V-S Day

May 4, 2015
Steele's standalone novel will amuse fans of alternate takes on WWII. In 1941, a whim of the Fuhrer steers von Braun away from ballistic rockets and toward Sanger's innovative (and never constructed) Silbervogel antipodal bomber, a rocket plane able to attack New York itself. In reaction, America charges visionary Robert Goddard and his team with creating the world's first rocket-plane interceptor. Half a world apart, two military-industrial behemoths race to finish their grand projects, a contest whose final winner will be determined high above America's East Coast, at the edge of space itself. Nazi Germany's Wunderwaffe, "wonder weapons" whose ability to turn the tide of war in Germany's favor was happily overstated, were largely ineffective, even counterproductive, but they have a romance for the technically minded that persists to the present day. Steele's exploration of a world where rocket-planes clashed in the upper atmosphere is enthusiastic, and his prose is serviceable. Various unlikely elementsâthe effects of a small payload of explosive and an atypically racially inclusive U.S. teamâappear to be deliberate decisions to make the plot more plausible and the society of 1940s America more palatable to modern audiences.

March 15, 2014
An accomplished author of space-advocacy fiction now combines his favorite material with alternate history. It is 1941, and, thanks to one of Hitler's whims, the German rocket program changes its goals. Instead of the unmanned ballistic V-2, it is now tasked to produce Eugene Sanger's hypersonic glider, launched by rockets but able to bomb New York by skipping off the atmosphere. British intelligence uncovers the secret, and a young Ian Fleming brings it to the U.S. A space race is on, with the U.S. striving to produce a rocket interceptor before the Germans produce Sanger's Silver Bird. The book is filled with fascinating minutiae of the early days of modern rocketry and exceptional characterization, particularly the portrait of the complex, troubled, and ailing Robert Goddard, father of the liquid-fueled rocket and a key figure in the American program. A well-told tale.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)