Danny McG
"Anything can happen in the next half hour!"
Pavane
no one did? it most have slipped my mind. i like it , which for me it's not usual. well i like a few of them at leastI'm surprised nobody's mentioned the 'Ring of Fire' books (Original '1632' by Eric Flint, now about forty books by half that many authors, and having its own publishing house) where a small West Virginia town is
transported through time and space to Germany in 1631, the middle of the thirty year war. Hence the first volume '1632'. And no, I'm not suggesting this series because I submitted (and was paid for) a short composition.
Sticking to Baen, perhaps S.M. Stirling's 'Island in the sea of Time' trilogy, where Nantucket is relocated in time to 1250 BC, Bronze Age.
He's also done a load of alternative world books where a change in the past modifies our present civilisation, like his Draka series.
Actually, a group of Chronnites (well, yes, including me) collaborated on a set of parallel universe stories which probably could be dredged up from the archives oh, about ten years ago, but they're not quite in the same direction, as you can go home from them.
I think there are several where it is public knowledge in at least one of the timelines. In L. Neil Smith's series beginning with The Probability Broach it is definitely public knowledge in one, and known-to-many in several. It's a really nice series. It is particularly clever in using many parallel versions of one particular real public figure who get together and work with and against one another. I think it reflects the author's ambivalence about that person, an attitude I share. Vague because I try not to write spoilers.How about giving me some books where travel between AH timelines is public knowledge?
Lots. I think nowadays, most. Turtledove's 2 novels turning on the Confederacy winning are interesting in that regard. He did the SF version first. I get the impression the SF aspect of it bothered him artistically. It is after all a heavy duty deus ex machina to bring in modern weaponry via time machine. The later book has no SF at all. Strictly "natural causes" illustrating why Gould spoke of history as being "massively contingent."Are there any alternate history novels that don't have a shred of sci-fi or fantasy?
I enjoyed The Plot Against America. Fatherland doesn't contain any SF elements, either.
On the other end of the scale is West of Eden by Harry Harrison, where the meteor that struck the Earth was only half the size as in reality, and dinosaur-like people end up fighting cavemen. A pretty wild idea executed very well, IIRC.
I don't know if I'd count it as alternate history, but there's also Naomi Novik's Temeraire series.