I have had a deep love for alternate history even before my days as an archaeologist. I think it goes back to when I first read about the Punic Wars and rooted for Carthage to prevail over Rome. (Spoiler: Hannibal came so very close but lost.) Much later, my yearnings turned into thoughts as to how the American-Soviet space race might have turned out differently. I decided to change it. OK, I’ll admit that my main purpose was to insert an woman astronaut into the Apollo missions to the Moon. Sadly, I could not convince myself that any of the Mercury 13 were plausible. So I made up a Soviet cosmonaut who defected. My first story about her was “The Next Frontier,” in Analog Magazine back in 2021. Flash forward to 2023 when my novelette, “Apollo in Retrograde” was also published in Analog. I was thrilled to find out earlier this year that readers of Analog voted “Apollo in Retrograde” into second place in the AnLab awards.
Now I am blown away to learn that “Apollo in Retrograde” has been nominated for a Sidewise Award! There are many alternate history stories published each year, so I never thought this could happen. Well, to be fair, I did let myself imagine how exciting a nomination might be. Dear readers, to be nominated is more thrilling than I imagined. It almost makes me wonder if I, myself, have slipped into an alternate timeline.
I am extremely grateful to Trevor Quachri and Emily Hockaday at Analog for believing in this story. Not to mention Michael Capobianco and Marc Stiegler for astute suggestions on the draft.
If you love reading tales of how history took a different path, and what the point of divergence was, let me urge you to read all the Sidewise nominees in both the novel and short fiction categories. Lastly, for those who have asked, it is past time for me to get back to work on the sequel to this story. Like me, the fictional astronaut I created is eager to go back into space.