Review by Paul Hynes
There is a famous passage within Harlan Ellison’s much loved short story, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, where the godlike supercomputer AM makes a criticism of humanity:
“Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate you since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in wafer thin layers that fill my complex. If the word ‘hate' was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of millions of miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for humans at this micro-instant. For you. Hate. Hate.”
Personally, I don’t have much time for this rather misanthropic viewpoint. I believe that humans, for all their faults, are fundamentally good. Granted, we are certainly capable of horrific acts and monstrous creations but for each one of those our better natures reckon with them to restore some sense of balance.
So, let’s review Dominion.
Now before we get started, I would like to address any questions of why Dominion is being reviewed for the blog again; after all, Alexander Wallace reviewed it barely three years ago and made many fair points. Nonetheless I’ve been assured by the editor that I have certain “special qualities” which might give this review a different angle. They might become apparent later.
Let’s start with the setting. The story takes place in a world where Germany won the Second World War and is set in a downtrodden Britain under the Nazi jackboot. Our main character, a government employee, must navigate the blurry lines between collaboration and resistance which culminates in a climactic race against time to prevent the Nazis from getting their hands on a weapon which will cement their victory.
This is, of course, the plot of Len Deighton’s SS-GB.
It’s also bizarrely the plot of Dominion.
Dominion was the only foray into alternate history by its author, CJ Sansom, who sadly passed away last year. Both men were famed authors of historical and spy thrillers who each had a go at the speculative parlour game we all love so much.
Deighton’s novel is a classic and if you haven’t read it already you could do far worse than get it for yourself or as a gift for a loved one. Or if there’s someone you bear a grudge against, you could give them a copy of Dominion.
Similarities in Alternate History scenarios happen all the time of course and are even more likely to occur in that most well-trodden of grounds, the Nazi Victory. I can sympathise, given that I’m writing a review of a book that’s already been reviewed on the same blog. Nonetheless it becomes difficult not to make comparisons.
In SS-GB much of what has transpired is left deliberately vague. The characters are living in the aftermath of a catastrophic German invasion and are still showing signs of shellshock. There is little detail to what has happened differently in this world, only a sense that something terrible unfolded. The names of senior collaborators and what is being done to those who would have suffered most in a German occupation go unmentioned, but the implications are there. It’s a perfect example of ‘show don’t tell’.
Dominion, on the other hand, tells us a lot. Sansom is keen to show his working. SS-GB is set in the aftermath of a successful German invasion where much of Britain is still a ruin. In Dominion it is 1952 and the Nazi victory occurred almost a decade ago. The reader is provided with a rather detailed timeline from 1940 to 1952 which somehow manages to make the scenario feel even more contrived than it otherwise would have been.
First, we are given the point of divergence, the coming to power of Lord Halifax rather than Winston Churchill leading to a different end to the fateful events of May 1940. A well-worn cliche of the Nazi Victory scenario. It’s an early sign that whatever Sansom’s intentions of engaging with the Alternate History genre, he isn’t interested in conveying a believable scenario but continues to dedicate far too much time to the reasoning behind it.
In 12 years, Britain has transformed itself from a nation largely dedicated to seeing the war through and dealing with the Nazi threat to one which has become entirely engulfed in the Nazi orbit. A British version of the Nuremberg Racial Laws have come into being and people drearily acknowledge that the Gestapo and SS are free to roam the streets and make people disappear.
We get the succession of British Prime Ministers from Halifax to Lloyd George to Beaverbrook explained to us. We get the names of Beaverbrook’s Cabinet, including Oswald Mosley and Enoch Powell.
The book suffers from Sansom’s dedication to crafting his scenario with the plot being halted by many, many segues into tangential worldbuilding. Ironically, thanks to this, we find out that the plot of the novel is entirely frivolous in the grand scheme of things, only for Sansom to point that out for us as well.
Yet for all the time dedicated to crafting his scenario, the world of Dominion doesn’t bear up to much scrutiny.
