Meanwhile, she loses The Pyronauts–the only known copy in her new reality. She makes brief headway, only to encounter massive resistance as she further explores the idea. Hel wants to memorialize the people like Sleight who had a great impact on her old world but were never given the chance in the new one. Ezra Sleight, the author of the genre-defining sci-fi novel, lived to old age in Hel’s reality but died at 10 years old in the new one. Helen becomes obsessed with The Pyronauts, a book Vikram brought through to this new reality. Even the smartest and most successful UDPs (Helen was a surgeon in her reality) struggle to find footing in their new world. They’re enrolled in integration courses and allowed to live in this alternate New York, but they’re treated with rampant discrimination. The technology, customs, and people in the reality they travel to are foreign to the UDPs. On the heels of nuclear war and terrorist attacks, Helen and Vikram–alongside ~156,000 other UDPs–are selected via a lottery system for a one-way trip to an alternate reality. Protagonists Helen “Hel” Nash and partner Vikram Bhatnagar are Universally Displaced Persons (or UDPs). The results will inevitably depend on the individual reader, but for my part, Famous Men Who Never Lived hit hard and made me think long after I closed the back cover. K Chess’ tale promised alternate timelines, a commentary on immigration, and a healthy dose of literary homage. Famous Men Who Never Lived boasts an incredible premise that earned it a spot on our Dark Horse list for 2019.

Famous men who never lived by k chess