The frightening story of a Britain that might have been

I read Jo Walton's Farthing last year, but I didn't get around to reading its sequels until just recently.  Now I've read the whole trilogy (woohoo!  One series complete and off my list!), and I can say I'm quite glad it's done because this is one scary world that Walton created and one that hits pretty close to home in its commentary about our modern world.

I love alternate history, but maybe when it's written right now about a world that so nearly could exist and perhaps already does in some forms... it gets scary.  Like, really scary.

Ha'penny and Half a Crown are the second and third books, respectively, in Jo Walton's Small Change series about a world that might have been, if just a few small changes were made (seriously, if Jo Walton is so amazing in her symbolism even in her titles, you can only guess how awesome she is when she has real sentences to work with.  Answer - really, really awesome).  The basis of this series is that, instead of fighting a long war, the Allies negotiated a peace with the Axis.  America never entered the war and is still in the midst of a massive depression.  Japan rules Asia (and wants at least half of North America) and Hitler reigns supreme in Europe.  The British Prime Minister is a sadistic and manipulative man as well, who works more to secure his own power than help his people.
 
These books started a WWII era binge for me; I followed these two up with Code Name Verity and Rose Under Fire, and reading the four of these books basically all in a row made clear to me that, while the decade had its moments, the 1940s were a dismal time in the world.

But Jo Walton makes clear that it could have been so much worse.  And hey, have we really come that far from where we were before?  The problem with history is that we look at it with the "Whew, dodged a bullet there" mentality and not with the, "There but for the grace of God goes everyone" mentality.

I am going to review these books together because I read them one immediately after the other.  Also, I am going to review them vaguely so as not to give too much away.  Of the trilogy, I liked Farthing the most, probably because it was the most jarring and emotionally heart-breaking.  These were good, too, but even more depressing because it seems like everyone in the books believes that the world they are in is the only possible world that can exist.

There is a term called "shifting baseline syndrome."  Basically, this means that people get used to a new normal and fail to notice change in the world, particularly if the world was different before they were around to notice it.  For example, a few hundred years ago, America was home to like, a bazillion passenger pigeons.  Now, there are no passenger pigeons.  No one alive in the world now can even imagine an America with so many pigeons.

That's pretty much what happens in this series.  In Ha'Penny, there still exists a strong resistance movement dedicated to toppling the government - but to what end?  And by the time we get to Half a Crown, more than a decade later, institutional racism and fascist parades are considered great fun and people go to them hoping to throw a rotten egg or two at Jews.  And the main resistance movement?  One that thinks the prime minister is too soft on Jews and prisoners and wants a stronger, stricter government.

It's the stuff of nightmares, is what it is.  But perhaps the most disconcerting aspect of science fiction and alternate history books is their ability to shine a light on our own world and the problems it faces.  With governments invading our personal privacy and many countries closing their borders to immigrants, and so many other seemingly small things that accumulate, the Small Change series seems especially timely.  And possible.

What comes to life so well in these books and is so very hard to stomach is the capacity that every person has for true good and horrible evil.  When you are raised thinking that something is normal and expected, when you look around you and everyone you know looks like you and spouts the same philosophy, then it's very hard to go a different route.

For example, Elvira Royston is a debutante in Half a Crown.  She's rich, she's educated, she has loyal friends, and she generally seems to have a good head on her shoulders.  But her beloved uncle, Inspector Carmichael, is not sure he can trust her so he never tells her that he is gay.  And when asked if she's a Fascist, Elvira says that she is because it's "fun."  She wants to attend a parade that basically celebrates the Aryan race over all others, just to see what it's like.  It's scary because you like her, but you are completely appalled by her.

Point being, any one of us could be an Elvira Royston.  And, as the story continues, Elvira does come into her own and starts thinking for herself and you realize that each and every one of us does have the capacity for courage, too, and even if it may take us a long time to make progress, we do try.  And that's an important lesson, too.