In this sixth volume of the North American Confederacy series, Win Bear and his extradimensional "twin," Edward William Bear, go back in time to July 1794 to once again do battle with the Hamiltonian strawmen. Lucy Gallegos Kropotkin is along to liven things up a bit, and there's a sort of bumbling mad scientist, Hirmschlag von Ochskahrt, thrown in—to provide comic relief from the usual jokes, I guess.

This time the Hamiltonians are out to defeat the noble NAC anarcho-libertarians by changing history itself at the key point where NAC history diverges from the history of our own continuum—the Whiskey Rebellion. By assassinating Albert Gallatin, NAC'S first anarcho-president, and nipping the popular rebellion against centralized government in the bud, Hamiltonian villainess Edna Janof hopes to divert NAC history into something like our own and thus assure victory for good ole Totalitarian Dictatorship. Somehow Our Heros get wind of the dastardly plot and go back to head off Janof before she can head off the Rebellion.

Need I tell more of the formula plot and characters? The boring gunfights and standard jokes? Can you possibly guess how it all comes out?

In her editorial "Is There a Winner This Year?" Prometheus, Summer 1985) Victoria Varga says I was too harsh on Smith's Tom Paine Maru in my earlier review of that 1985 Prometheus nominee. Perhaps I was, but others are even harsher. In response to my "Interview with None of the Above," which appeared first in the SF libertarian APA-zine Frefanzine No. 55, Martin Morse Wooster writes (in FREF No. 56): "I've read Tom Paine Maru and The Gallatin Divergence, and I can sum them up in two words: arf, arf. We're talking dogs, folks. L. Neil Smith is a rotten writer."

Of course this is only Wooster's opinions and I think it's a bit unfair, since Smith has written some better books than Maru and Divergence. But those were five or six years ago—what has he done for us lately? And where is the North American Confederacy series likely to go from here, with each new title becoming a weaker carbon copy of the ones before?

The Gallatin Divergence might have made a good novella, but as a novel it is a dog, even conceding that Smith can do better. Undoubtedly it will be nominated for the Prometheus this year, but I can't support it, alas: and I doubt that most of the voters will either. The best line in the book, which we might tag Smith's Law, is this one: "There's that streak in all men that resents being mentioned in the same context as poultry excretion." Unfortunately, much of Smith's more recent output consists mainly of equine excretion that even his jokes can't change into something better.

Are we heading for another None of the Above this year?