Ian Slater, 30 Years After

We mentioned author Ian Slater a few days ago and think it would be useful to delve into his World War III books. 

These are at once interesting and maddingly frustrating. The former because Slater's Third World War isn't as formulaic as his contemporaries, the latter because as the war goes on, it becomes more and more implausible.  

Spoilers ahead.

Slater's WWIII ends with a limited nuclear exchange. This is started because his Mary-Sue General, Douglas Southhall Freeman (what's up with that?) uses tactical nukes on his own authority in Korea. As we recall Seatlle and Detroit get nuked. Slater cleverly has Japanese auto execs being horrified because the American Big Three automakers will rebuild and surpass Japanese auto technology. 

General Freeman was fun, when we were 18. But we suspect he'd annoy us now. He's basically Slater's homage to Patton, George C. Scott's Patton. That's not a good thing.* Freeman turns things around in the foundering Korean theatre with a raid on Pyongyang, which was interesting. [And influential, no?-Ed] Quite right. A beleaguered president then sends Freeman to Europe to rescue the situation there. 

We'll give Freeman credit for spreading the war to the Aleutians [Once again, influential -Ed]. Yep. But this leads to a rather absurd scenario where in volume four of Slater's series, Siberia secedes from a defeated USSR and continues the war. After a really stupid battle around the Diomedes, the US sends an army deep into the hinterland. Another absurdity. Imagine the logistics involved. There are references at the end of the third book to NATO forces actually invading the Soviet Union. [You did-Ed] Yeah but on the periphery. [Crimea is the periphery?-Ed] Point taken. But we just don't think VII Corpe rolling into Ukraine is a workable idea.

We'll also say this for the man. Thirty years after having read Slater's World War III books, we remember a lot of the characters, especially a trio of siblings in various American service branches. Though not their names. There was the Marine guy, the navy sub guy on honeymoon with his limey wife. Oh, and the nurse sister. Heh, anyone else remember what the nurse got in trouble for? [What are you, 18?-Ed] No but we were then, and that scene always stuck with us. Hello nurse!

*That wasn't the real Patton. Not hardly.

Sunday Musings on the War Between the States

It is really just a coincidence that in World War 1990, President Bush is exhausted and so was Lincoln at the end of his war.

['His war?' Ok, your flirtation with Southern Nationalism has gone too far-Ed]

Quite right. Honestly we had Grant and his pre-Appomattox migraine in mind when writing about Bush being given a handful of T-3 every night. 

This week we learned two things about Appomattox. First we had no idea Lincoln and Grant were absolutely terrified Lee would order the Army of Northern Virginia into the mountains. They were anxious, sick with worry. Lincoln seems to have felt only relief when news of the surrender reached the White House. Second, we knew the Army of Northern Virginia was in desperate straights, but we had no idea Lee was basically conducting his own version of the Bataan Death March on the road to Appomattox. We've enjoyed reading the back and forth correspondence between Lee and Grant. A poignant scene: Longstreet reading Grant's message offering surrender, handing it back to Lee and saying simply, 'Not yet.' We can add nothing to the actual meeting between the two men, the victor destined to become his nation's next president. Lee would have been called and served out of duty, right? Wow.

For European reader(s), a member of this blog's Confederate readership mentioned something about race relations, something we've always believed ourselves. Race relations are better in the south than in the north, because, frankly, the south had to confront it head on, while us Yankees could always claim we didn't have Slavery and Jim Crow. No Jim Crow maybe, but northern cities had de-facto segregation and to this day still have black neighborhoods. No amount of block breaking and directives from the DOJ will ever change that.  Back in the 80's, man, a Westchester County New York  judge ordered radical desegregation plans and locked up the mayor of Yonkers who refused to comply. In our own four town school district, African Americans knew there was one town they couldn't go into. We won't name it. Heck, just a few weeks ago an African American family moved into the neighborhood, and that still merits a 'huh'. Southern Black and Southern white understand one another, or used to, in a way a Yankee can see, but never quite grasp. We saw it with our own Louisiana born grandmother who preferred a 60ish black hospice nurse from Georgia. They just knew one another.

Will Nukes America

We're wondering if each chapter in The Great Nuclear War of 1975 needs a showcase scene, a scene that is longer and meatier...

[You hear that, right?-Ed]

...than the other scenes. Sorry if I twixed your nethers there Ed...

