A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurray!
Harry Harrison
192 pages
published in 1972

Like Moorcock's The Warlord of the Air, which came out roughly at the same time, this is an alternate history novel set in a faux-victorian society. Again like Moorcock's novel this is also written in a mock Victorian style. What's different about Harrison's and Moorcock's approach though is their attitude towards the societies they've created; Harrison seems to approve of it and one point compares it favourably to our own world (~1971 that is) while Moorcock shows the dark sides of his society. On the whole I prefer Moorcock's book.

The main attraction of Harrison's book is the tunnel itself. It is, after all, an amazing concept. If only Harrison had concentrated more on the building of it and less on his somewhat boring hero, this would've been a better book.

Said hero is Gus Washington, a descendant of the traitorous George Washington, who was hanged for his participation in a revolt in Britain's American colonies 200 years ago. Gus is trying to redeem the family name by building this tunnel, which is needed in order to revive the stagnant economy of both Britain and its American colonies. In a series of episodes his struggles to finish the project, which is actively being sabotaged by Foreign Powers are related. However, those struggles never become really interesting and never seem very serious.

So there you have it, a flawed AH novel with interesting concept, where the divergence of our timeline happened sometime around 1777, right? Wrong. The trouble is that Harrison put the department point quite a lot earlier in history, which makes it hard to swallow that this world turned out like it did. Not that this divergence plays much of a role in the story; it only seems to be there to let Harrison have the opportunity to rant a bit about our own world.

My conclusion? This is not Harrison's best novel, but then again I think Harrison never wrote his best novel...