Green Lantern–The Movie

 

Yes, I know I’m a bit behind the times. I never go to the cinema without my fiancé, but today I borrowed a DVD.

I never liked Hal Jordon. The movie manages to remind me why I don’t like him. Hal comes across as a bit of a jerk in the first few segments, although he does grow up pretty quickly with the end of everything bearing down on him.

But that’s just me. Back when I was younger, DC had Hal become weighed down by the loss of Coast City, steal a great deal of power from the Guardians, attempt to reshape reality itself in the hope of making a better world, die saving Earth and be resurrected as the Spectre. It was the only time I really liked Hal, but the Hal-Spectre series was trash and pretty quickly it was all ret-conned away. But I liked Kyle and Guy. They’re both flawed characters and far more interesting than Hal.

There are some cool special effects in this movie. And I liked the training scene when Hal is put through his paces by the corps. But...

First, the fear-entity is not one of the best enemies in the Green Lantern universe. It certainly isn't one that can be depicted on screen very well. There is a certain link between Fear and Will – Will overcomes Fear, logically Hal should have won by overcoming his fear. Instead, he dumps the fear-entity into the sun. Will that actually kill the entity?

Second, I rather liked the portrait of Sinestro, but the movie lost a chance to shine when Sinestro chose not to put on the yellow ring (at least at first). It could have made Sinestro into a tragic villain, corrupted by fear and I expected him to be the main enemy. But instead they stuck with the fear-entity. A bad choice, IMHO.

Third, the lanterns are supposed to be able to create anything they can imagine, right? Well, why don’t they? There are some cool special effects, but nothing really spectacular. Why not?

Overall? Don’t pay full price for this movie.

Himmler’s War - Robert Conroy

 

Writing alternate history (and period fiction) is a tricky task. There is always the temptation to bend details for the sake of a good story – and then there will be some humourless reader who will then write long posts on why it couldn't happen the way you suggested. I tend to judge the book on both its merits as a piece of alternate history and the writer’s skill in telling a story. A world where Hitler successfully invaded Britain might be implausible, but that doesn't mean that someone can't write a good story set in such a world.

Himmler’s War takes a look at what the world might have looked like if someone more rational than Hitler had been in control of Germany during the crucial years of 1944. A bombing run by an American bomber kills Hitler just after D-Day begins. Calling Himmler more rational than Hitler is rather tricky – but at least Himmler has the sense to actually listen to his generals. A few pages into the book and the story hangs together rather well. Conroy does a reasonable job with a vast cast of characters, showing their reactions to the war – and how they might react when confronted with different possibilities. One weakness shows itself clearly, here – many of his characters are very similar to his other characters from earlier books.

One character who does stand out is Harry Truman, who asserts himself in a manner that is quite historical. The situation in the US that makes it necessary, however, is a little harder to follow. FDR was certainly weaker than the American public knew at the time, but he wasn't senile.

Unfortunately, I find it difficult to follow the logic behind the course the war follows. Himmler would probably allow the German generals to run the war the way they wanted to run it – and yes, this would certainly cause huge problems for the Allies. It is quite likely that an increase in German production earlier than historically would make it more likely that the Germans would bleed the allies badly. However, there is little logic in the Soviets accepting a truce with Germany – let alone shipping hundreds of tanks to the Nazis. Stalin might well have accepted a truce with the Germans – a period of six months for the Red Army to catch its breath would have been very helpful – but I can't see him helping the Germans. The Red Army needed the supplies it was getting from the West and deliberately betraying the Allies would have been disastrous.

The problems get worse as the story continues. Historically, the German nuclear program was unable to produce a bomb. The idea that they can jump to building a working device – and then slipping it to Moscow to blow up Stalin – is implausible, to say the least. Conroy hand-waves desperately here, assuming that we won’t notice. At the end of the story, it seems that the West has managed to take all of Germany – with the Poles still under Russian domination. Quite why the Russians fell apart so quickly is beyond me. A case could be made that Moscow falling in 1942 would have crippled the USSR, but the situation was different in 1944.

There’s also the issue of international politics. It is true that both Britain and France had reservations about fighting to the bitter end. However, it is unlikely that either of them would have resorted to considering deals with Himmler. The French Communists might have risen against the Free French on Moscow’s command, but frankly I’m not convinced that that would have won them any friends.

Assuming that the POD works, what is likely to happen? The chances are that the Germans would certainly manage to stall the Allies for much longer, but their ability to take the offensive would be very limited. Why? The Allies (mainly the USAAF, but the RAF as well) had overwhelming air superiority. They could (and did) hammer the Germans from the air, despite German jet fighters that were (in theory) superior to anything the Allies had. (The Germans might have done better if they’d diverted resources to more propeller aircraft than jet fighters.) However, the war would have ended only a few months after OTL.

Why? Unlike the German program, the American nuclear program produced a working nuclear bomb. If Germany had held out a few months longer, the US would have started dropping atomic bombs on Germany. I assume that the German generals would have been smart enough to overthrow Himmler’s regime and surrender to the West. That would have opened up a whole new can of worms – a fitting place for a story.

