total convenience and flowers seven days milk:

Ah, well, if you poke around in the comments upthread a bit you will see me backing off from the over-broad assertion that all AU fiction sucks. I think I namecheck Jo Walton's Farthing series (I would LOVE to know what you think about that one, because it's post-WWII Britain except that there was a Brit-Germany agreement instead of the Stalin-Hitler pact) and KS Robinson's Years of Rice and Salt, and I certainly should have remembered Man in the High Castle, and come to think of it, Michael Chabon! Yiddish Policeman's Union! Now that is a lovely book. Oh, and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, if read as an AU, works extremely well (and is another book I would love to know your reaction to, come to think of it.)

I'll have to try Harry Turtledove. I know much less classical and Byzantine history than you do, I'm sure.