Thomas Mullen

The Revisionists
2406

After two historical novels, Decatur author Thomas Mullen takes an extraordinary trip to the near future in a thriller called The Revisionists (Little, Brown/Mulholland Books). In Washington, D.C., after a game-changing disaster known only as the “Great Conflagration,” Agent Zed from the U.S. Department of Historical Integrity travels back in time to make sure nothing interferes with the unfolding of horrific events such as the Holocaust, the 9/11 attacks, and the mysterious conflagration. All are necessary evils, in the government’s wisdom, to bring about “the Perfect Present”—a time of no war, no poverty, and no disease. Zed and his fellow agents are pitted against time-traveling historical agitators (aka hags), who are hell-bent on stopping the big tragedies. Though this is not a historical novel, the plot concerns the nature of history itself. “There’s a saying that dates back even before this time: History is written by the winners,” Mullen writes. “But what happens when everyone has lost?” Questions of fate versus free will, utopia versus reality, and the implications of a world without obvious racial and ethnic lines add terrific human depth to the whiz-bang gadgetry of Mullen’s imagined world. Just as he played with genre elements of noir and magical realism in last year’s The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers, Mullen now puts a very highbrow spin on the spy novel and science fiction.

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DRIFTING INTO DARIEN: A Personal and Natural History of the Altamaha River (University of Georgia Press)
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Photograph by Brad Dececco

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