The plotline of this story is familiar. It is very like Fox on the Line and Fox at the Front, which – IMHO – explored the possibilities far better. Overall, Himmler’s War is worth one read, if you can put your doubts aside. But it doesn't deserve more than that. The author’s 1901 was a much better read.

A War of Choice: The British War In Iraq - Jack Fairweather

 

Let us admit it freely, as a civilised people should,

We have had no end of a lesson, which will do us no end of good.

So wrote a poet whose works are no longer studied in British schools, about a war that is now regarded as rather embarrassing. History teaches many lessons, but the main lesson it teaches is that those who refuse to learn from the past have to pay a price for the lessons in the future. Britain’s involvement in Iraq had a whole wealth of history to draw upon, with useful lessons that could have been used to ensure that the British covered themselves in glory during the occupation of Southern Iraq. But those lessons went unheeded and Britain’s involvement in the occupation became a disaster. Our American cousins learned from their screw-ups and managed to pull victory – of a sort – from the crushing jaws of a largely self-inflicted defeat. It pains me to admit that the British Government, Civil Service and Military proved unwilling to adapt to the situation on the ground in 2003. Our involvement in Iraq was a defeat fully comparable to the disaster at Singapore, in 1941. The long term consequences of the defeat may be just as disastrous.

A War of Choice is not the only overall look at the campaign in Basra and the collapse of British power. I have previously reviewed Ministry of Defeat, which presented a very bitter picture of the situation on the ground. This new book, however, has the insight granted by new sources that came into existence since the previous book. As such, it is a bitter pill to swallow, but one that must be read by all British citizens.

Britain’s involvement in modern-day Iraq stemmed from somewhat murky origins, but was primarily due to Prime Minister Tony Blair’s discovery that humanitarian missions (such as the stunning success in Sierra Leone) could be carried out by the British military. Blair, despite being a Labour PM, enjoys the record for committing modern British forces to war, with deployments to Bosnia, Afghanistan and even Iraq. His thinking tallied neatly with that of President Bush, who believed (correctly) that the sources of terrorism had to be dealt with overseas to prevent them coming home. Bush and Blair were unlikely partners, but Blair – desperate for British involvement and influence – effectively wrote his American partner a blank check. This had two major effects on the British war; the first was that concerns about the lack of post-war planning were ignored while the second – absurdly – was that the MOD was prohibited from buying supplies as it would cause political problems for Blair. This screw-up cost lives through bad or insufficient equipment.

No one (British or Iraqi) appeared to have genuinely believed that the US had no post-war plan. What little planning was done was utterly insufficient and largely based on wishful thinking. (This led to a bitter moment when Iraqis came to believe that the US wanted the post-war chaos.) While this was mainly an American fuck-up – and I use the term quite deliberately – Blair missed an opportunity to do the US a vast favour, or at least keep British forces out of the chaos. But it was not to be.

The decision to put British forces in Basra came fairly late during the planning for the war (originally, the UK would have invaded through Turkey, but the Turks torpedoed that plan.) While the capture of Basra was a well-executed campaign, the post-war occupation was poorly managed from the beginning. The forces assigned to hold Basra were utterly insufficient for the task at hand (at least partly because no one seemed to take a serious look at the requirements before the invasion) and the task of reconstructing the city faltered as the Coalition authority ordered that all Bathists were to be removed from office. As everyone who wanted to work in Iraq had to be a member of the party, this decision pushed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis out of work. It is clear that both American and British officers on the ground opposed this decision, but it was handed down regardless. This – again – was an American decision, yet Blair was in a position to countermand it in Basra. The opportunity to prevent chaos in the South was lost almost before anyone realised that it existed.

There are only two ways to win an insurgency. The first involves winning hearts and minds by providing security, opportunity and – eventually – a peaceful transfer of power. Malaysia, where a communist insurgency threatened to overwhelm the British-backed government, was a victory for the British military, which was able to win the hearts and minds of the population. The second way to win is effectively genocide. Saddam had crushed opposition in Basra’s living memory, while the USSR and the Turks had committed genocide to prevent future challenges to their rule. While the British military could look back on a long and generally successful series of counter-insurgency campaigns, the institutional memory of the army had lost the skills it required to conduct such a campaign and the political environment has changed beyond recognition. Put bluntly, the occupation force in Basra was not strong enough to either provide security or crush all opposition.

Why did Basra seem peaceful for so long? One response is obvious – it wasn’t. A second response is that power slipped, largely unnoticed, into the Shia militias. The UK simply couldn't provide anything like the resources required to protect the Iraqis who were willing to work with the Coalition, which meant that the Iraqi Police (for example) were either intimidated into submission or actually ‘semi-legal’ arms of the militias. The British forces on the ground had little appreciation of the scale of this problem, often stamping on Iraqi toes in the process – and therefore making a difficult job almost impossible.

