Cult Author Theodore Judson on America’s Past, Present, and Possible Future
[This interview first appeared here in RealClear History on October 9, 2026.]
In his two most celebrated novels—Fitzpatrick’s War and The Timerman—author Theodore Judson imagines a future America, the Yukon Confederacy, a feudal state of patriotic, God-fearing, family-loving yeoman-farmers, citizen soldiers, and governing lords protected and guided by a shadowy few philosopher-kings (actually, initially, engineers from Purdue) called the Timermen. The Timermen ensure that the world remains in the steam age, that the perils of electricity are avoided, that the inevitable corruptions of power are redressed, and that the Yukon Confederacy—a sort of recreated British Empire, centered in the former United States (Britain is now a backwater, only recently reclaimed from Muslim Europe)—survives forever against the forces of revolution, decadence, and evil. In short, it sounds a bit like a reactionary paradise. But is it?
I recently had the opportunity to talk with Judson about his life and work.
So, the first question is the obvious one: how are we meant to view the Yukon Confederacy?
Every sci-fi novel is an expression of something already existing within the present world. The Yukons are the opposite in every way to the modern world. They are pious while we are secular. They nearly worship History—a word they always capitalize—while we have forgotten ours. They are the negative reaction to what we have become.
The Timerman in some ways seems predictive or perhaps prescriptive. Is it?
I very much doubt we will become what the Yukons are. We instead seem to be drifting into a future we feel we cannot change. It is difficult for me to imagine a modern people who are as disciplined or as energetic or as angry as they are. Nor are they prescriptive. The Yukons—and their Timermen masters—have done things no people who cling to the Judaeo-Christian version of morality could do. Certainly they have committed crimes I would not wish anyone to undertake.
A Timerman in the book says that “you will find two factors in every tyranny and every [tyrannical] revolution…: namely, ordinary people willing to sacrifice the normal to the abnormal for the sheer pleasure of doing so, and second, a group of intellectuals urging those ordinary people on.” He calls such circumstances the “most dangerous” times in human history. We seem to live in dangerous times then, don’t we?
Yes, but we are not becoming the Yukons. Rather, we seem to be becoming the sort of people who will happily sacrifice the normal for the abnormal, simply because we see no reason to do otherwise. That is why Brave New World and 1984 are far more predictive of the world we are actually making than anything I have written. The Yukons represent a road we could have taken, not the one we are on.
Even more sobering: that Timerman says later in the book that “evil exists in the world and that the only long-term response to evil is the destructive power of force. Reason and compassion do not work against evil, for reason and compassion are virtues, and evil rejects everything that is good.” That seems a hard truth. What does it mean for America in the next decade?
It means we are headed for very dark times indeed. The great struggle for us and for our descendants will be to preserve as much of Western civilization as we can, much as the Byzantines and the monks of the Dark Ages preserved as much as they could.
So, let’s step back a bit. You’ve had a long career as a high school history teacher on an Indian reservation. Why did you decide to become a novelist?
I grew up on the reservation. My father was a homesteader on land set aside for veterans after World War II; it was, I believe, the last land given to homesteaders under the original act of 1862. After graduating college, I was a geologist for several years. When I married, my wife did not wish to live out in the field, so I became a teacher. I spent most of my teaching career in Colorado, and then returned to Wyoming after my wife died; she had cancer. I wrote Fitzpatrick’s War while my wife was sick and only published it after I had returned to Wyoming. Although I am Scotch-Irish and German, this seems to be my home. It is a beautiful but harsh place, albeit one of the poorest portions of America. Whatever faults the Shoshone and Arapaho people have—and abuse of drugs and alcohol are rampant here, as is a sometimes overpowering despair—they do seem to survive, which is something I fear the rest of us are going to have to learn how to do in the world to come.
I believe you once noted that Fitzpatrick’s War sold fewer than 200 combined hardcover and paperback copies. Talk about the loneliness of the long-distance writer: what kept you writing? And when did you become aware that the book, somehow—apparently circulating in discounted remaindered copies, discarded library copies, and used bookstore copies—was gaining a following?
I kept getting letters and e-mails from readers who said they liked the book. So, I went on despite my lack of success.
One last question. It took more than twenty years for the sequel to Fitzpatrick’s War to appear. Were you working on it that entire time—or did your new publisher, ARK Press, commission it?
The book, in various forms, has existed for at least decade. It was passed around by various people until ARK took an interest in it. I rewrote much of it for them during 2025.
Well, your persistence paid off, and I’m glad it did. Good luck with your books!
H. W. Crocker III is a best-selling historian, popular novelist, and former political speechwriter and publishing executive. His most recent book is a World War II thriller about a rosary-praying American secret agent behind enemy lines in Kruger’s Korps.