cover image Worlds That Weren't

Worlds That Weren't

Harry Turtledove, Various. Roc, $21.95 (304pp) ISBN 978-0-451-45886-5

What if, in any single moment, history had taken a different turn? In the engaging Worlds That Weren't, bestselling author Harry Turtledove imagines a different fate for Socrates (which he spells Sokrates); S.M. Stirling envisions life ""in the wilds of a re-barbarized Texas"" after asteroids strike the earth in the 19th century; Sidewise winner Mary Gentle contributes ""a piece of flotsam"" from her epic Ash a story of love (and pigs) set in the mid-15th century, as European mercenaries prepare to sack a Gothic Carthage; and Nebula nominee Walter Jon Williams pens the tale of Nietzsche intervening in the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.