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Catch That Zeppelin! is a 6000-word short story by Fritz Leiber, about an alternate history in which, in 1937, World War II is not imminent, and zeppelins are a dominant form of international travel. It was first published in the March, 1975 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Spoiler Warning: Plot details and/or information about the ending follow. If you wish to enjoy the work first, stop reading here and return at another time.

Plot

While visiting his son in New York, a man is transported to an alternate history universe, and given a different identity. He becomes a German businessman in 1937, meeting with his son, a history professor living in New York. His son tells him about research he’s doing on important cusps of history, and how things might have turned out much worse than they did. He says that in this world, Thomas Edison married Marie Skladowski (Curie), and they had a son who perfected the electric car; eliminating pollution. Also in this reality, after the American Civil War, Reconstruction was more successful, granting blacks their civil rights and suppressing groups like the KKK. Finally, at the end of World War I, the allies pushed through to Berlin and utterly defeated Germany; thus the Germans never developed their stab-in-the-back myth, and the allies never felt the need to exact vengeance on the Germans in the ensuing peace treaty. All of this makes for a better, more peaceful world in 1937, where Germany and America are close allies; where German technology has benefited the human race; where hydrogen zeppelins are the main mode of transport across the Atlantic Ocean, and where those same zeppelins are named in honor of German scientists. After eating lunch with his son at the top of the Empire State Building, the narrator rushes to meet his zeppelin; but then he switches to another reality; still 1937 but not the one he was just in. A man tells him that the zeppelin, named the Hindenburg, blew up in New Jersey earlier that day, and that it does not moor at the Empire State Building at any rate. The narrator is then transported back to his original reality, in 1973, where he is an old man from Chicago, in town to visit his son and daughter-in-law.

Reprints

This story has been reprinted in Donald A. Wollheim's The 1976 Annual World's Best SF.

Awards

Catch That Zeppelin! won both the 1975 Nebula Award and the 1976 Hugo Award for Best Short Story.

External Links

• Catch That Zeppelin! at ISFDB.org

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