Earth Swap: The Stone Library of Venus
Near-future Earth suddenly finds itself in a different version of the solar system, one where human civilizations trade and war between planets. Lurking behind those humans: the long-vanished non-human “Builders,” who colonized the solar system long ago, seeding it with Earth life. Ward Parke, astronomy enthusiast and presidential advisor, wants to explore this new solar system, but the planets here are on the verge of a genocidal, civilization-ending interplanetary war.
Our Earth is caught in the middle of that looming war, with technology hundreds of years behind the other powers. Its only advantage is an ancient stone library preserved by a now-vanished human civilization from Venus and Pandora, a mysterious woman who may be that civilization’s only survivor..
Nazi Treasure Hunt I: Marsh War
Marsh War is an alternate history novel set in the aftermath of an alternate World War II where Hitler went for Moscow rather than the Caucasus in spring 1942. As a result, World War II in the east stalemated deep inside Soviet prewar territory. The Soviets were too weak to push the Germans out, even when the western allies pushed into Germany. Diehard Nazis fled to the German-held Soviet Union and held out there for years until the western Allies crossed into Soviet territory and destroyed them.
With the Soviet Union battered and partially occupied, the United States emerges from World War II as the World’s only real Great Power. Great, right? Not really. In 1949, two years after they destroyed the last conventional Nazi resistance, the US still occupies large parts of the western Soviet Union and has been sucked into the treacherous politics of the Polish/Soviet border regions, with nominal allies close to war with each other over economically valuable and ethnically mixed areas.
Stalin pursues his intrigues in this dangerous region, while Nazi remnants scheme to regain power.
While the US settles in for a postwar boom, US occupation forces in the Soviet Union search for missing German scientists, Nazi advanced technology and looted Nazi treasures. They also search for missing loved ones and brace for a coming war they are woefully unprepared for.
The Moscow Option-1942
In this alternate history scenario, Hitler makes a different choice in spring 1942. Instead of heading south toward the Caucasus, he renews the German drive on Moscow.
That’s a tough choice. Moscow was the vital transportation and communications hub of the Soviet Union, as well as an important symbol of Soviet power, and while the Soviets pushed the Germans back from Moscow in their winter offensive, the Germans were still far closer to Moscow than they were to the Caucasus oil fields. On the other hand, the Soviets expected a drive on Moscow and had built up formidable defenses in front of it. Going after the Caucasus oil, if it worked, would conquer over 80 percent of Soviet oil, but getting to those oil fields meant covering huge, maybe impractical distances, wearing down German men and machines and opening up long, vulnerable flanks, as the Germans discovered at Stalingrad.
The different decision leads to alternate World War II, with ripples spreading to the Pacific even before the Germans move a single soldier, with the course of the war diverging, converging and diverging again as the fates of dozens of countries and factions throughout the world change.
The Moscow Option-1942 appeared as a serialization in The Best of Space Bats volumes 1 & 2. This volume simply brings those pieces together. It is written for history lovers and is a description of a fictional world rather than a traditional work of fiction with fictional characters and story arcs.
New Galveston Book2: The Wild East
In February 1939, just before World War II, the US Navy returned from a massive naval exercise in the Caribbean to find the New World replaced by an alternate version inhabited only by Indians.
In this alternate history novel, a sequel to New Galveston Book One: Operation Croatoan, Milo Gentry allies with an Aztec mobster and a beautiful Indian woman to fight his way north against White Russian slavers, stop a deadly epidemic and destroy a Nazi airbase in the upper Midwest.
New Galveston Book 1: Operation Croatoan
In February 1939, with World War II looming, the US Navy held a massive naval exercise in the Caribbean, involving almost fifty thousand sailors and marines. President Franklin Roosevelt personally attended.
In this alternate history novel, the US of 1939 disappears at the peak of the exercise, along with the rest of the New World. In its place is a New World still inhabited only by Indians.
While the US remnants try to make a new home for themselves, Nazis, Fascists and Japanese Imperialists scheme with Aztecs and other Indian powers to take over the resource-rich and now nearly defenseless New World.
Nazi Germany pours resources into it’s navy and into an advanced new generation of cargo planes. By summer 1941, the Nazis are ready to move. A mysterious “Operation Croatoan” is at the core of their schemes. Milo Gentry and a handful of other Americans race to figure out what the Axis powers are up to and stop them.
