Happy New Year: Looking Ahead

The year 2020 could not have ended too soon.  It was like an unwelcome houseguest that had overstayed its welcome.  From COVID-19, to the continuing sad, sorry saga of Donald Trump and the the civil unrest that gripped much of the world over racial inequality, I think we will be glad to bid good riddance to the year. 

Nevertheless, 2020 is almost over, which is perhaps the best thing that can be said of it.  I believe that 2021 will be a better year and am certainly looking forward to it.  In terms of my reading schedule, I am looking forward to a significant reviewing schedule, including:

• From the Ashes, by Sandra Saidak, is a novel that takes place roughly a century after the final victory by the Third Reich. I am currently reading this novel, and I will review it next month in this space.
• Winds of Wrath, by Taylor Anderson, is the final installment in his 15-part epic Destroyermen series that has followed the adventures of Captain Matthew Reddy and the crew of the time lost USS Walker. I’ve been following this hugely enjoyable series since it first appeared and will be looking forward to sharing my thoughts with you.
• Shadows of Annihilation, by S.M. Stirling, is the latest entry in the author’s action-packed alternate First World War series, furthering the adventures of ace American superspies Luz O’Malley and Ciara Whelan.
• Finally, expect a review of the second season of For All Mankind, the alternate history of the space race, premiering February 19, 2021, on AppleTV+   Ronald Regan is in the Oval Office and the Cold War is getting hot on the moon. 

Thank you for staying with the blog for the over ten years that I have been writing it.  It has been, to quote the Grateful Dead, a long strange trip. I hope that you will join me in the New Year and that 2021 will be both safe and productive for you all. 

In the meantime, you can purchase Elvis Saves JFK! for just 99 cents and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History, for $2.99 and now The Key to My Heart, also $2.99 (all are free to preview). All books -- which are already on Smashword's premium distribution list -- are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Sony, Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.  

Take care of yourselves.

Book Review: The Oppenheimer Alternative, by Robert J. Sawyer

This is not a perfect book, but nonetheless, I quite enjoyed it. 

The Oppenheimer Alternative is a biographical piece of alternate history, expertly researched and written by author Sawyer. It closely follows the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer as he led the research effort under the Manhattan Project to develop the atom bomb and the period. He emerges as a fully-fleshed out historical character, warts and all, which is a testament to the author’s storytelling abilities.

It’s something of a slow burn to get the meat of the novel and the point where our history spits from that of the novel. Much of the early part of the novel is spent in the careful building of relationships (and conflicts) with historical personages such as General Leslie Groves, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, Richard Feynman, and many others. 

When the point of divergence comes it’s a big one.  While researching the atom bomb, the Manhattan Project team uncovers that all life on earth is doomed in 2030, when a massive solar coronal mass eruption one astronomical unit in diameter (the orbit of the earth around the sun) that they dub the solar purge will occur.

Wanting to avoid a panic, Oppenheimer assembles a dream team that grows to include some of the major scientific luminaries of the mid-20th Century, including Albert Einstein, Wernher von Bruan, and Jon von Neumann, as well as a great many of his Manhattan Project colleagues. The group named the Arbor Project works in secret even as the Cold War dawns and the Red Scare takes hold, which eventually brings about Oppenheimer’s fall from grace. The goal of Project Arbor is no less than the relocation of the human race to Mars, which falls outside the radius of the solar purge.

Here be spoilers:

Unfortunately for our heroes and the rest of the human race as it seems, Mars is not what it seems to be. Instead of the world with water flowing through the canals of Percival Lowell they had expected, they face the reality of a cratered, desert world presented to them by the images from the first space probe to reach Mars, Mariner 4, in 1965. This is almost a terminal disappointment.

Almost.  What comes next is almost – almost – out of left field. Sawyer does foreshadow what’s to come in a blink and you’ll miss it a moment, just so much that the resolution doesn’t drop out of the sky, all dues et machina when it finally happens. And that just doesn’t ring particularly true for me, which is unfortunate. 

Ultimately, with that single but significant proviso, The Oppenheimer Alternative succeeds as an alternate history story. It's much better, more demanding reading than the good half-dozen usual "what-if-the-Nazis-won" alternate history novels circulating out there I could name. 

Recommended.

 What's Next?

