Sidewise, Side Foolish V: The 10 Best and

10 Worst AH Characters In AH Literature

******

For this edition of "Sidewise" I want to shift away from stories and story concepts and get down to the business of examining the cream of the AH character crop; most of the people I’ll be talking about in this commentary are characters from full-length AH novels, but you’ll also see a few names from shorter AH stories sprinkled in among the ranks. Likewise, when I examine the dregs of AH characters, you’ll see equal opportunity offenders from the ranks of full-length books and the short story division. And on that note, let us meet and greet...

#10)Rosemary O’Leary(A Damned Fine War)

Here’s one reporter even J.D. Salinger wouldn’t mind doing a sit-down interview with. Smart, gorgeous as all-get-out, and gifted with a knack for getting to the heart of things, Rosemary O’Leary is one of the greatest fictional journalists in AH literature-- or any kind of literature for that matter. She’s one of three members of the fourth estate who’ve qualified for this top 10 list. Speaking of which ...

#9)Arthur Barnett(Allen Steele’s "A Letter From St. Louis")

This character, an alter ego of the author, has a ringside side for when the Martians of H.G. Well’s War of the Worlds unleash their wrath on St. Louis. Though the ending of this story, which I won’t disclose here, is somewhat macabre to say the least Barnett tells a fascinating account of the Martian invasion force descending on an unsuspecting Earth; there’s also some nice interplay between Barnett and publishing magnate Joseph Pulitzer in the closing scenes.¹

#8)Ludwig Weber(1901)

It isn’t often that you get a German soldier as a sympathetic character in any context, but such characterizations are especially rare in the AH genre-- at least in my experience. So Ludwig, a humble teacher-turned-infantryman in the Kaiser’s imperial army in 1901, is  a welcome addition to the AH major character roster. An Everyman stuck in a war he doesn’t want to be fighting, he offers a superb view of what’s happening on the other side of the battle lines in the German-American war; in contrast to the brutality of one of his comrades-in-arms, the quasi-psychotic Otto Kessel, Ludwig is a welcome oasis of civilization in a desert of bloodshed.

#7)Douglas Archer(SS-GB)

‘Archer of the Yard’, as some of his peers call him, is a decent man having to work in an indecent environment-- namely, a German-occupied Britain. Using a premise previously explored in Hillary Bailey’s "The Fall Of Frenchy Steiner" and the movie It Happened Here and later dealt with in Robert Harris’ Fatherland, Len Deighton imagines Great Britain under the Nazi heel in SS-GB; investigating homicides in a physically and spiritually ruined London, Deighton’s protagonist does an outstanding job not only of ‘getting his man’ but also of preserving British cultural ideals in a milieu where those ideals often seem to be in danger of becoming extinct.

#6)Robert Goddard(Allen Steele’s "Goddard’s People")

One of the real-life heroes of 20^th-century American science is handed the task of beating Nazi Germany to the punch in a World War II space race in "Goddard’s People"; portraying Goddard as a mix of Albert Einstein, Paul Revere, and Jack Ryan all rolled into one, Steele gives us an eloquent reminder of why the rocket pioneer richly deserves our respect and admiration.

#5)Esau Jones(1901)

One of the biggest problems with early AH literature was that it often lacked any significant non-white characters. Fortunately, ethnic diversity is gaining root in the AH genre just as in all other aspects of modern life. Case in point: Sergeant(later Major) Esau Jones, who in Robert Conroy’s 1901 fights both the German army and racial prejudice in the ranks of his own army’s officers to carve out a distinguished career on the front lines of America’s war with the Second Reich.

#4)Xavier March(Fatherland)

In Fatherland Robert Harris does something you would think was impossible-- he makes an SS officer into a sympathetic figure. Divorced, estranged from his only child, and sorely disillusioned with most aspects of life in a victorious Nazi Germany twenty years after the end of World War II, March takes on what at first glance looks like a routine homicide investigation; he quickly discovers, however, that the victim was a high-ranking Party official who had close ties to the infamous "Final Solution" campaign. Rather than do what his superiors expect of him and look the other way, March puts his career and life at risk to get to truth about that homicide and a string of related murders-- and in the course of his investigations becomes further disenchanted with the Nazi regime until, by the last chapters, he has turned against it once and for all. March is a beacon of integrity in a totalitarian state where such virtues were not only absent, they were practically illegal.

#3)Cincinnatus Driver(Harry Turtledove’s Great War/American Empire series)

Few people in the AH genre-- or in any literary field for that matter --do the multi-generational saga better than Harry Turtledove. Exhibit A: Cincinnatus Driver, who over the course of Turtledove’s 11- book magnum opus goes from being a delivery truck driver to serving in an underground guerrilla campaign against the Confederate States in a World War II(a.k.a. Second Great War) between the United States and the CSA in a timeline where the South won the Civil War. Despite his seemingly endless travails, Cincinnatus never loses his pride-- or his hope.

#2)Captain James Armstrong(The Leader)

Some of our readers might remember that I previously talked about Captain Armstrong in my first Sidewise article. I’d like to expand a bit here on those earlier comments. Captain Armstrong is an old-school Englishman in the best sense of the word: fearless, highly principled, unflappable, and highly resourceful. As he labors to bring about the end of Fascist rule in England and the return of democracy in the ATL portrayed by The Leader, Armstrong exemplifies the British military man’s finest traits.

#1)Carl Landry(Resurrection Day)

Okay, I realize that by putting this guy at the top of my list I may be somewhat guilty of hometown bias considering that he’s from Boston, which also happens to be Resurrection Day’s main setting. But after the first time I read this book, I was gripped by Landry’s character in a way that hadn’t happened even with Xavier March in Fatherland. A Boston Globe reporter trying to track down the links between the mysterious deaths of a number of ex-Kennedy Administration officials, Landry makes a top-notch protagonist and guide through the alternate Boston depicted in Brendan DuBois’ novel of an America, and a world, devastated by nuclear war in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

******

Well, so much for the heroes; now it’s time to meet the zeroes.

Brace yourself for...

#10)Hodge McCormick Backmaker(Bring The Jubilee)

This long-winded, self-pitying knucklehead redefines the word "boring." From about the second chapter on I found myself hating Backmaker more and more with every passing paragraph; by the time the story got to the Battle of Gettysburg, I was rooting for a stray bullet to nail him right between the eyes.

#9)Charley Finch(1942)

Even allowing for the fact that he’s intended to be one of the heavies, there’s something about Finch that’s disturbing beyond words. He seems to belong more in a third-rate porno movie than in a serious alternate history saga; I half-expected him to have an S & M chamber hidden somewhere in the Hawaiian jungles. What possessed Robert Conroy to include this perv among the roster of 1942’s cast of characters is something I can’t begin to fathom.

#8)The Trainer(Martha Soukup’s "Good Girl, Bad Dog")

This macabre little story of the dog that played Lassie on the old TV series turning feral has always bugged the living daylights out of me, but I wasn’t entirely sure why until I had the opportunity to re-read it while I was researching for this article. Then it hit me: the author of "Dog" portrays the show’s trainer as a complete lout. I freely confess to knowing next to nothing about what the real trainer on the set of Lassie was like, but I seriously he was anywhere near as insensitive as this story makes him out to be. Soukup’s portrayal of The Trainer suggests Cesar Milian reincarnated as Nurse Ratched.

#7)Major Cullen Devane(Resurrection Day)

Clichéd characters in any kind of literature are a pain in the neck, but clichéd characters in an AH story are the worst. And this Army officer-turned-assistant newspaper editor in Resurrection Day is State’s Exhibit A of just how irritating such characters can be. Major Devane sounds and acts as if he just walked off the set of The A-Team; as if that wasn’t bad enough, his personality is so flat I sometimes think he’s been taking dullness lessons from Hodge Backmaker.

#6)Loki(Gregory Benford’s "Valhalla")

I’ve never particularly liked the Norse trickster in any context, but in this short story from Martin Greenberg’s Hitler Victorious, he really becomes a pain in the butt. At best he resembles Jar Jar Binks on steroids, and at worst...well, let’s just say that if I finish that particular line I may end up using at least four of the seven words in George Carlin’s notorious list.

#5)Kobus the Bookbinder(The God-fearer)

Never has a character in the AH genre managed to make me lose sympathy with them more quickly than this goofball did. He’s got no soul, no spine, and no brains. Given the perfect opportunity to do the right thing in a situation where it desperately needs to be done, he chooses instead to save his own skin and winds up wrecking God knows how many lives starting with his own. Set in a world where the Christian religion stayed a minor cult, The God-fearer could have been a great exploration of faith and religious tolerance if it hadn’t been saddled with an absolute loser for a protagonist. By the time I got to the final pages all I could think was: "Why doesn’t this !#%& hurry up and DIE already?!!"

#4)Jeremiah King(Resurrection Day)

Remember what I was saying earlier about clichéd characters? Here’s another perfect example of how irritating they can be. King is a third-rate Bob Woodward wannabe who seems to go out of his way to live up to the stereotype of journalist-as-cynic; if he’s got one line of dialogue in Resurrection Day that doesn’t sound like it was ripped off from an old Lou Grant episode, I’ll eat my hat. How he managed to get included among the dramatis personae of one of the greatest AH novels of all time is a mystery almost as big as the riddle of how all those former ExComm officials keep dropping dead in the book’s main plotline. No wonder Carl Landry doesn’t like this clod.

#3)Allen Pinkerton(1862)

Granted a private detective is required to be a bit of a snoop in order to successfully do their job, but in 1862 Robert Conroy’s fictionalized version of Pinkerton goes overboard on that front. In fact, he sometimes comes across looking more like a peeping Tom or Family Guy’s Herbert the Pervert than a professional investigator. And as if that wasn’t enough to make this alternate version of Pinkerton utterly detestable, he supports George B. McClellan’s defeatist stand on the Union’s fight to stop the Confederate rebellion against Abe Lincoln.

#2)Michael Dukakis("Dukakis and the Aliens")

In real life the former Massachusetts governor was a complete loser, but this story somehow manages to make himself seem even more pathetic-- if that’s possible. Robert Sheckley tries to make the Duke, portrayed in "Aliens" as an extraterrestrial warlord in disguise, seem like Ming the Merciless but he ends up coming off more like Spongebob Squarepants’ comic-opera nemesis Sheldon J. Plankton. He’s too unfunny to be a comedic character and too bizarre to be taken seriously; even Alex Jones would have trouble buying the idea of Dukakis as an extra- terrestrial baddie.

#1)Doctor von Westarp(Bitter Seeds)

I read Bitter Seeds for the first time right before submitting the final draft of this article, and while for the most part I thought it was a great read, one thing kept me from putting Seeds in my top 100 list-- namely its lead villain, Doctor von Westarp. He started out being a fairly interesting "heavy" but veered sharply towards becoming a Boris Karloff-as-Frankenstein stereotypical mad scientist halfway through the book; by the time I got to his final scene I found myself picturing him as a Warner Brothers cartoon character. Not a good sign for an AH book that deals with something as serious as World War II or psychokinetic abilities.

******