[You wish-Ed]

No, you wish.

This week we're working on the winter chapter. We're making this dark and horrifying. When we say horrifying, we don't mean people's skin peeling off their bodies. Rather, imagine what happens to the student body at a big university. The booze and pot are all gone, now it's just nuclear winter. This chapter will be absolute rock-bottom. We could use a few scene and location suggestions.

Then comes the Battle of Prudhoe Bay, tapping the great North Slope oil and natural gas fields, and building the pipeline down to Valdez. That ought to get us to 40,000 by the end of May.

Saturday Updates

We had a catastrophic formatting meltdown of the Three Seas manuscript this week and had to start the formatting over. We are still not 100% satisfied with the hard copy. We're not sure if we'll ever be. 

This weekend we will finish the final read-through, the editing and the checking of the edits.

We are absolutely numb to this book. Does it suck? We can't tell anymore.

No matter what, World War 1990: Battle of the Three Seas comes out on May Day. 

So long as the ideas keep coming for The Great Nuclear War of 1975...

[He has a title. Oh, fuck no....-Ed]

...Oh fuck yes. So long as the ideas keep coming, we'll keep writing. Working on some vignettes about the winter.

This does not change our plan to work on The Final Storm in April.

Op-Plan April:2020. It's Nederlanse month. We are confident we can complete the rough draft by May Day. Commie bastards. We'll need to give the naval chapter a good once over. No luck on finding other Dutchmen to read this thing.

Castro Research

This showed up on my FB timeline this morning:

For some reason Castro's Folly just worked.

Of course if we were writing Castro's Folly today it would be two or three novels.

The Nicaraguan stuff will be dealt with in some way, at some point. The Drive on Managua.

Will's Good Idea for the Week of 2/9/20

We thought that instead of trying to sneak in and finish Pershing's War this summer we should just write a couple of short stories for the compilation. Then we thought maybe we could turn The New World: All it's Power and Might into a short story. It's not a one off novel. It's either a short story or a trilogy, at least. Then we thought maybe a story compilation for that universe.

Our Italian consultant openly mocked us. Sure, just a short story, which is how Nederlandse started. Within week it's be a trilogy with a couple of novels dealing with side issues.

How many World War 1990 novels have we written? Almost seven. How many more are in the works? At least four.

JFC.

By the way, just as soon was we're done with Nederlandse we start The Final Storm.

The Orange and the Red

In response to our question about writing the Big Dutch Armoured Battle, this blog's Confederate contingent suggested a Soviet character.

Great idea, actually. We haven't done that in Nederlandse yet, so this will give the novel some differentiation.

Meet General Gydan, Russian-Asian* commander of a Soviet armored regiment. He'll be tasked with exploiting his division's breakthrough.

*Pro tip, don't google that term at work.

Dutch Slashed Up

We are almost done writing the Klazienaveen chapter, which is not the same as being done with the Klazienaveen chapter.

We may have to cut-nay slash, a few subplots. We'd really like to be done. Let's see how man words we're talking about here?... Whoa!.. 19,000 + words.

[Christ almighty you've got the foundations of...]

Don't say it Ed.

[I won't, I won't-Ed]

Ok. Cops wake up and get briefed. Cops patrol town. Cops deal with various and sundry issues arising form patrolling town. Cops get called to border to help border guard. Cops battle refugees and protestors. Cops go back once they realize Soviet paras drop on town. Cops sit around wondering what to do. Cops decide they have to retake town. Cops fight for town.

At some point you have you have to say, 'There. I said it!'

Three Seas, two looks

Well thanks for taking a look folks.

Things are just about as good as we can make them right now.

We still haven't looked at The Battle of the Barents Sea, either the air, surface or submarine aspects, so we have no idea what to expect at the end of the month - which will be the first chance we have to take a look.

This fall we'll wrap up World War 1990: NL and Pershing's War 1919. After that, we'll see about 2020.

America Strikes?

7-26-19 in New Jersey

Over at News12NJ, a tour of New York City's Harbor Defenses.

The tour runs up the Hudson River past Fort Washington, lost in 1776 to a bloody British assault, and Fort Lee, hastily and wisely evacuated by General Washington after the loss of the former. From there the tour goes way up river to West Point.

