Wot I have been Reeding - Stephen Fry's Making History

[angelophile]

Stephen Fry is a real renaissance man, coming out of the Cambridge Footlights tradition that gave us Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Monty Python and many other British comedy legends. Rising to fame as a comedic actor with his partnership with Hugh Laurie, he's also flirted with journalism, straight acting (although the adjective seems inappropriate considering he's as bent as a nine bob note and played Oscar Wilde in the film biography "Wilde",) presenting while also finding time to write a number entertaining novels.

Fry's novels often make for slightly uncomfortable reading, flirting with a side of human nature that's not always spoken about. This novel is technically a science fiction novel, I suppose, with its plotline of time machines and alternate realities, but it never really reads like one, instead focusing on character, history itself, and a rather touching love story that twists n expectations of the main character's sexuality.

Instead of being treated to a oft-seen plot of someone going back in time and attempting to change history, instead we see the effects of that change. No-one actually travels in time, but instead sends something back (to reveal what would reveal too much of the plot) to change history, and then the novel deals with how the world would have changed.

Fry's analysis of what might have happened if Hitler had never been born is brilliantly executed from a science fiction standpoint, but is also a great story with believable characters. Most alternate history fiction I've read spends way too much time on tearing apart the exact moment when things changed, with the exception of Robert Harris' superlative "Fatherland".

Fry's book is in the same ballpark and spends more time on the personal ramifications of a different reality. His writing style is straightforward yet innovative, switching to screenplay format at key points.

His view of a world where Hitler was never born is both believable and chilling, and it’s the USA that gets the focus. What if the US had its cold war with Europe rather than Russia is the question, and the shocking twist of how Hitler's legacy could continue without Hitler itself and the ramifications it would have on world politics and social reform is the main theme of the novel, rather than any of the sci-fi elements.

Different enough to be my favorite Fry novel, I can recommend this to anyone who thinks they'd enjoy a twist on the standard sci-fi conceit complete with alternative love story.