''My Real Children'' is a 2014 alternate history novel by Welsh-Canadian writer

Jo Walton Jo Walton (born 1964) is a Welsh and Canadian fantasy and science fiction writer and poet. She is best known for the fantasy novel ''Among Others'', which won the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 2012, and '' Tooth and Claw'', a Victorian era novel ...

, published by

Tor Books Tor Books is the primary imprint of Tor Publishing Group (previously Tom Doherty Associates), a publishing company based in New York City. It primarily publishes science fiction and fantasy titles, and is the largest publisher of Chinese sci ...

. It was released on May 20, 2014.

Plot

In 2015, Patricia is 89 years old and living in a nursing home, with two mutually-exclusive sets of memories: one of a world where

John F. Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination ...

was killed by a bomb in 1963, and one of a world where Kennedy chose not to run in

1964 Events January * January 1 – The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is dissolved. * January 5 - In the first meeting between leaders of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches since the fifteenth century, Pope Paul VI and Patriarc ...

after an escalated Cuban Missile Crisis led to the nuclear obliteration of

Miami Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a coastal metropolis and the county seat of Miami-Dade County in South Florida, United States. With a population of 442,241 at ...

and

Kyiv Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the seventh-most populous city in Europe. Kyi ...

—and, on a more personal level, one in which she went by "Trish", married a man and had four children before she was able to escape an unhappy marriage and become involved in politics, and one in which, as "Pat", she was a successful travel writer raising three children with her lesbian partner. Both feel completely real, but both cannot be – even though both sets of children visit her.

Patricia's two worlds

In the

Kennedy assassination John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated on Friday, November 22, 1963, at 12:30 p.m. CST in Dallas, Texas, while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza. Kennedy was in the vehicle with ...

timeline, there is accelerated

nuclear disarmament Nuclear may refer to: Physics Relating to the nucleus of the atom: *Nuclear engineering *Nuclear physics *Nuclear power *Nuclear reactor *Nuclear weapon *Nuclear medicine *Radiation therapy *Nuclear warfare Mathematics * Nuclear space * Nuclea ...

, however. The

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

liberalizes sooner and does not intervene in

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the ...

Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...

when they withdraw from the

Warsaw Pact The Warsaw Pact (WP) or Treaty of Warsaw, formally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland, between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist repub ...

peacefully. The USSR lands the first humans on the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

in 1967 and as a result, the United States struggles to catch up in the

space race The Space Race was a 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the United States and the Soviet Union, to achieve superior spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the ballistic missile-based nuclear arms race between the t ...

in terms of construction of a space station and later, a

moonbase A moonbase is a facility on the surface of the Moon, enabling human activity on the Moon. As such, it is different from a lunar space station in orbit around the Moon, like the planned Lunar Gateway of the Artemis program. Moonbases can be fo ...

of its own. In the Cuban War timeline, Pat, her lesbian partner Bee and their children watch aghast as

Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders ...

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( he, תֵּל־אָבִיב-יָפוֹ, translit=Tēl-ʾĀvīv-Yāfō ; ar, تَلّ أَبِيب – يَافَا, translit=Tall ʾAbīb-Yāfā, links=no), often referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the ...

, and several unspecified Chinese cities are subjected to nuclear attacks over a fifty-year interval. The incineration of Miami turns the United States

isolationist Isolationism is a political philosophy advocating a national foreign policy that opposes involvement in the political affairs, and especially the wars, of other countries. Thus, isolationism fundamentally advocates neutrality and opposes entan ...

and they do not become actively involved in the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam a ...

. The

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been de ...

becomes consolidated more rapidly than in our own world, but the European colonial powers do not pursue

decolonization Decolonization or decolonisation is the undoing of colonialism, the latter being the process whereby imperial nations establish and dominate foreign territories, often overseas. Some scholars of decolonization focus especially on separatism, in ...

as it occurred within our universe. Pat encounters a devastating disease,

anaplastic thyroid cancer Anaplastic thyroid cancer (ATC), also known as anaplastic thyroid carcinoma, is an aggressive form of thyroid cancer characterized by uncontrolled growth of cells in the thyroid gland. This form of cancer generally carries a very poor prognosis du ...

