is the effect, what happens 200 years after Tecumseh, the Prophet's dream united the various tribes into the Shawnee Alliance and to fight a continuous war against their white invaders.

The world that is portrayed is the 1960's during this ongoing endless conflict when Walks Softly, a young woman seeking vengeance for the deaths of her father and brother, joins the terrorist organization that attacks the whites only towns. There are many moments of Native Americans striking back on their foes such as Ed Ames recreating the tomahawk throwing incident on the Tonight Show. However, the real life incident involved Ames throwing the tomahawk at a drawing's groin with some off-color harmless jokes from Carson. In this time stream, an angry Ames grieving over the death of his nephew, takes offense at Carson's humor and silences the talk show host but good, on live television.

This intense short story climaxes in a moment when Walks Softly has to make the decision to save a white childhood friend or to commit the violence that she is trained to do. The ending reveals the conditioning that this war has brought when people on both sides only see an enemy and not a human being and revenge and rage are all that they live for.


"Death of a Dream" by Jack C. Haldeman II-Alternate warrior: Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gets the focus of two stories. The first Lawrence Schimel's "Taking Action", shows King tortured by dreams but not his famous one of equality. Instead, they are prophetic dreams of the Anita Hill testimony before Congress and the Rodney King beating and various other scenes of racism. (One can only imagine that if the story were updated how many more dreams he would have including Travyon Martin, Michael Brown, Ahmoud Arbery, the South Carolina church shootings and so on.)

The better story is Haldeman's "Death of a Dream." This depicts a King still alive in 1975, but an embittered, angry King who is dying of cancer and is no longer the golden voiced idealist who united all people under his dream. Instead he never got to give his speech. In this version of events, he was openly denounced by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. Most of the co-leaders of the Civil Rights Movement withdrew their allegiances with King and Malcom X went to prison for successfully assasinating Alabama Gov. George Wallace Segregation continues and spreads throughout the entire United States. The Civil Rights bill is rejected. African-Americans are denied the right to vote and maybe forced to return to Africa.

This is the most pessimistic of the stories featuring a character with nothing left to lose. King knows he's going to die, so he is doing the only thing that he has left taking the President of the United States (former Chicago mayor), Richard J. Daley with him. Even though it's less than five pages, it shows what happens when the fight is gone and all the warrior has left is bitterness, exhaustion, and vengeance.


Alternate Warriors takes these characters down a dark side. While their motives are understandable, often driven by prejudice, hatred, or vengeance, these stories retroactively make their real life actions more admirable. They could have easily chosen violence and walked down these dark paths, but they didn't. Instead, they chose to fight with words, talents, resistance, and bloodless action. In doing so, they became the real heroes.

Weekly Reader: The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead; Follow-Up To The Underground Railroad Surpasses Expectations

Weekly Reader: The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead; Follow-Up To The Underground Railroad Surpasses Expectations

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews


PopSugar Reading Challenge: A book that won an award in 2019 (Time Magazine Best Books of the Decade)



Spoilers: When a book becomes such a monster hit, there is much speculation and anticipation whether the author's follow-up will be just as well regarded as the previous hit. Take Colson Whitehead for example. His 2016 novel, The Underground Railroad was everywhere. The ciritcal and commercial success hit multiple best seller lists and won various awards including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and National Book Award for Fiction.

Naturally, when Whitehead's novel, The Nickel Boys was published in 2019, there were concerns whether it could compete against Railroad. Could Colson Whitehead top himself?

Fortunately, Whitehead proves that the successor can more than meet the standards set by the predecessor. The Nickel Boys is just as much a hit as The Underground Railroad. Time Magazine listed it as one of the Best Books of the Decade. It is a finalist for the National Book Award.

As for writing, The Nickel Boys not only meets The Underground Railroad in terms of style, it surpasses it in terms of characterization, theme, and quality.


The Nickel Boys takes place in the Nickel Academy, the fictional equivalent to the real-life Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Mariana, Florida. The Dozier School ran from 1900-2011 and gained a reputation for abuse, beatings, torture and murder of the boys by staff. In 2009, the school underwent a full investigation after the school failed a state investigation. The investigation included exploring the various unmarked graves on the site which told of various boys who were tortured and beaten to death or shot while trying to escape. The authorities identified 55 burials and nearly 100 deaths at the school.


