Science-fiction

The Cold Iron Towers: An Alternate History

/ G. Scott Huggins / 2 Comments

This idea grew out of a thread on another author’s page, and got enough likes that I want to seriously talk about the possibility of doing it. Bear with me, because this is really thinking aloud, and there’s a LOT of room for filling in details. Jump on board in the comments if you’re into that sort of thing.

My alternate history begins in June 1942: Hitler decides that because of flooding, reports on Soviet tank strength, and the delay caused by conquering Greece, Barbarossa can wait until Summer of 1942. As a result, the European theater enters a lull. Knowing that they will not be needed in the East, Hitler orders the reinforcement of Rommel’s Afrika Korps, which succeeds in taking Tobruk, and begins pushing into Egypt. Britain is unable to reinforce due to Luftwaffe air superiority.
In December, Japan bombs Pearl Harbor, but realizing that Barbarossa is more important, Hitler does not declare war on the United States.

Josef Stalin, having had six months to prepare and reasoning that Germany is too occupied in Africa, invades German-occupied Poland over the frozen ground of winter. With sympathetic Communist partisans all over the Balkan peninsula ready to strike, Stalin’s war quickly becomes acknowledged as a war of global liberation from capitalism and fascism. Communist cells all over Europe begin guerrilla warfare. With the Wehrmacht facing defeat, Germany hastily offers Britain any number of concessions to end their war. Churchill’s price for peace is the surrender of all captured colonies and massive post-war reparations, including the evacuation of France. Germany agrees, on the condition that Britain and Germany join in creating a neutral French Republic that will be kept out of any war with Germany. Hitler also begins courting Roosevelt, emphasizing the similarities between the New Deal and Hitler’s own “economic miracle.” “American Socialist” and “British Socialist” unions begin to form. While they are decidedly minority factions and disliked by the populace as a whole, they are more popular than the Communists.

Fighting Japan on its own, Roosevelt is forced to bow to Republican pressure to end Lend-Lease to the British and Russians. Japan, for its part, joins the Soviet Union, citing “Western Imperialist perfidy” on the part of the Nazi regime. The Soviets and Japanese Army agree to divide the tottering Republic of China between them after the war, and with the fall of Berlin apparently weeks away, the Soviet Far Eastern Army is assigned to invade China from the north.

However, free to fight the Russians alone, Germany begins to stabilize its Eastern Front just short of Berlin. For most of 1942, the Soviets and the Germans fight it out in East Prussia, while the US duels Japan. As Germany recalls its troops from the Balkans, Stalin seizes Istanbul and the Dardanelles, freeing the Black Sea Fleet to raid into the Eastern Med, after which, the Soviets seize the Suez Canal. Forced into the realization that the Soviets mean what they say, the Commons reluctantly support Churchill’s call for a “Devil’s Alliance” with the Nazis in winter of 1943. The United States joins the alliance by summer with Roosevelt’s reluctant approval, and Stalin’s forces are pushed back. The Britisha and American navies force the Med and land in Greece and the Balkans, using friendly Italian bases as their jumping-off points. As the Wehrmacht advances and the Anglo-Americans liberate Soviet-conquered Norway and Finland, the horror of the gulags shock the civilized world. The tide has turned, and Moscow and Stalingrad fall before Hitler’s Tiger tanks and jet fighters and the British and American blockades. Roosevelt barely scrapes an electoral win in 1944. After the American Manhattan project results in the bombing of Hiroshima and Vladivostok, the Soviets and Japanese surrender. Stalin commits suicide before he can be tried for war crimes.

The United Nations is formed with the United States, Britain, China, Greater Germany and Italy as permanent members of the Security Council. Italy retains Libya. Britain keeps Egypt and the Suez Canal, and liberated Greece reclaims Istanbul, again renamed Constantinople. A Jewish state is proposed, but Nazi-leaning Arab governments make it clear that no such thing will be tolerated. The few Jewish refugees to escape to Palestine ask the British and Russian governments for help, and the Russian Republic agrees to accept the Jewish population in its Jewish Autonomous Oblast on the Chinese border. It achieves independence and UN recognition in 1949.

