Books reading recommendations Seven Strange, Secret SFF Versions of History From time-travel hijinks to occult weirdness in Las Vegas to an alternate Space Race… By Sam Reader | Published on April 8, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share History is weird and fascinating. It’s a vast crisscrossing map of coincidences, strange incidents, crackpot theories, and violent disturbances that eventually coalesce into the circumstances affecting the present day. Even weirder is science fiction and fantasy’s relationship with history, where everything from meticulously researched what-ifs to absurd flights of fancy are welcome: There are time travelers desperate to keep history from folding in on itself, conspiracies battling throughout the actual history of the world as we know it, and riffs building on those bizarre coincidences and incidents. In celebration of all these myriad paths in time, here are seven strange and secret science fiction and fantasy histories. To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis Oxford University has discovered time travel. In order to fund research in the wake of this monumental discovery, they must accept the patronage of a little old lady who wants nothing more than to restore Coventry Cathedral to the pristine condition it was in before World War II. This involves the overworked Ned Henry and Verity Kindle leaping back and forth to Victorian England to find a hideous vase central to the restoration while desperately trying to preserve history before they alter the timeline irrevocably. This kicks off a romantic door-slamming farce as the two desperately try to stay one step ahead of each paradox they cause, all while bonding over their shared love of literature (one of the sweetest running gags involves quotes from the Dorothy Sayers book Gaudy Night), art, and history. A History of What Comes Next by Sylvain Neuvel A tense alternate history of the space program, What Comes Next is the story of a mother and daughter, the 98th and 99th generations of a family line known as the Kibsu, as they attempt to bring humanity to the stars before an uncertain and sinister doom engulfs Earth. This begins with Mia, the daughter, being sent into Germany during the end of World War II to retrieve Wernher von Braun for the Americans under Operation Paperclip, while her mother works behind the scenes in various intelligence agencies to manipulate both the US and Russian space programs. Neuvel’s approach to the story is refreshing in its far-from-rose-tinted view of the Space Race, beginning with bluntly discussing Operation Paperclip and depicting von Braun as a smug, vainglorious Nazi; his characters’ internal dialogues frame what they do as morally fraught but grimly necessary in their quest to reach the stars. Last Call by Tim Powers The strongest and weirdest of Powers’ secret histories is an epic noir in which chaos mages descend on poker tournaments, Bugsy Siegel builds the Flamingo Hotel as an occult temple so he can install himself as the Fisher King, a body-swapping crime lord rules Southern California and Nevada, and games of chance are a method of divine communion. Into this maelstrom steps Scott Crane, a man who won a weird poker game only to walk away with part of himself missing. Drawn back to Las Vegas and the strange houseboat on Lake Mead, Scott and his allies are drawn into a bizarre ritual as Powers blends the history of Las Vegas, occult mythology, true crime, and epic fantasy into an epic about losing and winning it all in a city that thrives on constant reversals of fortune. The Beheading Game by Rebecca Lehmann Lehmann’s historical picaresque begins, rather strangely, with its headless heroine waking up in a chest, her linen-wrapped head in her hands. From there, she escapes, sews her head back on, and finds herself in the streets of Southwark. Such a place is dangerous enough for a woman without any place in the world (especially one who was recently beheaded), but Anne resolves to exact revenge on her former husband and his current paramour in an effort to keep her daughter Elizabeth in line for the throne. Lehmann might dispense quickly with the absurd premise (Anne’s head is back on her shoulders and attached roughly two chapters in), but the true joy of the story is watching Anne use her second chance at life to grow from an out-of-touch ingenue (one who tells a public torture victim “I’ll pray for you”) into a savvy woman of the world in a way her real-life counterpart never got the chance to. Backmask by OF Cieri Backmask might be about the weird intersection of pop and rock music and the occult in 1960s America, but Cieri’s paranoid psychedelic horror novel knows there’s a lot more than music going on behind the making of pop records. Backmask descends into that underground, the reader following Valerie Chill as she meets with dangerous cult leaders and tries to keep her weapon-toting record producer boss in check. Hush, Chill’s blade-wielding boss, has an idea to meld occult practice and rock music to recreate the sound of his prophetic dreams. As with every attempt to dabble in secret knowledge, this gets the attention of competing occultists and record producers as Hush’s project becomes the focus of a secret war fought through popular music. Despite the far-out premise, Cieri’s well-researched attention to the period means that this somehow feels like a book where the names have been changed to protect the (extremely) guilty. Doctor Benjamin Franklin’s Dream America by Damien Lincoln Ober Ober’s satire of the Founding Fathers begins by listing the actual deaths of Benjamin Franklin and his compatriots, providing a framework for the increasingly bizarre story within. That story is a wi-fi enabled retelling of the founding myths of America, one featuring a net-speak Declaration of Independence, Button Gwinnett fighting flame wars with his longtime rival before they duel in Georgia, and social media campaigns to ratify the Articles of Confederation. While the story is pure science fiction—eventually the fledgling United States finds themselves fighting against sinister hiveminds and brain-infecting viruses—the relationships and events hew closer to historical record than one would expect, creating a wild and incredibly sharp satire of political engagement both past and present. Everfair by Nisi Shawl Another multi-viewpoint work about the fictionalized founding of a nation, Everfair is the vast and dense history of the nation of Everfair, a Congo wrested free from the control and atrocities of Belgium and opened as a haven both to the rightful residents and freed slaves. Upon this foundation, Shawl builds a vast interlocking series of narratives about building a free state, and using the wondrous postindustrial technology usually present in steampunk works to create a budding utopia. Where most works would concentrate on the utopia part and gloss over the wrenching labor pains involved in the birth of a nation, Shawl’s approach is more nuanced and expansive, showing the political, ideological, and religious clashes as well as the hardship both before and after the eventual founding of Everfair. It’s a utopia that feels like a true place, with all the turbulent history that entails.[end-mark] The post Seven Strange, Secret SFF Versions of History appeared first on Reactor.