Whitehead took the inspiration of this sad true story and created a novel that is heartbreaking, but also challenging with its themes of institutional racism and the power and control certain authority figures have towards those who are perceived as weaker than them.


This book is set in the early 1960's and focuses mostly on Elwood Curtis, a bright African-American boy from Tallahassee, Florida. Elwood works at the Richmond Hotel kitchen and reads books like classics and the Hardy Boys in his spare time. He lives with his grandmother after the disappearance of his parents who moved west to find work and never returned.

The greatest gift that Elwood ever received is a record of Martin Luther King's speeches. He plays them on an endless loop and is drawn by King's philosophies of nonviolence and loving one's enemies. In school, he is committed to his studies and social activism, the latter of which worries his grandmother.


One day, Elwood hitches a ride in a stolen car to his college classes when he and the other riders are arrested. Elwood is sentenced to The Nickel Academy, which is the closest thing to Hell on Earth to put things mildly. At The Nickel Academy, Elwood is subjected first hand to the mistreatments and punishments, including beatings, starvation, sexual assault, and torture. Not to mention the private rooms where those considered the worst offenders are sent and don't always come back out. Through it all, Elwood tries to hold fast to Martin Luther King's philosophies.

While this is going on, we peer into Elwood's current life as a New York City businessman. Even though other former inmates have reunited through social media, Elwood has not. He tries to live only in the present, though his troubled current life suggests that his past as a Nickel Boy still stays with him. He suffers from PTSD and is very uncomfortable in his current relationship. His past at the Nickel Academy isn't far behind as an investigation uncovers various unmarked graves and Elwood has to confront the Academy with all the suffering that he endured.


The Nickel Boys is the kind of book that is hard to forget. It is gripping and terrifying to read about how cruel and dehumanizing some people can be to other human beings. Much of the behavior is built upon the racist view of looking at someone as an "other", someone who they perceive as less than human. Once a certain people are dehumanized, it becomes easier for some to do deplorable things to them.

The moments between the inmates and the sadistic employees are gripping because of the abuse that the boys endure because of the racist dehumanization.


This book invokes comparisons to Native Son and Invisible Man in how it challenges not only the individual racist acts, but the institutional racism and conferred dominance that allow those acts to exist. Similar to Invisible Man's haunting Battle Royale chapter there is an early example of the systematic racism that Elwood endures. While working at the hotel, Elwood enters into an employee contest in which a fine set of encyclopedias are the prize. Elwood wins the contest, but loses in life when he learns that the encyclopedias are dummy copies and have nothing written in them. Elwood is set up to be humiliated by a society that demeans him for their own amusement.


Unlike the Narrator of Invisible Man however, Elwood's pacifism is not held up for ridicule and setting him up for constant humiliation by white society. While he is abused in Nickel, he reveals a true strength despite his captivity. He stands up for a fellow inmate who is threatened with sexual assault and gets beaten as a result. Another time, he takes King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" to heart and composes his own "Letter from a Nickel Academy" exposing the school and the staff for the house of horrors that it is. Even though Elwood sometimes finds it hard, he repeats the words, "Do to us what you will and we will still love you," like a mantra even when he doesn't want to.

While Elwood takes the path of nonviolence, another inmate proves to be a contrast. Elwood befriends Jack Turner, a more cynical inmate. Jack doesn't have the same ideals as Elwood. He is from a more violent criminal background. He is sharper, fiery, and prefers to make his point clear with a fist and sometimes a smart comment. He is more of a fighter and is willing to challenge his captivity and the staff through action. To Whitehead's credit, he never pushes one view over the other. Instead the book suggests that people challenge racism and their forced circumstances in different ways and that there is no one specific way that people can, or should, do it.


A plot twist opens many possibilities and causes the Reader to rethink the characters and themes. But it also says that Elwood and Jack's abilities to challenge the system around them will be remembered and in the present, put them in a situation to confront this dark past so that it can never be repeated.


The Nickel Boys is more than a successful best-selling and critically acclaimed follow-up to The Underground Railroad. With its better writing, compelling characters, and strong theme, it is the superior.