"What would you have us do?"
Straha said. "Boost for home,
having accomplished nothing?"
"It is within the Fleetlord's
power." Kirel said stubbornly.
He was right; abandoning the invasion
was within Atvar's power. No censure
would fall on him if he started back --
no official censure. But instead of
being remembered as Atvar
Worldconquerer, an epitaph only two in
the history of the Race had borne before
him, he would go down in the annals as
Atvar the Worldfleer, the title he would
be the first to assume, but hardly
craved.
His the responsibility. In the end, his
choice was no choice. "The
awakening and the orientation of the
troops has proceeded
satisfactorily?" he asked the
shiplords. He did not need to hear the
hisses of assent to know the answer to
his question; he had been following
computer reports since before the fleet
took up orbit around Tosev-3. The
Emperor's weapons and warriors were
ready.
"We proceed." he said. The
shiplords hissed again.
The
saurian extra-terrestrials known as the
Race (picture
the gecko from the Geico commercials --
only four foot tall, capable of
interstellar travel, heavily armed and
belligerent) have managed to
conquer and colonize two worlds in the
service of their Emperor. Now they've set
their sights on a third: Tosev-3 -- better
known to you and I as good old mother
Earth. Their
deep space probes return, showing them
pictures of Earth during the middle ages.
Crude metal swords and arrows is the best
opposition the "Tosevites"
appear to have, so an invasion fleet was
prepared for the expected cake-walk over
these primitive primates. Then, in the
intergalactic task forces wake, after the
Tosevites have been subjugated, a
colonization fleet will arrive to bring
these warm blooded savages and the spoils
of Tosev-3 into the service of the Empire.
The
trip from their home world will take several
centuries, hardly a blink of the
turreted-eye to the Race. The invaders are
cryogenically frozen for the duration of
the trip and embark on their galactic
journey. When the invasion fleet reaches
our galaxy and the lizards thaw out, they
are shocked to find out the savages have
evolved quite a bit. And the entire planet
of Tosev-3 is engulfed in clan war that
locals refer to as World War II.
The
"big uglies" technology
has advanced farther and faster than the
Race can believe possible, but it still
pales in comparison to their own weapons (basically
aside from the space travel, the alien
weapons are slightly more advanced than
what we have now in 2004. No lasers; just
smart bombs and heavy armor.) Despite
these developments, concerns
over limited supplies and support are
pushed aside and Atvar, the alien's
supreme commander, orders the invasion to
commence.
Needless
to say, all HELL breaks loose.
*
* * *
Author
Harry Turtledove is considered by some to
be the master of alternative fiction. That
is science fiction based on past events,
but with a few changes or tweaks, here
and there, the world becomes a completely
different -- yet strangely familiar place than
what it was destined to become.
In
The
Two Georges,
the American Revolution never happened. In
Ruled
Britannia,
the Spanish Fleet was victorious bringing
England under Spanish control. In the
Southern Victory series (that
doesn't include his most famous book, Guns
of the South,
where the south wins thanks to a stash of
AK-47s), the Confederacy is
victorious, throwing all kinds of wrinkles
into future historical events. In the
Worlds at War series, the second World War
is fought with sorcery. So
you get the idea. Here, in the Worldwar
series, he postulates on what would happen
if aliens invaded during World War II. The
poop hits the fan early in 1942. Pearl
Harbor has been bombed but America was
just in the process of mobilizing and
retooling for war; Hitler's plan to invade
Russia was grinding to a halt; and the
Japanese had free reign in the Pacific and
were running amok in China.
Initially
the fight goes well for the Race, as their
weapons -- including tactical nukes,
quickly give them complete air supremacy,
but the aliens are surprised when the
Tosevites don't surrender in the face of
such overwhelming odds. The Tosevite
behavior confounds the Race: How could
they have advanced so quickly? It took
their own kind eons to advance as far as
their enemy did in such a short time. The
Science Division gets busy collecting
human specimens -- to see what makes these
"big uglies" tick. This leads to
several hilarious scenes of the Race being
first appalled, then addicted, to watching
Earthlings having sex.
Terrestrially,
an uneasy truce between the Axis and the
Allies is agreed upon until the alien
threat is dealt with. And that is the most
intriguing point brought out by this book:
At the time of the invasion, Earth's best
hope for victory is with the German
Wermacht. The Race realizes this, too, and
uses one of their nukes to obliterate
Berlin.
