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Reissued by Wildside Press in 2003 in trade paperback.
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Alternate history.
Suppose the Nazis didn't lose World War II. No, they didn't win WWII. They didn't lose. At the height of Nazi power, Hitler died and was replaced by a ruling clique that quickly came to terms with the Allies.
Decades later, officially no longer fascist, Germany dominates Europe and is advancing steadily eastward into the territory of a shrinking Soviet Union. Much of the rest of the world is dominated by an ever more fascist United States.
No, it's not a contemporary novel. It's alternate history. Really.
The Franklin Watts edition has the best cover of any of my novels so far. I adore it. It's striking, it's esthetically pleasing, and it captures the essence of the novel perfectly. The artist, Honi Werner, has since become quite famous. I've never met her but I hope I will some day. Some authors manage to buy the original paintings for their covers; I want to buy this one more than any other.
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"[A]greeably alarming thriller. ... A 'what if' that works. Budspy is smart, fast, and mean without ever dipping into hokey or otherwise distracting futurisms." | |
Publishers Weekly
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"[E]ngaging thriller. ... [T]aken as a conscience-less romp, it succeeds just fine." | |
Booklist
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"[B]oldly speculative. ... Author Dvorkin has a vivid imagination, and he imbues his new world with a chilling teutonic authoritarianism. ... An involving anti-utopian thriller." | |
Norman Spinrad in Asimov's
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"The basic premise ... has been done rather often, and done rather well by divers hands. There is Len Deighton's SS/GB, Sargan's The Sound of His Horn, Gregory Benford and Martin Greenberg's excellent anthology, Hitler Victorious, and of course the ultimate masterpiece of this genre, Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle. So Dvorkin's novel has some pretty heavyweight stuff to measure up against. ... And for my money Budspy succeeds in more than holding its own in this company. When it comes to this theme, Budspy is superior to just about everything short of The Man in the Hight Castle itself. ... Masterful." | |
S.F. Chronicle
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"Well told adventure. ... There is a degree of subtlety and insight working in this novel that one encounters rarely." | |
The Indianapolis News
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"Dvorkin presents a well-told tale of crime and conscience." | |
I'm still digesting this review:
The Unicorn, a publication of The Rowan Tree
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"If you sci-fi fans have ever wondered what the world would be like if Germany had won the war, then read this book! Fast-paced, well researched. You will be outraged by the ending. I felt the ending too bizarre to handle. Not oriented to Earth religions." | |
To read the first three chapters of the book, click here. This is a PDF file.
The original hardcover edition of Budspy is long out of print. Copies of it show up sometimes in used bookstores and on Web sites for used books.
Fortunately, Budspy has been reissued as a trade paperback by Wildside Press. You can order it from various online booksellers. Use these links:
Or you can order Budspy through any bookstore. Tell them to contact Ingram (the big distributor from whom bookstores order a lot of their books) and mention that this book comes through Ingram's Lightning Source division.
Please note that this book is published by means of Print on Demand technology, so it won't be on the shelves at bookstores. You'll have to ask for it. Bookstore clerks are still a bit confused about this whole Print on Demand thing, but it's part of the publishing wave of the future, so eventually the bookstore personnel should be up to speed on it. (And if you encounter some who are still confused, for the love of God, educate them! Click here to educate yourself first.)