MY EARLIER POST on alternate-history produced a lot of email of the “how can you not mention ____?” variety. Hey, it wasn’t meant to be exhaustive. But by popular demand, I will mention H. Beam Piper, whose stuff holds up pretty well. And although it’s not exactly on point, I have to mention that this Cyril M. Kornbluth collection is probably the single best science fiction purchase I’ve made recently. Kornbluth was one of the “Futurians,” along with Isaac Asimov, Fred Pohl, etc., and died young, but had more impact than many realize. (His “would you buy it for a quarter” line from his The Marching Morons reappears as “I’d buy that for a dollar!” in the Robocop movies). His stories are more disturbing than I had recalled — The Marching Morons, though amusing, is actually monstrous — but they’re also even better than I remembered.

UPDATE: I think I may have linked to this before, but the Today in Alternate History blog is worth looking at.