What if the other candidates won? What if the elected president died before they took the Oath of Office or they were impeached leaving the vice-president or someone else to take over? What if a president’s term began or ended four years earlier or later than originally planned? That is the premise behind this intriguing and fascinating anthology, by some of the best science fiction authors, Alternate Presidents.
Burr and Woodhull: The Tyrant and the Suffragette
History’s losers are presented in these 26 stories in different forms none more forcefully than Aaron Burr. In Jayge Carr’s “The War of ‘07”, the infamous duelist lends his megalomaniacal personality to Washington D.C. after his 1800 election. Burr murders colleagues, falsely creates a war, and destroys the Native Americans and African-Americans races on his way to tyranny. The final passage is eerie as it describes Burr becoming the very thing that the early Americans fought to break away from.
Women presidents are featured in two stories starring also-rans, Belva Ann Lockwood and Victoria Woodhull. Woodhull’s story “We Are Not Amused” by Laura Resnick is particularly fun and charming. In the story, Queen Victoria pens a series of letters offended by Woodhull’s scandalous behavior since her 1852 election. Woodhull takes on a free love stance, separated from her husband and living with her boyfriend in the White House, declares Frederick Douglass as her running mate and gives women and African-Americans the right to vote. The saucy president puts the staid Victorian era on their ear in this delightful story.
Tilden and Dewey: Two views of the same two Presidents
One of the most interesting aspects of this anthology is how different authors will portray the same candidate. Samuel J. Tilden, who ran in 1876 against Rutherford B. Hayes, is the focus of two stories. The first “Patriot’s Dream” by Tepper King reveals Tilden’s idealism inspired by his much younger wife and hellacious nightmares to become a political reformer leading to decades of prosperity and unity.
The second more superior story, “I Shall Have a Flight to Glory” by Mitchell P. Kube deals with a darker Tilden. Angered by the corruption that cost him the 1876 election, Tilden uses some corrupt means of his own in 1880. Buying and swaying votes, Tilden becomes a political monster resulting in very tragic and familiar circumstances.
Harry Truman’s opponent, Thomas A. Dewey is also the focus of two stories, though not as dramatically different as the Tilden stories. In “The More Things Change” by Glenn F. Cox, Dewey proves to be just as stubborn and bull-headed as his political rival and gets his chance to hold up the newspaper.
The better Dewey story is Barbara DePlace’s “No Other Choice” in which Dewey fills in after an ailing Roosevelt and makes the heartbreaking decision to drop the bomb but not on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but on a different larger target.
Johnson and McGovern: “Next Stop is Viet-Nam”
The Vietnam War is directly or indirectly featured in four stories. One of the most haunting stories “Dispatches from the Revolution” by Pat Cardigan reveals a world where Lyndon B. Johnson seeks another term in ’68. One would expect Bobby Kennedy to become president, unfortunately things turn out dramatically and tragically different leading to a dictatorship where the Vietnam War lasts 40 years resulting in a destroyed Vietnam and an isolated U.S. where people cannot even travel across states.
A more heart warming story is “Suppose they Gave a Peace” by Susan M. Schwartz. In this story, a Midwestern family worries about their son still in Vietnam during the swift pull out in 1972 under George McGovern’s administration. The rift between the conservative father and his liberal daughter is sometimes clichéd but ultimately touching as Vietnamese refugees are brought into America by the hundreds and the family opens their hearts to an orphaned child.
Dukakis and Beyond
Unfortunately since the book was published in 1992, it ends with a hilarious 1988 story “Dukakis and the Aliens” by Robert Sheckly in which aliens covertly interfere with Dukakis’ election. So there are no stories featuring the likes of Bob Dole, Al Gore, or John Kerry. But this is a good anthology to show us what might have been and in some ways what we are glad never were.