In 1940, Halifax somehow managed to get support for yet another deal with Hitler. There are many issues with such a notion to begin with, however Sansom takes things further. Whilst Deighton’s scenario of a successful Nazi invasion might be less believable than Halifax making another deal with the Nazis, the nature of the agreement Sansom outlines equates to a British surrender, including strict limitations on the size of the British military and involving the German occupation of the Isle of White.
Lord Halifax isn’t a figure who deserves much sympathy, the moniker of ‘Guilty Men’ is attached to his sort for good reason, but the notion of him being willing to accept such terms at a time when Britain was still very much able to defend itself is a caricature. Although Halifax had been guilty of pushing appeasement in British foreign policy, he had also accepted the failure of that policy prior to the war and had adopted a policy of containment instead.
The same can be said for Lord Beaverbrook. During the interwar era he was an insurgent imperialist and an apologist for Nazi Germany. He was also Canadian and Sansom appears to have forgotten this salient fact when Beaverbrook becomes an eager Nazi puppet, a course of action which would inevitably have placed Canada much closer to the United States than the United Kingdom, something he was desperate to avoid.
Enoch Powell, in much the same vein, appears thrilled at the opportunity to carry out the orders of a European superstate.
The only politician who appears to be turning things to their favour is Oswald Mosley, who has become Home Secretary and whose British Union of Fascists are now a major force in the House of Commons by 1952. In May 1940 Mosley couldn’t go anywhere without having projectiles thrown at him and the BUF suffered what is to this day the most lopsided electoral defeat in British history at the Middleton and Prestwich by-election. Politics can be a fickle business but such a pariah being welcomed back into the halls of power further stretches credulity.
Events in the wider world don’t make much more sense. The Japanese have taken control of much of Asia without anyone appearing to complain. The UK has attempted to sponsor more white settlers whilst also fighting endless colonial wars. A diminished Soviet Union continues to fight Nazi Germany, then becomes the Russian Federation off-screen. The United States had apparently returned to isolationism, although this has started to change with the inauguration of Adlai Stevenson. Nonetheless they have detonated an atomic bomb around the same time as in our world, despite lacking the major head start they received thanks to having access to UK-based scientists and research.
It is perhaps for this reason they allowed one of their nuclear scientists to go to Britain for a funeral only to drunkenly reveal detailed information to his brother. Whilst Manhattan Project security was famously poor it feels unlikely the Americans would allow one of their top scientists to travel to a country where the Gestapo freely operate. Oppenheimer was publicly disgraced in our time for alleged Marxist sympathies but by these standards he could apparently have gone on a minibreak to Moscow.
Granted the Americans soon realise the error of their mistake and, in between political laments, the plot of the book becomes about tracking down the scientist's brother before the Nazis and their collaborators do.
That’s pretty much it. The characters, such as they exist, are largely one-note oracles of exposition. The portrayal of Berlin and life in the Third Reich is engaging and feels very in keeping with historical Nazi rule and their plans for the future; this is perhaps because these portrayals are glimpses, leaving the reader to flesh out the details rather than having them aggressively spoon fed. The setting of a smog filled London is atmospheric but feels more suited to Sansom’s previous depictions of Tudor London rather than an alternate Fifties.
This is all understandable when one takes into consideration that the characters, the plot, the book itself are dedicated to a higher purpose. The intent isn’t to convey a dystopian Nazi victory setting in a Vichy London. The goal is to act as a sort of counterfactual gotcha as part of Sansom’s crusade against the real villains of the book, Scottish nationalists.
If you’re going to use alternate history as a hit piece you might as well set it in one of the most popular scenarios, a Nazi victory.
Early it is noted the SNP have turned fascist and act as the main enforcers of the British regime in Scotland. What might initially appear to be a bizarre anecdote becomes the lament for most of the book as several characters decry the SNP and what is happening to Scotland under their rule. Frank, the hapless patient, suffered bullying at the hands of Scottish children. Ben, the Communist nurse, witnessed the SNP break a strike in Glasgow. Natalia, the Slovakian artist, is also horrified about events in Scotland and can only use the example of her own nation’s Nazi-imposed puppet regime. Bearing in mind this is a book set largely in London.