, which kills several of her relatives as well as Bee in that universe. Trish finds a useful and constructive role in the lives of her children and grandchildren after her divorce from her obnoxious closeted gay husband Mark in the Kennedy assassination timeline, but although Pat finds herself in an idyllic relationship with Bee, despite the challenges of her lover's disablement after an

IRA Ira or IRA may refer to: *Ira (name), a Hebrew, Sanskrit, Russian or Finnish language personal name *Ira (surname), a rare Estonian and some other language family name *Iran, UNDP code IRA Law *Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, US, on status of ...

bombing campaign, and they raise several children, the surrounding world is darker than our own, given its intensive nuclear proliferation and the breaching of our world's taboo against the use of nuclear weapons during wartime.

Reception

Lev Grossman Lev Grossman (born June 26, 1969) is an American novelist and journalist who wrote ''The Magicians Trilogy'': '' The Magicians'' (2009), ''The Magician King'' (2011), and ''The Magician's Land'' (2014). He was the book critic and lead technology ...

stated that ''My Real Children'' is a "quiet triumph", and compared it to the works of

Alice Munro Alice Ann Munro (; ; born 10 July 1931) is a Canadian short story writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. Munro's work has been described as revolutionizing the architecture of short stories, especially in its tendency to move f ...

, and to Philip K. Dick's '' Man in the High Castle'', while

Robert Wiersema Robert J. Wiersema (born 1970) is a Canadian writer. Since 2006, he's published two novels, a novella and a non-fiction book about Bruce Springsteen. Life and career Wiersema was born in Agassiz, British Columbia, in 1970. After high school, he at ...

described it as having "achingly beautiful prose and carefully crafted characters".

Cory Doctorow Cory Efram Doctorow (; born July 17, 1971) is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who served as co-editor of the blog '' Boing Boing''. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of ...

said that it was a "standout" even when compared to Walton's other works, and that it "literally kept imup all night, weeping uncontrollably with the most astounding mixture of joy and sorrow", while at

NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...

, Amal El-Mohtar said that to call the book "elegant" was not enough. The novel won the 2014

Tiptree Award The Otherwise Award, formerly known as the James Tiptree Jr. Award, is an American annual literary prize for works of science fiction or fantasy that expand or explore one's understanding of gender. It was initiated in February 1991 by science f ...

, and was a finalist for the 2015

World Fantasy Award—Novel The World Fantasy Awards are given each year by the World Fantasy Convention for the best fantasy fiction published in English during the previous calendar year. The awards have been described by book critics such as ''The Guardian'' as a "presti ...

,The 2015 World Fantasy Award Nominees Have Been Announced!
at

Tor.com ''Tor.com'' is an online science fiction and fantasy magazine published by Tor Books, a division of Macmillan Publishers. The magazine publishes articles, reviews, original short fiction, re-reads and commentary on speculative fiction. From 20 ...

; published July 8, 2015; retrieved July 25, 2015 the

Aurora Award The Aurora Awards (french: Prix Aurora-Boréal) are a set of primarily literary awards given annually for the best Canadian science fiction or fantasy professional and fan works and achievements from the previous year."Literary glow of Auroras lure ...

for Best Novel,2015 Aurora Awards Nominees
at ''

Locus Online ''Locus: The Magazine of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Field'', founded in 1968, is an American magazine published monthly in Oakland, California. It is the news organ and trade journal for the English-language science fiction and fantasy fields ...

''; published May 26, 2015; retrieved November 29, 2015 the 2015 Sunburst Award for Adult Novel,Thomas King, Cecil Castellucci win the 2015 Sunburst Award
by Jane van Koeverden; at CBC.ca; published August 29, 2017; retrieved May 28, 2023 and the 2015

Sidewise Award for Alternate History The Sidewise Awards for Alternate History were established in 1995 to recognize the best alternate history stories and novels of the year. Overview The awards take their name from the 1934 short story " Sidewise in Time" by Murray Leinster, in ...

References

{{James Tiptree, Jr. Award Winners 2014 British novels 2014 science fiction novels 2014 LGBT-related literary works Novels by Jo Walton Tor Books books British alternative history novels Novels set in the 2010s Fiction set in 2015 2010s LGBT novels LGBT speculative fiction novels 2014 Canadian novels Canadian alternative history novels British LGBT novels Canadian LGBT novels Novels about the assassination of John F. Kennedy