How did the novel
Hitler's Zeitmaschine come into being?
Well, it started out four years ago as a thought bubble which popped into my head whilst pondering the subject of my next short story. I had already written a few, but having been a keen reader of thought-provoking science fiction short stories, I was determined to have a go at the genre for myself.
"What would have happened if Hitler had avoided his historic fate by escaping to the future in a time machine?" was the thought that kicked off the process.
I gazed at the blank Word document on the screen in front of me and thought of the advice they give budding artists facing a blank canvas - "just slash your brush across the canvas, get rid of the blankness and inspiration will follow."
So in a similar blank-breaking fashion I typed out "Everybody has a story to tell", and leaned back to contemplate - what next?
Well, if there's a story to tell, there must be a story teller. So enters my first character, Schreiber, the newspaper editor who narrates the story, and adopting the current zeitgeist, I made her a woman.
But whose story was she going to tell? There are too many stories out there about Hitler - How about making the central character an unknown with some sort of connection to Hitler - Thus enters the main character, Hartmann, who will be the one telling Schreiber his story.
The scene shifts to Germany, 1944 where the tide of the War is turning against Hitler - what can he do about it? Answer - nuclear weapons! If he could only accelerate the (historically real) Uranverein project to produce these weapons, the fortunes of War could be restored in his favour. How is this to be achieved? By sending Hartmann to the future to gain the necessary knowhow. And so enters the Zeitmaschine (German translation of 'time machine') into the story - there was a good reason for choosing the German translation for the title - After I was well advanced in writing the novel, I searched Amazon to see if any other authors had produced vaguely similar works and was startled to find that not only had the title '
Hitler's Time Machine' already been used, but there was even another work titled '
Hitler's Secret Time Machine'.
The next thing I faced was the philosophical problem - if Hitler travels to the future, what then? There were two possible scenarios that might have followed:
- He stays in the future and the novel becomes a work of pure fantasy, being a complete departure from the historical record, or
- He returns/is returned in some way so that the historical record is not violated
I opted to follow the latter path, which turned out to be really great as it allowed me to research the War to install actual people, places and events in forming a factual background to the narrative.
The story just kept growing (almost on its own accord). I had at first envisaged it as a short story, but at over 17,500 words it became (by definition) a novella. But the narrative was determined and restless and was by no means content to stop there, and passing 40,000 words entered the realm of the novel, with the plot expanding to include a love story, Hartmann's horrific experiences at the end of the War and a thorough examination of the pitfalls and possibilities of time travel.
As it passed the 100,000 word mark, I researched the net to determine what constituted the optimum size of the average SciFi novel and found the consensus seemed to indicate between 90,000 and 120,000 words. I thought the manuscript fitted neatly in this range and was more or less content to leave it where it was.
But then came the editing.
Some of the events and circumstances which seemed appropriate at the time of writing didn't really add anything worthwhile to the story line and in fact slowed down the momentum of the plot. Then there were all the unnecessary bits and pieces that stated the obvious and slowed the pace - eg. instead of writing "he grasped the doorknob, flung the door open and strode into the room", one can lose the doorknob and the flinging, both obviously implied by the fact that he strode into the room.
And then there were words like "that". I used 'Word search' to hunt down this particularly over-used word and was staggered to find that (see what I mean) I had used the word over 500 times (or 0.5% of the total word count!)
There certainly was a lot of trimming required.
But in doing so, the word count fell dramatically below the 100,000 mark. I might have despaired at this point but instead, I looked through the manuscript for any areas that could do with a bit of beefing up to add more excitement to the narrative. There were indeed places in the plot deserving of an upgrade, and two additions actually turned out to be a pair of the most gripping parts of the work.
I'll finish this blog post now, as continuing to describe the work would be something of a spoiler to those intending to read the novel.
However, if you think writing the novel over a period of four years was the hardest part of getting it out there on the bookshelves, then you've never turned your hand at publishing!
More of this maybe, in a future Blog.
