A Better World's in Birth!

A chapbook.

It's 1876, twenty-three years after the executions of the Peoples' Revolutionary leaders Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, and Richard Wagner — and spectres in the guise of these three men are haunting Communist Europe, specifically the city of Dresden. Officer Rienzi, from the Peoples' Department for Security, is called in to investigate. Are these spectres truly ghosts of the Revolution's leaders? Or is there a larger conspiracy afoot? And if a conspiracy, does it involve Comrade Leader Eisenmann, who became head of the Peoples' Federated States of Europe following the death of Wagner?

With A Better World's in Birth!, author Howard Waldrop has skillfully crafted another of his trademark alternate history stories, this one about the peoples' revolutionary leader (and German composer) Richard Wagner. More than 10,000 words of pure Waldrop. In the Afterword, the author details the story behind this story that was twenty years in the making. Each copy is signed and numbered by the author on the limitation page.

With scintillating wraparound cover art by artist Nicholas Jainschigg.