Harry Norman Turtledove (born June 14, 1949), is a historian and prolific novelist who has written historical fiction, fantasy, and science fiction works. He is probably the best-known and most popular author of the genre of alternate history.
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Harry Turtledove, you are considered the Master of Alternate Times. How does it feel to play with the events that have marked our history?


Well, if I didn't do this, I would have to work for a living. Playing is more fun.

An uchronic novelist is supposed to play with history. How much fun is in your craft, and how thin is the border between fun and historical strictness?

If it isn't fun for you, don't do it. The border is wherever you want to put it. You can write a romp of a story, or you can write a very serious one. All depends on what you're trying to do.

Are there any fixed rules in order to write a good alternate history novel?

Interest. Entertain. Provoke thought. Past that, no.

You mixed alternate history with fantasy and science fiction, and often switched in between these genres. Which one do you find more satisfactory for your personality?

I love them both. I work in both, and in straight historical fiction with no fantastic element at all.

Coming back to alternate history, you seem to like very much the period of American Civil War, which in your series The Great War ends in a very different way. In Italy, uchronic novelists have been in trouble while writing about Fascism surviving WWII. Did any critic judge your novels as "nostalgic"?

Some people thought GUNS OF THE SOUTH was too generous to the Confederates and too optimistic about how much they could change. Some people also thought that meant I believed such things to be true. As Larry Niven says, there is a technical term for people who judge a writer's beliefs by what he writes. That term is "idiot." In the Great War universe, the Confederate States, de feated in World War I, go Fascist in the aftermath. So . . . Do i believe in the relatively benign Confederacy of GUNS OF THE SOUTH, or the relatively malignant one of the Great War universe? I don't believe in either. Both might have happened. Neither one did.

Are your Colonization and Great War series going to find new sequels?

HOMEWARD BOUND looks to be the last novel in that universe.

Are you thinking of writing another series?

I'd better be. Otherwise, I won't eat.

Harry, you are an historian and can read Italian. If you should write an uchronic novel placed in my country, which period would you choose?

Well, I've written one. It's for young adults, and is called GUNPOWDER EMPIRE. The breakpoint is back in Roman times: Agrippa doesn't die before Augustus, but lives to succeed him, and conquers Germany and incorporates it into the Empire. As a result, Rome doesn't fall, but becomes an essentially eternal state like China. I don't believe it's been translated yet.

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