Alternate history is[…]a mournful exercise; in it, the world we know has been erased, and usually not for the better. Sometimes the main character realizes this, but most often the reader alone is left to fathom the loss.

It is well named, for it is a very “floristy” flower, and is bound to be a favourite among the show fraternity.

[…] Norma Terris (who, so far as we had known, was born in Show Boat and went to Cain's with it) […]

But in the meditations of his leisure hours he believed in a dual reality which accounted for the miracles of Russian history. Talking about it, however, was harder than writing about it. Talking about it was almost impossible. ¶ “Well…” Nechvolodov replied. “You take the broad view of everything. I can’t look beyond Russia.” ¶ That was just the trouble. And it was worse still that a good general should be a writer of bad books and see that as his vocation. In his version, Orthodoxy was always right as against Catholicism, the rulers of Moscow as against Novgorod. Russian ways were gentler and purer than those of the West.