The Unthinkable War

Nuclear war is usually described as “unthinkable.”

Jacobsen's book makes for grim
— but engaging — reading. 
(Image via Amazon)

Despite this, science fiction authors and fans have spent an awful lot of time thinking about this potential ending to humankind. By some accounts (such as Ronald Regan and Mikhail Gorbachev watching The Day After) the consumption of science fiction has helped stave off the threat of nuclear war by forcing people to think about what will actually transpire after the bombs go off.

There’s a long history of depicting nuclear war in SF. Decades before the Trinity test launched the real-world atomic age, genre fans were reading works like H.G. Wells’ The World Set Free (1914) or Cleve Cartmill’s Deadline (1944). But Hugo voters have usually eschewed celebrating such works. Leigh Brackett’s Long Tomorrow and Wilson Tucker’s Long Loud Silence — two of the earliest works that attempted to grapple with just how awful nuclear war might be — may have gotten close to winning Hugos, but neither of them took home the prize.

With the more recent increase in international conflict, decline in democracy, and erratic leadership at the reins of superpower governments, the threat of nuclear annihilation is more present than at any time since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Annie Jacobsen’s new book Nuclear War: A Scenario is therefore quite timely. It should be strongly considered for the Hugo Award for Best Related Work.

The book’s chapters alternate between a second-by-second speculative account of how a nuclear war might be experienced and chapters that provide history lessons about nuclear weapons, academic research, and military planning.

A national security journalist who has been shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, Jacobsen approaches the subject through meticulous research. The scenarios she paints are informed by recently declassified documents and dozens of interviews. The interviees include scientists who worked on early iterations of atomic testing, high-level military leaders, policymakers, and politicians.

By Jacobsen’s account — and the accounts of several of her interviewees, such as former STRATCOM commander Gen. Robert Kehler — it could all be over in as little as 72 minutes. America’s “launch-on-warning” policy, Russia’s flawed surveillance systems, uncertainty over third-party actors, and a multi-polar world with complex threat assessment all lead to a precarious nuclear position.

The narrative scenario features a single missile sent by North Korea targeting the United States, which — in accordance with American policy — prompts a disproportionate retaliation of more than 80 nuclear weapons in return. With missiles flying the circumpolar route from North America to the Korean peninsula, they end up going over Russia and being mistaken for provocation. By the end of an hour and a half, five billion people are dead.

Much like the BBC SF horror Threads, each detail is presented with gripping and grim misery.

BBC's Threads grapples with the aftermath of a 
limited nuclear strike. Jacobsen suggests that there
is no such thing as "limited" nuclear war, and
that there are no rules in a nuclear conflict.
(Image via BBC) 

Jacobsen never provides any ideas about how to avoid the ugly future she lays out as a real possibility, and perhaps the book might have been strengthened by a call to arms. Is nuclear disarmament the answer? It seems unlikely in a world where countries such as Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea have atomic stockpiles. Does she think the temperament of leaders and their willingness to navigate complex nuclear quandaries should be more of a factor in electoral politics? The book ends on a fairly bleak note with little in the way of hope.

It’s interesting that, despite careful research methods, the sources she was able to interview for the book are — with a handful of exceptions — American, and this leads to some biases in the work.

In fact, it is a flawed book in multiple ways. The prose is overblown and occasionally pompous. The descriptions of the extent of each atomic bomb’s devastation is sometimes repetitive. And the scenario that Jacobsen imagines almost entirely absolves her fictional American decision-makers, preferring instead to place the blame for the nuclear war on more irrational leaders of other countries. But perhaps this was the hand of an editor looking for a US audience. These criticisms aside, the work unveils a believable and perilous instability within the systems governing nuclear decision making. This helps make the book a compelling read.

Nuclear war isn’t the happiest subject in science fiction, but it is part of our genre. Consequently, this book is as Hugo-eligible as non-fiction about spaceflight (The Right Stuff, best dramatic presentation finalist 1984), evolution (After Man, best related work finalist 1982), and planetary sciences (Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, best dramatic presentation finalist 1981).

For all its flaws, the research and timeliness of Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario make it one of the most important science fiction-related works of 2024. 

The Hot War is Turtledove at his best.

Harry Turtledove's The Hot War
suggests that nuclear war was
closer than many of us
choose to believe.
(Image via NationalInterest.org)

Superficially and stylistically, it would be hard to distinguish The Hot War from most of Harry Turtledove’s previous series.

As always, the writing is occasionally stilted. And as always, we are introduced to dozens of point-of-view characters representing key perspectives in every faction of a historical upheaval and their individual stories paint a larger picture of a global narrative. This is the Turtledove ‘sweep of history’ template, and it’s served him well over his career as the Dean of Alternate History.

But fundamentally, The Hot War is something different, darker and timelier than anything else he has written.

Keeping The Hot War to a trilogy — which is short by the standards of an author known for works like his 11-volume Southern Victory series — allows the narrative to move relatively quickly and with greater impact.

The point of divergence for this alternate history takes place in November of 1950, when (unlike in the real world) the Chinese invasion of Korea successfully destroys a significant portion of the American forces. The ratcheting up of the conflict has an inevitability and a horror to it, as first there are limited strikes by the Americans, then retaliation by the Russians, followed by direct attacks, and direct retaliations.

It is refreshing to see alternate history
that explores conflicts other than the
civil war or the Second World War.
(Image via Britanica.org) 

Against this backdrop, Turtledove offers the interwoven stories of a British widow named Daisy Baxter trying to get by in a ruined U.K, a U.S. pilot named Bill Staley who wrestles with his conscience as he destroys cities, a concentration camp survivor named Fayvl Tabakman who has to deal with the destruction of Seattle, a German veteran named Gustav Hozzel who goes to the front lines, and literally dozens more.

Turtledove's overarching themes of the universalities of human experience are well explored. Characters do their best in the best ways they know how in difficult circumstances. There are few, if any, true villains.

Unlike many previous Turtledove alternate histories, the human stories are unpredictable. These are tumultuous lives marred by sudden bouts of unexpected violence and destruction that turn worlds upside down. Death comes out of nowhere, and little meaning can be found in any of it.

Of particular interest in this alternate history is the tragic — and believable — story of Harry Truman. Turtledove’s research into historical figures is always impeccable, and many of Truman's decisions in these novels are based on courses of action that he considered in real life. Turtledove paints a portrait of an alternate failed presidency that hinges on one bad decision after another.

America's 33rd president was the
only one who ever ordered an
atomic bomb deployed in a war.
(Image via historynewsnetwork.org)

The consequences of Truman's mistakes keep compounding. The way in which this weighs on him in the novels is effectively conveyed, and this may be one of the best character arcs Turtledove has ever written. Turtledove seems to be arguing that even a well-intentioned president might invite calamity through brinksmanship.

This cast may be one of the most memorable groups that Turtledove has written since Worldwar: In The Balance back in the 1990s. However, it’s still clear that Turtledove has difficulty writing characters from outside his cultural background — none of the important Korean or Chinese characters are given point-of-view sections.

Harry Turtledove’s The Hot War trilogy concluded this summer with the publication of Armistice, and is eligible for consideration for the new Best Series Hugo. None of the three books stand on their own, and all of them have flaws. But the completed trilogy is far more than the sum of their parts, and it seems to us that this is the sort of work that the Best Series Hugo is uniquely able to celebrate. We are going to consider nominating it.