Snapshot-42 Book2: Through the Texas Gate
Snapshot42: Through the Texas Gate is an alternate history novel. In early November 1942, with World War II hanging in the balance, an invisible wall cuts Europe, along with parts of the Middle East and North Africa, off from the rest of the world. With the Allies running out of vital raw materials from the rest of the world, they look for ways through the wall. They find two gates to other realities. One leads to a still-independent Republic of Texas that still uses black powder weapons and is barely holding off fierce nomad raiders, while another leads to a strange land without people but overrun by still-living dinosaurs.
Jim Bridger and Colonel Tillman need to buy oil and food to keep the allies in the war, but first they have to survive fierce new enemies in these new-found realities.
Stalingrad Run
At the height of World War II, an apparent time anomaly cuts Europe and part of the Middle East off from the rest of the world. Trapped in Northern Iran, with no way to contact the world he knew, United States Army Engineer Jim Edwards is forced to flee from both the Germans and the Soviets. His only companions are a mysterious Russian woman who may be trying to assassinate Stalin, and a man who calls himself “Loki”. Is he any more trustworthy than the Norse trickster god he’s named after?
In a desperate bid to get to Great Britain, Jim finds himself in a treacherous race across Nazi-occupied Europe. His mission? To prevent the Nazis from overrunning Europe, then sending their war machines against an alternate United States that’s still armed with black powder muskets. The freedom of mankind’s future may depend on his success.
Jace of the Jungle
IA Snapshot Jungle Adventure?
Strange new people and animals keep appearing in an alternate history or alternate reality Africa otherwise isolated from the rest of the world for millions of years. In that strange version of Africa, oddly familiar events keep happening.
*An out of place passenger liner is torpedoed by German submarines.
*A castaway boy is raised by man-like apes.
*Brutal slave-raiders sweep in to destroy peaceful communities.
*An 18 year old damsel finds herself in a lot of distress.
*Men talk with elephants.
*Men and ape-man fight to the death.
Sounds like that has all been done before a time or two, right?
Jace of the Jungle delivers an homage to the pulp era Jungle Adventure story with a New Pulp novella just as action-packed as the old pulp adventures. Fair warning, though: Jace starts out considerably darker than the old pulps and goes places the pulp era stories couldn’t.
Raphaela, Princess of the Jungle
Nearly a hundred years ago, in an alternate reality Africa dotted with lost cities, Raphaela of Zan was eleven years old and dying of a rapid aging disease. A mysterious gray-eyed man gave her a drink he claimed would cure her. Instead, it stopped her from aging at all, trapping her in an eleven-year-old body, on the verge of life, but never able to truly live. Now, the rapid aging disease is back, threatening to turn her into a withered crone before she has a chance to live. Can she survive man-apes, Romans and Mad Puritans to find the gray-eyed man and convince him to save her?.
The Necklace of Time
In 2014, the Tourists create an exact copy of North America in a snow-globe shaped artificial universe, linked like pearls on a necklace to other copied times and places. In that timeline, Simon Royale—a.k.a. Simon-2014— is a legendary best-selling author. When he was only seven-years-old, his sister mysteriously vanished. Simon-14’s writing—and the power in it—is born from his obsession with discovering what happened to her. But now, cut off from the life he’d known, he may never find out.US-53 isn’t really the past. Thanks to the Tourists, it’s a mutant off-shoot, the 1950s grown up and sneaky, with sharp elbows. In this version of the timeline, Simon Royale—a.k.a. Simon-53—is just an aspiring author with a trunk full of unpublished novels. Then the two worlds connect. For an ambitious publishing company, it looks like a golden opportunity for Simon-53 to leverage Simon-2014’s fame.Can the clashing versions of Simon Royale coexist in the unnaturally linked timelines? Simon-2014’s legal battle over the right to his own work and identity are the least of his worries. In the 1953 timeline, his sister is still alive. What made her disappear in one reality but survive in the other? Is something dangerous hidden in his memories or his first novel? As Simon inches closer to the truth, one thing is clear: it’s a secret someone is willing to kill to keep.
Space Bats & Butterflies 1
Space Bats & Butterflies pulls together an eclectic collection of seventeen of the best alternate history or time-travel stories, book excerpts, essays and world-building exercises from the ninety-plus issues of a long-running Alternate History zine.
•An alternate World War II-The Moscow Option-1942.
•Was a Japanese invasion of Hawaii possible?
•Could you do a better job than Roosevelt in the lead-up to Pearl Harbor?
