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Making History Paperback – Import, 5 Aug. 2004

by Stephen Fry (Author)

1,045 ratings

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Michael Young is a brilliant young history student whose life is changed when he meets Leo Zuckerman, an ageing physicist with a theory that can change worlds.

Together they realise that they have the power to alter history and eradicate a great evil. But tinkering with timelines is more dangerous than they can imagine and nothing - past, present or future - will ever be the same again.

'The tensions and resolutions are intrinsically comic, made still more enjoyable by [Fry's] sinuous invention and cleverness at caricature' Spectator

'Sprightly and entertaining' Telegraph

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	Making History	The Hippopotamus	The Stars' Tennis Balls	The Liar
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Product description

Review

Stephen Fry at his twinkling best ― Sunday Times

His best novel yet ... an extravagant, deeply questioning work of science fiction ― GQ

A sci-fi comedy that is also a time-travel thriller, constantly topical and always surprising... packed with the author's personal enthusiasm and hatreds, the former red-hot and the latter icy-black ― Literary Review

A powerful imaginative pull that keeps the pages turning while the tea goes cold and the cat gets the goldfish ― The Independent

A sprightly and entertaining read ― Daily Telegraph

From the Back Cover

Michael Young is a brilliant young history student whose life is changed when he meets Leo Zuckerman, an ageing physicist with a theory that can change worlds. Together they realise that they have the power to alter history and eradicate a great evil. But tinkering with timelines is more dangerous than they can imagine and nothing - past, present or future - will ever be the same again.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Arrow
Publication date ‏ : ‎ 5 Aug. 2004
Edition ‏ : ‎ 1st
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 592 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0099457067
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0099457060
Item weight ‏ : ‎ 405 g
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 12.9 x 3.5 x 19.8 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 134,005 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 54 in Science Fiction Alternate History
- 69 in Time Travel
- 997 in Humorous Fiction

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1,045 ratings

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Customers find the book to be a thoroughly compelling page-turner with a clever writing style. They appreciate its thought-provoking nature, with one review noting how it takes readers on an adventure through history and reality. The plot receives mixed reactions from customers.

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Readability Thought provoking Writing style Plot quality

31 customers mention ‘Readability’28 positive3 negative

Customers find the book highly readable, describing it as a thoroughly compelling page-turner.

"...with a fertile imagination, this alternate history work is a fascinating read...." Read more

"...Anyone who is new should find this a very entertaining read & completely different from his other books. Enjoy" Read more

"...although it seems rushed and a little 'baffling' in places, is very enjoyable and would make an excellent airport, train or holiday book...." Read more

"I really enjoyed this book. It made for entertaining reading and had an excellent plot...." Read more

31 customers mention ‘Thought provoking’28 positive3 negative

Customers find the book thought-provoking and compelling, with one customer noting how it takes readers on an adventure through history and reality, while another describes it as a fantastically written alternative history tale.

"...his pop references are skilful, he is adept with language, he is knowledgeable, and some of the turns of phrases are interesting and often puzzling,..." Read more

"This book is a fantastically written alternative history tale. What if Hitler had never been born?..." Read more

"...giving "The Liar" a try I instantly became a huge fan of SJFs story telling...." Read more

"...This however was a revelation. Fry eases you into the plot and makes the 'learning' very easy...." Read more

27 customers mention ‘Writing style’22 positive5 negative

Customers appreciate the writing style of the book, describing it as clever and funny, with one customer noting the entertaining use of German colloquialisms.

"...Fry is a good writer, I think his pop references are skilful, he is adept with language, he is knowledgeable, and some of the turns of phrases are..." Read more

"...It’s nicely written, but I would have liked the plot laid out earlier and so far it is travelling along with stepping stones of stories on the way...." Read more

"...Fry eases you into the plot and makes the 'learning' very easy...." Read more

"...Am surprised by the high reviews of this. As it is by him the writing style is great, but the plot doesn't work...." Read more

7 customers mention ‘Plot quality’3 positive4 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the plot of the book, with some finding it engaging with twists and turns, while others describe it as bland and predictably routine.

"...As it is by him the writing style is great, but the plot doesn't work. Each additional messy premise jolted me out of the narrative...." Read more

"...is amusing, He ties the loose ends together well, and the plot lines mostly dovetail...." Read more

"...Similarly, the plot is bland and painfully predictable, putting it firmly on par with other second-rate science fiction, albeit a little more..." Read more

"...An inspired and twisted tale of change and inevitability. Deep and well written...." Read more

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Winning Form Mr Lips
I am delighted to have done so
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 May 2016
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Being an unashamed fan of alternate history or "what if" novels, I ordered this book as soon as I discovered a reference to it in a customer's review of a different "changed past" novel. I am delighted to have done so. I am a great fan of Stephen Fry as a television host and film actor, but this is the first time I have delved into one of his books.