After the war, Nazi agents reveal how thoroughly the Soviets had planted spies in the Manhattan Project, naturally taking the stolen knowledge for themselves. Nazi Germany detonates its first weapon in 1947. After Hitler reneges on his promise to evacuate the Low Countries, the Western Allies and Germany nearly come to war over the “Brussels Blockade.” A state of Cold War is recognized.

A wave of fear sweeps the United States over the fear of Nazi infiltration, and fueled by the awareness of Hitler’s air and rocket superiority. Only infusions of British jet technology keep the USAF competitive, and Churchill is voted down in disgrace after Hitler annexes all the West Russian territories.

The Marshall Plan manages to revitalize the Russian Republic, Finland, Norway, France, and Britain. Hitler copies the plan for Italy and Spain. The MacArthur Constitution is approved in Japan. Without support, Mao Zedong is hunted down and killed by Chiang Kai-shek, armed by both the United States and Germany. Chiang quickly copies the German model, proclaiming the “Chinese Socialist Republic. He quickly brings Vietnam and Korea under Chinese suzerainty.” Blamed for “losing China” and the German ascendance by the Republicans, Truman is defeated by Dewey in 1948. Greater Germany demonstrates long-range missiles and orbits a satellite by 1952. The United States cannot follow suit until 1958.

The “Swastika Scare” drives many former pro-German propaganda writers and converts to Naziism underground. The HUAC investigates, and jails those who refuse to testify about others with pro-Nazi leanings. At the highest levels of society and academia, however, Naziism is often secretly admired for its scientific achievements and its promise of eugenic improvement of humankind.

Hitler dies in 1947, and is laid to rest with honor. His death triggers a quiet purge by the Army of some of the more radical Nazi elements, but a more-or-less clean succession is engineered, with “de-Hitlerization” accomplished and the release of many surviving POWs and political prisoners. Jews are allowed to identify themselves and emigrate. Only a few thousand survive. Returning to Russia, they bring stories of Nazi concentration camps, but these are not widely talked about since there is no hard proof. Many believe the stories are simply anti-Nazi propaganda. After Eugene McCarthy’s “witch-hunt” for Nazis implicates the Army, he falls from power. Only Richard Nixon, with his arrest of former Bund Leader and State Department employee Francis (Fritz) Kuhn, gets a boost.

In 1952, charismatic young politician and war-hero Joe Kennedy, Jr. challenges Dewey and wins. Elected on the twin platforms of challenging Nazi dominance in space and revitalizing the economy. The US quickly achieves dominance on the world stage as an industrial power, outstripping recovering Nazi Germany by a fair margin. However, growing Nazi sentiment in Central and South America and Africa tarnish his legacy. Although Kennedy is re-elected in 1956, the fall of Cuba in 1959 to openly-Nazi Fidel Castro shakes public confidence. The German moon-landing in 1960 seals the Democrats’ Fate, and California Governor Richard Nixon is elected President by a landslide over the much-derided candidacy of John F. Kennedy.

Pro-Nazi elements support de-colonization worldwide (against formerly British and French colonies only, naturally). Naziism is “recast” as a struggle for national identity and support of the poor throughout the world. German propaganda spins into high gear throughout this time, emphasizing the unity of the German people and the prosperity of their lower classes as they homestead through the Ostmarks of the Greater German Reich. Protests that this is only possible because of the extermination of the Russian population and the occupation of the Soviet cities is largely ignored as Greater Germany begins to challenge American economic dominance in the 1960s.

