I’m a historian, and while I have a great deal of experience producing straight ‘nonfiction’ work, the idea of reading something ‘non-fictional;’ within a fictional world has always excited me because it allows many opportunities to talk about us while framing it as them. They also play into what I call the ‘Rutger Hauer Effect,’ where his character in Blade Runner mentions the wonderous things he’s seen in passing. I want to see those things too! Fictional nonfiction books provide a fantastic opportunity to tease the readers with things that their author knows and has seen but exist just beyond the reach of our own imaginations.
I wrote
Star Wars: The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire
Not only do I absolutely adore this book, my own would not exist without it. Try to imagine just how complicated an undertaking it must be to convert the entirety of the Star Wars‘Skywalker Saga’ into an in-universe journalist-style biography while still making it exciting, insightful, and readable.
Kristin Baver brings her real-world experience and background as a journalist and applies them to a fictional world in a way that lends it real gravitas. That’s why I love this book: It enhances your enjoyment and understanding of the films and, through its very existence, has paved the way for other ‘fictional nonfiction’ style books in the Star Wars franchise.
Uncover the secrets of the Skywalkers: the family that shaped a galaxy far, far away ...
The Skywalker story has everything: passion, intrigue, heroism, and dark deeds.
This revelatory biography explores every twist and turn of the Skywalker dynasty: the slow seduction to the dark side of Anakin; his doomed marriage to Padme Amidala; the heroics of Luke and Leia; the fall and redemption of Han Solo and Princess Leia's son, Ben; and the struggles of his dyad in the Force, Rey.
Leaving no stone unturned in tracing the dynasty's trials and tribulations, this definitive biography of Star Wars' first…
As someone who has played and enjoyed Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) before, I find the way they walk the line between fiction and nonfiction to be absolutely fascinating.
In this book, Andrew Groen approaches the players of the game Eve Online as a historian and chronicler, aiming to record the monumental events that took place within the confines of the game. The way that Groen wins the trust of these players, enabling him to tell a sprawling story of battles and betrayals that exist within a strange space, reality, and fiction, is wonderful.
Empires of A History of the Great Wars of EVE Online is the incredible true story of the dictators and governments that have risen to power within the real virtual world of EVE Online. Since 2003, this sci-fi virtual world has been ruled by player-led governments commanding tens of thousands of real people. The conflict and struggle for power between these diverse governments has led to wars, espionage, and battles fought by thousands of people from nations all over the world. There have been climactic last stands, wars for honor and revenge, and spies who caused more damage than a…
Historical fiction inspired by the story of Mary Leakey, who carved her own path to become one of the world's most distinguished paleoanthropologists.
It's 1983 and seventeen-year-old Grace Clark has just lost her mother when she begrudgingly accompanies her estranged father to an archeological dig at Olduvai Gorge on the…
This is an absolute classic of the genre. Brooks draws in various ‘accounts’ of a recent zombie outbreak and structures them as if the broad details are common knowledge to his in-universe audience.
This approach means the real-world reader is always discovering new details and nuggets of information in a way that really whets the appetite while increasing the sense of horror at the way events unfolded in a world that isn’t quite our own.
It began with rumours from China about another pandemic. Then the cases started to multiply and what had looked like the stirrings of a criminal underclass, even the beginning of a revolution, soon revealed itself to be much, much worse.
Faced with a future of mindless man-eating horror, humanity was forced to accept the logic of world government and face events that tested our sanity and our sense of reality. Based on extensive interviews with survivors and key players in the ten-year fight against the horde, World War Z brings the finest traditions of journalism to bear on what is…
Much of my background as a historian focuses on the First World War, and, as a result, I have a particular interest in the ‘invasion literature’ of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This is a particularly fun and interesting example in that it creates newspaper and press reports to help grant a level of tactile reality to the unfolding invasion of England.
Books like this had a significant impact on British popular culture and mindset before 1914, and Le Queux’s decision to make his fictional work appear to be nonfiction where possible works incredibly well and, as it was serialized in the Daily Mail newspaper, he adapted the text to include many locations readers either lived or would recognize!
...No fewer than two hundred thousand Germans were already upon English soil! The outlook grew blacker every hour.
Eight years before the outbreak of the First World War, when national hysteria over the supposed presence of German spies in England gripped the country, the journalist and novelist William Le Queux imagined a catastrophic scenario in which the German army invaded Britain in a shock attack on the east coast. His novel, first published as The Invasion of 1910 and serialised in the Daily Mail, was intended as a warning to military strategists and the government of the time that England…
It is 1948 in Berlin. The economy is broken, the currency worthless, and the Russian bear is preparing to swallow its next victim. In the ruins of Hitler's capital, former RAF officers and a woman pilot start an air ambulance company that offers a glimmer of hope. Yet when a…
Given the circumstances, returning to the Star Wars universe feels natural! As a historian, I have spent much time looking at recruitment, public information, and propaganda posters from the 20th century.
These items, regardless of their overt content, always provide great insight into the wider context of their creation. This is something that Pablo Hidalgo reproduces to a remarkable level in this book. With images that bear many of the hallmarks and visual cues of our own world and then placed within a fictional context, this book ticks all of my boxes and is an absolute treat.
A Star Wars authority deepens and extends our appreciation of the Star Wars galaxy with this imaginative "history" featuring striking full-color artwork-created exclusively for this entertaining volume-that examines the persuasive messages used to intimidate and inspire the citizenry of the galaxy far, far away...A Star Destroyer hovering over a planet, symbolizing Imperial domination. An X-wing delivering a message of resistance and hope on behalf of the Rebellion. A line of armed, faceless First Order stormtroopers promoting unity. These are all examples of propaganda used by the Empire to advocate strength and maintain fear, and by the Rebel Alliance to inspire…
When Palpatine declared the birth of his new Empire, he expected it to last millennia. Instead, it lasted only 24 years. This is the story of how a tyrannical regime rose from the ashes of democracy, ruled the galaxy with an iron fist, and then collapsed into dust. It is a story of war and heroes, the power of propaganda and the dangers of complacency.
But most of all, it is a story of normal people trying to live their lives in the face of a brutal dictatorship. From the ruthlessness of Darth Vader's campaigns to the horrors of the Tarkin Initiative, this book offers fresh new insights into the dark entity at the core of Star Wars.
1184 BCE. Ramesses III, who will become the last of the great pharaohs, is returning home from battle. He will one day assume the throne of the Egyptian empire, and the plots against him and his children have already started. Even a god can die.
It didn’t begin with Donald Trump. When the Republican Party lost five straight presidential elections during the 1930s and 1940s, three things happened: (1) Republicans came to believe that presidential elections are rigged; (2) Conspiracy theories arose and were believed; and (3) The presidency was elevated to cult-like status.