To complicate matters still further, the Iraqi Government (backed by the Americans and heavily dominated by the Shia) had extensive ties with Shia militias in Basra. Known insurgent leaders were off-limits to British forces and extensive pressure was applied to prevent the occupation force from pushing an offensive to a successful conclusion. Promising operations against the Mahdi Army were called off, resulting in tactical successes, but strategic defeats. A rather jaded American CO once remarked that the Iraqis lost all the battles and won all the negotiations. He was talking about Fallujah, but he could just have easily been talking about Basra.

The curious factor about President Bush was that he had the vices of his virtues. He was loyal to his subordinates, even when they should have been unceremoniously sacked. Rumsfeld was able to remain in office despite bearing primary responsibility for extremely poor decisions that cost American lives. Blair, on the other hand, had little loyalty to his followers, but chose to avoid confronting the Iraq question directly, with the result that British policy drifted rather than being refocused. Bush learned from his mistakes; Blair chose to try to sweep them under the carpet. Blair was luckier than he deserved; I have little doubt that if he had been in opposition at the time, he would have been the leading antiwar speaker. Bush had principles; Blair showed none.

Blair was not the only British official who made serious errors of judgement. The military leadership at the MOD comes in for much-deserved bashing; Britain’s military leadership accepted commitments that the UK couldn't handle. In effect, the UK was fighting a war on two fronts – Iraq and Afghanistan – and was doing it with the results of years of poor procurement decisions, with the result that military kit was either unsuitable, or only available in insufficient numbers. Sometimes the results were farce. At other times, they were tragic.

Listing all the mistakes made by British forces in Iraq would take an entire book. I can only provide an overview. First, as noted above, the forces and equipment were simply insufficient for the task at hand. Second, clumsy decisions by people with little awareness of local realities were allowed to impede operations on the ground. Third, there were insufficient aid funds available for development projects in Basra that might have provided a source of employment (some elements of the British international aid program refused to cooperate, a decision that should be considered treason). Fourth, the command and control system in Iraq was hopelessly complicated. Fifth, there were far too few interpreters and a lack of resources to protect the lives and families of Iraqis who were willing to aid the Coalition forces. Sixth, British military units arrived without local knowledge and were rotated out by the time they had a grip on what was going on, a process that was endlessly repeated – forcing the same lessons to be learned and learned again. Seventh, and most disastrously, there was zero political will to come to grips with the problems and actually fix them. Domestic policy was driving military decisions. (This was an American problem as well, but the Americans had far greater resources to deploy to Iraq.) Pitt, Churchill and Thatcher would be turning in their graves.

The final years of the occupation starkly underlined the results of years of failure. Basra was effectively abandoned to the militias, who imposed their own version of Islamic Law on the population – at the same time as the Americans were turning the remainder of Iraq around. It was not a British operation, but an Iraqi-led offensive that broke (for a while, at least) the power of the militias. Blair and Brown claimed that Iraq had been a success. One wonders just what world they were living in. Whoever actually won the war, it wasn't the UK.

But the core problem, I feel, is one that has taken root in the West since the end of the Cold War. Military operations, we are told, are to be short, casualty-free (both friendly and enemy) and perfect. This is, put bluntly, nonsense. War is, by nature, a chancy process at the best of times, and deaths and defeats have to be expected. No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy. There will be reverses, but a reverse does not mean that the war is lost. I shudder to think how the modern media would have reported Pearl Harbour, or Dunkirk, or even D-Day. The Japanese expansion into Asia would have been portrayed as an unstoppable juggernaut; no doubt the New York Times would have been insisting that the United States should surrender at once.

We have grown used to instant gratification. And yet we forget why we can enjoy a lifestyle that our ancestors would have regarded as heavenly.

The perception exists, rightly or wrongly, that a handful of casualties will make the West back off. The ultimate legacy of Blair’s war in Iraq will be measured in more casualties among British servicemen, men and women who will die when attacked because the military reputation of Britain has been shattered. I highly doubt that we could win a second Falklands War – an event that has been made more likely by recent remarks made by Hilary Clinton.

This book really should have been called Blair’s Betrayal. Blair betrayed the men he sent to war. The gallantry and incredible bravery of British soldiers was squandered by a man who knew nothing of war, history or the limitations of power, a man who wasn’t even savvy enough to extract anything for Britain from the disaster. He lives the high life, even now, while ex-soldiers have to eke out a life in a Britain that doesn't care. That will be his legacy – that of a knave and a fool.

Read this book. And don’t forget to ask Blair why he failed so badly if you ever meet him.

