Fire on the Mountain by Terry Bisson

Fire on the Mountain Reviews

• 
  Peter

  (Second reading, 2020):
  Well my appreciation and understanding of this book has certainly deepened dramatically, especially after having immersed myself in the Harpers Ferry raid over the past few years. This book embodies what I mean about dreaming of the future we want, finding ways to express it, and using that art as a jumping-off point to develop a praxis on how to get there. This book sent me through the looking-glass to critique our own world. Sitting as I do now, locked-in from a global pandemic, exacerbated by our unequal class regime and neglected healthcare system, these critiques are much more pointed. If you're capable of some intense self-reflection and -critique, this will guide you.
  
  (First reading, 2012):
  This is an alternate history story unlike most I have read- one that focuses on the human story and human problems of a radically changed world, and only glancing at the radically changed history. And it works. I appreciated the structure, told in parallel between a modern narrator, the memoirs of a revolutionary 100 years earlier, and the letters of his contemporary. It was like taking a quick shot of a refreshing drink, and the narrative flowed quickly. Not too bad, and definitely a unique vision of what could have been.
• 
  Alex

  John Brown is joined by Harriet Tubman and a host of international fighters to overcome slavery and bring about the independent nation of Nova Africa.
  
  There are 2 big problems with this book for me.
  
  The first, more obvious problem is that the "future" storyline is uninteresting, cliche, and irrelevant. The mother-daughter relationship lacks drama and the repetitive references to the dead space-man are beyond tedious. Add to this the fundamentally outdated Marxist formula that socialism = advanced technology, which not only forms the basis for the entire "future" setting, it also seems to be the only purpose of having a "future" storyline at all, since all the future characters are boring, talk only of the litany of technological wonders they've achieved in the year 1959, and have essentially no connection to John Brown or the struggle against slavery (besides an interest in the subject matter and a relative who was involved 100 years earlier).
  
  The second problem is more devastating for me. In this alternate history, Brown and Tubman's war on slavery succeeds apparently without the active and enthusiastic involvement of large numbers of black people, i.e. the enslaved population of the U.S. South. Instead, the book repeats ad nauseum that the fledgling rebellion is aided externally from international revolutionary columns from such unlikely sources as Italy (by way of Mexico and Texas), Chinese immigrants who conquer California, and Haitians making an amphibious landing. Putting aside the utter lack of believability, the core issue is that the book obscures the actual cause of the end of slavery in reality - the mass rebellion of black Americans against the South and against slavery in particular. The Civil War was a catalyst, but the exodus of millions of fugitives fleeing the plantations is what fundamentally broke that nightmare system and banished it forever. (see Black Reconstruction by W.E.B. Du Bois)
  
  The agent of progressive change in our country - in the 1860s as now - is the black community, and instead of celebrating their leadership, this book wanders into outlandish Marxist fantasies.
  
  That said, I can't dismiss the historical importance of Fire on the Mountain, nor can I say it lacks exciting passages. The showdown between Frederick Douglass and the U.S. Marshals in Philadelphia is perhaps the best scene of the book, and the electrifying effect of the black horsemen arriving at the Virginia farmhouse will be burned in your memory.
  
  It just could have been so much better.
• 
  Misha

  I met Terry Bisson at the Locus Awards and sincerely wish I had read this before I sat down to share a meal with him. Unbeknownst to me, his work has often focused on race and social justice. This is an alternate history in which John Brown and Harriet Tubman joined forces on the raid at Harper's Ferry, Virginia and won. In this timeline, it is the 1950s and a black utopia exists in the south. There are black men going on expeditions to Mars. This is interspersed with two accounts from the past with a story in the present of a young widow reconnecting with her daughter. I enjoyed the present tense more. The Mumia Abu Jamal introduction is pretty cool, too.
  
  From intro: "Have you noticed how much of sci-fi is not so much futuristic, as it is a projection of a future where whites are many and people of color are few? Have you ever watched a movie such as Logan's Run, and spent the first two-thirds of the movie wondering where all the black folks are?"
• 
  Lauren

  3.5 stars-I liked this quite a bit but had two minor complaints; first, it could get a bit heavy-handed at times (especially in the allusion to the John Brown's Body speculative fiction novel. I really liked this idea a lot! But idk it was also like "yes we get it") and second the historical narrative by Abraham was occasionally unnecessarily detailed and dragged on a bit too much. Overall a good read though!
• 
  Dana Torrente

  The premise of this book was so incredibly interesting but the execution was very poor. The multiple writing styles really got everything jumbled and made it feel like you were reading three books at one time. It took me awhile to actually get through it even though it was so short. I so longed for this to be something more than it was.
• 
  Jenny (Reading Envy)

  This was discussed on
  Episode 045 of the Reading Envy Podcast.
• 
  Emily St. James

  This has a lot of the problems of Utopian fiction, in that it's a pretty beautiful example of world-building in search of a plot for too long. But somewhere in the second half, Bisson's schematic divide between the 1859 timeline (where John Brown and Harriet Tubman lead a movement that liberates the slaves, tears the US into two countries, and turns the world into a socialist paradise) and the 1959 timeline (where space explorers from "Nova Africa" are landing on Mars) begins to draw various strands of the story together. There's a real depth of feeling in the book's final third, especially when it comes to the 1859 characters.
  
