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Book Nook: In the Presence of Mine Enemies

I agree with the comments about the short story being better - the same reason why I've always simultaneously wanted and not wanted a longer version of Turtledove's "Ready for the Fatherland" - but ITPOME has a certain place in history because it's the novel that made me sign up to the other place rather than just lurking. (People were posting maps of it and getting it WRONG so I was unable to stand by while Someone Was Wrong On The Internet, and the rest is - aha - alternate history).
 
I must've read this around the time it came out, long ago enough now that the details have mostly faded, but I do remember the interminable bridge games. The part that really stuck with me, I think, is the bit about the family with the baby that has Tay-Sachs disease. It serves to set up a more important element of the story and the plot resolution (plus the dark irony of secret Jews needing to edit their genealogical records to be just slightly less Aryan to evade suspicion), but I think it resonated with me for illustrating the smaller, day-to-days evils of the world the Nazis made. It's hard to really wrap your mind around the laundry list of atrocities and genocides and everything, even in real history, and it can just become so many words on the page in fiction, especially if you've read a lot of dystopian alternate history. But here you have this decent, conscientious pediatrician, no different from any of the millions of well-meaning family practitioners the world over, who has been pouring over his medical index and doing tests and consultations, trying to figure out what the heck is wrong with this poor kid, and when he finally figures it out, he flips right over to 'well, sorry, here's your referral to the Reich Mercy Center, ma'am' because that's the only answer the Nazi world allows him to know.
 
In mild defense of bridge such scenes do show that while the "future" for Nazis, and while some tech is advanced (the massive jumbo screen tv on the Volkshalle, or a outpost on the moon) for most part culture has stagnated. People sit around and play cards cause, I took it as, there is nothing else to do, and you are expected to engage in such activities.
 
Fenwick said:
In mild defense of bridge such scenes do show that while the "future" for Nazis, and while some tech is advanced (the massive jumbo screen tv on the Volkshalle, or a outpost on the moon) for most part culture has stagnated. People sit around and play cards cause, I took it as, there is nothing else to do, and you are expected to engage in such activities.
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I think this is a challenge for AH authors and one I have reflected upon more as I have aged and found that the divergence in the culture now often interests me more than different maps or different victors in a battle. It can be a real challenge to say 'look here is this different culture stuff' unless you end up with the explanatory dialogue which is so easy to fall into. I have had readers complain that the cultural differences are not 'real' alternate history. However, I am on the side of Grey Wolf in How to Write Alternate History (2013) in seeing interest and pleasure, indeed, in exploring things like music, games, sports (as we have seen here recently), art, architecture, food, etc. Though I recognise for a lot of consumers of our work, for them if it is not big battles then it is not AH.

I think this is particularly a challenge with things like a Nazi or Confederate victory because, yes, their victory would have brought about big, horrendous differences, but the culture of both was old-fashioned. The author to show this best is, perhaps, Stephen Fry with Making History (1996) and he pulls this off by having one person aware of how things were in our timeline and focusing particularly on the impact on gay people, interestingly, not simply under Nazis but 'second hand' through the 'reflected oppression' of US society in a world where Nazi culture is so predominant.

Fenwick I am glad you brought out this point about the bridge (not simply because I like featuring card games in my novels) because it reminds us that the mundane can be an indicator of the divergence as much as the big sweeping stuff and an author who feels they have an intelligent audience will include these indicators without having big signposts pointing to them.
 
Alexander Rooksmoor said:
I think this is a challenge for AH authors and one I have reflected upon more as I have aged and found that the divergence in the culture now often interests me more than different maps or different victors in a battle. It can be a real challenge to say 'look here is this different culture stuff' unless you end up with the explanatory dialogue which is so easy to fall into. I have had readers complain that the cultural differences are not 'real' alternate history. However, I am on the side of Grey Wolf in How to Write Alternate History (2013) in seeing interest and pleasure, indeed, in exploring things like music, games, sports (as we have seen here recently), art, architecture, food, etc. Though I recognise for a lot of consumers of our work, for them if it is not big battles then it is not AH.

I think this is particularly a challenge with things like a Nazi or Confederate victory because, yes, their victory would have brought about big, horrendous differences, but the culture of both was old-fashioned. The author to show this best is, perhaps, Stephen Fry with Making History (1996) and he pulls this off by having one person aware of how things were in our timeline and focusing particularly on the impact on gay people, interestingly, not simply under Nazis but 'second hand' through the 'reflected oppression' of US society in a world where Nazi culture is so predominant.

Fenwick I am glad you brought out this point about the bridge (not simply because I like featuring card games in my novels) because it reminds us that the mundane can be an indicator of the divergence as much as the big sweeping stuff and an author who feels they have an intelligent audience will include these indicators without having big signposts pointing to them.
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Like the best world building is from Wolfenstien of all things.


It is not in the game. At all. But... I know what tv is like, I know what heroes are and what villains are in this world. It is Batman in 1966 but still it works.



Little Duce Coup is what I get from this. But pop-music. Pop music in a Nazi dominated world is not something we see.

In the game itself we see a Nazi drink a strawberry milkshake. Simple. Pointless. But it shows the world has things people ENJOY doing. Part of what makes the Nazi's a solid villain is how evil they are but in terms of history what makes them so terrifying is they had movies, radio, food, cars, board games, holidays, and more AND still did what they did.

There is something to be said in finding the "comfort" in another world. Not the awful things but the good. Man in the High Castle is an awful world... but man does the public transit system seem top notch. Presence of Mine Enemies has a "good" ending where people lynch a man they think is Jewish... but hey at least a man can come home from a hard days work to dinner on the table and a game of cards with friends.
 
Yes, the 'mundane' evil is often the worst. There is an interesting bit in Schindler's List (1993) after Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley) looks to try to convince the camp commandant Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes) that there is power in not taking a life. However, Goeth is unconvinced as we see when he takes a pot-shot at Itzhak as he walks away, though misses. The sense that such life or death decisions have come down to the same level of whether Goeth has a cup of coffee or not, seems to really emphasise just how evil he is.
 
Alexander Rooksmoor said:
Yes, the 'mundane' evil is often the worst. There is an interesting bit in Schindler's List (1993) after Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley) looks to try to convince the camp commandant Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes) that there is power in not taking a life. However, Goeth is unconvinced as we see when he takes a pot-shot at Itzhak as he walks away, though misses. The sense that such life or death decisions have come down to the same level of whether Goeth has a cup of coffee or not, seems to really emphasise just how evil he is.
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For me Man in the High Castle had a better example in the cop helping change a tire. He did the work himself. He shared a meal with the driver. And... just kinda shrugged at the ash falling to the ground from the "burdens on the state" being burnt in the distance.
 
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