Invasion–Eric L. Harry

 

If you approach this book with any understanding of geopolitics, logistics, military technology and simple common sense, you will hit a point very quickly where you will have to declaim – loudly – that it simply couldn't happen like that. Harry’s novel is almost unique as it postulates a near-future (it was written pre-9/11) invasion of the Continental United States by China – a super-China that has invaded Japan, India, Australia, much of the Middle East and finally expanded into Cuba. Along the way, it has developed a working ABM system that has crippled orbital reconnaissance, given a very nasty bloody nose to the European Union, used nuclear weapons to crush Israel and just kept going. Suffice it to say that the logistical problems in invading the United States are monstrous even without the presence of American submarines and even the Chinese do not have the manpower to fight such a conventional war, a problem made worse by the decision to launch an invasion of Northern Florida rather than advancing up from Mexico. It simply could not have happened like that.

Reading more carefully, it is clear that Harry stacked the odds in favour of the Chinese. The United States spent eight years under a Democratic President who resisted all calls for intervention against China. Indeed, the US may be more advanced than the Chinese, but the Chinese have a massive superiority in numbers. This hypothetical President allowed the Chinese to take the Middle East without objecting, something that would do immense harm to the American economy. His replacement, an ex-movie star who reassembles Reagan, has to play with a very weak hand. America has lost control of the seas and the Chinese are coming.

Putting that aside – if you can – Invasion isn’t actually that bad a read, although some of it is suspiciously contrived. The American President’s daughter is an infantrywoman who fights to slow down the Chinese advance. (There are some remarkable insights into woman in the field.) Her mother had a relationship with one of the Chinese diplomats and her aunt had a child with the Chinese diplomat, a child who fights on the side of the Chinese Army. The American President’s lover is a spy for a group of coup-plotters in America, who believe that the time to go nuclear is now. Untangling the network of relationships and betrayals is a complex and difficult task.

Overall, Invasion is light entertainment – little else. If you can get over the impossible situation displayed in the book, you’ll enjoy it. It isn't, however, a conclusive story. I have a feeling that the author intended to write a sequel and never got around to it.

Three out of five.

The Eleventh Day: The Ultimate Account of 9/11

 

Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan

It is a commonplace problem, put bluntly, that hindsight is always clearer than foresight. This tends to lead to books and articles that claim that something was predicable and the people on the spot were stupid (or deliberately made mistakes) prior to the disaster. As attitudes go, it is far from helpful. The person on the spot will not view a future event as inevitable – and lacks the benefit of hindsight.

It is nearly a decade since 9/11, the day when the world changed once again, tossing our Western Civilisation into uncharted waters. 9/11 brought into plain view the ‘new world disorder,’ the Western existential crisis, the fallacies of Cold War-era thinking and the growing threat of Islamic terrorism. Nothing will ever been quite the same; to paraphrase someone I’ve forgotten, things aren’t what they used to be – but then they never were.

The Eleventh Day starts by recounting everything that took place on 9/11, starting with the terrorists boarding the planes and running through the confusion and shock that prevailed as air traffic controllers, the government and even the military struggled to cope with the chaos. The book pulls no punches in detailing how badly those in charge coped, making mistakes and errors that almost certainly cost lives. It then moves on to the desperate struggle to save people from the Twin Towers.

It rapidly dismisses most of the conspiracy theories centred around 9/11. The idea that ‘Bush did it,’ or ‘Bush let it happen’ has been prevalent, as have theories wondering if the Twin Towers were actually hit by missiles or some other form of covert operation, perhaps including explosives previously placed in the towers by military or intelligence-service engineers. The theories mostly don’t stand up to scrutiny, although it is possible to wonder if the CIA didn’t tell the FBI about the terrorists because the CIA intended to recruit them and may not have realised that they were on a strike mission. As always, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and little has been presented.

The book then moves on to discus the intelligence failures that allowed the terrorists to get into position and strike without being intercepted. There were very definitely heart-breaking moments when the plot could have been stopped, but most of them became clear only with the benefit of hindsight. Certainly, no one could have reasonably connected the death of a prominent anti-Taliban fighter with a terrorist plot in New York. Part of the problem is that intelligence agencies soak in a great deal of crap – lies, nonsense and miscommunications – every day. Valid leads can sometimes be lost in the white noise.

A further problem lay in the political-legal framework established since the end of the Cold War. Congress loaded restrictions on the CIA that barred it, for example, from recruiting known terrorists (precisely how much notice the CIA paid to this instruction is a matter of conjecture). Furthermore, the FBI agents were concerned about following up tips about Middle Eastern men studying aircraft piloting for fear of being accused of racial profiling. The fact remains that the vast majority of suspects who might have been recruited by AQ are generally – publicly, at least – practicing Muslims. It is a fact that it is politically unacceptable to admit.

This was quite bad enough, but it got worse. AQ is/was a more trans-national organisation than most NGOs and corporations. It quite simply didn’t fit in with the terrorist groups of the Cold War; the IRA, for example, was focused on Ireland. The British didn’t have to invade Ireland to win the war; they already controlled Northern Ireland. It was possible to limit AQ’s dependence on other states, but it was never controlled by a single state or even based in a single state. And the one state that could be regarded as a base – Afghanistan – was so poorly governed that even if the Taliban had wanted to hand OBL over, they might not have been able to do it.