However, the Nixon years are also a period of some foreign-policy successes for the United States. Under Nixon, the United States’ Aries Program lands Grissom and Chaffee on the moon in 1965. Nixon improves relations with China by exploiting racial tensions between it and its German ally. Nixon also has success with his “Southern Strategy” of reaching out to Black Americans and using the power of the federal government to enforce their right to vote. He is criticized for abrogating States Rights and increasing racial tensions.
Also, Nixon’s insistence on opposing Naziism in Central America leads to a number of low-level wars in which American troops are dragged in. Growing hostility to “American chauvinism” grows on campus as more and more lives are lost in Guatemala and Honduras. Opposition to Naziism is increasingly questioned, and a rift opens in American life, with a counterculture that resists capitalism and American interventionism. The “Peace movement” urges the United States to leave other countries alone to work out their own destinies, and finds support on college campuses across the nation. Among some political thinkers, distinction is made between “Naziism” as a legitimate political system, and the excesses of “Hitlerism.”

That’s as far as I can take it right now.  What do you think? Bear in mind this is VERY rough and obviously open to all sorts of criticism. Let me know.

I shouldn’t have to say this, but I will: this is (I hope obviously) NOT a pro-Nazi world. Naziism is evil. But it is one in which Naziism is strongly PERCEIVED to be the lesser of two evils because of a different set of circumstances. I reject Naziism in all its forms as an odious and terrible political and social philosophy. But there was a time, historically, in which it was seen by many as a potential and desirable future. Many good people died to see that this future did not occur. This universe asks the question: “What if they had not fully succeeded? What if the issue had remained — in the public mind — in doubt?” If you find this horrifying, good. It IS horrifying.

 

 

 

 

The Word: Can God Make A Person Free Enough To Surprise Him?

/ G. Scott Huggins / Leave a comment

Explanation: A bit over a year ago, I began writing a regular theology column for Sci Phi Journal called The Mote In God’s ‘I’. This is the column that launched the series, and remains my fastest sale to date (15 minutes). I am re-running it here, hoping my readers like it as well as the editor did.

The Mote In God’s “I.”

Most of the problems I’ve run into in my life, I have solved by the simple expedient of reading more science-fiction. I was too young to be an astronaut when I discovered that such an incredible profession existed, so I read Rocket Jockey by Lester del Rey. I didn’t have any friends in my middle-school years, so I read Anne McCaffrey and imagined myself a dragonrider. Somewhat more productively, I watched and read Star Trek and found myself a few like-minded friends who started tabletop gaming. Problem solved. Whenever dramatically boring people said I couldn’t use made-up worlds to solve my problems, I pointed out that a) the “real” world had no better track record at that, and b) it was working fine so far. Then I read more science-fiction and solved more problems.

One of the oldest problems in theology is that of free will versus theological determinism. If God exists, and is all-powerful and all-knowing as his followers claim, then how can his creation be possessed of free will? Won’t He know everything they are going to do beforehand? And if He does, is the future not fixed? And if fixed, in what sense do creatures have a choice?

(This essay is not going to concern itself with the debate on whether free will exists. For the sake of this essay, it exists. If you believe otherwise, go… do whatever the hell you were already going to do, I guess. I can’t stop you. More to the point, you can’t stop you. Have fun.)

On the other hand, if creatures have free will, then can God really be God? Doesn’t that mean he’s either not omnipotent, or not omniscient?

Short answer: No.

Long answer: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!

The problem is that many theological thinkers have just been willing to accept what turns out to be a false dichotomy. Calvinists, who believe in predestination, essentially say that yes, God does know everything, and are fine with that because the purpose of God is to glorify God. How God is glorified if it turns out that He Himself is the ultimate cause of evil, because no one ever had a choice not to commit it, I have never been able to figure out.

On the other side of the theological divide, we have the Arminians, who say that free will is sacred to God, so God would never interfere with it. While that certainly says a lot more for God’s character, it still doesn’t really answer how God can’t destroy free will by knowing the future.

In other words, the problem with both schools of thought is that their answers lack the imagination that provides the backbone of really solid science-fiction writing.

For the longer answer that is actually relevant I eventually formulated, I have to give credit, not, as you might think, to men like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien (I’m going to assume we all know these guys were hard-core Christians, yes?) but to writers such as S.M. Stirling and Terry Pratchett. Because both of these men’s worlds really do contain the answer, if we look hard enough.

