Items25The creator’s order
  1. 1The Man in the High Castle (1962)The Man in the High Castle (1962) 7.1/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 1962An Axis victory has divided the United States between German and Japanese power. Dick follows people whose work, tastes and sense of authenticity have adapted to that settlement, including a trade in supposedly genuine American objects. The altered war matters because it changes what people value…0
  2. 2The Plot Against America (2004)The Plot Against America (2004) 7.9/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 2004Roth imagines Charles Lindbergh winning the American presidency in 1940, then follows the effects through a Jewish family in Newark. Public policy enters holidays, schooling, jobs and arguments around the table, making an election's consequences intimate. The young Philip's perspective leaves room…0
  3. 3The years of rice and salt (2002)The years of rice and salt (2002) 8.4/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 2002What if the Black Death had killed almost everyone in Europe? Robinson follows centuries of development in a world whose major centres of power lie elsewhere, using recurring, reincarnated characters to connect the periods. Science, religion, trade and social movements receive as much attention as…0
  4. 4The Difference Engine (1990)The Difference Engine (1990) 6.5/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 1990William Gibson and Bruce Sterling give Victorian Britain the computer age through Babbage's successful mechanical engines. Information becomes an instrument of policing, class power and conspiracy, with punched cards worth killing for. Their crowded London matters as much as the invention itself:…0
  5. 5Союз еврейских полисменов (2008)Союз еврейских полисменов (2008)Published 1 Jan 2008Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union gives Jewish refugees a temporary home in Alaska, then sets a murder investigation inside the culture their descendants have built. The impending return of the district to Alaskan control makes belonging a practical uncertainty. Language, religion and police…0
  6. 6The Calculating Stars (2018)The Calculating Stars (2018) 7.5/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 2018A meteor strike in an alternative 1952 changes the urgency of space exploration and the resources committed to it. Elma York's attempt to enter the astronaut programme shows that a new national goal does not automatically remove sexism or racism. Kowal follows the people doing the calculations,…0
  7. 7Bring the Jubilee (1953)Bring the Jubilee (1953) 7.5/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 1953The Confederacy's victory leaves a diminished United States struggling in a different balance of world power. Moore approaches that history through Hodge Backmaker, an aspiring historian whose social position shapes what he can learn. The novel eventually makes historical observation itself…0
  8. 8Fire on the mountain (1988)Fire on the mountain (1988)Published 1 Jan 1988John Brown's raid succeeds, opening a very different route out of American slavery. Bisson connects the revolt to a later world with an independent Black nation, socialist Virginia and a space programme, while a scientist seeks her ancestor's story. The short novel's strongest move is to make…0
  9. 9Underground airlines (2016)Underground airlines (2016) 7.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 2016The Civil War never takes place, and slavery survives in four states of a recognisably modern America. Victor, a Black man working as a federal fugitive hunter, exposes the arrangements keeping that system functioning. Winters makes the divergence visible in policing, commerce and the evasions of…0
  10. 10The impeachment of Abraham Lincoln (2012)The impeachment of Abraham Lincoln (2012) 8.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 2012Lincoln survives the assassination attempt and faces impeachment amid the politics of Reconstruction. Carter makes that continued presidency a constitutional struggle rather than an automatic guarantee of a better settlement. Abigail Canner, a young Black woman working with his defence lawyers,…0