Pre-9/11, our networks and precedents were not set up to cope with anything like AQ. It was extremely difficult to track, let alone destroy. And even if we did, there was zero legal precedent to deal with them – unless we counted them as spies, who could be legally shot.

Finally, the book raises a disquieting question that has been largely buried since the attacks. Was a foreign government involved in 9/11? The book focuses on Saudi Arabia in particular, noting that the Saudis never cooperated with the US on tracking terrorism and were unprepared to stop their citizens donating money to terrorists until the terrorists came home in 2004. Given the strange nature of the Saudi Government, it is quite possible that the Saudis did fund AQ, if only to keep their own heads on their shoulders. And there was a great deal of jubilation in Saudi Arabia over 9/11.

Bush is roundly condemned for not focusing on this. The authors do not ask if he could actually have done anything. Saudi Arabia is the largest oil producer in the world. An American invasion of Saudi Arabia would cause a massive global oil shock. In that light, Bush’s decision to invade Iraq makes a great deal of sense; if Iraqi oil came online in great quantities, Saudi Arabia would be far less influential. The US would then be able to deal with it at leisure. Of course, accepting this means accepting that Bush wasn’t actually an idiot.

Overall, The Eleventh Day adds a great deal to our knowledge of 9/11, as well as usefully compiling already-known knowledge and dismissing numerous absurd theories. I doubt, however, if it is truly the final account of 9/11. Much remains to be discovered that may shed new light on the most tragic day of modern history.

Alien Invasion: How to Defend Earth - Travis S. Taylor and Bob Boan

 

One thing that has always struck me about much of the scientific community (particularly the SETI community) is that they place a surprising amount of faith in alien benevolence. The concept, expounded by the late Carl Sagan among others, assumes that any alien race advanced enough to cross the gulf of space between their homeworld and Earth will have developed socially to the point where they will not pose a threat to the puny inhabitants of Earth. Like most assumptions, it is not based on any actual fact. There is no reason to assume either alien benevolence or hostility.

Even if ET doesn’t intend us direct harm, contact with him may have harmful effects on our own society. What if ET starts shipping in advanced technology so far beyond what we can produce that we literally cannot understand or duplicate it? We would – like the American Indians – become dependent upon outsiders to supply us with what we needed. What if ET ‘proved’ that God doesn’t exist, or that communism could actually work if we tried? Or, just like a charitable NGO, unaccountable to the people it aims to help, ET tried meddling in our society for our own good? You don’t need bad intentions to do a great deal of harm.

This book is written from a more pessimistic point of view. If aliens exist, they may be dangerous; they may be unrelentingly hostile, bent on conquest, or maybe they would just regard us as competition – not evil, in any human sense, but still extremely dangerous. It is a point of view anthemia to SETI.

I should note one point before we begin the formal review. This book is actually an updated version of An Introduction to Planetary Defence, written by the same authors in 2006. Although the book was very interesting, it suffered from a number of production (as opposed to content) flaws; it was expensive, didn’t offer value for money (I’d expect a hardback at the very least) and had a number of spelling and grammar mistakes. The electronic version was PDF-only, fitted with a password and DRM, awkward to use. This version, updated, is cheaper, with a blessed DRM-free electronic version.

This is one of many curious oversights. I disagree quite strongly with the idea of benevolent aliens coming to help us, yet Carl Sagan has been much more successful at promoting his ideas. The rather tedious Contact was mass-produced as a cheap paperback novel, with the result that people were less inclined to write dire reviews of it once they’d read it.

One of the problems with considering alien invasion in general (apart from the snigger-factor) is that all of our knowledge of aliens is purely theoretical. On the other hand, we can say some pretty definite things about aliens we might actually happen to encounter in the next 50 years. Barring a revolutionary development in drive technology (as suggested in Travis Taylor’s Warp Speed) the aliens will encounter us, not the other way around. They will logically be able to cross interstellar space and secure control over the high orbitals (Earth orbit). Even a race with an equal level of technology to our own – but driven by a determination to get into space – will be able to take the high orbitals.

The first chapter of the book discusses the probabilities of aliens existing and alien encounters, covering such fixed ideas as the Drake Equation and the Fermi Paradox. The authors provide a valuable discussion of both concepts, although they spend a considerable amount of time dismantling the latter. In my opinion, both are largely worthless – if only because we have no data. It would have been far simpler to note that there are hundreds of stars like Sol (the sun) within the Milky Way Galaxy – and the only one we have studied closely did produce an intelligent race, humanity. Simple extrapolation tells us that there could be many alien races near us.

Of course, we have very limited technical data on what is and isn’t possible. Based on human experience, societies can rise and stagnate (like Imperial China), before being replaced by another society. If Europe had been dominated by a single power when Columbus proposed his voyage of exploration to the Indies (and ran into America) it is quite possible that he would never have been permitted to sail. The breakthrough that became the industrial revolution might never have happened. Generally speaking, a hypothetical alien race would have to develop intelligence, develop technology, survive its technology (i.e. without nuclear war, blowing itself back into the Stone Age), reach into space and start crossing the interstellar gulf before it encountered us. That’s quite a few bottlenecks they’d have to surmount. What that does tend to imply is if they succeeded, they might be a powerful and aggressive race – just like the Europeans who arrived in the Americas.

