Resurrection Day

Everyone remembers where they were the day JFK tried to kill them…

It may surprise CTT readers to learn that I never managed to read this book until recently. However, I read it and I enjoyed it, although I do have a few bones to pick with the author.

The book in set in a 1970, two decades after the Cuban Missile Crisis exploded into a thermonuclear war between America and Russia. The US is a nation slowly recovering from a small number of atomic strikes, while Russia (and apparently China) have been completely destroyed. The US is under marital law, with heavy rationing, and is dependent upon charity from Britain.

The hero of the book is a newspaper hack in a world where all news is censored by the military. Taking an interest in the death of an old man, the hero is dragged into a search for the truth about the man and an answer to the question everyone is asking: is JFK still alive? Complicating matters are a dastardly British plot and a conspiracy designed (with major incompetence) to kill him and his girlfriend.

I do have some issues with the details of the alternate world. I don’t think that Europe would have escaped damage in a war – the USSR would have to head west merely to make sure that the Europeans could not benefit from the war. A reunification of east and West Germany would be far more opposed by both Britain and France, instead of the pesudo-EU presented in the book. Further, I don’t think that the US would have been the only nation to keep nuclear weapons (it seems to be a pariah state in this TL, Britain is their only friend), having shown a major willingness to use them, I’d expect India, Europe and Britain to embark upon major nuke-building sprees. The one attempt made to solve that particular problem is abandoned towards the end of the book for no obvious reason.

Overall, I enjoyed the novel. Four out of Five.

hris, I read the book as well. A person by the name of DuBois wrote it if I'm not wrong. I believe it is still available-try Amazon.com. It's similiar to the story I read in Analog by William Barton-Age of Acquarius. Difference is that Most of Europe-Eastern Bloc is gone. Moscow was hit by 18 nukes! Nevertheless I preferred the novel. Right on about the number of stars.

Could someone explain to me why China would be nuked? Sure, it's an ally of the USSR in 1962, but how could they possibly threaten the USA?

Chris said:

The book in set in a 1970, two decades after the Cuban Missile Crisis exploded into a thermonuclear war between America and Russia.

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Huh?

Why JFK backed down?

In OTL JFK backed down. He agreed to remove the nuclear missiles we had put in Turkey in return for removing the nuclear missiles that Russia then in retaliation put into Cuba. He was later killed. Kruschev was removed for adventurism by the politburo shortly afterwards.
In this book that didn't happen. For some reason we got off very lightly. The Russians always had a lauch first and launch everything policy that would have toasted the southeastern states by more than forty nuclear strikes. That was back before the northern states had channeled so much money into developing the south up to the northern standard of living. The south should have been at about maybe Mexico's standard of living and the north not much better.

Any thoughts on what the world would be like now, 32 years after the story ended?

tom said:

Any thoughts on what the world would be like now, 32 years after the story ended?

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Try this thread from soc.history.what-if

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=...s_maxy=2004&as_mind=29&as_minm=3&as_miny=1995

<STUNNED LOOK ON FACE>

wkwillis, what are you talking about? The missles in Turkey were outdated and being phased out before JFK was even president. When the missle crisis began we only had nine left to dismantle. And if the Soviets gave up nearly a hundred longer-range missles for nine short-range antiques we were scrapping anyway, then JFK really did win the crisis.

Two stunned looks on faces

Grimm Reaper said:

<STUNNED LOOK ON FACE>

wkwillis, what are you talking about? The missles in Turkey were outdated and being phased out before JFK was even president. When the missle crisis began we only had nine left to dismantle. And if the Soviets gave up nearly a hundred longer-range missles for nine short-range antiques we were scrapping anyway, then JFK really did win the crisis.

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Interesting. I heard that the Russians were bitching about our leaving nuclear weapons in Turkey without decent electronic command and control systems to keep them from being grabbed by the Turkish generals. We refused to remove the missiles and told the Russians where to get off.
Russia then sent some missiles (40?) and warheads to Cuba after the Bay of Pigs to guarantee Cuban independence. We then blockaded Cuba to prevent the Russians from sending more. Then we cut a deal to remove our missiles from Turkey if the Russians removed theirs from Cuba.
Now that we have access to the Russian diplomatic files we can check up on what our government told us forty years ago. US and Russian history is being reconciled as we speak by doctoral candidates who weren't even born when this happened. Books even ten years old are out of date.
Since I read my version more than ten years ago, the old files from Russia weren't accessed. I was reading stuff that was published from American files that had been declassified. The declassified American files and the newly accessible old Russian files can now be compared and the redacted American data can be understood.
What's the latest book written by somebody who has actually gone to Russia and read this stuff? Not a book written by some monolingual that just rehashed previous stuff, but a book written by a serious researcher who has gone to Russia and read their stuff? That would be an interesting book to read.
Getting back to what you said, wouldn't it be interesting if the Russians were reacting to stuff we were about to stop doing anyway? That has happened before in history.

Munro:
That thread (which I started) is different from the book in two major ways:
1) Only Portland is destroyed in the thread vs a score or so cities in the book
2) Europe is erased in the thread vs being untouched in the book.
Note that I consider the thread unrealistic in (1) and the book unrealistic in (2).
These differences should be enough to make the 2004s in the thread and the book almost unrecognizably different.

tom said:

Munro:
That thread (which I started) is different from the book in two major ways:
1) Only Portland is destroyed in the thread vs a score or so cities in the book
2) Europe is erased in the thread vs being untouched in the book.
Note that I consider the thread unrealistic in (1) and the book unrealistic in (2).
These differences should be enough to make the 2004s in the thread and the book almost unrecognizably different.

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Well, I also think Portland alone getting it is very, very, lucky.

On the other hand, Europe being untouched requires the proverbial Furry Flying Extraterrestrials. Any 2004 for the book should be in the ASB section.