Kenny Martens’s Reviews > Sideslip > Status Update

The Technocrats send Archer back to his own timeline.

The Suolanians drug Archer and tap into his ancestral memories. He tells them of Earth, of humanity, of heroic and virtuous men. The Suolanians love it. They grant Earth the status of Protected Associate in the Condominium. Earth is free.

Archer feels used. He yells at Sharna and stomps off to find a bar--no small thing on a planet where nobody drinks alcohol.

Archer studies galactic history on the voyage. The Angels are properly called Suolanians. The Suolanian Condominium is only the third most powerful galactic empire. They are cautious imperialists, preferring to establish colonies on primitive worlds rather than risk a big war against a real power.

Sharna's goal is to help Earth achieve independence.

At Hitler's party Archer meets Mingus, a Believer who worships the Angels. Mingus helps Archer murder the woman companion assigned to mind him during the party (while they are unseen on a dark balcony), then spirits Archer away and takes him to the spaceport. Sharna is leaving earth and wants to take Archer with her.

Nobody thinks to ask Archer's permission for any of this.

Hitler throws a cocktail party. Archer knows what the Nazis did in his timeline and has trouble seeing Hitler as humanity's hope against the alien overlords. But this Hitler has (at least temporarily) set aside his animosity toward Jews to focus his hatred on the Angels.

Only Goebbels is still fixated on Jew-hating.

It's still disturbing. And I still don't know why Archer, a struggling private eye, is important.

The Nazis kidnap Archer back from the Angels. The Nazi Colonel marches Archer straight to a meeting with Adolf Hitler himself.

In New York City.

It seems everybody has set up shop in New York City.

Archer begins an affair with Sharna. She's a beautiful woman, nearly human in every way. But she has a tail.

This is so, so dumb.

Archer is immediately scooped up by the Nazis, then Angels steal him from the Nazis. Sharna, a beautiful young Angel woman questions him. Actually, she mostly delivers exposition: the Angels (from the planet Shalianna) have an empire much like those of Earth's, conquering and plundering for profit. Sharna is a bleeding heart and feels guilty for all the imperialism, but her faction is in the minority on Shalianna.

The Communists torture Archer for information about his timeline. They want to invade and take over. Archer lulls them into complacency, then violently escapes. Being a large, fast, strong man has its advantages.

Archer just got kidnapped by Communists. Or as the Commies put it, rescued from the Neo-Nazi Technocrats. In this timeline the alien overlords removed the Nazis from power, and the remnants of their party are reduced to rabble-rousing in the southern US. Communists were useful to the overlords so they remained in power, but only insofar as they were effective administrators. Communism as an ideology is dead.