So I am finishing up the new Robert Conroy novel of alternative history called "Custer in Chains." The premise is that Custer survives the Little Big Horn and is a hero who is elected President. He looks around to see what he can do and decides to start a war with Spain a couple of decades before it happened in our timeline.
Hilarity ensuses and Custer ends up getting captured by the Spanish. Don't ask. It is pretty far-fetched if logical and part of the Custer mystique. There are so many crazy Custer books that it is almost a subsection in the library like vampire books or something.
The first of these books I read many years ago. It was novel by Douglas C Jones and it portrayed a fictional court martial of Custer after the Little Big Horn. Several old school Union generals are on the jury. RC Ocean would get a kick out of it.
I have spoken about the weirdest version before. It is the series which starts with "The Year the Cloud Fell." In it the Indians win the war and Custer becomes President. Oh and they ride dinosaurs instead of horses. It is very realistic.
When I was a kid I enjoyed the Custer TV series "The Legend of Custer." It wasn't all that accurate but I enjoyed it. All of those TV shows were about American Heroes. Custer. Daniel Boone. Davy Crockett. The Swamp Fox. Old white guys. You don't have that anymore. There are no heroes in American History that will be profiled on TV. You get your Dexters or Don Drapers or Hannibals. But no Davy Crockett. Definitely no Custer.
So you have to find it in books. Maybe I should write one. An alternative history with Custer. But no dinosaurs. That has already been done. Vampires? Gay? Furries?
Wait a minute! He had long hair and was very vain and his wife was a control freak who managed every part of his life. I got it.
Transsexual Custer!
That's a million dollar idea right there.
9 comments:
Which Hollywood star, pray tell, would you have play this tranny Custer on the Silver Screen? Discuss...
Gary Busey
Hey, did you see the History's channel Texas miniseries with Bill Paxton?
Troop/
My RN wife took care of Busey's daughter @ Santa Monica Hosp in 2010. She got to know him fairly well. Was evidently during his dried-out non crazed, non drugged period, as she described him as polite, even shy (even if generally washed out in mien, lol.)
I did Chuck. It was pretty good.
I think Busey would work in that role, and certainly there's room for John Lithgow in there?
Titus.
Thanks for the heads up! That Jones novel is something I'd like to read.
How in the world does President Custer get captured? LOL. Yes, I know he was a hot head and a man of action, but still...
Here's my idea for a historical fantasy. Jefferson Davis realizes in 1862 that the only way the South can win is to get rid of Slavery in exchange for French-British recognition. So he gets rid of Slavery and wins CSA independence. Later, after the Peace, when most of the Freed blacks have left for NYC, Chicago and points North the successor to Davis, President Stonewall Jackson decides to cure the South's labor shortage by importing large numbers of Chinese laborers, Mexican peasants, Cubans, and Puerto Ricans. Hilarity ensues.
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