I have several novels I'm looking forward to reviewing over the next few months. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, you can purchase Elvis Saves JFK! for just 99 cents and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History, for $2.99 and now The Key to My Heart, also $2.99 (all are free to preview). All books -- which are already on Smashword's premium distribution list -- are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Sony, Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.  

Take care of yourselves.

Book Review: Pass of Fire by Taylor Anderson

The latest entry in paperback in author Taylor Anderson’s Destroyermen series, is Pass of Fire. It’s the 14th  and penultimate entry in the series, which begins the set up for the events to come in the final novel, Winds of Wrath.

For newcomers to the space, the Destroymen series tells the story of the captain and crew and the crew of the aging “tin-can” World War Two destroyer USS Walker, thrust into a parallel earth, where the asteroid strike that wiped the dinosaurs never occurred.  Throughout the series Captain Matthew Reddy and his crew allied themselves with friendly Lemurians who  against the reptilian Grik, who have allied themselves with the crew of a Japanese battlecruiser, Amagi, commanded by Captain Kurokawa, whom the transition between realities has been too much who has become insane.

The series can be best seen and digested as occurring in a series of cycles that first see Reddy and his allies (who grow to include various groups of descendants of other time-lost humans) stop the Grik and then ultimately start to push them back. Other cycles introduce newer enemies including the bloodily theocratic Holy Dominion and most recently, the more technologically-advanced  fascist League of Tripoli, the latter who come from an alternate second world war.

Spoilers ahead

I’ll be upfront here. Pass of Fire is all about clearing the decks for the action to come in the concluding volume of the series. By the end of this installment, the Grik have been all but defeated, except for a small remnant commanded by General Esshek. Reddy and his allies have taken the Grik capital, and not only capturing their queen, the Celestial Mother, but making them allies as well.

But now the emphasis shifts solidly on what’s to come. News comes that the League of Tripoli has sortied its battlefleet of modern battleships, cruisers, and destroyers, in aid of its ally, the Holy Dominion.  The odds are against Reddy and the Allies who are scrambling to develop modern warships of their own.  He must gather together his scratch force which is both smaller presumably smaller in size and quality. 

For fans of the series, like myself, this and the next book will be required reading. Throughout the series and into this book, author Anderson maintained a steady narrative drumbeat. Characters continue to be refined and developed – although how much can do be done with a cast this large – is debatable, but this is a natural outcome of epic series like this. 

Strongly recommended not only for fans of the series, but for fans of the genre. If you haven’t picked up the series yet, or have put it down along the way, there’s still time for one massive binge-read.

Mea Culpa

I must apologize for missing last month’s post. I seem to be getting sloppy. I have been struggling a little bit as of late, and sometimes things do slip. I hope all of you are well and are managing in the current situation. 

What's Next?

Up next, I have a novel by Robert J. Sawyer, The Oppenheimer Alternative, which retells the story of one of the 20th century’s most influential scientists in a different light. 

In the meantime, you can purchase Elvis Saves JFK! for just 99 cents and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History, for $2.99 and now The Key to My Heart, also $2.99 (all are free to preview). All books -- which are already on Smashword's premium distribution list -- are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Sony, Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.  

Take care of yourselves.

Apple TV+ Previews the Season Two of For All Mankind

Apple TV+ has finally dropped a teaser trailer for the long-awaited second season to For All Mankind.

If you’ll remember, For All Mankind is an alternate history story that asks what if the Soviets beat the Americans to the moon in 1969. In season one, showrunner Ronald D. Moore -  producer of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica – did an excellent job in exploring the implications of this question.

Now with season two in the offing we see that Ronald Reagan is in the Oval Office and Cold War tensions are ramping up. There are astronauts on the moon carrying assault rifles and the world seems to be dancing on the knife edge. For anyone like me who lived during those times, the images brought back the feelings of low-level fear immediately. It seems all very real.

One scene that I must nit-pick is that we a space shuttle apparently returning to earth from the moon. I don’t know how that would work and even YouTube space guy Scott Manley has problems with it.  I just hope it’s not  a sign of bad things.

In the meantime, you can purchase Elvis Saves JFK! for just 99 cents and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History, for $2.99 and now The Key to My Heart, also $2.99 (all are free to preview). All books -- which are already on Smashword's premium distribution list -- are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Sony, Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.   

