review

ESCAPE TO OTHER WORLDS WITH SCIENCE FICTION – JO WALTON

By karen t. brissette

Posted on May 21, 2016

Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction by Jo Walton
My rating: 4/5 cats
One Star

“Miss?” one of them asks. She swings around, thinking they want more coffee. One refill only is the rule. “Can you settle a question?” he asks. “Did Roosevelt want to get us to join in the European War in 1940?”

“How should I know? It has nothing to do with me. I was five years old in 1940.” They should get over it and leave history to bury its own dead, she thinks, and goes back to wiping the tables.

sometimes i have to restrain myself from just greedily pouncing on the brand-new tor shorts and remind myself of all the olde ones that are out there just waiting to be rediscovered. this one is from 2009 and shows that even back then, tor knew what they were doing in their acquisition process.

i’ve never read jo walton, but i know she’s beloved by many, and this story renews my vow to read the books of hers i already have here at the home. you know, someday…

it’s pretty short, since a lot of the backdrop to the action is provided by truncated newspaper headlines that give a sense of what’s going on in the larger world without having to actually commit to spelling everything out:

NATIONAL GUARD MOVES AGAINST STRIKERS
In the seventh week of the mining strike in West Virginia, armed skirmishes and running “guerrilla battles” in the hills have led to the Governor calling in

GET AN ADVANCED DEGREE BY CORRESPONDENCE
You can reap the benefits with no need to leave the safety of your house or go among unruly college students! Only from

EX-PRESIDENT LINDBERGH REPROACHES MINERS

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION
April issue on newsstands now! All new stories by Poul Anderson, Anson MacDonald and H. Beam Piper! Only 35 cents.

SPRING FASHIONS 1960
Skirts are being worn long in London and Paris this season, but here in New York the working girls are still hitching them up. It’s stylish to wear a little

HOW FAR FROM MIAMI CAN THE “FALLOUT” REACH?
Scientists say it could be a problem for years, but so much depends on the weather that

You hope to work
You hope to eat
The work goes to
The man that’s neat!
BurmaShave

etc etc.

it’s an alt-history story apparently tied to some of her earlier work:

Her Small Change trilogy, comprising Farthing, Ha’penny, and Half a Crown, is set in a world in which Britain struck an early truce with Hitler in 1941; “Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction” is set in the America of that world.

but i am living proof that you don’t need to have read those books to get enjoyment out of this story. i’m sure it’s more powerful to people who have read the other books, but for me it was a strong tone piece that was less of an actual story than an atmosphere suggesting a story, where a chorus of voices fleshes out l’esprit de l’époque, and where l’époque is a terribly bleak poverty-riddled postwar world full of desperate and unhappy people. even though it’s alt-history, there are intimations that there’s no escaping the inevitability of the darker events of history, no matter how you tweak its details.

so not comforting, jo walton…