The Pyronauts by Ezra Sleight

Thanks to Kids National Geographic 

Title: The Pyronauts

Author: Ezra Sleight

Publisher: Not known 

Source book: Famous Men who Never Lived by K Chess

Hel and her partner Vikram are Universally Displaced Persons in New York City, fleeing from a nuclear catastrophe in an alternative timeline, an alternative United States. Everything in their new home is the same, but everything is terribly different. Vikram, a PHD student of literature that no longer exists, tries to assimilate, but Hel, an ear, nose & throat surgeon, can’t bring herself to start again. She obsessively reads and rereads a tatty old copy of a science fiction classic that Vikram brought with him: The Pyronauts. But this is the only copy because it was never published, never written in her new timeline.

Here are some reviews of Famous Men from the Goodreads website. The first one, dated 16 September 2021 is particularly helpful if, like me, you haven’t yet read this book.

And here’s a very interesting write up of The Pyronauts. It’s definitely worth reading this. I don’t think there’s much point in me cobbling together my opinions of a book I know so little about when someone else seems to have done a grand job already.

Maybe I will get the chance to read about The Pyronauts one day. I hope so. Oh wait, do I mean Famous Men Who Never Lived?

Thanks to Finding the Universe