From my bookshelf: Circumpolar! and Countersolar! by Richard A. Lupoff

Honestly, this is a pair of zany alternate history books I’ve been wanting to review for a very long time.  The Twin Planets Novels by Richard A. Lupoff - Circumpolar! and Countersolar! -take place in a universe that is very different from our own. And I mean that in a very definite way. Not only is our history different with something resembling a mercifully truncated Great War that ends in a sound Prussian defeat, but there is also “an Emperor of Australia and a President of Japan.”

Pretty good stuff, because I wouldn’t well, uh… the earth they live on is flat. As in like a pancake. And it has a hole in the centre which kind of makes it look like a giant record, with a giant ice wall at the rim.

Well, at the least the flat earthers got something right.

It’s into this familiar but out-of-joint backdrop that we are introduced to Circumpolar!, which tells the story of a Roaring Twenties around-the-world race staged between Charles Lindbergh, Howard Hughes, and Amelia Earhart against a group of suitably dastardly Prussians including the Red Baron, Manfred von Richtofen and his brother, Lothar.  The air race takes the competitors across their side of the world, over the ice wall, and onto the other side where they encounter the mysterious ancient civilizations of the other side of the flat earth and back up through the north polar hole.  There’s a lot of fun and action to be had, including an amazing aerial sequence involving flying mechanical horses.

The sequel, Countersolar! takes place a few years later.  It’s 1942 and the world is at peace. While the world is at peace, the underlying tensions between Prussian revanchists and their backers in Peronist Argentina and the rest of the world that threaten to explode when a faint but urgent distress signal is picked up from an undiscovered counter-earth, orbiting on the far side of the sun. If you’ve accepted the concept of a flat earth at this point, the appearance of the counter-earth is one more violation of orbital mechanics that is briskly disposed of as the plot moves along. …and did I mention that the Titanic was still afloat? Lupoff takes the reader through a guided tour of the solar system, winding up on Counter-Earth, where their version of America is under threat from homegrown fascists.

Both Circumpolar! and Countersolar! are well-researched period pieces, with their backdrops and protagonists and antagonists, fictional and otherwise, finely drawn, all in the name of good fun. Lupoff invites just enough suspension of disbelief, which is the mark of a great storyteller, greater still that we get so deeply immersed in his flat-earth alternate-reality that we forget the finer things such as science.

Highly recommended. Go looking for the books online or in your local bookshop. They’re well worth your effort.

What’s Next?

First, apologies for being late with this blog.  Unfortunately, my laptop had an unplanned meeting with the floor which resulted in a  highly predictable outcome. However, the good news is that the computer has been repaired and that I am good to go again.

In terms of what’s on my review list, I have two books coming up. First, the latest novel in Taylor Anderson’s long-running Destroyermen series, Pass of Fire, and then a novel by Robert J. Sawyer, The Oppenheimer Alternative, which retells the story of one of the 20th century’s most influential scientists in a different light. 

In the meantime, you can purchase Elvis Saves JFK! for just 99 cents and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History, for $2.99 and now The Key to My Heart, also $2.99 (all are free to preview). All books -- which are already on Smashword's premium distribution list -- are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Sony, Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.  

Take care of yourselves.

Reviewing HBO’s The Plot Against America

First, I’ll come out and say that I liked HBO’s  The Plot Against America.  The six-part miniseries based on Philip J. Roth’s 2004 alternate history novel of the same name, follows the life of a working-class Jewish family, the Levins, in Newark, New Jersey in the early 1940s as they witness the rise of Charles A.  Lindbergh to the Presidency of the United States of America.

The real Charles Lindbergh speaking at an America First Rally

The character of Charles Lindbergh is a very complex one. In our history, he was one of the leaders of the isolationist America First movement which sought to keep America out of the Second World War. It is also true he also travelled to Nazi Germany in 1938 and met with high-ranking officials of the Reich. He also upon numerous occasions had expressed anti-Semitic remarks. Historians have since come to see Lindbergh as a well-intentioned but bigoted Nazi sympathizer.  In the alternate history world, Roth and the creators of the miniseries, have not far to go in getting their man.

The Levins in an uncomfortable moment.

Like most Americans the Levins (who are modelled loosely on the author Roth’s own family),  both husband Herman (Morgan Spector) and wife Evelyn (Winona Ryder) find themselves curiously attracted to the great aviator Lindberg, because as he says on one of his stump speeches when he flies the Spirit of St. Louis to Newark, “It isn’t a choice between Lindberg and Roosevelt; it’s a choice between Lindberg and war.” 

