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The Hemingway Hoax
The Hemingway Hoax is a Hugo- and Nebula-winning novella that weaves an intricate plot of a fake Hemingway manuscript with time travel, multiple universes, and the potential destruction of the omniverse itself.
Hemingway's first wife, Hadley, lost a bag containing the manuscript of his first novel on a Parisian train. In 1996, John Baird, a renowned Hemingway scholar, decides to use that loss to account for a fake manuscript he creates.
Little does Baird suspect that his attempt to pass off the forgery as a recovered Hemingway manuscript will take him on a journey involving parallel universes and time travel. For Hemingway's reputation is intricately linked to the fate of multiple worlds in the omniverse and any attempt to change that can have disastrous consequences.
Hemingway's first wife, Hadley, lost a bag containing the manuscript of his first novel on a Parisian train. In 1996, John Baird, a renowned Hemingway scholar, decides to use that loss to account for a fake manuscript he creates.
Little does Baird suspect that his attempt to pass off the forgery as a recovered Hemingway manuscript will take him on a journey involving parallel universes and time travel. For Hemingway's reputation is intricately linked to the fate of multiple worlds in the omniverse and any attempt to change that can have disastrous consequences.
- GenresScience Fiction
152 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1990
About the author
Joe Haldeman
440 books2,243 followersBrother of Jack C. Haldeman II
Haldeman is the author of 20 novels and five collections. The Forever War won the Nebula, Hugo and Ditmar Awards for best science fiction novel in 1975. Other notable titles include Camouflage, The Accidental Time Machine and Marsbound as well as the short works "Graves," "Tricentennial" and "The Hemingway Hoax." Starbound is scheduled for a January release. SFWA president Russell Davis called Haldeman "an extraordinarily talented writer, a respected teacher and mentor in our community, and a good friend."
Haldeman officially received the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master for 2010 by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America at the Nebula Awards Weekend in May, 2010 in Hollywood, Fla.
Haldeman is the author of 20 novels and five collections. The Forever War won the Nebula, Hugo and Ditmar Awards for best science fiction novel in 1975. Other notable titles include Camouflage, The Accidental Time Machine and Marsbound as well as the short works "Graves," "Tricentennial" and "The Hemingway Hoax." Starbound is scheduled for a January release. SFWA president Russell Davis called Haldeman "an extraordinarily talented writer, a respected teacher and mentor in our community, and a good friend."
Haldeman officially received the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master for 2010 by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America at the Nebula Awards Weekend in May, 2010 in Hollywood, Fla.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 18, 2021
I think this is Haldeman's masterwork. The novella is tighter, but the short novel is near-great, too. The long novella is the version that won all the prizes, and that's the version I recommend.
Here's the author's description, cribbed from his website circa 2003. This could be construed as spoiler-y. But not very, and it may avoid some of the puzzlement that other readers noted here. Trust me, this is a great work of art.
Haldeman:
"What is the book about? The subtitle A 'Short Comic Novel of Existential Terror' is accurate. In a way, it's a horror novel tinged with ghastly humor, as the apparently insane ghost of Ernest Hemingway murders a helpless scholar over and over; the scholar slipping from one universe to the next each time he dies, in what is apparently a rather unpleasant form of serial immortality. The tongue-in-cheek explanations for how this could happen qualify the book as a science fiction novel.
... It may be the most 'literary' of my books, but it also has the most explicit sex and the most gruesome violence I've ever written. Nobody will be bored by it." Amen!
Here are the many reprints of the novella: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cg...
If you've missed it, you're in for a great read. One of my personal 100 (or so) Best Ever stories.
Here's the author's description, cribbed from his website circa 2003. This could be construed as spoiler-y. But not very, and it may avoid some of the puzzlement that other readers noted here. Trust me, this is a great work of art.
Haldeman:
"What is the book about? The subtitle A 'Short Comic Novel of Existential Terror' is accurate. In a way, it's a horror novel tinged with ghastly humor, as the apparently insane ghost of Ernest Hemingway murders a helpless scholar over and over; the scholar slipping from one universe to the next each time he dies, in what is apparently a rather unpleasant form of serial immortality. The tongue-in-cheek explanations for how this could happen qualify the book as a science fiction novel.
... It may be the most 'literary' of my books, but it also has the most explicit sex and the most gruesome violence I've ever written. Nobody will be bored by it." Amen!
Here are the many reprints of the novella: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cg...
If you've missed it, you're in for a great read. One of my personal 100 (or so) Best Ever stories.