  There's too much cutesiness here and there, especially when it comes to various real-world figures who pop up in the alternate timeline, and it's very clearly a book about black people written by a white author in places (a white author in 1988, also). But its mournfulness for a world that never was carries through, and that it was written at a time when capitalism seemed as if it would never be defeated, much less by socialism, adds to that mournfulness.
  
  Good book, especially for alt-history fans.
• 
  Sarah

  I'd seen
  Jo Walton
  discuss this book quite a few times, and so it's been on my to-read list for some years; I finally got around to getting it out of the library (not many copies left in circulation!). It was indeed very engaging and readable, though there are certain things about it that feel a little dated these days (considering it was originally published in 1988, I suppose that's not a total surprise).
  
  I very much enjoyed the way the world was filled in both in the "present" of 1959 and in the past through multiple narratives, as well as letters and documents. For such a slim book, there's a lot of worldbuilding. I actually would have liked to hear more about the past characters; I found them a bit more interesting than those in the 1959 narrative. (In fact, it is that part of the book that feels dated at times, while the historical part is all excellent.)
• 
  Jes. Cavanaugh

  I like Bisson, but of everything I've read from him, I liked this the least. This wasn't a very satisfying story. I like the supposition of what could have been if the Civil War had come about differently, but I didn't really see the value in that supposition. I didn't feel like I had a chance to get to know the world they lived in or invest enough emotion into the characters to really care. The abrupt ending and lack of resolution for the personal lives of the characters also left me a little cold.
  
  I won't give up on Bisson from a single book, but I would not recommend this to someone just starting to explore his works.
• 
  Teleseparatist

  This is not a perfect novel: I feel like the parallel between the fire in the belly and the fire on the mountain, and its symbolism, is pointed out a little more than necessary, and the ending feels vaguely incomplete; I kept thinking there had to be a little more. But at the same time it's this book's exact charm; the shoes need to get wet and it takes effort and work, and there's alternative history, and socialism, and flying, and space; it's a cool book and its structure does some very clever things. I'm really happy I could buy and read it.
  
  (And I guess I'd never have come across it without Jo Walton's recommendation.)
• 
  Tyler Williams

  Really more a 3.5.
  
  The book is good, but elements feel a bit wish-fulfillment-esque (Granted, this is coming from someone who loves Reds! A Revolutionary Timeline). The parts surrounding the successful Harper's Ferry raid are solid. Some of the foreign interventions are a bit unbelievable, however (Garibaldini helping the uprising? Weren't they a bit busy trying to unify Italy?). Overall a fun alternate history though, and one that doesn't take itself too seriously.
• 
  Jim Leckband

  "Fire on the Mountain" is an alternative history where the fork in the road of time is that John Brown's raid on the Harper's Ferry armory was an all around success rather than a tragedy of errors. This single unsmashed butterfly leads to a hundred years of alternative history. The war between the states turns into a civil war between the whites and the blacks (I may be wrong - since the history was woven into the narrative and is not a textbook what really happened is obscured).
  
  The following may look like a spoiler, but it really is understated in the book. The main gist is that the success of a revolutionary action by non-state actors unleashes the potential in the world that was allowed to wither after the 1848 "revolutions". Mexico retains California and Texas in a Garibaldian twist, Haiti is a power, Africa is not backward but progressively modern and the rest of the US is broken into two different states.
  
  The story is not about that history though - it is about John Brown's guerrillas and their literal "Fire on the Mountain" that is a beacon to the blacks and abolitionists. As alluded in the paragraph above, this fire on the mountain is also symbolic in how it unleashed progressivism in the rest of the world. Of course it also alludes to
  Ray Bradbury's title story in
  A Sound of Thunder and Other Stories where that stepped-on butterfly by time travelers ripples down through the ages.
  
