From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.written

I have been, time from to time, been reminded of books that I had read
decades ago but could not remember authors or titles. For example, a few
weeks ago I was reading decades old posts on forums devoted on board
war-games (commercially published games that try to model military
operations - publishers of note in the 70-90s include Avalon Hill, SPI,
GDW, Clash of Arms, and West End Games), in this case games on the
American Civil War. One post mentioned that there weren't very many
games based on the Trans-Mississippi Theater (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Mississippi_theater_of_the_American_ Civil_War) and I remember that I had once read a novel based in that
theater. A few days later, another post on the forum mentioned Brigadier-General Stand Watie, a Cherokee who was the last CSA general
to surrender (the Indian Territory was a bit remote). I found a
Wikipedia article on him which also included various references to him
in popular culture, including (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifles_for_Watie), which I believe was
the book I had read 6 decades ago (while the description includes much I
don't remember, it also includes everything I do remember). _RfW_ also
was a 1958 Newbery Medal winner, which would make it a very reasonable
book to find in a high school library or in the young adult section of a public library.

Because of this success, I have decided to assemble a description, the
best I can remember, of other such titles. Unless stated otherwise, I
believe that I read them in the early to mid 1960s (some have been
mentioned in earlier posts). The first two are SF; the third one might
be, the rest are not (but even reduced as it is now, the readership of r.a.sf.w appears to well-read).

1) This story had time travelers who manipulated time by changing events
in the past (and thus generate a new timeline). The story also had a
character (non-time traveller) who remembered the erased timelines
(IIRC, he, on occasion, couldn't find books he remembered reading
because they had been written in the erased timeline and not the new
one). I also remember that the last time manipulation that the time
travelers performed in the book erased a time line where that character
had been murdered. In the new one, he was still alive and he did
remember being killed. BTW, sometime during the book, the time travelers became aware of him.

2) Sometime in the late 1950s (I would only been 8 or 9 at the time), I
found a box of magazines in a closet (might have been issues of the
Saturday Evening Post or Colliers). One of them had a story of a colony
on Mars (I remember an illustration with a flying vehicle approaching a
dome beside what looks like a canal). I vaguely remember it being a two
part serial (but I might be wrong) and I also vaguely remember scenes in
a cave system (and again, I might be wrong). I looked through the ISFDB entries for both magazines and didn't see anything that sparked a memory.

3) I remember very little of this one (I might have read it before
1960). IIRC, the protagonist was a guard for a prison/camp for violent
mutants (perhaps they weren't mutants, in which case this story wasn't
SF). One of the prisoners was a good looking woman about the same age as
the guard. It was eventually revealed the reason she had been classified
as violent was the vigor of her objection to sexual harassment (or
perhaps it was attempted rape, I might not had recognized the euphemism
that was used) by a guard at her previous prison/camp. I don't think it
was set during WWII at an internment camp, but I could be wrong.

4) This novel, IIRC, starts in Boston (probably in the 1950s). Our
protagonist was a big winner in a poker game; the big loser was a
fisherman from Sweden (and ownership of his boat is in question). The protagonist reassures the fisherman; he has a plan. He approaches his
former college professor (somewhat cautiously, because he and the
professor's daughter had once been very friendly, so much so that she
left town to "visit an aunt" - I don't know what happened to the baby, I suspect it was given up for adoption). The professor accepts the
proposal and our protagonist, the professor, the professor's daughter
(who is not interested in her old boyfriend at all) and the fisherman
sail off on the boat to Sweden to search for the tomb of Beowulf. The
port they land at (which might be the fisherman's home port) is in the southern part of Sweden, the part that belonged to Denmark centuries
ago. A mound that might be the tomb of Beowulf is found, but they also
found an old, but still maintained tunnel into the treasure chamber
which didn't have much treasure left. The professor and his former
student conclude that it was a multi-generational family secret piggy
bank that had been used from time to time to pay for things, perhaps
even a fishing boat.

5) I remember this book as having 2 threads, but it is possible that the second thread exists only in my imagination. It is set in a manor on the
east edge of the Nile Delta, probably in the period between the Egyptian revolt against the Persian Empire and the reconquest (404 BC to 343 BC)
or possibly during the Ptolemaic Dynasty. I say this because of
references to what I think was the original Persian conquest. The
protagonist is a daughter, IIRC, of the lord of manor (I might be wrong
about her father's status, but I think she was at least 10 years old,
not a servant and I think she would had been a servant if her parents
were servants). I don't remember much about the plot other than the
manor was close to where a son of King of the Hittites was ambushed,
killed, and buried (IIRC, there was mention of a letter of the widow of
a pharaoh to the Hittite king for a son for her to marry, BTW, Hittite archives mention this whole affair). The second thread, if it existed,
was an archeological dig of a manor on the east edge of the Nile Delta
(same manor of course).

6) An adventurer (IIRC, Danish) is hired by a great power to go look
into things in a newly independent nation (I can't remember what
suspicions his contact had). So he goes there and somehow ends up in a
lowly populated area of one district whose population who were trying to
set up a separate district. He discovers intrigues by a second great
power. I can't remember how that intrigue was defeated in the story.
BTW, the setting is in the mid 1780s, the first great power was Great
Britain, the second was Spain, and the newly independent nation was of
course, the United States of America. Most of the action was the aborted
state of Franklin (which contained what is now 12 counties in east
Tennessee). I don't know of very many novels that mention the state of Franklin (_Joyleg_ was one and I think it was mentioned in a Hardy Boys
book of all things).

7) I read this around 1970 - the book was set up something like the
Choose Your Adventure pamphlets issued after the great success of D&D
later in the 1970s. The focus is on the President of a newly independent African nation - thus, "Mr. President, Choose Your Policies". I believe
the number of scenarios was greater than 3, but less than 10. The
write-ups for each decision point were more extensive than those in the
CYA pamphlets, however, I remember noticing some railroading. One
scenario really annoyed me, it was "Do you set aside your European wife
and instead take a daughter of the people as wife". Aside from my
opinion that the request amounted to an insult to the President's
manhood, I wondered just how many presidents of newly independent
African nations had European wives. I never tried to find the answer to
that question, but the one such President that I discovered decades
later that did have a European wife was Seretse Khama who did not
divorce his British wife and they were still married when he died in
1980. He was also by any reasonable measure (how much personal wealth
gained while running a country is not a reasonable measure) the most successful post-colonial leader in Africa. For example, he died in 1980
and just how many military coups, revolts, riots over electoral fraud,
etc. has Botswana had in the near 46 years since? AFAICT, none.
--
"We have advanced to new and surprising levels of bafflement."
Imperial Auditor Miles Vorkosigan describes progress in _Komarr_. i-----------------------------------------------------
Robert Woodward robertaw@drizzle.com
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