•Alternate timelines and the Prime Directive
Fiction stories and excerpts:
•Modern-day US finds an alternate timeline where the Roman Empire stagnated and Europe never reached the New World. It’s 1492 all over again, but this time with an entire new world to exploit.
•Outnumbered four to one, New England’s Indians make one last doomed attempt to push the English into the see, but this time they have a dangerous ally who may help them win.
•The Space Bats don’t want to invade Earth. They just collect unique human minds the way we collect rare coins.
•Red Potter is unemployed, homeless and humanity’s last desperate chance in a time war that has lasted a million years.
•World War II Europe meets an alternate North America cut off from the rest of the world since the middle of the American Revolution.
•A boy and girl from alternate realities become friends, but they can’t both be real.
Space Bats And Butterflies 2
Space Bats & Butterflies Book Two is another eclectic collection of the best alternate history or time-travel stories, book excerpts, essays and world-building exercises from the ninety-plus issues of a long-running Alternate History zine.
•Part Two of a two-part book-length alternate World War II scenario-The Moscow Option-1942.
•The Interrupted Trajectory: Indians without the Old World.
•Could you save the Incas from Spanish conquest?
•American Revolution: Britain Keeps the Deep South
•D-Day Landings Fail.
Fiction stories and excerpts:
•World War II Germany invades a divided alternate history US that still uses black powder muskets.
•Bootleggers from the 1920s invade a far-future sanctuary for massacre victims.
•Modern US collides with an alternate reality full of deadly animals.
•Tasmanian Wolves are supposed to be extinct. What is one doing in a Illinois cornfield?
•An ageless, vastly intelligent dog holds the secrets to immortality. Can he survive long enough to give it to humanity?
Space Bats And Butterrflies 3
Space Bats & Butterflies Book Three is yet another eclectic collection of the best alternate history or time-travel stories, book excerpts, essays and world-building exercises from the ninety-plus issues of a long-running Alternate History zine.
Spain Joins the Axis.
A Rocket Race in the 1930s?
Could you save Poland from the Nazis?
Alternatives From Little Known but Pivotal Wars
Rif War
Boer War
Communeros Rebellion (Spanish Civil War in 1519)
Alternate Technology
Electric World
Confederate Bicycle Dragoons
US Synthetic Rubber Industry Fails
Fiction stories and excerpts:
It’s 1949. After an alternate World War II, US troops occupy the western Soviet Union and Stalin wants his country back.
Descendants of the Spanish Conquistadors become pawns in a Great Power struggle between the US and Tsarist Russia.
A girl from a stone-age alternate reality stumbles into a modern paintball game, a murder and a remorseless police manhunt.
A mysterious doctor brings murder victims briefly and painfully back to life to help solve their murders.
Char
It was a routine murder investigation, except the main suspect walked out of a mud hole she didn’t walk into leaving blood and footprints that weren’t quite human. Char of the Real People is the ultimate smart outsider, a brilliant young woman, but is she smart enough to survive in modern society when she is plucked from her stone-age reality and becomes a fugitive, the main suspect in a modern murder investigation? How much can a stone-age woman understand about us by the sheer power of her mind? How long can she escape the law enforcement net closing around her? Learn More
All Timelines Lead to Rome
When the modern US opens gates to an alternate reality where the Roman Empire never fell and Europeans never reached the Americas, an entire new world opens up to us, rich, uncrowded, unpolluted and horribly vulnerable to disease and exploitation. All Timelines Lead to Rome is a unique, action-filled novel in a world unlike any other. Powerful forces try to protect the alternate reality, while others work to exploit it, creating a mystery spanning the U.S. rustbelt, the surviving Roman empire and an alternate North America where Indians still thrive. Learn More
Snapshot
Alternate realities you can fly to.
For eighty million years, the Tourists have taken Snapshots of Earth, creating living replicas of continents. Life in the Snapshots quickly diverges from the real world, creating a universe where humans and animals from Earth’s history fly between Snapshots, exploring, fighting, and sometimes meeting themselves.
In 2014, the Tourists’ newest Snapshot catches Middle East Analyst Greg Dunne rushing toward Hawaii to join his wife, who just went into labor. The new Snapshot doesn’t include Hawaii, cutting Greg off from everyone he loves.
Greg is thrust into the aftermath of a hidden, decades-old massacre, where Germans from a pre-World War II European Snapshot battle ranchers from a Korean War-era U.S. Snapshot. The prize: an ancient, wild Madagascar Snapshot. Whoever controls it can fly to Snapshots where dinosaurs still roam, Indians rule the New World or Nazis or Soviets control Europe.