We grew up half an hour or so away from the academy. Every year our school went on a tour of the place. Our elementary school was Furnace Woods, so named because the chain stretched across the Hudson during the Revolutionary War was smelted in the woods around the school. Furnace Woods Elementary lies on Watch Hill Road, so named....well reader(s) will get the idea. Well into the 20th century, we were told by the district's old bus drivers, people dug up Revolutionary War relics at old Continental redoubts on Charles Point and Indian Point.

Anyway, if reader(s) want to visualize the defenses smashed by the Royal Navy in Palmerston's Ironclads, there they are.

Nuke This

So we've watched HBO's Chernobyl twice, read a history book on same, and written a review (pending acceptance) for a Ruski news site.

[Colluding? - Ed]

Hey, we might get some new fans. Can't be anyworse than working for CNN, which I also did.

[Yeah, 20 years ago.-Ed]

You could say we're really into this Chernobyl thing...comrades.

We've learned a lot about the Soviet Union too.

In writing World War 1990, we've really underestimated the Soviet willingness, and frankly, assumption, that they would fight World War Three as a nuclear war.

Oh well. 

That's just not the direction we wanted to go. But this does give us some ideas for The Final Storm. We might back reference Thatcher saying, 'If the Soviets use tactical nukes in Europe our very first retaliatory move will be to nuke Moscow.' She already said something similar in Eastern Storm.

[Hey! Before you talk about The Final Storm, how's about getting Three Seas out there?-Ed]

We are afraid to open that doc. So afraid.

Three Seas, Three Days, Three Scenes

We went through The Battle of the Barents Sea again and it's looking better and better.

We discussed with some of you the value of adding another POV and think we'll do so.*

MacGregor asked about non-NATO contributions to TF 60, which is an intriguing idea. The South Americans are certainly worried about Brazil's place in the post war world. Might it be worth sending along a destroyer or two? It's not that far fetched. Both Chile and Argentina contributed to the Cuba blockade in '62.

The Argentina sub-plot writes itself.

We might just bring back USS Stirling.

*Over to you, Harris.

Saturday Updates

Those in Peril is out and is #1 in its category.

Otherwise just an awful week writing wise.

Ok it wasn't that awful. We more or less got things sorted out.

World War 1990:NL is 30,000 words.

We've added some characters and scenes to The Battle of the Barents Sea. This still feels like a slog, though.

In the meantime:

World War 1990: Battle of the Three Seas

World War 1990: Battle of the Three Seas is at 45,000 words with the battles of the three seas more or less done.

We need about 15,000 words to get us to our preferred novel length.

So yesterday we thought....hmmmm do we recombine? Heh. We could, but no.

Adding coup efforts and the final aerial attack would just muddle things up, confuse the reader.

In short, there'd be too much going on. 

We're going to keep things as is and see what we can add related to the battles of the three seas.

Feel free to chime in.

Alt-Hist-Ken

We'll, we're commemorating the hundredth anniversary of President Kennedy's birth. He's only a hundred? Jeez it feels like he's been around a lot longer than that.

Kennedy was already a legend by the time we became aware of the man with the 20th anniversary of his assassination in 1983.

Many have wondered what would have transpired had Kennedy lived. We've heard some very absurd claims, from no Vietnam War to an early end to the Cold War. Neither one of these ideas makes any sense to anyone who knows anything about either conflict.

For my money, if Kennedy lives very little changes. He defeats Goldwater in '64, although not by Johnson's margin. From then on its full-60's away. All those forces that brought Johnson low were already at work before Kennedy was assassinated. And the Vietnam War? Well, all the people who were giving Johnson bad advice - Clifford, Taylor, McNamara - were already giving Kennedy bad advice.

By 1968 we're left with the same bitter, divided, exhausted country. We suppose Johnson would have run, but doubt he'd have gotten very far. Most likely we'd have seen a showdown between the old time Dems, represented by Humphrey, and the new anti-war Dems represented by McCarthy. Not only are they frustrated with the war, they're frustrated with Kennedy's slow pace of change. These folks have no use for Humphrey. We think McCarthy wins.  On the GOP side Nixon's still the one and can plausibly run on a campaign slogan of 'I told you so'. He handily defeats McCarthy.

Maybe having won a convincing victory in '68 Nixon doesn't feel he has to worry about '72. Or, given Tricky Dick's personality quirks, does nothing change?