Back in the USSA

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Back in the USSA
BackInUSSA.jpg
Book cover
Author Eugene Byrne &
Kim Newman
Cover artistArnie Fenner
LanguageEnglish
Genre Alternate history
Publisher Mark V. Ziesing
Publication date
September 1997
Publication placeUnited Kingdom
Media typeHardcover
Pages356
ISBN 0-929480-84-8

Back in the USSA is a 1997 collection of seven short stories by English writers Eugene Byrne and Kim Newman, which was published by Mark V. Ziesing Books. [1] The title is a reference to the song "Back in the U.S.S.R." by The Beatles. The stories are linked through their setting, an alternate history of the twentieth century in which the United States experienced a communist Second 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.

Contents

Background

Theodore Roosevelt is re-elected President of the United States as the Progressive Party candidate in 1912. On 19 December 1912, prior to assuming office, Roosevelt is assassinated by Annie Oakley while personally breaking a labor strike at the Chicago Union Stockyards with the help of the Rough Riders. Vice president-elect 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 World War I in 1914 and the assassination of his rival candidate, Woodrow Wilson, during the 1916 election campaign.

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 working class, and the massive corruption and exploitation this has resulted in. The Socialist Party of America, led by Eugene V. Debs, gains increasing support, and soon the unrest has led to a Second American Revolution and Second American Civil War, following which Kane is ousted from the White House, overthrown, and executed for treason. Afterwards, a new socialist order, led by Debs, takes over. The United States of America becomes the United Socialist States of America.

The early idealism of this change is misplaced, however; upon Debs' death in 1926, power is seized by Al Capone, who rules with a fist of iron, establishing a cult of personality, exiling and executing his political rivals and ruling the country more incompetently than any of the robber barons who were deposed. Gradually, following World War II, the Cold War between the USSA, the United Kingdom and a semi-constitutional monarchist Russian Empire, and the Vietnam War, the USSA begins to stagnate economically and socially, before finally collapsing into bickering nations by 1991, leading to an uncertain future for the former USSA and the rest of the world.

Stories

Overview

As is common with much of Newman's work, the stories feature a great deal of intertextuality, both with actual historical events (many of the stories feature events which mirror actual events that took place within the real 20th century; in particular, the 1917 Russian Revolution and the Vietnam War) and with popular culture. The stories are significant in that they feature famous fictional characters (particularly from American and British texts) interacting with real personages; President Charles Foster Kane, for example, is the main character from Orson Welles' 1941 motion picture Citizen Kane , whereas Tom Joad — hunted by real-life law enforcers Eliot Ness and Melvin Purvis in 'Tom Joad' — is the protagonist of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath . Hannibal Lecter appears as the head of the Department of Health, and John Rambo helps train Vietnamese Communists. Rambo is played in a film by Raymond Massey. Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart appears as a British officer in Teddy Bears' Picnic (though Doctor Who is referred to as fiction in the same story), as do Nigel Molesworth and Basil Fotherington-Thomas.

Real-world comparisons

Individuals

Back in the USSA IndividualReal-world equivalent
Father O'Shaughnessy Georgy Gapon
Charles Foster Kane Nicholas II
Emily Kane Alexandra
Aleister Crowley Grigori Rasputin
Nick Carraway Felix Yusupov
Eugene V. Debs Vladimir Lenin
Al Capone Joseph Stalin
Cecil B. DeMille Sergei Eisenstein
Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. Al Capone
Jean-Luc Godard Mao Zedong/Fidel Castro
Ed Gein Andrei Chikatilo
Arthur C. Clarke L. Ron Hubbard
Rudolf Nureyev Sean Connery
Barry Goldwater Nikita Khrushchev
Innokenty Smoktunovsky John F. Kennedy
Chuck Yeager Yuri Gagarin
Ayn Rand Joseph McCarthy
Richard Nixon Leonid Brezhnev
Henry Kissinger Richard Nixon
Kurt Vonnegut Mikhail Gorbachev
J. R. Ewing Boris Yeltsin
Margaret Thatcher Ronald Reagan

Events and objects

Back in the USSA itemReal-world equivalent
United Socialist States of America (USSA) Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)
Washington, D.C./Debs, D.C. Saint Petersburg/Leningrad
Confederation of Independent North American States Commonwealth of Independent States
Second American Revolution Russian Revolution
Second American Civil War Russian Civil War
Second Mexican–American War Polish-Soviet War
Dust Bowl Holodomor
Chicago Moscow
Texican Wall Berlin Wall
People's Republic of France People's Republic of China/Cuba
Alsace-Lorraine Missile Crisis Cuban Missile Crisis
Cuba Czechoslovakia
Progressives Tsarists
Socialists Bolsheviks
Telstar Sputnik 1
X-15 Vostok

Publication history

References