The premise that the world might be a better place had Hitler never even been born is not exactly new, and nor is the premise that in fact his early death or non-existence might have actually made things worse. A lot worse, even. After all, the conditions which led to the Nazis' rise to power in post-World War 1 Germany would have existed whether Hitler was around or not, and a different Fuhrer might just have guided Germany to the world domination which Hitler himself failed to achieve. Here Stephen Fry creates Rudi Gloder, who becomes Fuhrer of Germany in an alternative history, and much of the world (especially Europe and most especially Russia) suffers greatly for it.

In fact, what would have been needed to stop the Nazi rise to power would have been for World War 1 to never happen, a premise which Ben Elton dealt in his excellent recent novel "Time And Time Again", and in which book the Law of Unintended Consequences also becomes all too apparent as things don't map out at all as its characters intended. If you are going to sterilise anybody by the use of a male contraceptive dropped back in time (as is the premise of Making History), rather make Kaiser Bill's father incapable of siring children, not Hitler Senior. But that is bye the bye. This is obviously all fat-fetched fiction, and, as always when it's in the hands of a writer with a fertile imagination, this alternate history work is a fascinating read.

Yes, I have a few issues with "Making History." It takes a long time to hit its stride, and I fail to see the need for several of its chapters to be written in the style of a screenplay. Furthermore, as another reviewer here has written, I probably would have liked the book even better had the alternate history part been set in Nazi Europe and not in an America which, for reasons not explained, is openly homophobic and, racist, engaged in a cold war with Europe, and overrun with secret police. Yet these American scenes are handled extremely well, as the realization gradually dawns on the reader that the country is a an increasingly far cry from the USA that we know today, and not in good ways. Obviously we will never know just what America or Europe might have been like had there been no Hitler, but Fry's imagining of it is as realistic and valid as any other potential scenario.

Despite a few quibbles, I am content to give "Making History" five stars out of five,. Once I became accustomed to the author's somewhat peculiar and rambling writing style in the early chapters, I simply could not put it down., I finished all 500 plus pages in two sittings, and missed episodes of some of my favourite TV shows while doing so. And ultimately, isn't this desire to be so engrossed in a story that we are happy to skip other pleasurable pursuits one of the principal reasons why we read books in the first place?

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T. T. Rogers
Making Evil
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 June 2017
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
Michael Young is a dissatisfied graduate history student at Cambridge, about to submit his doctoral thesis. He attends the fictional St. Matthew’s College. Somebody more knowledgeable will correct me, but I seem to recall that the same fictional college appeared in a Kingsley Amis novel. Cambridge, not just the university itself but the town as well, is portrayed in this novel as a rather closeted world, detached from the harsher realities of life. This paragraph, referring to a city-wide scheme to combat bicycle thefts, captures the author’s sense of things quite well:

[quote]”There was even a time, which ought to have been humiliating for the town, when they tried a Scheme….The town fathers bought thousands of bicycles, sprayed them green and left them in little bike-parks all over the city. The idea was that you hopped on one, got to where you wanted to be and then left it on the street for the next user. Such a cute idea, so William Morris, so Utopian, so dumb. Reader, you will be amazed to hear, astonished you will be, thunderstruck to learn, that within a week all the green bicycles had disappeared. Every single one. There was something so cute and trusting and hopeful and noble and aaah! In the Scheme that the city ended up prouder, not humbler, for the deal. We giggled. And, when the council announced a new improved Scheme, we rolled over on the ground howling with laughter, begging them between gasps to stop.”[unquote] [pp. 21-22].