(They
don't like to overuse the atomics because
they want something left to colonize when
the colonization fleet arrives.)
This
act is cheered in some sectors, where the
alien invaders are viewed as liberators.
In Warsaw, Poland, the oppressed Jewish
population concentrated there join
"the lizards" to drive the Nazis
out. But they quickly realize that the
lizards are even worse when they drop
another bomb on Washington DC.
As
the fight rages on, the Race's limited
material is quickly running out with no
end in sight. Their weapons are superior,
but their tactics are miserable and
methodical to a fault. The Earthlings
learn quick and exploit every advantage. I
actually caught myself cheering for the
Germans on several occasions, and then
found myself feeling a little guilty for
it. Using huge railway cannons, the
Wermacht score Earth's first victory by
shelling an alien stronghold -- and a
lucky shot takes out a cache of atomic
bombs, spreading radioactive material all
over the countryside that is invaluable to
several burgeoning terrestrial attempts at
atomic fission.
The
first book ends with several story threads
still hanging for the reader: the
scientists working on the Manhattan
Project are forced to flee the besieged
city of Chicago; we're still tracking
several recovered pieces of plutonium that
are being smuggled out of alien occupied
territory; the Race are confronting the
growing problem of narcotic addiction to
the spice ginger. And General Patton uses
the inclement winter weather and a new
weapon -- the bazooka, to kick a little
alien ass and soon has the lizards on the
run in southern Illinois.
Now
there are a lot of characters to keep
track of in Worldwar:
In the Balance,
so a scorecard is probably in order to
keep everyone straight. The events are
translated to us from the perspective of
over a dozen characters from all over the
world, and several characters will be
familiar to you if you were paying
attention in history class. For the humans
we have a Chinese peasant, a female
Russian pilot, a German tank crew, several
American scientists and baseball players (one
captured, one fighting on the front, the
other guarding alien POWs), a
British Bomber crew, and a Jewish
dissident -- who unwittingly becomes the
voice of the alien invaders before
realizing his mistake and rebelling. For
the Race we have Atvar, Teerts -- who is a
POW in Japanese hands, and Ussmak -- a
tank driver, who is under the influence of
ginger and will do anything to get more.
It
will take some suspension of disbelief to
swallow the fact that a lot of these
characters somehow manage to keep
bumping into each other, and whose
resulting actions then have such a direct
and dramatic ramification on each and
everyone else. Sometimes these dominos
line up a little too neatly and
conveniently. But I guess they don't call
it science-fiction for nothing.
Turtledove
does have some intriguing ideas here, and
he does explain away most of the plot-holes
satisfactorily. But my biggest beef with
him, in all of his writing, is whenever he
expresses an idea or plot-point, he then
proceeds to repeat and belabor that idea,
or point, again and again and again and
again and again...Turtledove takes every
opportunity to remind us that the alien's
development was a slow and steady process,
taking several thousand years, that it
brings the book to a screeching halt on
several occasions. It was friggin' obvious
six chapters ago; it's friggin' obvious
now. We get it. Move on.
I
swear, if an editor went through and
removed even half of these instances, the
book would be reduced by almost 150 pages.
Worldwar:
In The Balance
is the first in a series of four books
chronicling Earth's efforts to repel the
invaders. That's followed by three more
installments detailing the arrival of the
colonization fleet.
(So I guess we kinda know who won already.
Well that's kind of depressing...) Each
tome reaches a staggering 600+ pages. And
yes, some of those pages and chapters can
be repetitive, plodding, and the author
can by annoyingly cloy sometimes --
shoehorning real historical figures into
situations rather clumsily. But when it
cooks, it cooks with gas. I love the
combat scenes, but the political and
social aspects can be a lot to trudge
through. I say that as warning if you pick
this up on a whim, expecting something
more along the lines of War
of the Worlds
or Starship
Troopers.
Reading the book is like sitting through
history class. You've got to sit through a
lot of boring and stale stuff about Tea
Pot Dome Scandals to get to the
interesting parts.
So
it's a lot to slog through but I'll still
recommend it, and I'm intrigued enough to
read the second book. Can I sustain it for
all four? That's quite a commitment and
remains to be seen.
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