The Human Front

Starred review from June 10, 2013
Scottish author MacLeod bolsters his tight, brilliant 2001 alternate-history novella with two supporting essays and a lengthy interview, combining revolutionary politics, flying-saucer lore, and family dynamics in a slender but potent volume. The eponymous novella takes up the bulk of the book, tracing the life of Scottish resistance fighter John Matheson as he’s gradually radicalized. In his world, Stalin is gunned down by American troops and flying saucers serve as Allied bombers. Matheson’s revolutionary career takes a turn for the strange when he shoots a saucer down, taking its pilot prisoner and opening the door to a far deeper mystery. The essays—one on the novella’s setting and one on the landscape of fiction—lend depth and context to what is already an excellent tale, one that readers should be glad to see made readily available in the United States.