  The most poignant part of the book is when a character in 1959 finds an alternative history book about John Brown's failure (i.e. our history). She finds the resulting story of capitalistic excess and the continuing white power so far-fetched that she throws the book out the window. And I thought, if only we could throw our real history out the window and start from a clean slate as well.
• 
  Elagabalus

  This book has a few elements I feel are similar to Hard To Be A God by the Strugatsky brothers, in that it takes alternative history and sci-fi from a socialist perspective. Beyond that, it's an interesting lesson in US history and politics. Reading this got me thinking about whether part of why left-wing politics are so derided here is because the white ruling classes know anti-racism and socialism are directly connected together and threaten the position of that ruling class. We can see this in the primary targets of COINTELPRO, rhetoric against any kind of universal healthcare or education, and before that Lincoln's fervent pragmatic nationalism that left too much influence to the quite racist or otherwise too passive population generally and middle-class ("landed" people) specifically. This book seems to propose that while the fight for liberation would be a long one, success would mean great things.
  
  It shouldn't surprise anyone that the US's hundreds of years of slavery and of public executions for those who oppose it, reflects something particularly oppressive in the society and culture that are comparable to and dependent on totalitarianism. Even though Fascism came into being decades after the Confederacy, the system throughout the country (yes, the North included) was brutally upheld in a similar way, leading to resistance and rebellion like that of John Brown's raiding party. This book gives the reader an idea of what could have been, as well as inspiration to reflect on the world today, and really look at the way the US currently fights tooth and nail to sustain a brutal, totalizing prison (and slave labour) system and militarized security forces. While an alternative history, it encourages hope and action for opportunities in the modern system.
• 
  Artnoose McMoose

  I originally picked this up to table at punk shows, and it looked interesting. Simply put, it speculates what the world would have looked like if the Harper's Ferry uprising had succeeded. The narrative is told from three vantage points: a former slave who witnessed the uprising as a boy and wrote the story years later, his great-granddaughter who lives in the country of Nova Africa with her own somewhat "Mericanized" daughter, and the letters of an abolitionist supporting Brown's cause.
  
  It's a great premise, and I was drawn to the narrative style. My one complaint is that it just wasn't long enough. It's a slim novel and I wanted both more character development in the modern-day story line as well as more adventures told by the former slave.
• 
  Michael McCaughey

  An sci-fi-ish alternate history where John Brown's raid was successful and he led America to be a socialist utopia.
  
  Loved this. Mainly because the author never lost the sense of optimism or hope, even when displaying the horrors that arise from racism and war. The three parallel stories, which occur in three different times, bounce and flow off each other. The only downside is that it's very easy to miss the point of the "current" storyline, because the other two are so dramatic. Which is a shame because it's a gorgeous tale.
  
  Reminded me of "The Man in the High Castle" for a lot of obvious reasons, so I'd recommend highly for anyone looking for something similar.
• 
  Ryan Jantz

  Wow. Just stunning. An alternate history that depicts an America in which John Brown’s rebellion succeeded, and the country was reshaped around a sovereign black nation (Nova Africa). It toes the line between inspiring and yet, for me at least, endlessly frustrating because of how out of reach is this vision that I so desperately wanted to be real. I admit I much preferred the historical timeline than the future one, as the events that lead up to the rebellion are filled with so much drama and power. This should be even more recognized as a classic than it is.
• 
  Ducky T

  The cover on Goodreads is terrible. This is not some pulp sci-fi dime novel. It is an inspiring rewrite of history where the good guys win. John Brown was a hero who died a martyr and like most renegades of history, his story has been buried.
  
  What if the civil war was fought to actually free the Africans in America instead of to save a broken white nation? It would change not just the definition of victory but of the politics that would be born from it.
  
  I recommend this book to all. The Fredrick Douglas speech alone is worth five stars.
• 
  Sarah Mae

  While I definitely believe that under different circumstances John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry could have been successful, there is absolutely no historical evidence that it could possibly have led to a socialist revolution. This book is nothing but a pipe dream with nothing to back it up. Plus it doesn't even really show us what this socialist society is like, beyond that they are landing on Mars and they have some cool tech.
• 
  Hannah

  i read this because the incredible walidah imarisha said this was the sci-fi universe she'd live in if she had to choose one when an audience member asked at her presentation about octavia's brood and emergent strategy. it was so fucking rad. i hope in some parallel universe this turn of history did happen because jesus fuck, if only.
• 
  wheels

  This is an amazing story of what this nation state could look like if John Brown's raid (of 1859) had success. Loved this. I recommend it. This is the book that inspired me to seek out Octavia Butler's "Kindred".
  