S.M. Stirling is my all-time favorite alternate-history writer. Sister Marya Sokolowska of his Draka cycle is one of my favorite religious characters in all of fiction. But it was The Peshawar Lancers that started me thinking along theological lines. In it, the “seer” Yasmini can see possible futures, enabling her to predict the results of present actions. As the novel progresses, she begins seeing all the possible futures, all the time, until it threatens to drive her mad.

Terry Pratchett, in his Discworld universe, more facetiously puts an omniscope (which can see anywhere and anywhen) under the control of the Department of Inadvisably Applied Magic. When asked to observe the future, he demurs, on the grounds that observing the future would cause all the possible futures to collapse into a single future, which, having been observed, would now be the only future.

In both of these cases, we see the same core idea: there are many futures to choose from. And while it might not be possible for a man to observe them all, as in Pratchett, or for a woman to keep them all straight, as in Stirling, it should be quite possible for God.

The solution to the problem is not that God be considered less than omniscient. It is that He be considered more omniscient than we had ever imagined. Why could God not see all possible futures, simultaneously, and then react accordingly as His creation, blessed with free will, makes choices?

There are really only two objections to this: Firstly, does this mean that God could be surprised? Maybe even thwarted? Certainly not, and science-fiction (or fantasy) again provides the answer, as any competent dungeon-master who has ever run a party through a Dungeons and Dragons campaign knows. Because the dungeon-master knows the rules. The party may do something unusual, and the die rolls may be odd, but they can’t really surprise him.  And by (in Hawking’s famous phrase) “throwing the dice where they cannot be seen,” God can certainly always create the circumstances He wants. But no being with infinite attention could ever be surprised, any more than an author of one of the old Choose Your Own Adventure books could be when a child reaches one of his endings. Yet, the child had free will.

Secondly, is it possible for God to keep knowledge from himself in this way (and you have to admit, that’s a lot more interesting than the old “can-God-make-a-rock-so-heavy-yadda-yadda-barf” question)?

Well, it’s hard to imagine why He couldn’t. His lack of knowledge doesn’t threaten Him or anyone He cannot protect. And God often speaks in “If… then” phrases in the Judeo-Christian tradition (Exodus 4 being but one example). Why would God need to use “if” when He already knew? Is He lying to his followers? That would seem more troubling than the idea that God might limit his own knowledge. By giving people free will at all, God would already have limited His own power, simply by allowing other power to exist. This objection seems petty.

There seems to be no intrinsic reason then, why free will and omniscience could not coexist, so long as we recognize the proper definition of “omniscience,” which requires, as science-fiction has always required – as religion, at  its best, has always required – that we always seek beyond the limits of the humanly and presently possible.

A Memory of Jerry

/ G. Scott Huggins / Leave a comment

The worlds of Science Fiction today are mourning the loss of one of the best of us. Dr. Jerry Pournelle has passed. For those of my readers who do not know, Dr. Pournelle was one of the great pioneers of both science and science-fiction. He was consulted by NASA and the Reagan Administration on matters of space exploration and defense. He wrote several novels I loved, especially High Justice. But my favorites were his collaborations with his partner, Larry Niven. Together they wrote two of my favorite SF novels ever, and one of my favorite fantasy works: Footfall and The Mote In God’s Eye, which to me deserve a place in the eternal canon of SF for being, respectively, the greatest alien invasion and first contact novels of the latter 20th century, and Inferno, a rewrite of Dante, in which a science-fiction writer travels through hell.

I was reminded of how privileged I am to have spent even one evening in Jerry’s company when I saw so many of my Facebook friends, most of whom are more accomplished authors than I am myself, saying that they had only met Jerry last week at DragonCon for the first time, or never.

I met Jerry eighteen years ago, at Writers’ Of The Future. I’d won 2nd place in the 1999 contest, and I still remember it as one of the proudest moments of my life that he and Mr. Niven handed me — ME! — my first ever science-fiction writing award. That I promptly made an ass of myself with my thank-you speech, which I had not rehearsed, is a somewhat less-proud moment, but that’s life.

