You remember the other week when I reviewed that “biography” of Baron Ungern-Sternberg and talked about how it was cool to read a book that didn’t over-explain things to the reader? Well, this book is like that too, only it’s an alternate history story rather than a biography.

You can tell things are different in this world. The story is about the Energy Wars of 1994, when terrorists of unclear affiliation attacked the Johnson Space Flight Center.

General Gus Grissom, who apparently did not die (I think–see below) in the Apollo 1 program in this timeline, is heading the response to the attack. Under his command is the narrator of our story, Peter Caudell, with the framing device of Caudell telling the story many years later to his daughter.

It’s a very short book, taking only about ten minutes to read, but it packs a lot into those ten minutes. Mostly raising more questions than answers. Which is good if you’re like me. My motto is that the best books are the ones that leave you questioning what’s even real.

Still… it would have been nice to have things a bit more fleshed out. The author does include an Afterword which explains some things, but even the explanations raise questions. For example, there’s a note about where the clones of Stalin are located in this alternate world.

This is why I included the parenthetical note about Grissom above. There are multiple references to clones throughout the story, in a way that suggests they’re important, but I could never figure out exactly what the deal was with them.

But in a way, this makes the story feel more authentic. I feel like clones were all the rage as the sci-fi trope of the 1990s. I know I was a big fan of clone-related stories when I was a kid. AI and robots and simulation theory are all right for these young people with their short pants and their comically oversized lollipops, but me, I’m from the Old School. Give me that old-time warehouse with rows of clones in test tubes. If it’s good enough for the Galaxy of Fear, it’s good enough for me.

Anyway, back to the story: it’s well-written but kind of incoherent. But I’m strangely okay with that, because it really does feel like reading a fragment of a dispatch from some other reality.