Last month suddenly put alternative (World War II) history at the center of the nation’s public discourse — and in a way that makes me want to share a book recommendation, dear reader.
Near the end of the month Amazon released its original series The Man in the High Castle. It turned out to be a drab rendition of Philip K. Dick’s novel of the same name about a world in which the Axis powers won World War II. The makers of the show had cunningly tricked viewers into demanding and then watching a full season with a few clever Riefenstahl-style shots in the pilot.
A couple of weeks before that, the desirability of alternative histories and presents had come to the forefront in the presidential campaign. Former Republican frontrunner ¡Jeb! Bush was in the middle of attempting to execute a new campaign strategy, one that emphasized his strength and decisiveness. Instead of going Snickers, he had started eating nails before breakfast. And when asked whether he would kill baby Hitler if he could go back in time, he responded “Hell yeah, I would. You gotta step up, man. That would be key.”
Governor Bush immediately expressed some Back to the Future-inspired concern that traveling back in time to murder an infant might have some unintended consequences, “but I’d do it – I mean, Hitler.”
Cambridge University. Shutterstock.
More deeply felt concerns about unintended consequences are expressed in Stephen Fry’s wonderful 1996 novel Making History. Mr. Fry, a British actor and writer (perhaps best known for portraying Jeeves in the TV show Jeeves and Wooster? Or for playing the Master of Lake-Town in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit movies? Or for creating A Bit of Fry and Laurie with Hugh Laurie, who is, indeed, both Wooster and Dr. House? He is very powerful.), tells the story of a graduate student in history at Cambridge, Michael Young, who has just completed his dissertation. That is, he has made (hundreds of pages of) history.
Mr. Young studies, you guessed it, the baby Hitler.
[SPOILER ALERT]
He meets an aging German physicist Leo Zuckerman who, in a desire to avert the Shoah, has developed a technology that allows for the insertion of objects into the past – the making of history! – and together they keep the baby Hitler from being born. They succeed without murdering the baby Hitler, and suddenly Michael finds himself in a different world – a world in which he plays baseball and has better teeth, a world in which things are named for something instead of after something, but also a world more similar to that of The Man in the High Castle than he had hoped.
[NO MORE SPOILERS]
His adventures, in Cambridgeshire and New Jersey, range from the incredibly funny to the deeply frustrating until they come to a touching close. Enjoy!
from AEI » Latest Content http://ift.tt/1NUB837
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