That scene-setter is more important than it might at first appear. The characters in this story live in a protected world and are somewhat naïve. Michael’s doctoral thesis – entitled, ‘The Roots of Power’ - is about the early life of Adolf Hitler and attempts to provide some of the explanation of Hitler’s meteoric rise to power in those terms. Michael eventually meets up with one Professor Zuckerman who, intrigued by the subject-matter, has devised a novel means to kill off Hitler’s ambitions at their root, in the belief this will change history for the better. Michael joins the enterprise. Despite their intelligence (or maybe because of it), the two men fail to see the obvious: that history is in reality about general movements, trends and undercurrents, and that historical change is not just in the lap of Great Men, but social, economic and political forces that they use their prodigious energies to guide and harness towards certain goals and ideals: including Nazism. In contradistinction to Michael’s academic thesis, the author’s position on the relevant period of history is that Nazism as a successful mass political movement in Germany might well have happened without Hitler, and he shows us how this could have occurred. I happen to agree with Stephen Fry’s broad view of history, and disagree with Michael and Professor Zuckerman’s. Fry is suggesting that people in history follow patterns of behaviour that are shaped by material circumstances, which perspicacious individuals exploit and manipulate but do not necessarily create. Michael comes to agree and suitably ends the novel by discarding his dissertation, having seen its basis disproven in the most practicable way possible.

This is not a time travel novel. Michael, the main agent of change, by his own admission does not travel through time. Rather, “time has travelled in [him]” [p.379]. The world has changed around him, but as a result of his actions, such that he is the pivot of change, much like Archimedes’ lever. Michael’s consciousness remains unchanged, so that he remembers the old world as it was before, just as he can clearly surmise the new world he is in; the converse is also true when he restores the world to how it was. The idea of altering history by removing a proverbial Great Man from the picture is an old idea in fiction, especially in the case of Hitler – practically a cliché - but Fry gives it a new twist by having the characters change history not by killing Hitler as such, but by ensuring he is never born in the first place. There is an irony that in attempting to do what they think is ‘good’, Michael and Professor Zuckerman end up making the world worse in their perspective, and committing genocide: the very thing they supposedly set out to prevent, an actualisation of Saint Bernard’s maxim, again quite a common theme in fiction. Of course, they are not doing ‘good’ at all, not even on their own terms. Professor Zuckerman is salving his own conscience. Michael is acting out of naivety. Neither is a ‘goodie’ in this novel, they are more like oversensitive children, and if there is a flaw here in Fry’s writing, it is that I genuinely find it difficult to sympathise with either. They are not making history. They have gone outside history and are instead turning the past into a crude morality play in which they have the chance to play God, to make themselves feel better or more important: to make the world spin on their terms, in short to become Great Men themselves. Certainly in the case of Michael that turns out to be the case, as he retains his consciousness of both the ‘before’ and ‘after’ worlds throughout his variegated experiences, thus he stands ‘outside’ the conscious realm of the rest of the world, much like a Great Man might stand above the consciousness of the masses.

Real history isn’t germane to the moralistic point-of-view adopted by Michael and Professor Zuckerman. It is often difficult to discern the morally pure from the less so, and in any case, we will invariably fail in the attempt because we are retroactively imposing a moral template suitable for our own time, not necessarily for whatever past time is under examination. Michael, as a graduate student of the past, should know this. Professor Zuckerman, as a man with a past, does know this. Both are acting thoughtlessly. On the other hand, by removing a Great Man from the equation, and inadvertently replacing him with another, the characters do change history in noticeable ways. Here is the second novel twist from Fry: the notion that replacing Hitler might have improved Nazi fortunes, again implicitly attacking the ad Hitlerum premise of much of the modern history of Germany. The question arises: if our two “heroes” had taken into account the possibility of a replacement for Hitler, could they have achieved their goal, which was presumably to stop Nazism in its tracks as a significant political force in Germany and Europe? Throughout this novel, the word ‘Making’ is used in the chapter titles: Making Coffee is the title of the first chapter. We also have Making Breakfast, Making News, Making Friends, Making Conversation. Underpinning this is a sense that events that make up our lives, and eventually culminate in the history of our own lives, and sometimes the history that makes up the broader public consciousness, is the result of millions of micro-actions of individuals, and that changing one tiny thing, even something as seemingly inconsequential as skipping a university lecture one morning, could have immense consequences. Therefore the moral question is not straight-forward. Even if we accept the value judgement that Nazism was “wrong”, we then have to contend with the prospect that changing history involves altering an infinite number of variables, most of which we cannot even begin to contemplate, with the possibility that our actions might result in or cause still greater evils. The old saw: ‘Things happen for a reason’, has wisdom. Even if Michael and Professor Zuckerman had got to Gloder as well and, anticipating his rise to power in Hitler’s stead, killed him or somehow otherwise neutralised him, who is to say that another still more effective leader for the Nazis could not have emerged?