It’s a theme that resonates enough to bring Lindberg, played by Ben Cole, into the White House.  The changes they see, the petty slights and discrimination is incremental at first and but then it begins to build: it’s almost like the story of the frog in the pot of water that is slowly brought to boil, by the time the Levins realize the trouble they’re in, it’s almost too late. 

The President and the Rabbi

The series features many strong performances by a strong cast. But one of the standout performances of the series by John Turturro who plays Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf, who sells his soul to get in good with the new administration. He conceives of a plan to resettle Jewish families. Curiously, he is blind to see the monumentality of his betrayal until he finds ultimately himself betrayed. 

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Herman’s nephew Alvin (Anthony Boyle), who joins the Canadian Army in violation of neutrality laws, only to come home wounded to a country that has changed. Although the story is told from the point of view of the extended Levin family, we still get telling glimpses of the changed world around them, with newsreel footage of Lindbergh shaking hands with Hitler in a secret meeting in Iceland, signing a non-aggression pact, which is a twisted fun-house version of the Roosevelt -Churchill meeting and the signing of the Atlantic Charter.

Without giving away too much, the ending is left in doubt, which is a departure from the source novel. It’s not too much to say that the show’s producers intended the series to be a reflection of the current situation in the United States, which has seen a resurgence of isolationism,  anti-Semitism and with the rise of the so-called alt-right, fascism. Perhaps recent years have stripped away the thin veneer and have revealed what had been lying there all along, under the surface. In the alternate history of the series, it takes a man like Charles Lindbergh to bring out the worst in people; in our world, all it took was the election of Donald Trump.

Alternate history in its best form, raises an interrogative mirror to our world  and allows us to not only ask what if, but also, if this goes on. The Plot Against America holds such a mirror to our uncertain times and allows us to ask not only these questions, but more. 

Highly recommended viewing.

What’s next?
I apologize with lateness of this blog post. Like many people with onset of COVID-19, I am now working from home.  I found have found it difficult to manage and deal with the circumstances around us.

Next month, I’ll be back with another post. Until that time, please look after each other and yourselves.

In the meantime, you can purchase Elvis Saves JFK! for just 99 cents and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History, for $2.99 and now The Key to My Heart, also $2.99 (all are free to preview). All books -- which are already on Smashword's premium distribution list -- are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Sony, Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.  Thanks.

Reviewing Michael Moorcock’s The Nomad of the Timestreams Trilogy

This month I am reviewing a long-time favourite series of mine, The Nomad of the Timestreams trilogy – The Warlord of the Air (1971), The Land Leviathan (1974), and The Steel Tsar (1980). These books were among my first exposure to the alternate history genre.

The primary protagonist of all three novels is one Captain Oswald Bastable, a Victorian soldier in the British Indian Army, circa 1902. In the opening novel, he’s sent to put down a rebellion in the north-east of India only be taken prisoner in an ambush. He manages escapes into the Temple of the Future Buddha but that's when his troubles truly begin. There’s an earthquake, and suddenly Bastable is thrust forward into the year 1973. Only it’s not our 1973.  Neither the First World War or the Second World War, the Great Depression or the Cold War has happened. Instead the great European colonial powers, along with the the United States and Japan, continue to rule the globe. Upon being rescued by a British airship, his adventures only start. After a shorts stint as an air policeman, he gets involved with a motley band of anarchists and revolutionaries, many of whom we meet in different guises in the throughout of the series.  

Like some latter-day Flying Dutchman, Oswald Bastable is fated to cross from timeline to timeline finding only war but never peace. We next find Bastable in The Land Leviathan, in another 1902, where society has all but collapsed after a devastating global war. After another series of adventures, Bastable finds himself at the side of the “Black Attila,” an African leader set to conquer the world.  For me, this is probably the strongest of the three books, although the story of Bastable himself actually the slimmest, if only in page count. In many ways, it reminds me of the later works of H.G. Wells, in particular The War in the Air (1902) and The Shape of Things to Come (1933), in his distrust of technology and the blind faith in that progress that most of us still have.

The books are connected by the conceit that author Moorcock is actually relating a true story though his grandfather and then much later, himself.  This adds an extra layer to the story and a dash of whimsy.  And frankly, a part of me would love to believe the stories were true. 