  Next on my list is to re-read is some Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs.
• 
  Aaron

  Obviously wish-fulfillment - and the author is pretty honest on that score - but an interesting book. Well written (though a pretty weak beginning). I think a Brown- and Tubman-founded nation would be some sort of mystic theocracy though.
• 
  Benjamin Fasching-Gray

  I thought I would be happy reading this, because I would love a socialist Nova Africa in the South, but actually, I was sad a lot while reading it, thinking about what we have missed, what we continue to miss. This is a powerful exploration of a great opportunity squandered.
• 
  Cheryl

  EBOOK ONLY jo walton rec
• 
  Andrew

  It's amazing to me that a book about a socialist alternate universe in which Black Americans took over the south and created their own country called Nova Africa was written and published in 1988. It would be pretty impressive if it were written today, let alone 30 years ago. I'd say it's worth reading for the fascinating and inspiring premise alone.
  
  The writing's okay, but the narrative itself is a little too disjointed. It jumps between three different perspectives: a "present-day" story of a mother and daughter's personal connection with a mission to Mars; a 1st-person retelling of the beginning of the Black revolution when John Brown and Harriett Tubman succeeded at Harper's Ferry; and personal letters from an abolitionist doctor around the time of the revolution. It's hard to keep up momentum with the rapid changes in story and tone, though they do all come together at the end.
  
  An inherent challenge with alternate histories is that explaining the differences between realities derails the narrative, but adding too much story and conflict is overkill on top of the alternate timeline. Here, Bisson errs with too little narrative; there's not much present-day conflict between Yasmin and her daughter Harriet, and the bulk of the story focuses on the Harper's Ferry aftermath. I think a stronger story would have been set around the "Second Revolution," in which the northern U.S.A. became the socialist U.S.S.A. This would have provided more compelling present-day conflict while also allowing Bisson to tell us about the first revolution of 1859.
  
  In any case, it's a brilliant thought experiment and a compelling read. I absolutely love what Bisson did with Abraham Lincoln, accurately affirming his ambivalence with respect to enslaved people, and converting his obsession with preserving the union into villainy rather than heroism. I'd highly recommend this book to fans of scifi or those interested in U.S. History and/or U.S. race relations.
  
  
  Not Bad Reviews
  
  
  @pointblaek
• 
  Dan Pepper

  Wow, how come every nerdy commie asshole like me doesn't have this book thrust into their hands the minute we check a Noam Chomsky book out of the library?
  
  This immediately zoomed up towards the top of my list of favorite alternative histories and it's pretty great sci fi, too. It seems generally accepted that writing a (relative) utopia is harder than writing dystopia but maybe that's cause writers don't try the former enough. Is an independent and soon Marxist republic set up by former slaves and their revolutionary allies in the South crazier than some of the things that really happened? A little, I think, but not as crazier as is popularly imagined.
  
  Bisson really just kills every bit of this from the character of Yasmin grieving her lost astronaut husband and scared to see the sky, to the 1800s letter writing we get from Dr. Hunter and the similar memoirs of Dr. Abraham, to scenes like the military funeral and the purely awe-striking imagery of the titular fire burning in the Blue Ridge and promising deliverance from slavery via the Army of the North Star. He ventriloquizes historical figures with as much facility and effrontery as anyone since Neil Gaiman casually wrote Will Shakespeare. He gives you enough alternative history to understand though not enough to get bogged down in details as the book is short and moves so fast. He also pulls of some snarky history humor with the novel within the novel of John Brown's Body and a few other details.
  
  Definitely a book that blew me away artistically and emotionally as much as anything I've read since A Song of Ice and Fire.
• 
  Joanne Rixon

  It's easy to forget that audacious dreams are potent and effective. In times of trouble and austerity we become cautious about hoping for too much. Fire on the Mountain is a strong antidote to that fear.
  
  The glory and breathless joy of the idea of Harriet Tubman and John Brown keeping the light lit on the ridge of the mountain so the enslaved would hope and the slavers would fear was so powerful that I had to put the book down and process it for a few days before picking it up again.
  
  I quite liked the epistolary sections from the past, and thought they interwove well with the story's present tense, in 1959, which an archeologist from Nova Africa, the country ruled by former slaves that emerged from the ruins of the American South, takes her daughter on a short business trip to Harper's Ferry to deliver the letters her grandfather wrote during the war for the centennial of the first attack. The utopian world, in which socialism has defeated Manifest Destiny and is putting black astronauts on Mars, was just as emotionally impactful.
  
  I have loved this book for a long time, and was pleased to have a chance to re-read it this winter after stumbling across a PM Press edition at the Seattle Anarchist Book Fair. I don't remember when I first had a chance to read it, but it's been at least a decade, maybe longer, which would make this book part of my hard left turn into revolutionary socialism. And now, still, it makes me cry.