People's Republic

People's Republic is a 2000 alternative history novel by Georgeland author John Fisher. The novel is set in an alternate 1957 in which Georgeland is a communist state. The novel won the 2000 Victor Taverner Prize for literature and was nominated for a Georgeland Literary Achievement Award.

Plot
Stanley Morris is a low-ranking civil servant employed by the Bureau of Rationing in a communist Georgeland. He lives in Santa Christina which under Communism is a drab, heavily regimented city. Morris, until the events of the novel a loyal Communist Party member, begins a relationship with Sandra Gates, a journalist for the state newspaper, who it turns out is actually an undercover agent for the CIA which is helping to fund a counter-revolution. When Sandra's cover is blown, Stanley and Sandra are forced to go on the run. After Sandra is "zeroed" by her agency, the two are forced to hide out in the country and contact a resistance cell which will smuggle them out of the country to India. The plan seems to be going according to plan until the chief of the secret police happens to arrive and the resistance concentrate instead on assassinating him. Stanley and Sandra get drawn into the plot, which fails and the pair are arrested. They are sentenced to be executed, but a last-minute negotiation arranges their release in exchange for some other hostages being held in the United States. Stanley and Sandra are exiled from Georgeland to America, where they discover that far from being the free, liberal utopia it has built itself as, it is in fact a fascist dictatorship.

Characters

 * Stanley Morris is a clerk at the Rationing Bureau. He is a loyal, if apathetic, Party member until being caught up in events and learning of the atrocities the Party has committed. He is relatively happy at the beginning of the novel but somewhat unlucky and very meek.
 * Sandra Gates is everythign Stanley isn't - passionate, headstrong and firey. She is officially a journalist for the state media but is actually an undercover CIA operative helping to fund a counter-revolution. Sandra's impulsiveness and temperament lead her to make reckless decisions.
 * Tom Norman is the leader of the resistance cell Stanley and Sandra contact. He is deeply opposed to communism and remembers the freedoms before the Soviet-backed revolution. A war veteran, Norman is revealed to be a former Party official who became disillusioned and was overlooked for promotion, suggesting his opposition to the People's Republic may be more personal than idealogical.
 * John Urquhart is the head of the regime's secret police. A sociopath, it is suggested Urquhart may not be a Communist and is more concerned with his own power than with any particular ideology. Urquhart takes a perverse personal interest in Stanley and Sandra after they are arrested.

Alternate world
The novel's setting is an alternate world in which history is significantly different. As explained in the novel, the point of divergence in the alternative history relates to the Soviets developing nuclear weapons prior to the United States. It is therefore the Soviets that defeat the Axis Powers. The result is an expanded Soviet sphere-of-influence which includes most of Western Europe (including the United Kingdom as well as Australia and Georgeland. The novel is set in 1957, and all the characters were alive during the "Great Revolution" which established communism simultaneously in many of these countries. The alternative Georgeland is therefore an totalitarian, communist state. The governing Communist Party of Georgeland is all-powerful and has an arm devoted to control of the population, a secret police, referred to in the novel only as 'the secret police'. Several references are made to the ruler of the state being George Garretty - "Comrade Garretty" is mentioned numerous times as the country's leader, though it is implied he may only be a figurehead and that Urquhart and the Party's elite (the politburo may be the real rulers. The United States within the novel claims to be a free, liberal society standing in opposition to the Communist hordes. The reality is quite different - as the main characters discover, the country is actually a fascist dictatorship with as little personal freedom as the communist states.