The Two Georges

"The Two Georges" is an alternate history novel co-written by science fiction author Harry Turtledove and Oscar-winning actor Richard Dreyfuss. It was originally published in 1995 by Hodder & Stoughton in the United Kingdom, and in 1996 by Tor Books in the United States, and was nominated for the 1995 Sidewise Award for Alternate History.

Plot summary

For more than two centuries, what would have become the United States and Canada has been the North American Union, a territory encompassing the northern portion of the continent excepting Alaska, retained under the rule of Russia (the name "Canada" is here merely the name of a province corresponding to Ontario - see Canada's Name). In this it is an integral part of the British Empire as a result of an agreement between George Washington and King George III. This event is commemorated in a Gainsborough painting titled "The Two Georges" and has itself become a symbol of national unity, much like the Stars and Stripes, which in this world is the "Jack and Stripes"—i.e. the Grand Union Flag.

While being displayed in New Liverpool (this world's Los Angeles), the painting is stolen while a crowd is distracted by the murder of "Honest" Dick (a.k.a "Tricky" Dick), the Steamer King, a nationally-known used Steamer (car) salesman - who, despite his last name never being given, is clearly intended to be our world's Richard Nixon. Colonel Thomas Bushell of the Royal American Mounted Police (a term clearly derived from the Canadian Mounties) leads the search for the painting, accompanied by its former curator Dr. Kathleen Flannery and Captain Samuel Stanley. Some days later, a ransom note is received from the Sons of Liberty, a paramilitary organization that wants to see America independent of Britain.

The search takes Bushell, Flannery, and Stanley across the country via airship (an advanced form of dirigible), train, and steamer. Along the way, the trio's investigations bring them into contact with many members of the Sons of Liberty including Boston newspaper editor John F. Kennedy.

The Governor-General of the North American Union, Sir Martin Luther King, informs Bushell in confidence that the painting must be recovered in time for King Charles III's state visit, or the government will pay the Sons' ransom demand of fifty million pounds.

Bushell and his associates must solve two interlinked mysteries: who is the highly-placed traitor who continually tips off the "Sons" and foils their efforts, and which is the foreign power that supports the subversives with arms and money? For most of the book, the detective (and the reader) tends to suspect, respectively, Sir David Clarke - the suave Governor-General's Chief of Staff -- who had taken away Bushell's wife Irene (a hurt which takes the whole book and Flannery's loving ministrations to heal) and the Russians, the North American Union's brooding neighbors to the north and west.

These suspicions, however, turn out to result from deliberately planted false leads. The true foreign culprit is in fact the Holy Alliance, a rather unappetizing union of France and Spain controlling everything from the Rio Grande to Cape Horn (British Guiana excepted), in which the Inquisition is still active. (It resulted from Napoleon Bonaparte having massacred the crowd trying to storm the Bastille and nipping in the bud the French Revolution - and his own chance to become an Emperor).

The searchers arrive at Victoria (the Washington, D.C. of our world) and (thanks to an inspired guess of Flannery) manage to discover "The Two Georges" an hour before the King arrives. They also discover the true traitor: none other than Bushell's superior officer (and secretly, a fanatic Sons of Liberty sympathizer) Lieutenant General Horace Bragg.

Bragg tries to assassinate the King, not once but twice: with his own hands on the dock where the monarch lands, and at the All-Union Art Museum where the King gives a speech in front of the recovered painting (an explosive is hidden in the picture frame). Both attempts are foiled at the last moment by the brilliant detective's quick thinking and frantic action.

(Bragg, described as a North Carolinan descendant of plantation owners who is still bitter at the Empire having freed his family's black slaves in 1834, is presumably related to our history's Civil War general Braxton Bragg.)

Bragg is headed to the gallows, while Bushell and Stanley are both knighted by the King for their efforts. The story ends with Bushell, at his moment of glory, having "never felt more proud to be an American" - which, in his terms, in no way contradicts being a loyal subject to the King of Britain and being rewarded for that loyalty.

ocial and political themes

The "Sons of Liberty" are rabid racists, and the North American independence they envisage would involve a massive ethnic cleansing of anyone who is not English-speaking and white. They're militants, calling themselves "Roundheads" after Oliver Cromwell's soldiers, (but clearly modelled on Nazi-skinheads) spend their energy more on attacking various non-white ethnic and religious groups than on opposing British rule. They are so bigoted as to reject out of hand any idea of making a common cause with the French-speaking Québécois, to the north and the Nuevoespañolans (Mexicans) in the southwest — some of whom have their own reasons to oppose being part of the British Empire. All this is a bit unfair to Tom Paine, who was a staunch opponent of slavery and racism, and the title of whose book "Common Sense" is appropriated by the Sons of Liberty as the name of their racist paper. (Presumably, they look no further than to Paine having dissented from George Washington's compromise with the British.)