Caught between powerful opponents, and joined by a woman nearly driven mad by her past, Greg struggles to survive in this cutthroat new reality, to remain faithful to a family he may never see again, and to find a way back to his original Earth.
Wrath of Athena (A Snapshot Novella)
A fly-by-night petting zoo lands in Madagascar-24M, the Snapshot of Madagascar the Tourists made 24 million years ago, and promptly finds itself slapped in quarantine. After all, exotic animals from off-Snapshot are a risk, for people, local wildlife, and the environment.
Scott Hardy’s title may be Assistant Veterinary Engineer, but his actual job is shoveling crap out of cages and protecting the “talent”—the nubile youths hired to run the petting zoo.
That doesn’t include protecting the zoo’s star performer, Athena Anders, Hardy’s redheaded, volatile, dish-hurling, on-again-off-again girlfriend. Not because Athena isn’t talented, but because she does just fine taking care of herself. The one thing Athena really loves are the zoo’s stars, a pair of talking dinosaurs. Then the dinosaurs go missing. And it’s mating season.
The only thing worse than the havoc a pair of breeding dinosaurs can create on an unprotected, unsuspecting world? The wrath of Athena when she finds out who’s responsible. Learn More
Exchange
Exchanges temporarily swap town-sized chunks our reality with pieces of an alternate reality where humans didn’t make it through an ancient bottleneck. Our risk-averse, bubble-wrap society suddenly has a frontier again. With little warning, a town can be in a land where sabertooths, giant bears and even more dangerous creatures still roam, a wild, dangerous place people can go to start a new life if they’re brave or crazy enough.
When her town is caught in an Exchange, computer
guru Sharon Mack has to fight giant predators, escaped convicts, and a mysterious cult to rescue her kidnapped daughter before the Exchange ends, trapping them forever. Learn More
Devouring Wind (Exchange Book 2)
“They’re coming for us, from the sky and emptiness.” Ten months ago, technology guru Sharon Mack and her autistic and strangely prescient daughter Bethany were trapped in the wild alternate version of Earth called Bear Country. They took refuge at Fort Eegan, an outpost built by a peculiar cult with mysterious ties to the US government. Now a new Exchange brings terrifying new consequences.
The new Exchange blocks Fort Eegan’s water supply, threatening deprivation now and catastrophic floods in the future. It also pits Fort Eegan against beings with superior technology, inhuman ruthlessness and a weapon capable of devouring everything in its path, including Fort Eegan.
In spite of the danger from the new Exchange, the humans of Bear Country are nearing a war with one another. Ruthless escaped convicts hold hundreds of women hostage. With supplies dwindling, they eye Fort Eegan’s already limited resources. Inside and outside the fort, conflicts fester among the isolated humans, including a deadly love triangle. Fort Eegan’s only hope is to unite before it is blown away by the devouring winds. Learn More
The First Exchange Sampler & Companion
Exchanges swap town-sized chunks of our reality with pieces of a wild, untamed alternate universe. This is a collection of short stories and essays set in that universe. The short stories/novellas include:
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- Winston: When a very smart bear escapes into our reality, he may change it forever.
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- Freedom: Exchanges are the ultimate way to get away from it all, to an alternate reality with no people, no bureaucrats, no taxes. But freedom has its price.
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- Bat Out of Hell: Bats from an alternate reality are potent bio-weapons in the wrong hands. Now terrorists are about to buy a breeding pair.
American Indian Victories
Have you ever wondered what would have ever happened if events in the past had gone differently? Have you ever wished that the American Indians hadn’t gotten the short end of the stick? American Indian Victories delivers over twenty realistic, well researched alternative history scenarios where the American Indians do significantly better than they did historically, along with a fiction excerpt set in world where Europeans never reached the New World and a novelette set in New England’s most bitter Indian war. Scenarios include:
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- What if the advanced Indian civilizations of Mexico and Peru had exchanged technology and ideas before Columbus?
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- What if a civilization equivalent to the Aztecs and Incas developed in eastern North America?
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- How could one shipwrecked sailor change the fate of a continent?
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- What if Carthage had colonized Mexico before the Punic Wars?
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- What if the Spanish conquistadors had set up independent kingdoms?
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- What if the ice age animals of the New World had survived to be domesticated?
Fair warning: The scenarios make up around 80% of the book and they do assume a fair amount of interest in and knowledge of history. The fiction should work for most science fiction readers. Learn More
Dale Cozort 