1. Great space adventure. One of the best in the modern science fiction. Maybe even the best.
2. The whole alternate history side of the story was just ridiculous. A lot of wishful thinking and dead butterflies.
https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prov%C3%ADncia_ultramarina
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_Volta
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burkina_Faso%E2%80%93Soviet_Union_relations
During the 1960s, USSR was sometimes derisively referred to as "Upper Volta with rockets",[2] coined by a journalist Xan...