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Title: The Tranquillity Alternative by Allen M. Steele ISBN: 0-441-00299-4 Publisher: Ace Books Pub. Date: March, 1996 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $21.95

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Average Customer Rating: 3.8 (5 reviews)

Rating: 4
Summary: If you can find it - enjoy it
Comment: ... It is one Steele's more gripping novels. It started slow for me - only in that I had to guide myself into Steele's alternative history and get used to Presidents McGovern and Dole. I had to convince myself that Neil Armstrong was NOT the first man on the moon. These were just minor distractions. However once I figured it all out, I became totally entrenched in this book. He breaks up each chapter with a newspaper article or television report that provides a chronological alternative history to the space program. I liked that idea. It gave it more believability. There were a few unexpected twists and turns toward the end, which I won't give away...

Rating: 3
Summary: Alternate history in near space
Comment: As usual for Steele, this is a hard sf book of the exploration of near-Earth space. But unlike Orbital Decay and Lunar Descent, The Tranquillity Alternative is not set in the near future, but in an alternate history, where the American space program started in World War II and effectively ended after a joint US-USSR expedition to Mars in 1976. The story line is intriguing because of the close similarity to real history, which makes the deviations surprising (Nixon won the 1960 elections, Robert Kennedy became President after Nixon in 69, was shot in Dallas. McGovern became president in the 70s, Dole instead of Bush was Reagan's vice president and followed him as president).

What makes alternate history hard to swallow is that one the one hand America is depicted as a nation in decline without the will to pursue objectives in space anymore - Tranquillity Base is sold to a German company - much worse than in reality: Is this meant to be the consequence of higher spending for space in the alternate history?

Another disappointment is that of the 300 page story, about 250 pages are used to depict the scenery, and only for 30 or so pages there is some action. However, the descriptive parts are most interesting and thought-provoking.

Rating: 2
Summary: Not enough details on the alternative space program
Comment: Sorry, I wasn't satisfied with TA. I was looking for more specifics about an alternative space program that started in the 1940's. Instead, I got a silly plot set ahead to the 1990's with a disappointing ending. If you are looking for hard details about an alternative NASA and its accomplishments, try Stephen Baxter's "Voyage".