July 28, 2023
https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/bears-discover-fire-by-terry-bisson-the-hemingway-hoax-by-joe-haldeman/
It’s complex, but not overly so; an English literature professor and Vietnam veteran, in a marriage that is less happy than he realises, gets inveigled by his wife and a conman into forging the papers lost by Ernest Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley, on a train leaving Paris in 1922. (The Hemingways were members of the same library as my grandmother.) This scheme attracts the attention of time-travelling entities, one of whome keeps reappearing in the form of Hemingway, for whom it is crucially important that Hemingway’s early writing history remains unchanged and unchallenged, because of his importance to the development of civilisation. Sex, violence and time paradoxes ensue, as the Hemingway entity kills the protagonist only to find him resurrected in a slightly different universe. I enjoyed it without being entirely clear what had happened at the end.
The one element that really has dated is the notion of Hemingway’s exceptionalism.
“the accelerating revival of interest in Hemingway from the seventies through the nineties is vitally important. In the Soviet Union as well as the United States. For some reason, I can feel your pastiche interfering with it.”
When I first read The Hemingway Hoax I had not read any of Hemingway’s books; in the interim, I have in fact read several, and I’ll agree that they are great literature, but really not as earth-shattering as all that. I think we’re meant to take seriously the notion that Hemingway’s writing is central to the present and future of Western civilisation; and I can’t.
On the plus side, the story is clearly also Haldeman working out his own feelings about Vietnam and literature, and both of those are deep wells to draw from. The women characters (wife and lover) wobble on the edge of stereotype but don’t quite fall over. I felt that while it has dated, it’s still very good.
It’s complex, but not overly so; an English literature professor and Vietnam veteran, in a marriage that is less happy than he realises, gets inveigled by his wife and a conman into forging the papers lost by Ernest Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley, on a train leaving Paris in 1922. (The Hemingways were members of the same library as my grandmother.) This scheme attracts the attention of time-travelling entities, one of whome keeps reappearing in the form of Hemingway, for whom it is crucially important that Hemingway’s early writing history remains unchanged and unchallenged, because of his importance to the development of civilisation. Sex, violence and time paradoxes ensue, as the Hemingway entity kills the protagonist only to find him resurrected in a slightly different universe. I enjoyed it without being entirely clear what had happened at the end.
The one element that really has dated is the notion of Hemingway’s exceptionalism.
“the accelerating revival of interest in Hemingway from the seventies through the nineties is vitally important. In the Soviet Union as well as the United States. For some reason, I can feel your pastiche interfering with it.”
When I first read The Hemingway Hoax I had not read any of Hemingway’s books; in the interim, I have in fact read several, and I’ll agree that they are great literature, but really not as earth-shattering as all that. I think we’re meant to take seriously the notion that Hemingway’s writing is central to the present and future of Western civilisation; and I can’t.
On the plus side, the story is clearly also Haldeman working out his own feelings about Vietnam and literature, and both of those are deep wells to draw from. The women characters (wife and lover) wobble on the edge of stereotype but don’t quite fall over. I felt that while it has dated, it’s still very good.
July 18, 2017
This book was the perfect plane read for me. I love Hemingway, I'm falling for Haldeman, and this book kept me engrossed! I am always intrigued by plots involving time travel and this one fit the normal bill. I'm learning that Haldeman means there will be violence (always somewhat graphic, never glorified) and some sex. His writing style keeps me wanting to turn the page and often makes me chuckle out loud. I enjoyed the description of the Hemingway collection at the JFK library outside of Boston as I had the pleasure of using it while I was in a college class on Hemingway. This book made me ready for my next trip to Key West. The only thing I wasn't a super fan of was the very ending. It seemed abrupt and I may need to reread it to fully grasp it.
May 18, 2026
4.5. Excellent and well deserving of the awards. This manages to hit all the right notes of pulp, science fiction, literary reimagining and comedic absurdity. It made me think of the horror and humor of reading Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and The Siren’s of Titan. And it made me remember how much I love Joe Haldeman’s writing and that I shouldn’t wait so long to read him again.
May 10, 2022
"... there are bundles of parallel universes prevailed over by a Hemingway lookalike with a magic cane..." (pg. 73)
The above line sounds completely preposterous when cited out of context, but even in the context of the story it is rather ridiculous. Joe Haldeman's The Hemingway Hoax is a strange story; there are some great opportunities (that are not fully exploited), some good ideas (which ensures the book remains a good read throughout) and some really dumb peculiarities (see above quote).
The premise is that a professor of literature enters into a scheme with a con man to fabricate some of Ernest Hemingway's early manuscripts (which, as any aficionado can tell you, were lost by his first wife Hadley on a train to Paris in 1922). This part of The Hemingway Hoax is compelling, as characters are set up on the board, plotlines are tantalisingly raised and Hemingway lore is delved into. The book never loses the charm that is first seeded in this part of the story, but it does start to fumble.
