A Different Flesh
Written by Harry Turtledove
Narrated by Paul Woodson
4/5
()
About this audiobook
What if mankind's "missing link," the apelike Homo erectus, had survived to dominate a North American continent where woolly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers still prowled, while the more advanced Homo sapiens built their civilizations elsewhere? Now imagine that the Europeans arriving in the New World had chanced on these primitive creatures and seized the opportunity to establish a hierarchy in which the sapiens were masters and the "sims" were their slaves.
This is the premise that drives the incomparable Harry Turtledove's A Different Flesh. The acclaimed Hugo Award winner creates an alternate America that spans three hundred years of invented history. From the Jamestown colonists' desperate hunt for a human infant kidnapped by a local sim tribe, to a late-eighteenth-century contest between a newfangled steam-engine train and the popular hairy-elephant-pulled model, to the sim-rights activists' daring 1988 rescue of an unfortunate biped named Matt who's being used for animal experimentation, Turtledove turns our world inside out in a remarkable science fiction masterwork that explores what it truly means to be human.
Harry Turtledove
Harry Turtledove (he/him) is an American fantasy and science fiction writer who Publishers Weekly has called the "Master of Alternate History." He has received numerous awards and distinctions, including the Hugo Award for Best Novella, the HOMer Award for Short story, and the John Esthen Cook Award for Southern Fiction. Turtledove’s works include the Crosstime Traffic, Worldwar, Darkness, and Opening of the World series; the standalone novels The House of Daniel, Fort Pillow, and Give Me Back My Legions!; and over a dozen short stories available on Tor.com. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, novelist Laura Frankos, and their four daughters.
More audiobooks from Harry Turtledove
If The South Had Won The Civil War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In the Presence of Mine Enemies Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Guns of the South Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Give Me Back My Legions!: A Novel of Ancient Rome Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Agent of Byzantium Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Alpha and Omega Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How Few Remain: A Novel of the Second War Between the States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Man with the Iron Heart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wages of Sin Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Or Even Eagle Flew Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Homeward Bound Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Three Miles Down Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fort Pillow: A Novel of the Civil War Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ruled Britannia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Joe Steele Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The House of Daniel: A Novel of Wild Magic, the Great Depression, and Semipro Ball Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Related to A Different Flesh
Related audiobooks
Against the Tide of Years Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Liberty Bound: A dystopian adventure at the end of civilisation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Protector's War (3 of 3) [Dramatized Adaptation] Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBeyond the Gap: A Novel of the Opening of the World Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Ruled Britannia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Alpha and Omega Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bombs Away Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Atlantis and Other Places: Stories of Alternate History Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Dawn of a Nazi Moon: Book One Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Sky People Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Opening Atlantis: A Novel of Alternate History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Nation Interrupted: An Alternate History Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fallout Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Colonization: Down to Earth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Marching through Georgia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Colonization: Second Contact Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On the Oceans of Eternity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Blood and Iron Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Black Chamber Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Joe Steele Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Homeward Bound Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Drakon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Under the Yoke Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Drakas! Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings1920: America's Great War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Peshawar Lancers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Liberating Atlantis: A Novel of Alternate History Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Island in the Sea of Time Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great War: Breakthroughs Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Berlin Project Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
General Fiction For You
A Court of Mist and Fury Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Court of Wings and Ruin Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Hunger Games Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Court of Thorns and Roses Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Good Omens: A Full Cast Production Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It Ends with Us Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Name of the Wind Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bell Jar Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Court of Frost and Starlight Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5And Then There Were None Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Alchemist Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Finn Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5American Gods: The Tenth Anniversary Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5American Gods [TV Tie-In]: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dutch House: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Man Called Ove: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Farseer: Assassin's Apprentice Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leave the World Behind: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/511/22/63: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wishful Drinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Finding Me: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Their Eyes Were Watching God Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Overstory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for A Different Flesh
38 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I’ve read Harry Turtledove’s alternate history novels for years, and I consider him to be one of the masters of the genre – he’s certainly among the genre’s most prolific authors. Alternate history is defined by Wikipedia as “speculative fiction consisting of stories in which one or more historical events occur differently,” and I think that’s an accurate general description of the genre. The real fun in reading an alternate history comes from the “speculation” part of its definition, in tracking how one or two changes in historical fact can lead to massive changes in reality over the next decades or centuries.That’s exactly the approach that Turtledove takes in A Different Flesh, a collection of seven loosely connected short stories that chronologically span over 300 years of American history. Turtledove’s basic premise is that the ancestors of the American Indian population that the colonists found upon their arrival in the New World never make it across the Behring Strait. Instead, the continent remains so isolated until the 1600s that it is still dominated by saber-toothed tigers, wooly mammoths, and Homo erectus, an upright species said to be the ancestor of several more advanced human species. Poor Homo erectus gets to stand in for the real-life abuse suffered by both the Native American population and most of what happened to the Africans who were imported to the colonies later on. The first story, “Vilest Beast,” features the Jamestown colonists a few years after Captain John Smith has been killed and eaten by a group of wild “Sims” (the name universally applied to the Homo erectus species). By now, both the colonists and the Sims prefer to stay clear of each other, but after one bloody conflict, at least one of the colonists is starting to wonder just how “human” the Sims might be.The next two stories, “And So to Bed” and “Around the Salt Lick” follow the evolving relationship between Sims and America’s settlers through the late 1600s, a period during which Sims are captured and sent back to Europe for study. The two species have even by now developed a sign language that allows them to communicate thoughts to each other, and in some cases they develop deeply binding friendships. Overall, however, Sims are still considered animals – and are treated as such.“Though the Heavens Fall,” the book’s fourth story, is set on an 1804 plantation on which Sims are the slaves doing all the heavy field work and the few black slaves on the plantation are used inside the house. As portrayed in the story, there is a definite class hierarchy on the plantation, and the black slaves are very relieved not to be on the bottom of it. “The Iron Elephant,” set in 1781, is a fun story about the evolution of the steam locomotive and how it eventually would put out of business the wooly mammoth-pulled locomotives of the day.My personal favorite, though, is “Trapping Run,” a long story set in 1812 about a trapper who has gone farther west than any other explorer of his day. That means that the trapping is excellent, but it also means that when the trapper suffers a devastating injury from a Grizzly, he’s is almost certainly going to die there all alone. And he would have if not for the band of wild Sims who befriend him. This is a touching story, but it illustrates the difficulty of the two species ever truly understanding each other on anything resembling equal terms.“Freedom,” the last story in the book is set in 1988 (the year that A Different Flesh was published), and it’s the saddest and most disturbing story in the book. By this point Sims are being used in research labs around the world, a practice justified in the minds of researchers by the assumption that the Sims are no more human than any other animal species. Bottom Line: Turtledove’s A Different Flesh is philosophically deeper than it might appear at first glance. The Sims are stand-ins for every racially dominated group in the history of the United States, and the author seamlessly slips his serious messages into the book’s seven stories. This one is probably underrated in part because of some of the awful covers the book has had over the decades. Don’t let that throw you off; this one is worth reading.