Also, a broader value judgement inescapably enters into all this. Who says that Nazism was a force for evil? Who decides this? How is this decided? On what criteria? Do we apply our own standards that exist today or do we take account of how people thought in the past? Over what period of history do we make the moral reckoning: the full 20th. century? This novel was written in 1996 and the story has been set contemporarily, so presumably the characters think that the passage of a mere 50 years is long enough to judge an entire period of history and consign it to the dustbin of their own private memory holes. I beg to differ. I would like the patient reader of this review to consider another possibility: that the revolution instigated by people like Stephen Fry is the real evil and that the inverted world that Michael confronts in this novel at Princeton as a result of his dubious dalliances with time is in fact the better world and the way the world should have been.

For once, the naïve whig historian is half-correct: exceptionally, the Second World War was - contingently – a war of good versus evil. But the good side lost and now we live in a world in which this horrible man, Stephen Fry, gets to flaunt his homosexuality and degeneracy right under our noses, knowing we don’t like it. That is not what I would in any sense recognise as freedom. Give me milk and cookies and virgin 20-something women in long dresses and stern fathers and good manners and lifelong marriages and large families and real blue collar jobs and nutritious food and pleasant countryside and literate tabloid newspapers, men who are real men, women who are real women, homosexuality in the closet where it belongs, unarmed bobbies on the beat in funny hats, and above all else, a white British society - give me all those things and more any day over the sick, inverted world that the ‘Stephen Frys’ have created for us. Fry, much like the characters in his own novel, has imposed his own twisted morality on the rest of us in his quest for a ‘better world’: a Hell for everybody else.

Fry is a good writer, I think his pop references are skilful, he is adept with language, he is knowledgeable, and some of the turns of phrases are interesting and often puzzling, but never dull: what, for instance, is “figgy coffee” when it’s at home? [page 129]. Coffee with figs in, I suppose. Another thing I like about this novel is Fry’s knowledge of German. It’s very entertaining to read choice German colloquialisms like Wienerschnitzel, but then I remember Fry has a smutty mentality and I wonder whether the thing that seems entertaining is not as wholesome as it appears, which spoils the experience as I find myself second-guessing the author and delving into his filthy mind, something I would rather not do. Fry does seem to treat his fiction-writing as a platform to promote a pro-homosexual agenda and general obscenity. That is his prerogative, of course, and that in a sense is one of the messages of this book. It is only his prerogative because the forces of everything good and pure were defeated in 1945. Fry is not a stupid man, he knows this, and he chooses to rub this perverse victory in our faces. I would not consider this novel suitable for children, as I would worry about them being exposed to Fry’s homosexual proclivities in print, not to mention lots of other subtle smutty references, especially early on. I am no prude, but it’s not well done here and I can’t get quite the image of the author out of my head when reading it. It is not a stimulating vision. It is for these reasons that, despite the author’s talent, I will not be reading any more of his work. Should I break my own resolution, I expect I will be needing eyewash.

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Squirrel 79
I couldn’t put this down ! An excellent read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 December 2023
Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase
This book is a fantastically written alternative history tale. What if Hitler had never been born? I won’t discuss what happens in the book as I don’t want to spoil the story, but the plot really made me think about a situation I hadn’t even considered!

Please do read this, I couldn’t put the book down and read it as soon as I had any spare time between working and being at home ! Thank you Stephen Fry , please write more - I loved this.

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DylanThomas
Approach the book with patience
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 May 2023
Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase
So, I haven’t read the whole book yet, and it’s developing with a theme of academia and some of the odd things that might take place on university campus. Personally I’m finding it hard to see where the story is going to lead, but Stephen Fry writes with humour counterpointed with some more serious subjects. It’s nicely written, but I would have liked the plot laid out earlier and so far it is travelling along with stepping stones of stories on the way. It is funny, but I will write a fuller review once I’ve finished reading it. Don’t want to say too much and spoil the read for others.

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Mr B Samborski
Yet another fantastic story from SJF
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 August 2014
Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase
I don't read much. Movies are my thing. The few books I have read have all been from the 'humour' genre. After hastily giving "The Liar" a try I instantly became a huge fan of SJFs story telling. I found "The Hippopotamus" to be even better, and now I am in two minds as to whether "Making History" is my new favourite. I have yet to read "The Stars' Tennis Balls" but will be doing so soon.

Anyone who is a fan of SJFs works will love this one. Anyone who is new should find this a very entertaining read & completely different from his other books.

Enjoy

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Mallika
But the print was great
Reviewed in India on 6 February 2016
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Promt delivery but the book has yellowed pages. But the print was great

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James Toupin
Well-written and captivating.
Reviewed in Canada on 4 May 2024
Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase
A very interesting read that manages to deal with time travel and it's paradoxes in a manner that, not only makes sense, but gives you a real feeling of the disorientation it causes the characters. It is fun and fast paced, while still exploring tge characters in depth. I would definitely recommend this book.

