New Release: Stressland

[Gary Oswald]

Discuss this announcement here

 

[Gary Oswald]

Fun timing that we're announcing a Weimar Germany book by @Alexander Rooksmoor just after we started serialising articles about the setting.

 

[Charles EP M.]

"The Nazis didn't get into power but they're still hanging about waiting their chance, is this going to happen anyway" is a bloody good hook.

 

[Alexander Rooksmoor]

"The Nazis didn't get into power but they're still hanging about waiting their chance, is this going to happen anyway" is a bloody good hook.

Charles, thank you. Yes, it inspired me too. In part it stemmed from me being typically riled by people stating that it was 'inevitable' or 'unavoidable' that Hitler came to power and carried out his plans. Instead, it was actually the result of a backroom deal which might have brought someone else in his place. However, I was also interested to consider what impact Stresemann living even just a little longer, given he died at 51, might have had given his popularity inside and outside Germany and his willingness to try quite radical things like the Rentenmark. I had done a prototype for this novel as a short story in my anthology 'Umleitung' and that allowed me to reflect on the scenario and make some tweaks.

Retrospectively, I do worry that towards the end of the novel, it falls too much into the kind of 'white saviour' trope in regard to the attacks on Jews. If I wrote it now, I would have shown the Jewish community having greater agency in fighting back against the Nazis, beyond the extent which I included such when writing it.

 

[Hendryk]

However, I was also interested to consider what impact Stresemann living even just a little longer, given he died at 51, might have had given his popularity inside and outside Germany and his willingness to try quite radical things like the Rentenmark.

It's interesting that "Notzi" TLs are a dime a dozen, but aside from you, the only person I'm aware of who did anything with Stresemann is Scott "Faeelin" Blair in Holding Out For A Hero, and that was over a decade ago.

 

[Alexander Rooksmoor]

It's interesting that "Notzi" TLs are a dime a dozen, but aside from you, the only person I'm aware of who did anything with Stresemann is Scott "Faeelin" Blair in Holding Out For A Hero, and that was over a decade ago.

And the Blair story is not easy to track down!

I used to teach on modern Germany and have written 17 crime novels and novellas set in Munich in the early 1920s, so I guess it was a time and a place I would come to eventually. The current one I am working on, though, is set in Upper Canada in 1813, for a contrast.

 

[Hendryk]

And the Blair story is not easy to track down!

Indeed, only those who were regulars at the other place during its silver age will have heard of it.

When it comes to commercial AH, the only time I've ever seen Stresemann featured is in the French graphic novel tetralogy Metropolis, in which WW1 is narrowly preempted; a small buffer state is created between France and Germany, with its co-presidents being Briand and Stresemann.