Alternate History Anthologies - Back in the Ussa (Paperback)

Chapters: Back in the Ussa. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 62. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Back in the USSA (ISBN 0-929480-84-8) is a collection of 7 short stories by Eugene Byrne and Kim Newman, which was published in 1997 by Mark V. Ziesing Books. The stories are linked through their setting, an alternate history of the twentieth century in which the United States experienced a communist revolution in 1917 and became a communist superpower, whereas Russia did not. Six of the stories first appeared in Interzone magazine, and the concluding story in the sequence, On the Road, was written especially for the collection. The stories imagine that, in 1912, Theodore Roosevelt was reelected President of the United States as the Progressive Party candidate, only to be assassinated before taking office when personally breaking a labor strike at the Chicago Union Stockyards with the Rough Riders. Following this his vice president, Charles Foster Kane takes power, and gradually leads the United States into greater levels of oppression, class division and bureaucratic incompetence and corruption - including an earlier entry into the First World War in 1914 and the assassination of his rival candidate, Woodrow Wilson, during the 1916 election campaign. Gradually, by 1917 the United States is unstable politically and socially, with overwhelming civil unrest stemming from the massive (and seemingly pointless) loss of American lives in the mud of the Western Front and the increasing gap between the wealthy 'robber barons' and the poor workers, and the massive corruption and exploitation this has resulted in. The socialist party led by Eugene Debs gains increasing support, and soon the unrest has led to outright civil war, following which Kane is ousted from the White House and a new socia...More: http: //booksllc.net/?id=552874