One point the authors do make that puzzles the hell out of me is an assertion that the laws of physics may be different in other parts of the universe. (Chapter 1.6). If I understand it correctly, the laws will be identical everywhere (unless we postulate an encounter with an entirely different dimension with different physical laws). ET may well be more advanced than us, but his technology should be understandable, at least once we work out how it works. I don’t think that alien technology would be incompatible with our atmosphere.

It does raise the issue of what there might be to fight over if the aliens were genuinely alien. What if the aliens live in gas giants? Earth would be useless to them, except perhaps as a source of raw materials – and they could get those much more efficiently by mining the asteroids. We and the Jupiter-aliens would be ships that pass in the night. We might not even be able to communicate.

The chapter goes on to note that humans aren’t particularly good at preparing for a new threat. This is unfortunately true, although it reads oddly when compared to later statements regarding secrecy and classification. We need a threat to be present before we react to it. NATO is a good example of this; it was formed to withstand Russian threats to Europe. When we don’t see a threat coming, the results – as on 9/11 – can be disastrous. We are currently broadcasting our existence to the rest of the universe. Is that really such a good idea?

Even so, I seriously doubt that we could have a global ban on radio transmissions. It would be politically unacceptable.

Chapter Two discusses the human approach to war and how it might be shaped to face an alien invasion. A great deal of the material here is interesting, although it suffers from MEGO (My Eyes Glaze Over). This isn’t a section for someone who isn’t prepared to think hard about the material. In some ways, reading a good alien invasion novel – Footfall, for example – would provide a more usable primer in the use of space in dominating the Earth. The authors are entirely correct to suggest that we should have a plan for meeting the aliens. However, such a plan would have to be very generalised. We won’t know what’s coming until we meet it.

A problem that does appear is that the book discusses next-generation technologies like armoured combat suits (mecha) and orbital weapons. They do not exist at the moment, at least not in a workable form. What do we do if the aliens arrive tomorrow? Rumsfield’s doctrine – you go to war with the army you have, not the army you want – applies here, far more than anywhere else.

Chapter Three discusses alien motives – why would they want to invade Earth? Many of the reasons are drawn using pop culture examples, which is actually a very good idea. It helps put faces on abstract possibilities. Mind you, what if we did run into ‘Q’ (Star Trek)? Star Trek fans have endlessly debated Q’s actions in ‘Q Who.’ If Q hadn’t thrown the Enterprise into the path of the Borg, the Federation would have been unprepared for their arrival. Q handed out a painful lesson that was, ultimately, for humanity’s own good. What might Q-like aliens decree for us in the future?

This chapter can be fascinating, although in some respects it is let down by the examples cited. The Transformers universe can be great fun, but it isn’t particularly realistic.

Chapter Four is difficult to review, if only because I disagree quite heavily with the authors. The authors assert that there is no ‘need to know’ about an alien threat and cite Heinlein’s dictum that a ‘secret weapon must remain secret.’ The problem is that both examples – they include one from Independence Day as well – cut in different directions.

In The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress the rebels have a secret weapon – the super-intelligent computer that runs the lunar colony is on their side. The Professor (one of the leaders) states that Mycroft Holmes (the computer) must remain a secret, an advantage that the main baddie, the Warden, doesn’t know about. He is, from his point of view, quite right. Losing that advantage will make the rebellion a great deal harder.

The problem is that we, in the event of an alien encounter, will be playing the Warden.

Think about it. The Warden’s job is to suppress dissent and keep the colony working for Earth. He has an absolute ‘need to know’ about Mycroft Holmes; from his point of view, it’s a weapon in the hands of the enemy. Removing the computer will make his job easier; he has to find out about Mycroft.

The main advantage the aliens have, right now, is that no one knows they are coming. If they lose a UFO somewhere over CONUS, that secret is blown – we will know that there is a new threat, one that we need to prepare for, now. Except – if the authors of this book have their way, the secret will remain secret. There will be no warning.

Let’s assume that the aliens are hostile and intelligent. They know they’ve lost a craft. They may know where it is – they are unlikely to assume that it was destroyed beyond recognition. Their secret is out – how will they react? As I see it, they can bring the invasion plan forward and hit us before we can mobilise, they can back off and retreat into interstellar space, they can attempt to communicate with us – or they can continue with their original plan. But which one will they choose? And what was their original plan, anyway? We don’t know.

If we keep the UFO crash a secret, we are effectively preserving the alien secret and making it impossible for the rest of humanity to get ready before the aliens arrive. An American would call that treason, the rest of the world would call it a crime against humanity – and they’d be right. We are not talking about hiding a US-built secret weapon; we are talking about hiding the existence of an unknown enemy.

