Famous Men Who Never Lived

Famous Men Who Never Lived by K Chess

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This is a literary science fiction novel that emphasizes character over plot and setting. This works for the most part because the author, K. Chess, has a nice, engaging writing style. Unfortunately, the main character - “Hel” (short for Helen) - is not a particularly appealing character, the plot is fairly weak, and the real strength is in the setting, which is underplayed.

Hel is the main character of the story. She and 150,000 others have immigrated from a parallel history that diverged from our history in 1910 for unexplained reasons. We are given tantalizing pieces of information about the divergent history of Hel's timeline. The Nazis in Germany weren't “Nazis” but operated under a different name. There was no Holocaust, but some undefined ugly behavior against the Slavs. The real threat to Hel's America was some kind of Communist state based in Caracas that unified Latin America. We never get any explanation about how that history developed the way it did, which is a disappointment to any fan of alt-hist, and which seems highly implausible.

Hel arrives in our history because the Latin America Superpower has unleashed some kind of radiological disaster that threatens Hel's New York (and maybe the world (it isn't clear)), but, fortunately, a scientist has invented a window into a parallel universe, which we assume is our universe.

This is all incredibly interesting, but the focus of Chess's story is on the experience of Hel and her fellow “universally displaced persons” (“UDP”). Once here, the story of Hel and the other UDPs is the typical existence of immigrants - alienated, isolated, and discriminated against. Chess does a good job with the first two elements, but, honestly, the discrimination trope is so tired and cliche at this point. Chess seems to want to win some points for bringing this trope into the story, particularly with the strange requirements that UDPs attend some kind of re-education classes five years after their arrival and are docked for failing to attend, but this element of the story goes nowhere. Apparently, there is a box to check for “xenophobia” in stories of this kind.

This leads to my main problem with the book - I didn't particularly emphasize with Hel. She seemed too much like an upper-class, urban elite - what would have once been called a “Yuppie.” Hel has been lucky enough to survive a world-ending disaster, but she is upset, angry and disappointed with the fact that the world is not her world. This is not an incidental or occasional set of feelings; these feelings seem to define her to the extent that she has made no effort to fit herself into the new reality. For example, she refuses to take the steps necessary to qualify herself as a doctor in current New York for no logical reason. She stupidly risks the last copy of the great science fiction work of her reality and then assaults her only influential friend because he curtly informs her that he can't help her.

In short, Hel is not particularly sympathetic. We are supposed to sympathize with her because of her situation, and I do sympathize to a certain extent, but like most people, including her influential friend, there is a limit to sympathy, and that limit tends to get reached when we don't see the object of our sympathy doing rational things to help themselves.

That said, I did enjoy contemplating with the book what it would be like to be exiled to a universe where everything I knew had “never happened.” (Of course, those things had happened, really, in a different time and place.) Of course, I have those experiences all the time at my age. I can go to a particular place where I had a picnic in the country one spring afternoon, which is now an intersection with stoplights and medical buildings. I can clearly see with my mind's eye what it was and with my actual eye what it is now. I am just as much at a loss to explain to my kids what it was like as I know it in my memory as Hel is to explain why a particular science fiction book that no one knows was known by everyone.

The core of the story is, of course, about Hel's memory. Her boyfriend, Vikram, was a scholar of Ezra Sleight, author of The Pyronauts. In our history, Sleight died as a boy; in Hel's history, Sleight became an influential writer, perhaps he was the Kurt Vonnegut of Hel's world, albeit it seems that Slieight's work was pulpier and he was more influential than Vonnegut. Vikram brought a copy of The Pyronauts with him and so it is the only remaining text of its kind in our world. If it is lost, then Sleight is lost.

Hel discovers the house where Sleight lived as an adult in her history. She decides that it would be a good idea to open a UDP museum - which actually seems like a good idea - and she brings the only copy of the book to a party with a museum official, at which point, she loses the book. She believes that the museum official stole the book and the vast middle section of the book is taken up by her efforts to get the book back.

Meanwhile, Vikram learns some things about the program that led to the arrival of the UDP in our history. This thread seems to go nowhere, but in retrospect, you will realize that it provides the developments necessary for the final wrap-up.

After seeming to wander around for most of the book, the ending arrives like the solution of a mystery when we didn't know we were reading a mystery. I began to be suspicious when Chess started throwing a particular character at us.

This is not a bad book. In fact, it is enjoyable if you don't mind a book that takes its time to develop itself. Likewise, if you are willing to read a book that is more literary than science fiction, you will enjoy this book. On the other hand, this book could easily have been written in a way that developed the alternate history setting and the plot more directly. That book would have been more exciting, but you can't blame a book for being the book that was written rather than the one you wanted to be written. This book is more cerebral and more tantalizing in laying out hints and clues concerning the history Hel grew up in without providing answers.

This book reminded me of Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, which was also cerebral and brought the reader into the minds of the characters. If you liked that book, you will probably like this. If not, then you won't.