V-S Day: A Novel of Alternate History

Steele's standalone novel will amuse fans of alternate takes on WWII. In 1941, a whim of the Fuhrer steers von Braun away from ballistic rockets and toward Sanger's innovative (and never constructed) Silbervogel antipodal bomber, a rocket plane able to attack New York itself. In reaction, America charges visionary Robert Goddard and his team with creating the world's first rocket-plane interceptor. Half a world apart, two military-industrial behemoths race to finish their grand projects, a contest whose final winner will be determined high above America's East Coast, at the edge of space itself. Nazi Germany's Wunderwaffe, "wonder weapons" whose ability to turn the tide of war in Germany's favor was happily overstated, were largely ineffective, even counterproductive, but they have a romance for the technically minded that persists to the present day. Steele's exploration of a world where rocket-planes clashed in the upper atmosphere is enthusiastic, and his prose is serviceable. Various unlikely elements%E2%80%94the effects of a small payload of explosive and an atypically racially inclusive U.S. team%E2%80%94appear to be deliberate decisions to make the plot more plausible and the society of 1940s America more palatable to modern audiences. (Feb.)