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Terry Bisson, Fire on the Mountain (1988)
What a great little book.
There are lots of alternate history novels of the Civil War, but instead of asking "What if the South won?" this one asks, "What if Brown and Tubman's raid on Harper's Ferry in July 1859 had succeeded?" A hundred years later, an archaeologist is returning her great-2x-grandfather's papers to the museum of the revolution in Harper's Ferry, going on the ground in a hydrogen-powered car rather than by airship because she hates flying -- because her husband was killed years ago on humanity's first voyage to Mars. The other storylines follow that same great-great-grandfather watching the war break out as an enslaved Black child in Harper's Ferry and a white abolitionist doctor trying to get medical supplies from Philadelphia to the Army of the North Star in Virginia, told by letter.
Not much actually happens in terms of plot, but there's a wealth of thought that went into the alternate history, much of it influenced by Bisson's evident sympathy for Kuwassi Balagoon and the Black Liberation Army (mentioned in the dedication, rather bold in 1988) -- Nova Africa, which the South became, is socialist now, and after the war of 1948 the former United States is now socialist too, in the Marxian rather than the Soviet sense. It's a beautiful world in many ways, and a few times I caught myself forgetting that it was meant to be 1959 rather than 2029. There are some tip-offs that it was written in the 1980s: no email, no computers, no phones or personal devices of any kind, and a positive mention of land reclamation in Europe. But also, no Juneteenth, because the Harper's Ferry raid was on the Fourth of July!
As a matter of alternate history, it seems fairly plausible until the final third of the book, when the conflict "internationalizes" and freedom fighters from around the world start showing up. It's a beautiful dream, and seems to consciously try to incorporate both Internationalism and pan-African nationalism, which divided the Black Panthers in the late 60s. Nova Africa is clearly influenced by the Republic of New Afrika: the Nova Africa flag is the same colors, though maybe in the tricolor vertical rather than horizontal stripes, and Nova Africa stretches much farther than New Afrika's formal boundaries. I was also somewhat surprised to see Abraham Lincoln immortalized as a hero of the Lost Cause in this book, but the Lost Cause is a unified United States -- in the book Lincoln leads an invasion force south in 1870 to try to reunite Nova Africa with the USA. Lincoln of course doesn't need defending, but I do wonder whether this portrayal is in the book to tweak white liberals of the time, or whether Bisson has imbibed too deeply at the well of the actual Lost Cause in our world, which insisted that the war wasn't about slavery. Of course it was about slavery, but in the book everyone, including the revolutionary historian, thinks it was about land. (In a rather grim and not light-handed touch, an old racist hands the archaeologist a book called John Brown's Body, which is basically a history of our world, and everyone dismisses it as a grotesque white supremacist power fantasy.) Conversely, Harriet Tubman gets a significant fraction of the credit and recognition she deserves, as the book insists that her presence at the raid was key to the whole thing succeeding (in our world, she was sick on the Fourth and wasn't there when Brown and company did actually conduct the raid months later), and then she goes on to be one of the Army of the North Star's two commanding generals alongside Brown. Put her on the $20 bill already!
And again, I'm not too fussed about Lincoln being made out to be a villain, but I do think the man who kept introducing the spot resolutions in Congress in 1848 doesn't easily fit into the box of an imperialist. I do also think that the white moderates and abolitionists of the North in the book come off a little worse than they actually deserve, but it's certainly true that a lot of them kept hoping slavery would naturally die out somehow rather than actually fighting. I can't help but wonder whether this aspect of the narrative is influenced by Bisson's experiences in the student activism of the 60s and later; I can't really blame him for being perhaps more cynical about the past than is warranted, given the experiences of the radical left, especially the radical Black left, in the 70s. The nineteenth century was a more sincere age, and once the actual fighting started, people in the North answered the call, and it's not some kind of accident that "As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free" is in the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Nor would Lincoln have promulgated the Emancipation Proclamation if it hadn't been something the military wouldn't have been willing to enforce, even if it was a strategic move that didn't emancipate slaves everywhere. The failure of Reconstruction is in many ways a different story, and things assuredly would have been different if Lincoln hadn't been assassinated -- although how different, we can never know. Maybe Bisson's point is just that our circumstances shape our destiny no less than our character, which is certainly true. And the richness of Nova Africa, a Black Utopia, in the book is thrilling even if we spend all our time in the former United States and it's only described indirectly.
Anyway. I've had this book on my shelf for ten years, and I was surprised at how moving I found it once I did finally pick it up. (I have the original 1988 paperback, bought for a dollar, but the current ebook edition has a foreword by Mumia Abu-Jamal, who admits that he cried reading it. I did too, at the end.) It's a quick read, and a good one.