Conversely, the Empire is eminently enlightened towards black people. Not only were they emancipated in 1834 with no need of a civil war, but they were actively offered wide avenues of upward mobility and especially entry into senior positions in the civil service (which is not what happened in our timeline's British colonies, such as South Africa or the Caribbean islands, where blacks were freed from slavery but remained on the bottom of society, although careful allowing of native people into the colonial administration occurred in British India). The depiction of Martin Luther King as Governor General of North America, a staunch Tory upholder of the existing order in which blacks have a considerable stake, is emblematic. Turtledove, The "Master of Alternate History", was obviously well aware of how improbable it would be for a recognizable Martin Luther King to be born in 1929, a time in which the lives of blacks were so radically different all along the preceding century.

Also, in this interpretation of history, the Native Americans were better treated than in real life. The tide of white settlement westwards was a bit slower. Washington is mentioned as having held it up until 1798, for which Native Americans hold his memory in high esteem. Consequently, some tribes got the chance to modernize themselves - such tribes keeping a large part of their lands and getting a considerable autonomy, equivalent to the Princely States in British India. A major part of the book takes place in the flourishing land of the Iroquois, with its careful and highly-successful blend of traditional and modern social, political and cultural elements. The map included in the book indicates that also the Cherokees managed to keep their original lands and were spared the Trail of Tears.

Germany in this world was never unified. There was no Nazi Germany and Jews were spared the Holocaust. Also, from the fact that there are only a few Jews in this North America, one may conclude that the Tsarist regime, not threatened with revolution, did not feel the need to divert popular discontent by actively fomenting anti-Semitism and pogroms. Hence, there was no big East European Jewish migration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such as the one from which most American Jews are descended. And with no massive antisemitic persecutions, Zionism is unheard of and Palestine is still a sleepy province of the Ottoman Empire.

In this portrayal of history, there was never a United States Constitution, and consequently no Second Amendment. Firearms are not available to the general public, so criminals, terrorists and freedom fighters need to go to considerable pains to smuggle them from abroad. The police go mainly unarmed, and deployment of armed police is authorized only under exceptional circumstances. As a result, ten firearm murders per year in the New Liverpool (Los Angeles) area seemed like a high rate.

The North America in the book is more slow-moving and less of a consumer society than the real USA. This is partly due to having had no world wars to spur technological innovations. Coal is still used as the main energy source and trains still move by steam. However, to a considerable degree, a more slow and relaxed way of life is a conscious choice and cultural trait. Leisurely dirigibles are the preferred way of travelling by air, fast-moving airplanes being regarded as vulgar and reserved for military purposes (and planes are relatively slow because the jet aircraft was not invented). Television exists, but is mainly restricted to pubs and other public places. Installing a TV in a private home is considered vulgar, and is highly expensive.

Women's dresses that show the ankles are considered quite daring. However, hotels seem to turn a blind eye to male and female guests spending the night in each other's rooms, as long as they do it discreetly. Homosexuality is illegal, although it is remarked that The Sons of Liberty are "more intolerant in that respect than His Majesty's Judges". In this Britain and its Empire, the idea of abolishing the death penalty does not yet seem to have come up for serious discussion.

Miners in such towns as Charleroi, Pennsylvania all around Pittsburgh — on whom this society depends for its main energy source — live under terrible squalor, exploitation and health-destroying pollution. Although they manifest their protest in various violent and non-violent ways, there is no mention of any trade unions. It is no surprise that among these miners - who are predominantly Irish - there is widespread support for the Sons of Liberty. The only one of the "Sons" who is presented sympathetically is a miner (and explosives expert) named Michael O'Flynn. Given Turtledove's well-known brand of humour, it might be no accident that this is almost identical to the name of a fellow science fiction writer, Michael Flynn).

The strong feeling of being discriminated and "left behind" in this society is also prevalent among many well-off Irish. This is evident in Boston, as is manifested in the part featuring the highly unsympathetic analogue of John F. Kennedy. In the wake of the potato famine, hordes of destitute and desperate Irish arrived in North America just as the recently emancipated blacks embarked on their successful climb up the social ladder. At the conclusion, while the main protagonist has his moment of glory and gets knighted, he muses that "something must be done about the miners". However, there are no details as to precisely what should be done and who would do it.

