I've liked alternate history stories since reading H. Beam Piper's Gunpowder God in Analog in the 1960s. Since then, they've become a sub-genre of their own, with their own awards (the Sidewise Award), and a few have attained best-seller status (Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union and Ben H. Winters' Underground Airlines, for example).
The latest one that I've read is Bryce Zabel's Once There Was a Way, which is a history of the Beatles career from 1968 onward. "What career?", you may ask. In this book, they didn't break up.
The framing device for the story is that it's a compilation of articles and interviews about the Beatles from a British rock magazine, stitched together to form a continuous narrative. The demarcation point from our worldline seems to be when the Beatles were to be on the Johnny Carson show. In our world, Carson wasn't available that night and only Lennon and McCartney appeared. In this story, they insisted on Carson being available and it gave them a psychological boost that helped them stay together over the next few months. And it goes on from there in a most entertaining way.
I don't want to give more of the story away, because obviously the Beatles story quickly becomes very different from what actually happened. Zabel has worked out a logical series of events and both the story and the Beatles' characters are believable.
You don't have to be a Beatles fan to enjoy this book, although I'm sure it helps. It's a good read and deserved its Sidewise Award.
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