Probably the best name for a novel ever. Couldn't wait to dig in. Great book! Can't wait to see what K. Chess writes next.

A science fiction novel that is much more about atmosphere and emotion than science. An immigrant story, about the longing for a self, a community, and a history that no longer exists.

I tried to get through this, but struggled through the density. Part of it owes to the fact that I’ve realized over time that alternate timelines... are not my thing. Nevertheless it was an interesting plot and characters, I read recently about 2 years after release.

I really enjoyed this one. It captured New York and not New York in a unique and intriguing way. It was well written and I could not put it down.

What would you do if you found yourself in a world that was similar to your own, yet undeniably different? What if you were displaced by tragedy, only to wind up in a place where you were largely unwanted? What if your old life was erased, leaving you with just a few scraps of memory?

Those are the questions at the heart of K. Chess’s excellent “Famous Men Who Never Lived.” It’s a wonderful piece of speculative fiction, following two people who find themselves adrift in a place that is just different enough from their home to be jarring and unsettling. They are surrounded by people who view them as other – as alien – and their connection to the past grows ever more tenuous as they try desperately to remain connected to whatever cultural consciousness to which they can cling.

Hel lives in New York City. But it’s not her New York City. Hel – along with some 150,000 others – is a refugee from a parallel universe, one where the world fell apart thanks to a cataclysmic war. She and the rest were selected by lottery to be sent through an experimental portal to this new parallel world. Each of them, allowed to carry through very few possessions. Those possessions, along with their memories, are all that remain of their world.

They are UDPs – Universally Displaced Persons.

Hel was a doctor in her old life, but she’s struggling to assimilate in this new place; she’s not alone in that despite the various governmental efforts to make it happen. The music is different, the slang is different, the technology is different – not necessarily by a lot, but always by at least a little. Politics, pop culture, art – all different. The histories of these two worlds diverged relatively recently, sometime around the year 1909, though the specific moment of separation has yet to be nailed down.

Her partner Vikram is adjusting a bit better. He’s a night watchman now, but in his old life, he was a PhD student specializing in the works of Ezra Sleight, a literary sci-fi author considered to be one of the greatest writers of his time. Only in this world, Ezra Sleight died young and never wrote a word, leaving Vikram’s tattered paperback copy of Sleight’s “The Pyronauts” the sole example of that greatness.

Hel becomes obsessed with the notion of preserving the tattered vestiges of her old world; Sleight (whose death she believes may be the point of divergence between these parallel Earths) is to serve as the centerpiece of what she intends to be a museum of sorts.

However, she remains a refugee, with the many prejudices and obstacles that that status lays upon her. There are so many people in this world who distrust and disdain Hel and her fellow UDPs; people harboring fear or contempt or some toxic combination therein. Her ideas are met with either anger or apathy.

But when the precious book goes missing, Hel must decide how far she’s willing to go – and what she’s willing to sacrifice – to preserve a world that she will never see again.

Speculative fiction is never better than when it serves the dual roles of mirror and lens – roles that “Famous Men Who Never Lived” fills with spectacular success. Chess has forged both a mirror in which we can look upon ourselves and our world and a lens through which we can more closely examine those aspects of the world that demand detailed inspection.

This is a book about refugees and the refugee experience. This is a story about what happens when people take flight from their homes, only to wind up in places that are both ill-equipped for and largely uninterested in assisting them. It’s a tale of the power our past can hold over us, our need to remain connected to our own culture … and the overwhelming despair the loss of that culture can instill.

The juxtaposition between the NYC of the story’s present (which is more or less ours) and that of Hel and Vikram and the rest of the UDPs is one of the best aspects of the book; Chess folds details in throughout the story, giving us glimpses of the differences between the two worlds and adding perspective on what the changes mean in terms of personal loss. Those peeks back through the dimensional portal lend a wonderful and rich vividness to the proceedings.

“Famous Men Who Never Lived” is a thoughtful exploration of what it means to be a refugee and the pain of losing one’s cultural foundation. It is also an elegantly written and darkly funny sci-fi narrative. However you choose to engage with it, one thing is certain: you’re going to dig it.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an eARC of this in exchange for my open and honest review.

K Chess's debut novel, "Famous Men Who Never Lived" is a diverse blend of different science fiction, sociological, and psychological ideas. It is a profoundly cerebral collection of ideas of who we are, and how do we go on after facing the loss of an entire timeline. The premise is what if a whole group of UDP (universally displaced persons) fled their failing and dying timeline and came into ours and how survivors of that would fare in our new world. The UDP's each have a different history both large and small, and even though they have gone through an intensive reintegration program to adapt to the new timeline, they still remain a curiosity to some and a focus of outright hostility and prejudice for others.

The narrative follows a few different people as they surf the woes and difficulties adapting to living in a new timeline — specifically those of Hel and Vikram. Vikram's favorite author in the old timeline was a man named Sleight. Vikram managed to bring one of Sleight's books with him, a book that was never written in this timeline due to Sleight dying at a young age. Hel feels like there is something strange about Sleight and how he somehow caused the divergence between the two timelines and Vikram and Hel decide to figure out what that is.

"Famous Men Who Never Lived" is marketed as a science fiction novel; however, I felt it was more a character study based on a science fiction premise. Those looking for a heavy parallel universe novel should look elsewhere as the parallel premise is a means of talking about the effects of displacement for people. The writing is well done, the characters are well-formed and interesting, especially for a debut novel but I felt that the story did not know precisely what it wanted to be and that led to it feeling choppy.