International relations seem based on a sort of permanent cold war between three equally matched empires: Britain, Russia and the Franco-Spanish Holy Alliance. Minor powers, some with their own smaller empires, live in the shadow of the big three. These include Netherlands (including Belgium), Denmark (including Norway), Sweden, Austro-Hungaria, Portugal, Japan, and fragments of Germany and Italy (neither of which were ever united). The Balkan was never "balkanised", with Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs and Albanians still living under Ottoman rule, tempered by a British "resident" in every province "keeping an eye" on the Turkish governor - since the Ottoman Empire is a British protectorate, as is China.

There had been no great wars in this history since the 18th Century. The world was spared the death and destruction of the two world wars, nor did the breakup of European empires after WWI and of colonial ones after WWII happen here. Democracy in this world seems restricted to Britain and its European-settled dominions. The other countries live under absolute monarchies, feudal remnants or various versions of the colonial "White Man's Burden". In this world, there had never been a Gestapo, but in Spanish-speaking countries, the Inquisition is still extant and active.

Like our Canada, on which several terms are modelled (division into self-governing provinces rather than states, the Federal Police being called "Mounted Police") the North American Union has the main attributes of a sovereign nation. It has its own armed forces, with its army, involved in occasional border skirmishes with the Russians to the north and the Franco-Spanish to the south; and the British Royal Navy and Royal North American Navy are specifically mentioned as two separate - though allied and closely cooperating - organizations.

The North American Union also maintains its own system of diplomatic relations with other powers, which it can sever (and does in the course of the book) without needing the approval of London. Executive power is clearly in the hands of the Governor General, and the opinion of the British Prime Minister (a woman, presumably Margaret Thatcher though her name is not given) does not count for much.

The King is highly respected, and his good opinion is important to the North American - but still, he is clearly a constitutional monarch who has no wish to exercise concrete power (unlike his fellow-monarchs at Paris and St. Petersburg, who are mentioned as still wielding the real power in their respective empires). There is some ambiguity about how the Governor General gets to the job: in some places he is mentioned as having been appointed by the King, but in others it is noted that he is an elected politician who must have a care for electoral considerations. The seeming contradiction might point to a customary political convention - similar to the one by which the actual Britain selects its Prime Minsters in the past several centuries - whereby the Monarch has in theory the discretion to appoint a North American Governor General, but by invariable custom always appoints the person enjoying the confidence of the North American electorate and legislature.

Literary Connections

A similar theme, but with reversed sympathies, appears in Richard C. Meredith's "At the Narrow Passage" (1973), in which a heroic ARA (American Republican Army) wages a valiant liberation struggle against a cruel and rapacious British Empire. That world resulted from Britain having crushed the 18th Century rebels rather than compromise with them.

The British Empire and dirigibles

The assumption that survival of the British Empire as a political entity would entail survival of the dirigible as the main or only way of travelling by air is shared by various other alternate British Empires (otherwise considerably different from each other) such as those depicted in "The Warlord of the Air" by Michael Moorcock, "Great Work of Time" by John Crowley, "The Peshawar Lancers" by S.M. Stirling, and the aforementioned "At the Narrow Passage" by Richard C. Meredith.

Tour of the North American Union

The Royal American Mounted Police investigation takes Bushell and Stanley on a pursuit through to the various counterparts of U.S. and Canadian cities. Starting from New Liverpool (Los Angeles), where buildings higher than 12 stories are forbidden, due to earthquakes, the detectives travel by airship to Drakestown (San Francisco), where there have been proposals to build a bridge to span the bay; West Boston (Portland), where the flip of a coin determined a different name; and Wellesley (Seattle), where the winds prevent airship travel north of Puget Sound. After an excursion by railroad to the northwest NAU (British Columbia), the detectives fly from Wellesley/Seattle on a 16 hour trip to the O'Hare Airship Port in Astoria (Chicago), and thence by train across the provinces of Tippecanoe (Indiana) and Miami (Ohio) to Doshoweh (Buffalo) in the Iroquois Nation. After stops at Pittsburgh and Boston, the detectives travel to the national capital at Victoria (which is on the south side of the Potomac River, across from Georgestown, which occupies the same area as Washington, D.C.).

External links

* [http://www-smi.stanford.edu/people/kxl/2Gannotations.html An Annotated Guide to The Two Georges]
* [http://www.uchronia.net/bib.cgi/label.html?id=dreytwogeo Uchronia.net: The Two Georges]
* [http://www.amazon.ca/Two-Georges-Richard-Dreyfuss/dp/customer-reviews/0812544595 Amazon Reviews]