Maybe when the winner of this year’s Hugo Award is The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon.  Chabon is a fan of comic books (Amazing  Adventures of  Kavalier and Clay) and alternate reality fiction (The Final Solution, Gentlemen of the Road).  Yiddish Policeman’s Union is an alternate reality novel and very well done.  It posits that, after WWII,  Jews were given a homeland in Alaska.  It came with a lease, however and that lease is running out as the novel begins.

You don’t have to be Jewish to love this book but it helps with allusions and some Yiddishisms that punctuate the narrative.  Nearly everything that is unfamiliar can be found with your favorite browser and I learned some fascinating religious law as well as Chabon’s inventive way of using legitimate words as slang terms with different meanings.  For example, the bagel that we love to nosh is used as slang for detective.

No space opera or black holes for the Hugo this year.  Chabon is a heckuva good writer and his parallel universe makes you think of our own as he makes up his story.