“The Girl from Ipanema in the Year Zero”

My latest publication, “The Girl from Ipanema in the Year Zero: An Alternate History Short Story,” is available as of today (December 30, 2024).

Cover of "The Girl from Ipanema in the Year Zero" by Raymund Eich

Jazz is perhaps my third or fourth favorite musical genre. I’m also a history buff.

Those would seem to have nothing in common…

…until I realized the song “The Girl from Ipanema” was written at a time of political upheaval in Brazil. The first English-language recording of the song was released in March 1964. The same month as a coup in Brazil which established a twenty-year military dictatorship.

That realization stirred in my subconscious for a while. Then, in the parking lot of a local supermarket, an image popped into my mind: the girl from Ipanema walking to the beach, oblivious to an army helicopter flying leftist political prisoners out to sea, where the prisoners are tied up and thrown overboard to drown.

But though military dictatorships are bad, does that make a revolutionary takeover good?

The personality types that seek to gain and hold power over others don’t really care about ideology. Left, right, liberal, conservative, elitist, populist, secular, religious… for most politicians, those are just words used to cheaply buy support from segments of the population. What motivates most politicians are parts of their psyche that are deeper, grimier, and far more personal than rhetorical phrases.

With that in mind, a story pretty much wrote itself.

“The Girl from Ipanema in the Year Zero” is set in an alternate 1980s. A teenage girl who sunbathed on the beach in the early 1960s is now a mature woman. And in a time of revolutionary tumult, only her grace and wits remain for her to survive the agendas of two figures from her distant past.

Click or tap to learn more.

The Girl from Ipanema in the Year Zero: An Alternate History Short Story

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