Cold Turkey

[threemonkeys]

I'm trying to kick a habit and this may be my best opportunity. The addiction in this case is the reading of Harry Turtledove alternate history series. Each book in one of these series is huge and the series can easily span half a dozen volumes or more. The books are entertaining in a mindless kind of way - the lives and loves of a bunch of characters who make their way through the changed reality that is a Turtledove universe. From time to time there is a chance to say "ooh he is referring to that bit of history", but mostly it is just about the characters' lives. Very much like a soap opera or reality show really.

The thing is, I have reached the point where the two series I was reading have both finally been wound up. I have not started on any of the numerous others and I intend to keep it that way. From now on the only Turtledove books I will read are the stand-alone stories. Not all of those either - my experience with the incredibly tedious Ruled Brittania leaves me wary.

The actual trigger for this resolution is that I have finished reading Out of the Darkness - book 6 in the Darkness series. This is the WW2 as a fantasy world series. It follows sixteen different characters. That is a huge number of POV characters which is why it is no wonder that the books fatten to the size they are - typically 650+ pages. There is no point in trying to describe it further - if you know Turtledove, then you know what to expect. If you don't then you wouldn't start with this one and I would suggest that you don't start on any of them at all unless you have vast acres of time at your disposal.

Comments

[gillpolack.livejournal.com]

I am trying to work out the levels of addiction, saturation, fatigue and ambivalence to Turtledove from your post and can't.

My suspicion is the more accurate his history gets the slower his writing is to read.

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

High ambivalence and saturation levels have been reached. I just don't care about his stuff anymore. Therefore the addiction is easy to break - there won't be any withdrawl symptoms. But you have to factor in that, in general, I do find it hard to break most addictions - say TV shows and the like. Its just the addiction to fat and sugar that I have a problem with.

I'm trying hard to think of a correlation between the accuracy of the history and ease of reading and I can't really come up with one. At least within the confines of alternate-reality novels. His non historical stuff is certainly easier to read than his historical stuff.

[gillpolack.livejournal.com]

I'm a salt addict.

I can see why his hsitorical stuff slows down - he takes on the tones of some of his sources, including the cademic one. And he feels the need to flesh out background a lot more. He also explores causes and consequences in greater detail: there is a lot less assumed and a lot more explained. And just doesn't it make sense that these are the books *I* like, since I have spent large chunks of my life reading matters historical. I find the other books a bit Turtledove-lite.

My particular addictions are things with salt. Chips. Pickles. Deep fried with salt is best of all. (I have salad for lunch and can't see any way to make it anything other than healthy.)

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

I have high blood pressure, so I try to keep my salt intake to a reasonable level. I don't think I have huge salt-BP sensitivity but it can't hurt. However every so often I just find the need to binge on one of the more heavily salted kinds of potato chips.

[gillpolack.livejournal.com]

I have high blood pressure, but I am also insulin reistant and have metabolic disorder (which means I lok at food and get fat ). I do think my doctor would be happier if I gave up eating entirely.

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

I am also somewhat insulin resistant. My doctor is a nice fellow and is too polite to bully me to lose weight, so he tries to gently hint around it. Poor fellow must be so frustrated with me. With a bit of luck, my break over the next few months, if all goes to plan, will make him happier.

[lobelet.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately I still have my Turtledove addiction (there's a new book in the "Settling Accounts" series coming out in July). There is no hope for me.

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

When I saw that series start I braced myself, took a deep breath and said "no". And kept on saying it until my book buying impulse subsided to a dull roar.

[thoatherder.livejournal.com]

What cured me of Turtledove were his stylistic flaws. The 'Down to Earth/Colonization ' series irritated me with the constant repetition of 'explosive metal bomb' for nuclear bomb, and the endless repetition of 'empathic cough' whenever someone said 'truth' in agreement to a statement (interestingly in my own family we do say 'true' as rejoinder to a statement we agree with by we don't follow it up with a cough). It was as if he had a macro in his word processor to type these two phrases over and over again.

Turtledove may have a command of history, but his command of language and its development is lacking. Commonly used phrases become shortened over time, 'explosive metal bomb' would have been shortened to something else fairly rapidly (note how we have 'nuclear bomb' that got shortened to 'nuke') the constant reference to the 'emphatic cough' is the sign of a long winded writer.

For me, I think the attraction of an alternative history story is spotting the characters which are the same but different, the little flashes of pleasure when you spot how things have been made different in the imagined world, or recognise someone who had a different (or the same role) in the new history.

Turtledove's "The Guns of the South" is a pretty good novel. It helps if you don't have much idea of the nature of the real life people the characters are supposed to represent. For example Lee is not quite the paragon that Turtledove makes out.

The long winded series where things diverge too far from history as we know it leave me cold, I picked up one of his books in Dymocks and noted that he had concentration camps for blacks in the Confederate territories, it was pretty obvious what was happening there and moreover what this was supposed to resonate with (liberation of the death camps in WWII).

Interminable writing seems to be an occupational hazard of the successful SF/Fantasy writer. Once they sell enough that no editor dare ask for rewrites, goo and dribble often results look at Heinlein, Asimov, Harrison, Spider Robinson (you could argue that the goo and dribble was there from the start) the list goes on and on.

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

Thank you. That expressed much of what I feel much better than I could have.