By John A. Hopkins
I was incredibly excited when Sea Lion Press agreed to publish my first alternate history novel, Atomic Secrets. It is built on a simple premise and an alternate history staple – Britain and Germany come to terms, WW2 is different, and the Nazi regime survives in some form or other. What happens next?
I do not know when I first heard the phrase ‘everyone has a book in them’ but I think at the time I took it as encouragement. The additional ‘… and that’s where it should stay’, often attributed to Christopher Hitchins, came much later, and by then I was already on the extremely rocky path to becoming a writer even if I were not sure my writing would ever see the light of day.
Having always been an avid reader – at school, I took my own copies of The Hardy Boys series to reading sessions because I had exhausted the school’s collection – it seemed natural as I got older to write, although I do not recall getting great marks in creative writings classes. Despite this, I enjoyed it, and I wrote little stories at home, mimicking (perhaps plagiarising) whatever I read.
By the time I moved to London for work after university, evenings offered plenty of time to start working on a novel. I gathered a treasure trove of research – nuggets from the news, magazines, and real life that I thought might make interesting plot points. That is still a long way from being able to write eighty-odd thousand words on a subject. That is where alternate history comes into this picture.
Like many, my association with alternate history is a serendipitous accident. I was searching for something about WW2 – almost certainly an aircraft or a ship – and one of the results took me to a post about a mythical ship in a make-believe alternate Second World War. I was hooked. As an avid consumer of 80s and 90s technothrillers – Craig Thomas, Clancy etc., Alt-History struck me as a great place to play around with the genre.
Immediately I thought about an alternate World War Two – a pure technothriller in the vein of Red Storm Rising. I could not wait to post about my unique idea. And I was slaughtered! With the benefit of hindsight, the ideas were not well thought, and the criticism was probably not as unfair as it seemed at the time. I almost gave up, but there were a few timelines I wanted to keep reading.
The more I read, the more I learnt. I had never heard of a Points of Divergence. I knew about butterflies from chaos theory – this just changed the outcomes from thunderstorms to different worlds. The dangers of changing too much became apparent (a major flaw in my original ideas), as did the need for research (ditto).
Some timelines went into the minutiae of the politics, or specific battles and decisions made by generals. Others were written as histories. Whilst I enjoyed reading them, it was not what I wanted to write. I am not a historian or a military man. I was happy to do some research, but I was more interested in narrative stories rather than the details of how you get from our own timeline to an alternate one.
As a fan of the classic espionage thriller – Fleming, le Carre, and Deighton – I was already toying with plot ideas for something along these lines, and indeed my first novel (not AH), is a modern thriller. My aforementioned trove of research was leading me towards a second, but I began to think about another setting. Alternate history offered an almost infinite palette – it was just a case of figuring out a starting point.
A different World War Two is a common alternate history setting – Fatherland, Dominion, and The Man in the High Castle being prominent, mainstream examples. The most troubling aspect of this setting is of course, the survival of the Nazis – survival and a degree of success so they become a threat to Britain. I was conscious of not glorifying the Nazis, and I hope I avoided doing so. A successful Nazi regime is where I ran into trouble with ardent, hardcore alternate historians, but as I have previously said, I was more interested in writing a thriller than a timeline, so I gave myself some latitude.
Although I wrote quite a lot of backstory and have pages of notes as to how the world looks in my timeline, I tried to avoid filling the book with backstory. Broadly speaking, Hitler’s death allowed Britain and Germany to come to terms before Pearl Harbor, meaning the US never gets involved with the European War. I do not go much further than this – I am not alone. The circumstances around how we get to Robert Harris’s 1960s are not outlined in Fatherland – it just is.
Having settled on an alternate Cold War setting, the next decision was when. I decided on the late 1940s because it offers plenty of scope to use some real-life ideas as a basis. Most AH fan is aware of the vast cache of Nazi projects promising wonder weapons – Wunderwaffe – from flying wings to moon rockets, two-hundred-ton tanks, and all sorts of other astonishing technology. But the British and Americans had just as good – even better technology. Jet engines, vast aircraft carriers, and the genesis of computers. In my alternate world, I could take the best parts of the two genres I enjoy the most – espionage and technothriller – and bring them together.
In 1948 (the year of Atomic Secrets), after seven years of peace with Britain but a continuing war in the East, the Nazi will have learned lessons, just as in the modern world the West learned at great cost the perils of urban warfare. Atomic Secrets focuses on the Nazi atomic weapons programme. In OTL a chaotic hodgepodge of competing projects and self-interest thankfully scuppered the project. The Manhattan Project utilised the world’s greatest scientists (many refugees from persecution in Germany), the continent-sized economic power of the US, and the fear of a world dominated by darkness of the Nazis. Here, The Bomb arrives later but remains a secret. It seemed reasonable to assume the Germans would eventually realise an atomic bomb was possible and would make every effort to obtain such a powerful weapon. What would Britain do?
For my lead, David Brook, I did not want a superman, but I needed someone a bit out of the ordinary. I settled on a Battle of Britain veteran, thinking the ability to fly might prove useful at some point (although not in this book). He speaks fluent German and French, he boxed at university, and that is about it as far as superpowers. Brook is not a loner – he certainly has help in Atomic Secrets, and he will in the future.
With a setting, a broad plot, and a lead, it was now just a case of writing it! Once I started, Atomic Secrets took on a bit of a life of its own. It took a lot less time than my first book, although I suppose that was inevitable. Narrative was the most important things for me – I hope I managed to convey some of the horror of life in a Nazi state. My original espionage-techno thriller plan expanded to incorporate a bit of police procedural.
The AH community were a tremendous help. It was a place to post bits and pieces, to get the thoughts of others, and when I had finished to post a fair few of the chapters to get feedback. There were a few rewrites of sections, and some important corrections, so thank you to anyone who took the time to read and comment – it really does make a difference! And then I was done, and SLP took a chance and published. The feeling of holding the paperback copy was tremendous. I have even managed to sign a copy recently!
So, what next? Even before I started writing Atomic Secrets, I hoped this would be a series. The Empire is breaking up, but perhaps not as quickly and completely as OTL – at least not by 1948, another reason for selecting this period. There is plenty for a British Intelligence operative to do. The second book in the series is complete and will be released soon – Funny Money takes Brook to Egypt. A first draft of the third, untitled at this stage is complete. If people are interested, I have notes to take Brook around the world, so if anyone has any suggestions…
Atomic Secrets is on sale at Smashwords until 8th March and also available from multiple retailers after.
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