Once, the Hudson River was crammed with pleasure boats, taking city folks to picnics and parks all summer long.

When I was a young science-fiction sponge, growing up on the East Coast, I fell hard for a weird little novel called “The Lathe of Heaven” by Ursula K. LeGuin.

The subtitle of Sergey Radchenko’s book makes it sound like an aspirant bestseller from ... armies had spread overnight and were now threatening to leap across the Moskva river to consume the palace.