Memorable And Imaginative Stories

• Date: 10.08.2010
• Book: Lost Pages (Di Filippo, Paul)
• Author: plappen

Review

This bunch of previously published stories present a number of alternative visions of the 20th century.

Anne Frank emigrates to America, just ahead of the Nazis, and eventually becomes a famous movie star. She falls in love with Mickey Rooney, and later marries him. Anne divorces him after a few years, citing physical abuse. While a plague is ravaging the Northern Hemisphere, a man attempts to re-create Wings Over the World (from "Things to Come" by H.G. Wells) with help from a few surviving pilots in southern Africa. There is a tale about Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady and the 1945 Trinity atomic bomb test.

In a Hamburg bar in the middle of World War III, a soldier listens to a very strange story. An average-looking man tells of a world destroyed by nuclear weapons in an all-out war. He happens to find a time machine and takes a one-way trip back to the early 20th century. Pretending to be a reporter, he systematically, and discreetly, kills any scientist involved in atomic physics, from Einstein to Oppenheimer. The atomic bombing of Japan is replaced by the American invasion of Japan, with heavy American casualties. The man realizes, to his dismay, that he may have taken nuclear weapons off the table, but he has done nothing about the forces that periodically push humanity to war.

A young Native American writer travels to 1930s New York City to meet the editor of a famous science fiction magazine, Joseph Campbell. In post-war America, a handful of people are sent on a private rocket ship to the Moon. Told that the Nazi High Command is there plotting a comeback, when they arrive, they don’t find any Nazis. Then they are informed (by President Robert Heinlein) the real reason they are there.

Here are some memorable and imaginative stories. They are well-done and interesting from start to finish, and will give the reader plenty to think about.