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Things Unborn
by Eugene Byrne
(Earthlight, £6.99, 420 pages, paperback; published 19 April 2001.)
Eugene Byrne's first book, a collaboration with  Kim
Newman titled Back in the USSA, presented a world in which the
Communist revolution occurred in the USA instead of Russia. His second
book, the novel Thigmoo, postulated a future in which rebellious
artificial intelligences, in a desperate bid to save their lives, engineered
a worldwide Communist revolution.
The Communist revolution is absent from his third book, Things Unborn.
Instead, the Cuban Missile Crisis turns into the Atom War and history
deviates in weird and unpredictable ways.
Things Unborn takes place in the early 21st century, more than
forty years after that cataclysmic war. It's ostensibly a detective
thriller about a threat to the British government from a group of radical
right-wing Christians. At least, that's what propels the plot along.
The strangest thing that happens in the aftermath of the Atom War is
that people who died prematurely, from any time period before the war,
are being mysteriously resurrected in a random fashion, in perfectly
healthy bodies, no less. And that's the peculiar idea that fuels the
novel.
Most of the protagonists (and antagonists) are such resurrectees, including
Scipio Africanus, a slave in his previous life and now a war hero, celebrity,
and police detective; Guy Boswell, a Battle of Britain fighter pilot
who is Africanus's latest assistant; and the infamous Richard III, again
King of England.
Things Unborn is a fun romp, told in a compelling, off-beat
voice. It's spiced with the author's knowledge of history, which he
exuberantly twists to his own purposes. Its plot is full of surprises.
Its cast, historical and fictional, is fascinating. And it's imbued
with that most charming of combinations: it's both intelligent and unpretentious.
Originally published, in slightly different form,
in The Montreal Gazette, Saturday, 15 September 2001.
Claude Lalumière's Fantastic Fiction
is a series of
capsule reviews first published in the Saturday Books
section of The Montreal Gazette.
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