But I will always treasure the memory of the after-party, when I got to speak with Jerry and many other writers.  I’ll always remember that he came up with the best explanation I’ve ever heard of for the infamous Roswell  Incident, which I will recall here. I’m going to emphasize that this was Jerry speculating, NOT releasing actual knowledge. Obviously, what follows is not an exact transcript, but I’m going to reproduce it as best I can recall from eighteen years ago:

“You got to remember that this was the old Air Force, with all the pilots still veterans of World War II. And those pilots were pretty much drunk as their ground state of being. On top of that, this was 1947, when the entire nuclear arsenal of the world was approximately eight weapons, all of them bombs, and all of them owned by the United States of America.

“Well, what it seems to me is that at some point, the Air Force wanted to move a bomb. Naturally, you’d keep that as secret as you can; why would you tell even the pilots? And so, two pilots, enjoying the long and boring flight over the New Mexico desert as best they could, climbed into the night sky, and never arrived at their destination.

“Now a nuclear weapon, of course, has safeties to prevent a mushroom going off in case the plane carrying it crashes, but crashed planes tend to burn, and the chemical explosive wrapped around the plutonium can certainly catch fire. So you have the Air Force looking for a missing plane, carrying an atomic bomb, and suddenly reports from Roswell of a a burning wreck in the middle of the desert. It doesn’t take the Air Force long to put those two facts together, but by the time they arrive, several VERY unauthorized persons have seen the wreck and the burned bodies (Author’s Note: Ever seen a photo of a very badly burned body? They do tend to shrink and attenuate. So they look very thin, with disproportionately-sized heads. Funny, that.) and strange fragments of highly-classified equipment.

What the Air Force very much wants to do is to make all this go away, so they whisk away all that they can, but they can’t disappear U.S. citizens, and they very definitely do not want it getting out that a couple of idiots managed to destroy by incompetence an eighth of the world’s nuclear arsenal. So they make up the story of a crashed weather balloon, which is an obvious fabrication, and pray. Sure enough, people disbelieve this and their theory about what the Air Force is covering up is… aliens. Alien spacecraft, crashed in the desert, whisked away by the Air Force.

The Air Force, of course, with its competent people on the job, send up praises to heaven and immediately refuse all comment on such things, pointing with increased energy to the “weather balloon,” and looking as stupid as they can. Because the more they do, the more people think “Ah-HAH! So it IS aliens,” and the less they think, “I wonder whether the Air Force might have lost a nuclear bomb.”

I remember thinking. My gods, of course. That makes absolutely perfect sense, and no matter how high up the chain of command you go, all the way up to President Truman, absolutely NO ONE in the government is going to have an interest in coming clean on that story, and neither would anyone in Eisenhower’s administration after that. How simple and brilliant.

Well, we all laughed, and whether it’s true or not, it’s a good story. And then Jerry talked to me. He asked about my story, and said he remembered it, and that it was a good story. And that’s something I will always remember when I feel that I can’t hack it as a writer. More than anything else, I remember that Jerry made me feel included, and truly part of this wonderful thing that I had always imagined fandom to be. And you know what? I think he did that with everyone. While I have talked to people who hated Jerry’s politics (and hated his fiction) and said he could be an ass when he was arguing, I never heard anyone who said that Jerry snubbed them or made them feel unwelcome.

There’s been a lot of — shall we say, discord — in fandom lately. A lot of exclusivity. I’ve seen friends made to feel unwelcome and friends threatened and excoriated and called liars and slanderers and worse. I’ve experienced some of it myself, as people made it clear that for one reason or another, I was not good enough or important enough to be worth their respect or time. For the purposes of this piece, though, I am not interested in the rights or the wrongs of any of it. All I would like to say is, that I would like all of us to remember Jerry, and how he took the time to befriend and welcome a newbie author. I never had the privilege of truly working with him, but I will always be grateful that for that evening, and that the man I met was as gracious and entertaining as the worlds he had brought to life for me. Thank you Jerry. And I hope to meet you again, in the worlds beyond the sky.