Infinite Blues: A Cold War Fever Dream

by Gerald Brennan

June, 1968. An air force astronaut flies to an orbiting observation platform for a forty-day stint spying on the Soviet Union from space—and discovers a plot that will determine the fate of the world.The fourth book in the Altered Space series, Infinite Blues imagines a militarized Space Race in a Cold War that never was, with America trying to find its way back to normalcy after the MacArthur presidency, and warily watching as Beria’s Soviet Union builds the ballistic missiles that threaten to destroy it on a half-hour’s notice. A thoroughly researched thriller full of political paranoia and imaginative intrigue, it’s also a look at today’s America through the lens of an alternate past, as well as a literary examination of observation and participation, individualism and collectivism, the ideas and attitudes that hold our country together—and the ones that might send it careening towards catastrophe.The titles in the Altered Space series are wholly separate narratives, but all deal with the mysteries of space and time, progress and circularity. Each one is an ensō of words in which orbits of spacecraft, moons, planets, and people allow us fresh perspectives on the cycles of our own lives.

730 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 6, 2021

About the author

Gerald Brennan is a self-described corporate brat who hails from the eastern half of the continent but currently resides in Chicago. He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, and later earned a Master's from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. He’s the author of Resistance, Zero Phase: Apollo 13 on the Moon, Project Genesis, Ninety-Seven to Three, and Public Loneliness: Yuri Gagarin's Circumlunar Flight. He's been profiled in Newcity, and his writing has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, The Good Men Project, and Innerview Magazine; he's also been a co-editor and frequent contributor at Back to Print and The Deadline. He’s into Camus, Dostoyevsky, Koestler, Hitchcock, Radiohead, and The National, but you can also catch him reading Jim Thompson and even sneaking in some Wahida Clark from time to time. He’s also a huge Martin Scorsese fan.

Reviews

[Jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tense is the only word I can think of. And depressingly realistc.

[slowtime · Rating 5 out of 5]

A couple of years ago I was browsing around the Renegade Craft Fair in Chicago when I spied a stall full of books. Stepping closer, I saw Gerald Brennan's Public Loneliness propped up on display, and exclaimed loudly to my husband, "That's the best book I've read all year!" The man behind the display table turned to greet me, but apparently hadn't heard me. I wish he had, or that I'd thought to repeat myself - turns out he was Gerald Brennan. Dude, if you're reading this, that was the best book I'd read all year! And this one might be the best I've read this year.

I can't say enough good things about the Altered Space series. I found my way into them by way of Ian Sales' Apollo Quartet (also excellent, btw), and after liking Zero Phase just fine, the series really sunk its hooks into me with Public Loneliness. Island of Clouds blew me away, and then this book...wow.

Infinite Blues is set in an alternate but scarily plausible 1968. Our protagonist is an Air Force astronaut tasked with taking spy photos of Soviet targets from the Manned Orbiting Laboratory. Nixon is president after three terms of a MacArthur administration, but is in the process of losing the Republican primary to Barry Goldwater. (You read those sections with Walter Cronkite saying the American people won't possibly hand the presidency to such a dangerous, hateful buffoon, and it's so poignant it hurts.) Instead of Kruschev succeeding Stalin, the Soviet Union is in the hands of former NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria. Their world in 1968 lives, as ours did, on the edge of a nuclear knife. And it's made up, as ours is, of individuals who wrestle with whether their personal decisions matter, and whether, given the stakes, they really want them to.

The book is divided into three sections, each of which asks you to view the protagonist's choices from a different perspective. First you identify with him through the first person - you witness his thought processes, feel his anxiety, empathize with his doubt. You are with him as he makes his choices, and so in a way, his choices are also yours. You can justify them. Then you see him from a distance, as an unnamed third person, identified only by function (protagonist) or job (spaceman). You see who he meets with, and how he responds, and there's enough distance between you and him now that you may feel you can judge him. You watch as he weaponizes the police against a black man minding his own business in a public restroom, and you don't get to know what he thinks about it - would the man you got to know in the first person do something like that? What other decisions does he make that don't fit the story he tells about himself? And finally, you see him as one of a collective, first person plural. There is no you, no him - just a we, and we are in it together. We make our decisions, and are equally complicit, equally culpable. We wonder together whether any choice we make makes a difference in the larger pattern of events, and whether making a difference even matters. We walk out together into the world we all made.

Recommended for fans of Ian Sales, Andy Weir, and Mary Robinette Kowal. If you like your sci fi with lots of real science, or you like flipping back and forth between your book and Wikipedia, or you just like reading well-written sentences about real-feeling people living their lives and making you feel things in the process...this book is for you.