There are lots of alternate history novels of the Civil War, but instead of asking "What if the South won?" this one asks, "What if Brown and Tubman's raid on Harper's Ferry in July 1859 had succeeded?" A hundred years later, an archaeologist is returning her great-2x-grandfather's papers to the museum of the revolution in Harper's Ferry, going on the ground in a hydrogen-powered car rather than by airship because she hates flying -- because her husband was killed years ago on humanity's first voyage to Mars. The other storylines follow that same great-great-grandfather watching the war break out as an enslaved Black child in Harper's Ferry and a white abolitionist doctor trying to get medical supplies from Philadelphia to the Army of the North Star in Virginia, told by letter.
Not much actually happens in terms of plot, but there's a wealth of thought that went into the alternate history, much of it influenced by Bisson's evident sympathy for Kuwassi Balagoon and the Black Liberation Army (mentioned in the dedication, rather bold in 1988) -- Nova Africa, which the South became, is socialist now, and after the war of 1948 the former United States is now socialist too, in the Marxian rather than the Soviet sense. It's a beautiful world in many ways, and a few times I caught myself forgetting that it was meant to be 1959 rather than 2029. There are some tip-offs that it was written in the 1980s: no email, no computers, no phones or personal devices of any kind, and a positive mention of land reclamation in Europe. But also, no Juneteenth, because the Harper's Ferry raid was on the Fourth of July!
As a matter of alternate history, it seems fairly plausible until the final third of the book, when the conflict "internationalizes" and freedom fighters from around the world start showing up. It's a beautiful dream, and seems to consciously try to incorporate both Internationalism and pan-African nationalism, which divided the Black Panthers in the late 60s. Nova Africa is clearly influenced by the Republic of New Afrika: the Nova Africa flag is the same colors, though maybe in the tricolor vertical rather than horizontal stripes, and Nova Africa stretches much farther than New Afrika's formal boundaries. I was also somewhat surprised to see Abraham Lincoln immortalized as a hero of the Lost Cause in this book, but the Lost Cause is a unified United States -- in the book Lincoln leads an invasion force south in 1870 to try to reunite Nova Africa with the USA. Lincoln of course doesn't need defending, but I do wonder whether this portrayal is in the book to tweak white liberals of the time, or whether Bisson has imbibed too deeply at the well of the actual Lost Cause in our world, which insisted that the war wasn't about slavery. Of course it was about slavery, but in the book everyone, including the revolutionary historian, thinks it was about land. (In a rather grim and not light-handed touch, an old racist hands the archaeologist a book called John Brown's Body, which is basically a history of our world, and everyone dismisses it as a grotesque white supremacist power fantasy.) Conversely, Harriet Tubman gets a significant fraction of the credit and recognition she deserves, as the book insists that her presence at the raid was key to the whole thing succeeding (in our world, she was sick on the Fourth and wasn't there when Brown and company did actually conduct the raid months later), and then she goes on to be one of the Army of the North Star's two commanding generals alongside Brown. Put her on the $20 bill already!
And again, I'm not too fussed about Lincoln being made out to be a villain, but I do think the man who kept introducing the spot resolutions in Congress in 1848 doesn't easily fit into the box of an imperialist. I do also think that the white moderates and abolitionists of the North in the book come off a little worse than they actually deserve, but it's certainly true that a lot of them kept hoping slavery would naturally die out somehow rather than actually fighting. I can't help but wonder whether this aspect of the narrative is influenced by Bisson's experiences in the student activism of the 60s and later; I can't really blame him for being perhaps more cynical about the past than is warranted, given the experiences of the radical left, especially the radical Black left, in the 70s. The nineteenth century was a more sincere age, and once the actual fighting started, people in the North answered the call, and it's not some kind of accident that "As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free" is in the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Nor would Lincoln have promulgated the Emancipation Proclamation if it hadn't been something the military wouldn't have been willing to enforce, even if it was a strategic move that didn't emancipate slaves everywhere. The failure of Reconstruction is in many ways a different story, and things assuredly would have been different if Lincoln hadn't been assassinated -- although how different, we can never know. Maybe Bisson's point is just that our circumstances shape our destiny no less than our character, which is certainly true. And the richness of Nova Africa, a Black Utopia, in the book is thrilling even if we spend all our time in the former United States and it's only described indirectly.
Anyway. I've had this book on my shelf for ten years, and I was surprised at how moving I found it once I did finally pick it up. (I have the original 1988 paperback, bought for a dollar, but the current ebook edition has a foreword by Mumia Abu-Jamal, who admits that he cried reading it. I did too, at the end.) It's a quick read, and a good one.
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WTAF.
Shall have to hunt down a copy.
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It does make me laugh, though, that the 1988 back cover copy is going on about Nova Africa but still has to specify that the main character is a woman scientist, because that was still so difficult to fathom.
ETA: If you want I can mail you my copy! I am trying to lighten the physical book load and I was going to put it out in the neighborhood LFL.
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no worries, I'll put it on the longass list.