Product Description

This book is set in Liverpool 1962; a place and time of danger and passion. A thrilling new music is bursting on to the grey streets of the post-war city: a music that electrifies, a music that promises to change everything. But in Cuba, on the other side of the earth, nuclear tensions are at breaking point. The end of the whole world could be just days away. At the heart of it all is fourteen-year-old Laura Mann. She's on the run, hunted by strange forces fighting over the future of humanity. Laura is the H-Bomb Girl. And Laura is about to discover that her own life is at stake - in ways she could never have imagined.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #143763 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

About the Author
Stephen Baxter was born in Liverpool and is the internationally renowned, prize-winning author of over thirty science-fiction and non-fiction books for adults and children, as well as pieces for TV, film and newspapers. He has worked as a maths and physics teacher and now lives in Northumberland with his wife.

Customer Reviews

Baxter back down to Earth, with a very big bang...
Stephen Baxter is well known as an author of very technical, imaginative and theoretical science fiction. Huge works like the Xeelee Sequence, the Manifold series and the Destiny's Children series are millenia-spanning epics of the destiny of mankind making liberal use of the latest theories of astrophysics.

The H-Bomb Girl is different. It is a fictional account of a 14 year old girl's part in the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and how survivors of several possible outcomes of these events travel back in time to manipulate the past for their own ends. Far less heavy on the grey matter than Baxter's usual work this is a highly accessible novel and a very human story.

Don't be fooled by the teen girl's novel cover though. Chapter 21, an account of a nuclear attack on Liverpool and its aftermath told mainly through the girl's diary entries, is one of the most gripping, chilling passages of fiction I have ever read.

Cameos by the Beatles, Cilla Black and others are a fun touch, while the moment towards the end of the story when you realise a minor character in the book is a major character from the Destiny's Children series will raise a smile from Baxter diehards.

Baxter is a master of his genre. The H-Bomb Girl is further proof, alongside the Mammoth books and the current Time's Tapestry series, that he is a brilliant writer outside his genre too. If you haven't read any of Baxter's books this is an excellent place to get hooked.

Well worth reading
I enjoyed this work. It differs from Baxter's other stories in a refreshing manner.

It is set in the Cuba crisis which I lived through (survived in this one of Everett's many worlds). Basically it is an enjoyable read. British readers who were aware of events at the time will note that the government response to the crisis was not as Baxter portrays. Baxter explains in the appendix that this liberty was taken for dramatic effect and I think he made the correct decision.

Definitely worth reading
I bought this book because it's a science fiction novel set in Liverpool - the only one I've heard of. It's great to see all the places I know, read Scouse words and smile at the occasional cameos by celebrities. However, this is Liverpool in the 1960s - a time when the city was still massively damaged by the bombs of WW2, when the Beatles were still an unknown band playing at the Cavern, and when the entire world was fearing nuclear war between the USA and the USSR.

In this story, two groups of people from different futures have come back in time to try and manipulate the Cuban Missile Crisis to go how they want it to - and to do that, they need Laura. The scene where Laura reads a diary which she wrote in one of those alternate futures - a future where something like 90% of the British population died as a result of nuclear war - is incredibly chilling and definitely the high point of the story.

I do have my criticisms. I wasn't massively keen on certain events towards the end of the book, and one or two of the (more minor) characters annoyed me. Overall, though, this was an excellent book which managed to competently address not only the Cold War, but also other issues prevalant in the 1960s, such as prejudice against black people, gays, and unmarried mothers. I think what made it work for me is that it wasn't a heavy read like many books with moral messages tend to be. In some ways it felt like your typical "teenager at high school" type novel, especially at the beginning before the real drama began. It's a gripping read, and recommended - especially if you've ever lived in Liverpool.