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Starlite
Non-Fiction Person Loved This Novel!
Reviewed in the United States on 30 April 2007
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
I don't ususally read non-fiction, and have never been into the Alternate History craze. I bought this as a Stephen Fry fan, and perhaps a bit because I was a history major in college.

From page one, I could not put it down. The way Fry writes, discussing how one feels when getting up in the morning, writing a thesis, and comparing us history students to pretentious literature students for example, was hilarious and dead-on.

Mike Young is anxious to have his PhD thesis read and earn his doctorate, while living in a strained relationship with a logical but herbal tea drinking scientist. He literally bumps into a stranger with a guilty secret, and a story unravels, involving an attempt to make sure Hitler never gained power without actually going back and killing him.

Fry writes this book from several different views, a past time, thesis, young Hitler in the trenches, screenplay, etc. I love his writing style, one rarely makes me laugh out loud, but as I said, his takes on life's little crises are on the mark.

The ending is good too, perhaps something has changed after all. There is a side story that some might not like, but it's so near the end you won't want to stop reading.

If you were like me and have never ventured into time travel stories, and have a good sense of humor, and a love of things British, buy this book! You'll be calling all those "Eds" at work "Double Eddie" in no time.

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Emma290497
Playing God
Reviewed in Germany on 22 November 2012
Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase
Imagine Cambridge. Imagine a history student, Mike Young, writing his thesis about Adolf Hitler - how it began - not the political career, his life. Imagine a physics professor, Zuckermann, jewish by name and upbringing but in truth the guilt-ridden son of Nazi criminal...

Lots of potential there, right? Fry uses that potential brilliantly and writes an entertaining, funny book about "what if".

What if the intimate knowledge of a historian and the brilliant invention of a time machine by a determined physicist result in preventing Adolf Hitler from ever being born?

Three possible outcomes:
Everything is better.
Everything is much the same.
Everything is worse.

Well, the first two would make a boring story, wouldn't they?

So we learn, that Adolf Hitler wasn't born on a lonely island, isolated without any contact to any other person... suprise! We learn that however grotesque his existence might be perceived today, he was more than "the Führer" - he interacted... and his sole existence might have prevented a greater evil than the havoc he wreaked himself...

This is a great read, without the "raised finger" of "I told you so".... you could replace Hitler with any "prominent historical figure" and create the same story - it's not only one person that's making history, it's very much as well the circumstances (here the econimcal crisis in Europe and the lack of a strong leader in Germany uniting the split parties) that enable the rise and fall of ideas and people - and it's very much their ability to disguise true feelings / ideas, their so-called diplomatic abilities, that will determine the amount of evil they might produce (in secret or not so secretly).

There are a few "random" additional threads in the story that might have a feel of sidetracking from the main topic - like Mike entertaining the idea, that he might actually be gay. Sort of pointless, I first thought, but basically just one thing in the new world Mike and Zuckermann created, that's worse than before - and that's been punishible in the Third Reich. Homosexuality is illegal - and one of the first things Mike finds out waking up in "his" new world and meeting friends of "his" old world who were openly gay... I know it bothered previous reviewers, but it didn't bother me, because these small sidetracks of the story did have a meaning, if small, and actually are not overly distracting.

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Lindsay James Spears
Fry is a rare genius
Reviewed in Australia on 27 January 2019
Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase
The most interesting thing Fry ever wrote. It has something for everyone; history , sci-fi, philosophy ,thrills and romance . ( well, nearly everyone )

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Making History Paperback – Import, 5 Aug. 2004

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5.0 out of 5 stars I am delighted to have done so

4.0 out of 5 stars Making Evil

5.0 out of 5 stars I couldn’t put this down ! An excellent read

3.0 out of 5 stars Approach the book with patience

5.0 out of 5 stars Yet another fantastic story from SJF

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4.0 out of 5 stars But the print was great

5.0 out of 5 stars Well-written and captivating.

5.0 out of 5 stars Non-Fiction Person Loved This Novel!

5.0 out of 5 stars Playing God

5.0 out of 5 stars Fry is a rare genius

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I am delighted to have done so

Making Evil

I couldn’t put this down ! An excellent read

Approach the book with patience

Yet another fantastic story from SJF

But the print was great

Well-written and captivating.

Non-Fiction Person Loved This Novel!

Playing God

Fry is a rare genius