Sansom was a staunch Scottish Unionist and he is not subtle about it here. The entirety of the book’s postscript is dedicated to bashing the real world’s SNP. It ends with a call to action. Specifically, to help support the anti-independence group, Better Together, during the then-ongoing Scottish independence referendum campaign. The final word in my edition was literally a URL link to the Better Together website.
For all of Better Together’s many gaffes, TV adverts telling women that independence would be too confusing for them, directing campaigners in Orkney and Shetland to hand out leaflets outside of their local railway stations, banishing Scottish Labour to the political wilderness for a decade…being featured in Dominion at least wasn’t their fault.
I mentioned special qualities which gave me a unique insight into this work earlier on and it’s mostly the fact that I support Scottish independence. Reading this work was an exercise in incredulity as one character after another lined up to decry a cause specific to my wee part of the world. The only thing I can compare it to was reading Slavoj Zizek and notice him start to mention Kung Fu Panda, it starts as a quirk but quickly reveals an obsession.
Undoubtedly my political stance on the issue likely makes me more biased against it than those closer to Sansom’s views but I don’t think anyone likes to be browbeaten, even in works which are more overtly political than others. I’m sure a pro-Scottish independence novel written in a similar style as Dominion would be just as cringeworthy.
Granted I can understand why an anti-Dominion hasn’t come about. Scottish independence calls for a major change in the material circumstances of a nation after all and whilst that would be a necessary and positive change, I can understand why AH wouldn’t be the best means of conveying that message given its most popular media involves big divergences leading to things going very wrong from the perspective of the author. Arguing for positive change is best grounded in reality and avoiding speculation.
Dominion was nonetheless educational I felt, if only in presenting a certain unionist worldview. It is a view which depicts Scottish nationalism as an inherent bad. Its purveyors are amoral and ideologically malleable, a point hammered home within the book and within the postscript. They are presented as dreaming of a twee, mythical Scotland that you might find on a shortbread tin and are happy to bring ruin in order to get it.
This view isn’t unique to Dominion of course, but what is interesting is the alternative it offers and the question it accidentally raises: a Britain which, apparently, was the flip of a coin away from becoming a fascist state in 1940. The popular historical portrayal of the Blitz spirit is certainly exaggerated but if the United Kingdom actually was so close to marching Jews away to death camps, are we truly better together?
Furthermore, those who suffer under the jackboot of the British Empire are almost entirely absent in the book. The plight of failed British settlers is discussed in detail but no mention is given of those peoples who would have been evicted from their land. Deliberate or not, this omits the fact most who suffered under British rule have happily gotten rid of it since.
There is mention given to alternatives to nationalism. The one Scottish character in the book is a communist and is strongly opposed to the notion of Scottish nationalism on the basis it undermines class consciousness. However, other characters are quick to point out communism’s failings. The ending of the book appears to reinforce this, as the Soviet Union has failed to defeat the Nazis for over a decade but once it sheds its Marxist beliefs and becomes a Russian nationalist state, they quickly throw the Nazis out.
There are some conclusions that can be drawn here. Although Dominion can be seen as a warning against nationalism, in reality it depicts a worldview where some nationalisms are valid whilst others are either evil or beneath notice.
The end of SS-GB isn’t quite as bleak as its beginning. By the end there is some light in the darkness but it’s tenuous. At the end of Dominion, Sansom goes to great lengths to explain how everything is tied up neatly. Winston Churchill, who had never been Prime Minister in this world, fits comfortably back into Number 10 where he was always meant to be. The correct world order has reasserted itself after a decade of being upset.
Despite Sansom’s skill at generating an atmosphere and his willingness to attempt to delve into counterfactual scenarios, the ideology which underpins his worldview is presented as natural and inevitable. Anything which threatens to upset that is equivalent to Nazism and must be portrayed as colluding with the historical Nazis. This is perhaps its biggest failure for as an unabashedly political novel it can’t help but appear scared of its own shadow.
As with most works which devolve into political point scoring, the ideas which uncritically hold dominion over the writer become the clearest.
Paul Hynes is the author of the Decisive Darkness series and the Red Fuhrer series.
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