Back in the USSA is a 1997 collection of seven short stories by English writers Eugene Byrne and Kim Newman, which was published by Mark V. Ziesing Books. The title is a reference to the song "Back in the U.S.S.R." by The Beatles. The stories are linked through their setting, an alternate history of the twentieth century in which the United States experienced a communist Second Revolution in 1917 and became a communist superpower, whereas Russia did not. Six of the stories first appeared in Interzone magazine, and the concluding story in the sequence, "On the Road", was written especially for the collection. Background Theodore Roosevelt was reelected President of the United States as the Progressive Party candidate in 1912, only to be assassinated on December 19, 1912, at the Chicago Union Stockyards by the sharpshooter and exhibition shooter Annie Oakley, before he took office, when personally breaking a labor strike with the help of the Rough Riders. Following this, his vice president, Charles Foster Kane takes power, and gradually leads the United States into greater levels of oppression, class division and bureaucratic incompetence and corruption – including an earlier entry into World War I in 1914 and the assassination of his rival candidate, Woodrow Wilson, during the 1916 election campaign. Gradually, by 1917 the United States is unstable politically and socially, with overwhelming civil unrest stemming from the massive (and seemingly pointless) loss of American lives in the mud of the Western Front and the increasing gap between the wealthy 'robber barons' and the poor workers, and the massive corruption and exploitation this has resulted in. The Socialist Party of America led by Eugene V. Debs gains increasing support, and soon the unrest has led to a Second American Revolution and Second American Civil War, following which Kane is ousted from the White House, overthrown, and executed for treason. Afterwards, a new socialist order, led by Debs, takes over. The United States of America becomes the United Socialist States of America. The early idealism of this change is misplaced, however; upon Debs' death in 1926, power is seized by Al Capone (an obvious parallel to Joseph Stalin, just as Debs is used to mirror the achievements of Vladimir Lenin), who proceeds to rule over the USSA with a brutal, repressive fist of iron, establishing a cult of personality around himself, exiling and executing his political rivals and ruling the