Talk:Joe Steele (novel)

Differences Between the Short Story and the Novel

Joe Steele was originally a short story that came out in 2003 in Stars: Original Stories Based on the Songs of Janis Ian and was later expanded into a novel twelve years later in 2015. With the novel being expanded from the short story, there are several differences between the two. I'm not sure if this could be used on the article, but here's a list of known differences between the story and novel.

• The story is approximately ten pages and rapidly fires through several key plot points. The novel is much more detailed, explaining a variety of events that weren't addressed in the story.
• The short story uses third-person omniscient narration. The novel is told through the limited third-person POVs of fictional characters Charlie and Mike Sullivan.
• The novel follows the basic arc of the short story until the end. In the short story, Vice President John Nance Garner takes office as President following Steele's death after serving as his VP for 20 years, and immediately orders the deaths of the Vince "the Hammer" Scriabin and J. Edgar Hoover. The "Hammer" issues the same order against Garner and Hoover while Hoover issues the same order against Garner and the Hammer. Hoover ultimately prevails with both the Hammer and Garner being killed. In the novel, however, Garner tries to act legally, but is ultimately outsmarted by Scriabin (who is conveniently killed after being hit by a car) and Hoover, and is impeached and removed from office. Garner quietly retires to Uvalde, Texas.
• In the short story, Joe Steele runs unopposed for his fourth, fifth and sixth terms. In the novel, the Republican Party nominates Thomas E. Dewey in 1944, Harold Stassen in 1948, and Robert A. Taft in 1952.
• In the short story, the American atomic bomb in the Japanese War is dropped on Sapporo. In the novel, it's dropped on Sendai.
• In the story, the four executed Supreme Court justices (Pierce Butler, James Clark McReynolds, George Sutherland and Willis Van Devanter) are called the "Gang of Four". In the novel, they are the "Supreme Court Four".
• In the short story, Steele's would-be assassin is German citizen Otto Spitzer (who was the only fictional character named in the story). In the novel, however, it is American soldier Captain Roland Laurence South (whose name is an unexplained pun on Oliver North). The ensuing purge of the military logically flows from this in the novel.
• Huey Long is officially killed while trying to escape Fort Leavenworth prison in Kansas the short story. In the novel, he is shot by a sniper while speaking in public in Alexandria, Louisiana.
• Japanese Emperor Hirohito is killed during a firebombing raid in December 1945 in the short story. In the novel, he is killed by a machine gun round in March 1946.
• In the short story, Lavrenty Beria is still the head of the NKVD under Leon Trotsky. In the novel, Genrikh Yagoda, a more logical choice given the circumstances, is the head of the NKVD at the novel's end.
• In the short story, Sam Rayburn is an early critic of Steele, is killed in a car accident in 1937 arranged by the Hammer. Rayburn is not mentioned at all in the novel.
• In the short story, Dwight D. Eisenhower commands in the European Theater as he does in real life. In the novel, he commands in the Pacific War.
• In the short story, Omar Bradley leads the war against Japan as he does in real life. However, in the novel, he takes over Eisenhower's role in Europe, including opening a second front via an Invasion of Normandy.
• In the short story, the U.S. atomic bomb project is led by Edward Teller. In the novel, the project is led by Hyman G. Rickover, with Teller merely a part of it.
• In the short story, the specific government of South Japan is not discussed. In the novel, it is a constitutional monarchy under former Emperor Hirohito's twelve year old son Emperor Akihito, who acts as a puppet to Eisenhower.
• In the short story, Albert Einstein and several other Jewish scientists, who withheld knowledge of atomic bombs from Steele and thus necessitated the complete invasion of Japan, are rounded up and executed for conspiracy in the "Professors' Plot," with Steele focusing on their Jewish origins (Steele was anti-semitic by the way). In the novel the conspiracy is not named, and the scientists' Jewishness is only commented on by a few average citizens in private, but Einstein and the others meet the same fate.

--JCC the Alternate Historian (talk) 20:10, 1 October 2018 (UTC)