Back in the USSA (1997)
Back in the USSA is a 1997 socialism book written by Eugene Byrne and Kim Newman.
The 1917 revolution lands in America, not Russia, and the twentieth century warps from there. Eugene Byrne and Kim Newman run that premise across seven linked stories, imagining a United States that becomes a communist superpower while the Tsar still rules a capitalist Russia, familiar historical figures scattered into wildly different roles. Six of the tales first ran in the magazine Interzone before this 1997 collection gathered them, capped by a closing story written for the book. The title nods to the Beatles, and the project shares that pop mischief: recognizable history reshuffled with a sly, knowing grin.
Similar books
- The Marx-Engels reader (1971)
- Karl Marx and Frederick Engels (1935)
- Lenin on the national and colonial questions (1967)
- What the "friends of the people" are and how they fight the social-democrats (1946)
- The teachings of Karl Marx (1930)
- Chto delatʹ? (1922)
- Vivement le socialisme !. Chroniques 2016-2020 (2020)
- From the other shore, translated from the Russian by Moura Budberg and The Russian people and socialism, translated from the French by Richard Wollheim (1979)
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A few thoughts on Back in the USSA
Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle is the alt-history benchmark, another America remade by a different outcome. Robert Harris's Fatherland does the same detective-story trick inside a victorious Reich. On screen, the series For All Mankind reshuffles real history with the same what-if discipline, tracing how one changed event ripples outward for decades.
Comic universes remixed and reshuffled
Back in the USSA rewrites history by dropping the 1917 revolution onto America and reshuffling the famous faces that follow. These comics play similar games with continuity, colliding worlds, swapping timelines and rebuilding their universes from scratch. For readers who love watching a familiar mythology get taken apart and reassembled.
Mashup movies where separate worlds collide
Back in the USSA gets its charge from famous figures thrown into wildly different roles, and these movies chase the same crossover mischief. Rival heroes team up, timelines fork, and franchises smash together into one story. Big, playful what-if spectacle for anyone who enjoys seeing familiar names shuffled into strange new arrangements.