Let’s consider the argument from a different point of view. The latest Russian mobile radar/SAM launcher is supposed to be able to track stealth aircraft. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that it can provide perfect tracking of an F-22/F-117. And the Russians supply a few dozen of them to Iran. More through luck than skill, the CIA discovers this – and says nothing. When war starts with Iran in 2014 (or whenever) the early stage of the air campaign is an absolute disaster. Forty US stealth aircraft are shot out of the sky. What – exactly – do you think that the President, Congress, the Senate and the American public would say about the CIA when the truth came out? They’d be branding the CIA as traitors. They kept the enemy’s secret weapon a secret!

Independence Day actually illustrates this point quite nicely. The UFO crashed in 1947. If we assume that the invasion took place in 2000, the US had a priceless advantage and squandered it. The bare fact that there was an alien race out there would galvanise the space race and start generating weapons that could be used when the aliens finally show up. FIFTY YEARS of lead time was WASTED. If the example used in this book is accurate – the aliens, travelling near the speed of light, would only experience a few months while we experienced fifty years – they wouldn't even have a chance to realise that something had gone wrong!

There is a vast difference between a secret weapon and a secret enemy. Can you imagine the US undertaking the build-up it did for the Cold War if the USSR didn’t exist? Or if the US Government constantly assured the population that the USSR didn’t exist, or was of no defence significance? Now, if the US did build a secret weapon to use against the aliens, that does need to be kept a secret (unless it might deter the aliens from attacking) – but keeping the aliens a secret is doing their work for them.

I disagree with the authors, almost completely. If there is an alien threat, the entire world has an absolute ‘need-to-know.’ Why? Because we would not be caught unawares when the aliens arrived. Military reserves would be called up, aircraft would be distributed around the various countries, civil defence precautions could be implemented, diplomatic teams would be prepared for contact, military alliances could be activated…hell, we’d look a great deal more intimidating to any alien threat if we were clearly ready for them.

There’s also the political issue. The aliens may well be playing from a sophisticated political and military playbook; we can hardly hope to run into rampaging berserkers. If it turned out that the US had warning of the aliens and didn’t provide any warning, NATO would shatter and the aliens would have ample opportunity to turn the world against the US. Alliances can stand a great many things, but they cannot stand outright betrayal – and that would be exactly what had happened.

The authors appear to believe that it is an all-or-nothing situation; full disclosure or complete secrecy. That isn’t necessary. There are certain details that no one outside government has a ‘need-to-know’. The location of the crashed ship should be classified, the exact level of success in understanding and duplicating alien technology should be classified, military plans to resist the invaders should be classified…

Chapter five discusses how we have handled alien contact in the past – or what passes for alien contact. The early parts of the chapter focus on the UFO craze, before blurring into generalised thoughts about alien encounters. I doubt that we could choose who shows up to say hello to planet Earth. Much of the advice is very good, although limited. A study of the Spanish invasion of Mexico and the lessons it offers for our preparations would not have gone amiss. What it doesn’t offer is a specialised plan; ET is coming, what do we do?

The final chapter discusses ways to prepare for alien encounter. The authors suggest that a ‘Sixth Column’ – a classified study and preparation program – be created to meet the possible threat. They point out, correctly, that lack of a prior plan can lead to disaster. However, many of the objections they raise to disclosure are somewhat disingenuous. For example, they assert that any sharing of technology would grant it to rogue nations. I doubt that that is possible, at least not within a meaningful timeframe. Having a complete set of plans for the F-22 would not allow North Korea to build its own. It took them decades to produce nukes.

Obviously, some manner of global cooperation is required. NATO has served well when it came to meeting threats that all its members agreed were threats. An alliance against an alien threat might reasonably include the G22 states, providing enough economic, political and military power to deter rogue nations from acting up. Why, you might ask, would the Chinese or Russians cooperate? Answer; they’re just as threatened by ET as everyone else.

One of the main problems with the Sixth Column’s position is funding. Developing advanced weapons in total secrecy is likely to cost a LOT of money. It’s hard enough to convince governments in these days of economic belt-tightening to pay for equipment to meet threats that are clearly seen; why would anyone expect the government to pour billons of dollars into a black project without it turning into a political football? And what if there is no clear proof of an alien threat? That is one good reason for disclosure – to frighten governments enough to get them to unlock the purse strings and push money into the military.

There are ways to make some preparations on a limited budget. Have biohazard teams (prepared for immediate deployment to a biological attack) trained to deal with a UFO crash. Have diplomatic teams study alien contact as a theoretical exercise. Have the laws and regulations governing commercial space travel abolished, allowing the covert development of a space force that might pass unnoticed. There are many others, which need careful thought.

I enjoyed reading this textbook, honestly. However, there are some curious oversights.

