Wasteland of Flint
reviewed Jun 26 2005
In an alternate future in which the Méxica (Aztecs) and the Japanese rule an interstellar empire, the light cruiser Cornuelle carries a Company team and an Imperial shaman/political officer to Ephesus to rescue a stranded archaeological team which has uncovered dangerous relics of a long-lost hi-tech civilization… good space opera, decent characters, and the usual pleasant unfamiliarity of alternate history.
I like alternate history when the point is to show that some of the things we take for granted weren’t inevitable, but I think this story could have been told without the added conceit, by constructing a future culture that included all the elements he wanted to adopt from Aztec culture. Still, Harlan’s extrapolation of Aztec society to technological imperium feels consistent and believable.
(addendum July 2020: “Aztech Nights” in Alan Moore’s Tom Strong #3 from July 1999 has an alternate-world technologically advanced Aztec empire the worships a sentient AI in the form of Quetzalcoatl conducting an expansionist war across dimensions.)