The story develops a time-travel theme too convoluted to explain here (though the preposterous quote with which I started this review is as good a summary as any), and this pulls the story away from its crime thriller-like hoax into something much nuttier. It could work, in theory (though time-travel and Hemingway are extremely odd bedfellows), but the problem is that when pulling away, parts of the story come unstuck. Characterisation is abandoned, with none of the characters behaving consistently (even accounting for the multiple timelines), and there are some indulgent "fuck and suck" sex scenes (pg. 98) that make the book needlessly crude. Outlandish ideas and hasty explanations are thrown into the story with abandon, and the reader becomes increasingly bewildered.
By the time we reach the end (which sees a sharp 90-degree turn in Haldeman's prose style, providing further confusion), we still don't know why the protagonist is special, why his Hemingway hoax manuscript is so important, or why it is all about Ernest Hemingway in the first place. It is, ultimately, an amusing parlour game for Hemingway aficionados, but it's increasingly obvious that this is what it is to Haldeman too (even before he explicitly states this in his Note at the end). Like those lost manuscripts, it wouldn't break your heart to leave it on a train, as there probably wouldn't be much of real value lost, but at the same time there's still enough curiosity to make you want to read and see what it's about.
The above line sounds completely preposterous when cited out of context, but even in the context of the story it is rather ridiculous. Joe Haldeman's The Hemingway Hoax is a strange story; there are some great opportunities (that are not fully exploited), some good ideas (which ensures the book remains a good read throughout) and some really dumb peculiarities (see above quote).
The premise is that a professor of literature enters into a scheme with a con man to fabricate some of Ernest Hemingway's early manuscripts (which, as any aficionado can tell you, were lost by his first wife Hadley on a train to Paris in 1922). This part of The Hemingway Hoax is compelling, as characters are set up on the board, plotlines are tantalisingly raised and Hemingway lore is delved into. The book never loses the charm that is first seeded in this part of the story, but it does start to fumble.
The story develops a time-travel theme too convoluted to explain here (though the preposterous quote with which I started this review is as good a summary as any), and this pulls the story away from its crime thriller-like hoax into something much nuttier. It could work, in theory (though time-travel and Hemingway are extremely odd bedfellows), but the problem is that when pulling away, parts of the story come unstuck. Characterisation is abandoned, with none of the characters behaving consistently (even accounting for the multiple timelines), and there are some indulgent "fuck and suck" sex scenes (pg. 98) that make the book needlessly crude. Outlandish ideas and hasty explanations are thrown into the story with abandon, and the reader becomes increasingly bewildered.
By the time we reach the end (which sees a sharp 90-degree turn in Haldeman's prose style, providing further confusion), we still don't know why the protagonist is special, why his Hemingway hoax manuscript is so important, or why it is all about Ernest Hemingway in the first place. It is, ultimately, an amusing parlour game for Hemingway aficionados, but it's increasingly obvious that this is what it is to Haldeman too (even before he explicitly states this in his Note at the end). Like those lost manuscripts, it wouldn't break your heart to leave it on a train, as there probably wouldn't be much of real value lost, but at the same time there's still enough curiosity to make you want to read and see what it's about.
August 6, 2023
This short novella won Joe Haldeman the two highest awards in science fiction, the Nebula and the Hugo. Originally published in 1990, Haldeman was among the first to set a story in the multiverse. Something that in this day of Marvel is common, was at the time rare.
The story will appeal to those with some familiarity with Ernest Hemingway's life and multiple wives. The truth upon which the story starts is that the manuscript for Ernest Hemingway's first novel actually did go missing while being carried on a train from Paris by his wife Hadley. The manuscript has never been found.
From that foundation, Haldeman constructs his fiction about a Hemingway expert who may or may not be willing to fabricate a fake that will fool the experts. But Hemingway's influence is such that creating such a fake might monkey with the fates of more than one multiverse.
An interesting book from an earlier period of science fiction that still holds up today.
The story will appeal to those with some familiarity with Ernest Hemingway's life and multiple wives. The truth upon which the story starts is that the manuscript for Ernest Hemingway's first novel actually did go missing while being carried on a train from Paris by his wife Hadley. The manuscript has never been found.
From that foundation, Haldeman constructs his fiction about a Hemingway expert who may or may not be willing to fabricate a fake that will fool the experts. But Hemingway's influence is such that creating such a fake might monkey with the fates of more than one multiverse.
An interesting book from an earlier period of science fiction that still holds up today.
July 19, 2015
Excellent read. This book definitely earned the Hugo and Nebula awards as a novella. While it is marked as a "time travel" book, I found it more useful in understanding the omniverse/multiverse concept. I highly recommend this for any Sci Fi and/or Hemingway enthusiast.
December 2, 2018
Despite winning both a Hugo and a Nebula for best novella this works better as an idea rather than the finished article. Probably helps to be a fan of Hemingway and I am ashamed to admit that I have never read any Hemingway. Perhaps I should correct that?
Ray Smillie
Ray Smillie
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews