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| Author | Harry Turtledove |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Alternate history novel |
| Publisher | Ballantine| |
| Publication date | 22 September, 1992 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
| Pages | 561 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-345-37675-7, ISBN 0-345-38468-7 Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character |
The Guns of the South (1992, ISBN 0-345-37675-7) is a novel by writer Harry Turtledove.
Plot introduction
An alternate history story set during the American Civil War, the story deals with a group of time-travelling Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging members who supply Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia with AK-47s and small amounts of other supplies (including nitroglycerine tablets for treating Lee's heart condition), leading to a Southern victory in the war.
Plot summary
It is March 1864, and the Confederacy is slowly moving towards defeat. A stranger, Andries Rhoodie, with an odd accent and an even odder gun, visits the Confederate camp at Orange Court House. The gun, to the Confederates' astonishment, can fire thirty rounds in only a few seconds, with considerable accuracy. Rhoodie offers to supply the entire Confederate army with the guns.
General Lee visits Richmond, and learns that Rhoodie and the other "Rivington men", named for the fictitious North Carolina town where they have built homes and warehouses, are charging an absurdly low price for the weapons. Upon visiting the armory, Lee also learns how technologically advanced the weapons and ammunition are, and that the weapons are marked with names of countries unknown to the Confederates, such as the CCCP, the People's Republic of China, and Yugoslavia.
Mystery piles on mystery for Lee, as the Rivington men provide accurate intelligence of a raid by the Union, which is turned back by the Confederates and their new weapons. Finally, Lee confronts Rhoodie, and learns the truth, that they are time travellers from a 2014, where, according to Rhoodie, the white man's cause is ruined. Lee asks for, and receives, a precis of what the Union plans are.
Analysis
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The story is told alternately from the third-person perspectives of General Lee himself and of First Sergeant Nate Caudell, who, in real life, was actually a Confederate soldier. The realities of the situation gradually reveal themselves as Lee learns more about his dubious allies, while Caudell also hears increasingly disturbing rumors about the situation at Rivington - with the concluding explosive confrontation with the AWB again seen alternately from the two distinct viewpoints.
Turtledove used historical records of an actual Confederate Army unit, the 47th North Carolina, to flesh out his list of characters. All the characters in the book are mentioned with the actual ranks they held in the 47th - including Mollie Bean, who as a woman masqueraded as a male Confederate soldier for most of the War before being wounded and captured by Union forces - as well as their civilian employment if known.
Awards
The book won the John Esten Cooke Award for Southern Fiction in 1993.
In other science fiction
- Dr. Turtledove has an entire (unrelated) book series, known among fans as Timeline-191, on an alternate history in which the Confederacy won the Civil War. In this series, however, the Confederacy does not win the war through intervention involving time travel. Rather, the famous 'lost orders' are found by other Confederates, meaning that the Union does not learn of Lee's plans. A battle equivalent to the Battle of Antietam results in a decisive Confederate victory.
- The idea of a time traveller bringing advanced weapons to Confederates is also the theme of Harry Harrison's book A Rebel In Time. The two treatments are, however, very different.
- Several of the characters, or at least South African people with the same name, appeared in S. M. Stirling's 2003 novel Conquistador, where they are killed. A copy of the Turtledove book is seen on a bookshelf in Stirling's novel.
External links
- Americanisms in Harry Turtledove's The Guns of the South, Tatu Ahponen, 2003 (including detailed summary)
- review by Mark Taha