Wrack and Roll by Bradley Denton (author of Blackburnand Buddy Holly Is Alive and Well on Ganymede) is a fun rock-and-roll alternate history where rock and roll has really changed the world. It’s a political-social satire that centers around the 1980 election in the alternate time-line while dealing with politics, regret, love and the power of music.

In 1933 Franklin Roosevelt choked on a chicken wing and the whole history split off into a different time-line.  By the 1960s the US/Soviet alliance were competing with the UK/China Alliance for world control. Meanwhile a soldier Eddie Dixon wrote a song that touched so many people that it blossomed into a movement. The Wrackers went from a few music lovers to a true social force with their own ethos and beliefs. But they live for “The Music”. After Dixon, the next big Wracker musical act was Bitch Alice in the 1960s. For unexplained reasons, Bitch Alice was on one of the moon landings in 1967 when a defect in the ship make sure that she could never return. Her dying words were to trash Dallas (where the space center was located). The resulting destruction ensured the US space program was dead. The UK/China alliance created a space station and some parts of the US electorate are worried about them raining down death on the US.

The novel opens up in 1979 with the run-up to the 1980 election. Bitch Alice’s daughter The Bastard Child and her band Blunt Instrument are the biggest draw in the world. The current President is up against Winton R Wilson (a Ronald Reagan analogue) in the upcoming election and is forced to push for a plan to put men on Mars. He is looking for the Bastard Child’s support (because her Mom was the cause of the US losing the space race). A button they are trying to push to get her to help is that the scientist (Daniel P Jackson) on Wilson’s side is the person blamed for Bitch Alice’s death.

Clifton Bonner is a med student in a small island off South America when the UK sends in some troops to take over the island. When Blunt Instrument arrives to play at the island, Clifton is thrust into working with Blunt Instrument to stop a US/UK war, open up the US space program and create some music.

The book can be hard to read in parts as Denton goes overboard on the Wracker slang, but it’s fast moving and above all fun. In the second half of the book, the action heats up as the satire takes a back seat. As people are forced to deal with the past to move to the future, the straights and the Wrackers are forced to work together to save the world. Recommended as a fun read that will introduce you to one of my favorite writers Bradley Denton.