There is no serious literature review. OK, there hasn’t been an alien invasion and there are no serious studies of past invasions. However, there are a considerable number of novels published concerning alien invasion – and the authors barely touch upon this subject. They prefer to concentrate on movies and television shows. This isn’t a bad idea, in some respects, but it is very limited.

In my opinion (I have been reading SF since I was 7) there are three alien invasion novels that must be read by anyone seriously interested in the possibilities. The War of the Worlds (HG Wells), Footfall (Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle) and Operation Thunder Child (Nick Pope). The War of the Worlds was the first novel concerning alien invasion. Footfall was hard science-fiction, without any ‘magic’ technology. Operation Thunder Child touches upon government and military responses to alien encounter and invasion. These books are not mentioned by the authors, even though they are vitally important for any serious study of the genre.

Following on, there are many others. The Alien Years explores the problems in dealing with far more advanced aliens. A Matter for Men and its sequels consider an alien terraforming of Earth. The Kraken Wakes considers contact and war with aliens we never see, hiding within the ocean deeps. The Midwich Cuckoos considers the dangers of a very stealthy and insidious alien invasion. Even Out of the Dark offers useful thoughts on how alien invasion might play out.

A second oversight – potentially more serious – is that there isn’t much information that might be useful at once. What should a USAF officer do when confronted with a crashed UFO? He’d be better briefed if he read Operation Thunder Child. What should we do if we detect an alien mothership heading towards Earth? Footfall offers some helpful suggestions. This book should have included a provisional SOP for possible encounters.

I enjoyed reading this book. Ignore most of my quibbles; this book is a daring and worthwhile read. However, this book has its flaws – and we should not be blind to them. It could cost us…everything.

What lessons can we draw from the past?

• Unity is important. We must present a united front to the aliens. The Aztec Empire included subject nations that fought beside the Spanish, helping to overthrow the Aztecs.
• ET may play with a different political/diplomatic guidebook. Learn as fast as we can. We may end up having to accept their version of the law.
• Learn how to overcome alien tech advantages and duplicate their technology. The Aztecs had a habit of ritual warfare rather than serious warfare – and it cost them. The Native Americans never managed to duplicate European technology to any great extent.

Any others?

Implied Spaces - Walter Jon Williams

 

I have what I tend to think of as a shit list of authors. Generally, it consists of authors who come up with great ideas and then fail to execute them properly – while making me pay full price for a copy of their books. One of the many reasons why the Baen Free Library and Free Samples is such a great idea is that even if I don’t like the samples, I haven’t actually spent any money on the book and don’t feel inclined to bash the author, publisher or anyone else.

Walter Jon Williams has been on my shit list for quite some time, after I paid for a complete set of his Dread Empire Falls books. They were badly written, poorly conceived and completely failed to live up to the promise suggested by the back covers. It was only because I saw Implied Spaces in the library that I decided to buy it and read it. I am pleased (and astonished) to report that it is actually a very good book, reminding me of A Fire Upon the Deep and other far future yarns.

It is several thousand years in the future and humanity has passed through the singularity. Under the benevolent oversight of eleven powerful AIs, humanity has solved most of its ills and has spread out over countless star systems. Most of the human race enjoys living in artificial universes, where they can indulge themselves to the full. Others set out on STL trips across the universe, looking for new worlds to explore.

But all is not well in this paradise. A shadowy figure has launched a plan to take over the world and impose his own order on paradise. A desperate war ensures between the shadowy figure – who has subverted one of the AIs – and the loyalists. The war is a strange mixture of very high-tech and theories that would be understandable today. Much of it is strange and confusing at first glance, yet it makes a certain kind of sense. In a nod to Peter F. Hamilton’s work, backed up copies of dead people can be revived, allowing the dead to live on. One of the enemy’s nastier tricks is an infection that ensures that all who rise from the dead are his devoted loyalists. One gets the feeling that the only thing preventing humanity from being destroyed or enslaved by the AIs are the safeguards built into them, which ironically prevent the AIs from evolving to the point where they can simply out-evolve the enemy.

The villain actually raises a very good point in his megalomania. If there is nothing to strive for, what purpose is there to life? It is not an argument I have much sympathy with, I admit. The people who starve to death each day on our world would love to live in a post-scarcity world. His conception – that the universe is the creation of the Inept, an incompetent God – suggests a greater purpose to life. I do agree with the hero though, in some ways. What are they going to do – seek recompense from God?

In some ways, the ending is too simplistic for my tastes, but it fits in neatly with the rest of the book. The epilogue is actually – although this is not made clear – a note of the price of backsliding into barbarism, as a make-believe world of swords and sorcery becomes real and the mighty civilisation that birthed it nothing more than myths and legends. I’d like to see a sequel at some point.

Those who enjoyed John Ringo’s There Will Be Dragons may note some similar themes, but the story is very different. There are problems with presenting a post-singularity world to modern-day readers, a problem faced by other authors, yet Williams does very well. It really required an appendix too.

Overall, the book showcases the promise – and terrors – of singularity. It is definitely worth a read. A couple more like this and I may even take him off my shit list.