Anarquía: An Alternate History of the Spanish Civil War

4/5 ( ratings)

REVIEW
A very large proportion of alternate history novels take as their change point a major war, usually the American Civil War, the Revolutionary War, or World War II. Authors Linaweaver and Hastings have chosen a much lesser known conflict with this novel, which involves an alternate version of the Spanish Civil War. Like most novels of this type, it is filled with historical characters in slightly different roles, everyone from Ernest Hemingway to Adolf Hitler to Ayn Rand. This mixture of authentic history and imaginative extrapolation is much more convincing than those other alternate histories, well grounded in what did happen. The characters are almost always well drawn, and villains--though thoroughly villainous--also seem quite human. I'm surprised this didn't appear from a major publisher, which might be a sideways commentary on the contemporary publishing scene.
—Don D'Ammassa
—"Critical Mass"
—Science Fiction Chronicle

ABOUT THE BOOK
SPAIN 1936-37—Everyone was there for the show . . . Fascists, Falangists, Catholics, Carlists, Marxists, Trotskyites, Republicans of all political-left stripes, Separatists, Loyalists, Royalists, Anarchists, Communists, International Brigades, Comintern Members, Syndicalists, Anarcho-Syndicalists, Distributists, Agorists, Franco's Nationalists, Stalin's Reds, and Hitler's Nazis. And joining the contest from around the globe came artists, poets, novelists, reporters , idealists, soldiers and freedom fighters. Everyone knew that the world was about to change . . . no one could guess just how much! This excellent romp through history will show what might have happened by combining actual events with some fascinating "what-ifs."

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Brad Linaweaver is a Nebula finalist for the novella version, and Prometheus-award winner for the novel version of Moon Of Ice, endorsed by such luminaries as Robert A. Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov and William F. Buckley, Jr. His other novels include Sliders and The Land Beyond Summer. Collaborative novels are four best-selling Doom books with Dafydd ab Hugh, two Battlestar Galactica novels with Richard Hatch, and Anarquía with J. Kent Hastings. Linaweaver has sold over eighty short stories, including some to Amazing, Fantastic, Galaxy, and a hell of a lot of anthologies. He has written over three hundred articles, as well as various scripts and original stories that have been produced as audio dramas and low-budget movies. He appeared in National Review with a piece on George Orwell. He has written for genre movie magazines such as Cult Movies, Filmfax, Femme Fatales, and Forrest J Ackerman's Spacemen and Famous Monsters of Filmland. Brad shares a second Prometheus award with Ed Kramer for co-editing Free Space, a major libertarian science fiction anthology from TOR books. Linaweaver also takes pride that his writing was praised by Ronald Reagan.

J. Kent Hastings wrote "The Information Underground Railroad" which appeared in The Agorist Quarterly #1, articles for New Libertarian Magazine, a regular column on the subjects of spread-spectrum radio, encryption, and untraceable digital cash, called "Techtics," for Tactics of the Movement of the Libertarian Left, the novelette "Revolution Is My Hobby" , and the short story "The Blue Light," about solar system colonists escaping from a global dungeon state on Earth, for the Prometheus newsletter.