The trick with dialogue is to make it sound natural without its being natural.) And all of the characters, both male and female, are believable–often all too believable. The dialogue is crisp and natural sounding. His descriptions of 1940s and 1950s Britain seem note perfect, as do his descriptions of the workings of a resistance cell (modeled on the French resistance during WWII).
Sansom really did his homework for this one, and it shows. The rest of the novel concerns the resistance’s attempts to get Frank out of the country and Special Branch’s efforts, directed by the Gestapo, to seize Frank and torture the information out of him. Things grow even tenser when an old college friend, Frank, a geologist, learns atomic secrets from his physicist drunken lout of a brother who’s working on neutral America’s atomic bomb project. Sansom does a fine job of showing how the need for secrecy and the constant fear of detection erode both Fitzgerald’s sense of well-being and his personal relationships. In broad terms, that would likely have meant (as it does in the novel) that Britain would have been dominated by Germany, its foreign policy allied with Germany’s, that the British government would have become increasingly authoritarian, to the point of stealing elections, spying on its citizens, and violently suppressing dissent, and that it would have engaged in increasingly odious anti-semitism.Īgainst this background, Samson’s protagonist, career civil servant David Fitzgerald, is recruited and begins spying for the resistance. Sansom’s massive Dominion looks at what might have happened (as Samson thinks would have happened, as he mentions in his “Historical Note”) if Churchill had not become British prime minister in May 1940, the appeasement faction of the Conservative Party had remained in power, and had made peace with Germany during or immediately following the fall of France. Move over Harry Turtledove, there’s a new contender for best alternate-history novelist.Ĭ.J. Review: Great Utopian and Dystopian Works of Literature (Pamela Bedore).Definitions of the Day: Assaulting an Officer, Perjury.Silver Linings to the Ongoing Crises (yes, there are a few) - first up, Donald Trump.Star Party Image of the Day (south of Tucson).Definition of the Day 7-3-20 - Mt. Rushmore.A musical/psychological distraction from the ongoing horror.Quote of the Decade (Charles Barkley) - please read this, it’s important.Quote of the Day 8-7-20 (Steven Weinberg).
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