Together the trilogy is both a criticism of imperialism, racism, and of our blind faith in technology and utopia.  All of these concerns are as valid today as they were back when the books were first published. Definitely worth an online hunt.

Finally…

I’m writing this blog in my second week of working from home, like so many of us are.  The COVID-19 coronavirus, which seemed like a blip on the horizon last month for so many of us is now a daily reality.  I sadly believe that things will get worse before they get better.  But an important thing to remember is that things will get better and the current situation indeed will pass. How the situation will pass is in large part, how we respond as a species in the coming months. I would like to believe that we would emerge as more caring and connected, not only for each other but for the world around us.

Until that time, stay safe and look after yourselves and each other. I’ll be back next month. 

In the meantime, you can purchase Elvis Saves JFK! for just 99 cents and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History, for $2.99 and now The Key to My Heart, also $2.99 (all are free to preview). All books -- which are already on Smashword's premium distribution list -- are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Sony, Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.  Thanks.

Book Review: S.M. Stirling’s Theatre of Spies

Theatre of Spies is the second book in S.M. Stirling’s alternate history of the Great War, which continues the adventures  of American super-spy Luz O’Malley Arostegui, and her companion, technical wizard Ciara Whelan. 

It’s late 1916 and Teddy Roosevelt is President and America is now at war (Spoilers ahead). Imperial Germany has launched a deadly gas attack on the Entente Powers, all but destroying France and crippling England. America’s eastern seaboard would’ve fallen to similar fate, if not for the intervention of Arostegui, an agent for America’s spy agency the Black Chamber, and her friend Whelan, who is now an agent in her own right. Now word has leaked out that the Germans have developed another potentially war-winning weapon, one that the Entente must have at all costs, if only to maintain the precarious balance.

Astroegui and Whelan manoeuvre through a series of masterfully-plotted adventures ending in a satisfying climax. They travel through a deiselpunk paradise of technology given the full-steam ahead signal both by Roosevelt and the pressures of war. Let it not be said that Stirling does not have a sense of humour. Pop culture references abound from James Bond movies, to Hogan’s Heroes, and Young Frankenstein.

Stirling is a masterful storyteller, doing what any mature writer does, showing, not telling. By giving his protagonists and antagonists – and us – an opportunity to walk through such a richly-detailed universe, which is a real treat. Stirling is a past master of the alt-history genre, having first cut his teeth in the Draka series, and then moving forward from strength to strength to strength.

Highly recommended. Definitely looking forward to the next instalment.

Update:

In a previous post, I had written that scientists have recently speculated that they had found evidence of matter leaking in from a neighbouring universe via “Cold Spots” in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), possibly as a result of a collision between bubble universes sometime in our very distant prehistory. 

The concept of a bubble universe may fly in the face of the generally accepted theory of a flat universe, but a key piece of data retrieved from the European Space Agency’s Planck space telescope suggests that we be in fact living inside a bubble universe of our own, prompting a paper from Nature Astronomy warning a “cosmological crisis.” Reviewing the most recently published data, the paper suggests that Plank, whose mission was to map CMB, may have also recorded a phenomena known as “gravitational lensing,” were gravitational fields are bent, distorted and warped.  According to the data, the CMB is being gravitationally lensed much more than expected. One possible explanation for this seeming curvature in spacetime is that the universe is itself closed. In fact, according to the paper, there is a high level of confidence to this, on the order of 99%.

Mind blown yet? So let’s draw a few concluding links to set our heads really spinning. If our universe is in fact a gigantic bubble and Cold Spots in the CMB represent matter leaking in from neighbouring universes, is it possible to travel between universes through such a Cold Spot? Have people or other beings done it, accidentally or on purpose?  Are there Type V universe-spanning civilizations out there, such as the one in H. Beam Piper’s Paratime series, that have turned these Cold Spots into portals and have mastered how to transit them? 

I don’t know about you, but my mind is sufficiently blown now. I’m going to have a drink. If you don’t see me in this space next month, it’s quite possible I’ve fallen through a Cold Spot. 

What's Next?
Next month, hopefully now that the ruckus of the move to a new apartment and the setting of my new job continues, I’ll be reviewing The British Lion, a novel of Britain under Nazi occupation, by Tony Schumacher. 