Famous Men Who Never Lived is a strikingly unique tale of alternate realities and the struggle to cope with losing your ties to the place you call home. It’s a character piece filled with emotional depth that rings true on every page. Chess has shown us the human side of technological advancement and how a life saved can alternatively become an identity lost.

The overall concept is a fascinating one. Chess reveals pieces of an apocalyptic origin story throughout, peppered between the current day experiences of our small group of characters. This technology was meant to save millions and, in the end, rescued thousands. There is no hard science or technical explanation, and that’s okay. The book isn’t about that. Instead, we see the aftermath of arriving as a stranger in your own city. It’s quite jarring to imagine. They left behind families, friends, jobs, homes – the list goes on and on. It makes you think about the things we take for granted. Your favorites books, art, or music most likely doesn’t exist. Cars, cell phones, even the cultural makeup of the world – it could all be different in another reality.

The inclusion of first-person accounts adds another human element to the story. They’re hurting deep inside, longing to return from a new world that’s different in every way that counts. Many of the survivors are unraveling in some way as they try to juggle their ties to both realities. They go about their lives, trying to hold down jobs, trying to find romantic partners who can deal with their otherness. Chess really drives home a feeling of longing, of trying to hold onto memories that are the only record of something you’ll never experience again.

I applaud Famous Men Who Never Lived for its originality and solid writing. Above all, it’s a reminder that home isn’t something to be taken for granted. Experience everything because one day, you might find yourself standing in a different reality having lost the people, places and things that define you.

Review will be published on 2/28: https://reviewsandrobots.com/2019/02/28/famous-men-who-never-lived-book-review/

Thank you so much Tin House Books for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The premise of this book is one of my favorites -- I love parallel universes and their interactions with our own. But I think I expected the book to be a little more plot-driven; instead it was mainly a character study. If you like character-focused sci-fi, dive right in! This is a wonderful novel. If you like more plot, this might not be the one for you.

Either way, this is well-written with a lovely premise and clever worldbuilding.

Although it has its moments, I couldn't buy into the premise of this book, which is essentially, "What if we accepted refugees from an alternate timeline and they just bummed everybody out?"

As the protagonist tries to get her will to live back after abandoning her family for dead, she decides to start a museum dedicated to her home dimension. But instead of curiosity and enthusiasm, the entirety of New York seems hostilely indifferent. Which, okay, maybe that's just New York. But she also loses a famous paperback from her universe that no one bothered to make a copy of.

The plot kind of makes sense in the end when it's revealed to be a different kind of book than advertised. But I could never get over that last part. If this paperback is so important to people from that dimension, and they only brought one copy to our universe, wouldn't they go out of their way to preserve it? Our government didn't meticulously collect every detail about the alternate Earth that they could, including their pulp science fiction? No one's interested in cross-cultural exchange at all?

I don't know. It just seemed weird to me. If I showed up in another world, you can bet sharing all our cool stories would be the first thing I'd do.

Famous Men Who Never Lived is intriguing and confusing. The premise is unique but executed in a way that didn't work for me. It was slow going and too heavy at times for me. I do see the appeal for readers who enjoy a dense complicated story. Unfortunately it's just not right for me. Thanks to NetGalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

Thousands were able to escape the fallout from the simultaneous sabotage of three nuclear power plants. A lottery chose them to cross through the portal to another earth, one that zippered off in 1909 leaving two timelines spinning independently of each other. These Universally Displaced Persons (UDP) have had a hard go of assimilating to a new world, where everything is slightly off. Re-education classes, job assistance, and housing services do some to help them get over the shocks of displacement and the prejudice they experience.

Hel and Virshim are two of the UDP living in NYC, who are trying to find their way in this new land. They suffer from a form of PTSD as both their collective and individual memories were suddenly ripped away. Families lost and history rewritten, they were only able to bring a few possessions with them when they went through the gate. Virshim prizes a copy of an iconic piece of science fiction from his past life of academia. The book is written at about the time of the splintering, so he and Hel find a mission in a search for any remnants of the author's life in New York. This leads them down a path of discovery that might just get to the heart of the bifurcation of time.

Loss, PTSD, "aliens," literature, and even tarot are all topics that are taken on in this narrative. Told mainly from the 3rd person points of view of Hel and Virshim, Chess also includes excerpts from the infamous novel, The Pyronauts. The threads are woven with a rhythmic pattern that creates good tension and suspense. It holds for most of the book, yet I found the ending to be a little trying, as if all parts weren't particularly given even attention. But it really won't be the ending that I take from this story. The concepts are immersive and the author's dealings are quite inventive. 

Note: Time travel makes me queasy, like nauseous. Really. I'm not joking. I can't keep the timelines straight and I get confused very easily. This book reads like time travel lite... you really only get one half of the travel, but with some references to the others time thread. This makes it easy to keep things straight.

Overall, the is a novel that covers many themes of our modern life through an inventive science fiction premise; a series of interesting characters and a cross-dimentional  mystery that is mostly satisfying.

4 out of 5 stars

Releases of March 5th.

Thank you to NetGalley, W.W. Norton, Tin House Books, and the author for the advanced copy for review.

After reading about a quarter of Famous Men Who Never Lived, I was having difficulty connecting with the story and characters. It is a well-written book with an interesting premise, but I had to set it aside.

While I enjoyed this very much, I found it dense and at times hard to slog through. The prose is enchanting, but it didn't **flow** for me as much as I'd like. I wont have a difficult time hand selling this, particularly as I can see how this has the potential to be a truly phenomenal series!

I didn't finish this, and it's probably because it's just not my type of book-- the tone is kind of depressing, and the sex scene at the beginning was off putting for me.