In the meantime, you can purchase Elvis Saves JFK! for just 99 cents and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History, for $2.99 and now The Key to My Heart, also $2.99 (all are free to preview). All books -- which are already on Smashword's premium distribution list -- are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Sony, Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.  Thanks.

First Season Review: For All Mankind

First things first.  I am going to say I loved For All Mankind.  That gets my biases out of the way, once and for all. As a work of alternate history, the series, whose first season has finished streaming on Apple TV +  is an emphatic, positive retelling of that early heroic age of manned spaceflight.

The series opens in June 1969, with people around the world glued to their flickering television screens to watch Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov step onto the lunar soil and plant the hammer-and-sickle flag and proudly claim the moon for the “Marxist-Leninist way of life.” Impossibly, the Soviets have beaten Apollo 11 to the moon by a few short weeks. Instead of sending the Americans reeling in panic, showrunner Ronald D. Moore -  producer of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica  -  has President Richard Nixon upping the ante and the space program’s budget by setting the sights on the establishment of the first lunar base. And so, the “race for the base” is on. 

Apollo 11 makes its historical landing – albeit with some complications.  From there on things get different, with the goal of all subsequent Apollo flights to find water on the moon to sustain the base.  In reaction to a female Soviet female cosmonaut making a lunar landing, Nixon orders a crash program to find and train suitable female U.S. astronauts.  The plot, which is tight, moves along briskly with enough moments that provide for suitable gasps and clenched teeth. It’s all very plausible stuff.

Moore and crew do an excellent job in blending fictional characters with well-developed story arcs with historical personalities. Some reviewers have complained about this at length and note many historical players appear to have been given short shrift. To my mind, they don’t seem to get it. This is first and foremost, a work of alternate history.  Historical figures such as Wernher von Braun, John Glenn, and Neil Armstrong are well represented. Actor Chris Bauer, for example, does a standout job portraying Deke Slayton, who in our history was one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts but due to heart problem, only flew much later on the Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975. As a space enthusiast, I commend Moore and his team for getting so many important details right.  

An N-1 booster shortly before
failure, June 27, 1972

An important question that many people who have watched the series are asking is when does the point of divergence from our history occur?  In our history, the Soviet N-1 booster which was to carry Leonov to the moon never made it off the pad, past a few disastrously short test flights, the last of which occurred in 1974.  Although the design process began in 1961, around the same time as JFK’s announcement to land a man on the moon and return him by the end of the decade, the N-1 project was plagued by poor funding and competing priorities. The project only seemed to gain any real impetus in 1964, by which time it was almost too late. Another problem was the fractured nature of Soviet space program which had multiple design bureaus competing against each other for scant funding and often not in best interests of the program. Finally, there was the health of Sergei Korolev, “Chief Designer” of the Soviet space program and chief backer of the moon program who died under routine surgery in 1966.

The only way I could see of Leonov getting to the moon is that the Soviet leadership took JFK seriously and funded Korolev’s N-1 project as far back as the U.S. President’s announcement. They would also have given Korolev total leadership on the project, so to rule out any competing visions. There is also the question of Korolev’s health, but we have a handy answer for that. Moore and the writers of For All Mankind have stated that in their history, Korolev survived the surgery and went on to work the kinks out of the N-1 in time to beat the Americans to the moon.

I highly recommend this series. This the new standard-bearer for alternate history on the small screen. This not only how the space race could’ve been, it’s how it should’ve been.  As of this writing, For All Mankind has been renewed for a second season.  Indeed, the post-credits scene in the season’s final episode ends things on a particularly triumphant note. I eagerly anticipate whatever direction the next season will take.  Mars, anyone?


What's Next?

It's been an eventful year-end around the old blog. I have a new job, for which I am exceedingly grateful for. I thank all of my readers for your continued support.

Next month I'll be reviewing the second book in S.M. Stirling’s alternate First World War series, Theater of Spies, which continues the adventures  of American super-spy Luz O’Malley Arostegui, and her companion, technical wizard Ciara Whelan. After that, I’ll be reviewing The British Lion, a novel of Britain under Nazi occupation, by Tony Schumacher. 

In the meantime, you can purchase Elvis Saves JFK! for just 99 cents and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History, for $2.99 and now The Key to My Heart, also $2.99 (all are free to preview). All books -- which are already on Smashword's premium distribution list -- are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Sony, Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.  Thanks.