Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (Special Mention: Alternate History Rankings)

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Cover of the SF Masterworks edition of The Man in the High Castle by P.K. Dick, arguably the most famous of SF fictional depictions of Axis victory in WW2

 

 

I’ve ranked my Top 10 Wars of history, essentially by combination of iconic status and idiosyncratic preference. But how do they rank by plausibility of their alternate history victory scenarios, ranked from most plausible to least plausible – that is, how plausibly could the war have gone the other way?

Well, they rank almost entirely differently as it turns out, with the exception of one entry from my Top 10 which remains in the same place ranking (in tenth place).

There are some anomalies – one in particular – in my alternate history rankings, because of the discrepancy between their historical plausibility by which I’ve ranked them and their fictional popularity or profile, albeit I tended to reflect that discrepancy by awarding my X-tier or wild tier ranking. If I had done my alternate history rankings solely by their fictional popularity or profile, that one entry in particular would be so far above the rest as to basically be its own list, but sadly for it, the historical plausibility of its fictional alternate history scenarios lags far behind their popularity or profile.

Interestingly, the alternate history rankings divide neatly into halves. The first five entries are the most plausible or those for which the alternate history scenarios even seem more plausible than the actual historical outcome. In other words, it seems more plausible for the war to have gone the other way than the one it actually did. The second half or least plausible entries are the reverse – where alternate history scenarios of victory by the other side seem so much less plausible than the historical outcome, notwithstanding their popularity or profile in fiction for my wild-tier entries.

 

S-TIER (GOD-TIER)

 

(1) GREEK-PERSIAN WARS

 

It was tough to choose the top spot for alternate history plausibility as there were at least three entries where the actual outcome seemed more implausible than the alternatives or just downright miraculous for the victors. However, I went with the Greek-Persian Wars as the highest ranking in this respect – particularly given that there were two of them, with two of the most famous battles won by the Greeks against the odds, one in each war, the battle of Marathon and the naval battle of Salamis. The Greeks themselves attributed their victory at Marathon to divine intervention, with the god Pan winning it for them. Io Pan! Io Pan Pan!

I mean, the world’s largest empire in territorial extent at the time – as well as the largest empire by percentage of world population ever – against the small and fractious Greek city states, with some even remaining neutral?  It seems no contest, particularly when that empire conquered the Greek cities of Ionia in Asia Minor and subjugated or defeated states such as Thrace in Europe

 

(2) ALEXANDER’S CONQUEST OF PERSIAN EMPIRE

 

From one Greek-Persian war to the next, it was a close call for top spot for alternate history plausibility between the OG classical Greek-Persian Wars and Alexander’s conquest of the Persian Empire. Both had historical outcomes that seemed more implausible than the alternatives or just downright miraculous by winning against all odds.

Alexander’s conquest also has the additional factor of being one of those wars that hinge on one man as commander or conqueror, such that the historical outcome seems impossible without that man.

In the end, the classical Greek-Persian Wars just edged out Alexander’s conquest as the former involved a fractious coalition of small Greek city states while Alexander was fortunate enough to have the larger and more concrete state of Macedonia he inherited from his father – and even more so the army his father had forged into the instrument of a hegemonic power.

Stil, it is hard to imagine anyone other than Alexander with the audacity or ability to achieve the same conquests. What if there was no Alexander? There almost wasn’t, with his lucky escape from death in the Battle of Granicus River, which would have seen his historic conquests nipped in the bud.

At the other end, there is the alternative history scenarios of what Alexander might have achieved if he had not died at only 32 years of age at the height of his conquests.

 

(3) SPANISH CONQUEST OF AZTEC EMPIRE

 

The Spanish Conquest of the Aztec Empire was the third of my close contenders for top spot as wars where the actual outcome seems the implausible alternate history victory scenario.

In some ways, the Spanish Conquest of the Aztec Empire seems even more implausible than the classical or Hellenic Greek-Persian Wars. There are simply no parallels to just how lopsided Spanish victory was in their conquest of the Aztec Empire, conquering an empire of millions in less than three years with forces numbering only in the hundreds – or three thousand at their most numerous. And like the conquests of Alexander, much of the Spanish Conquest of the Aztec Empire seemed to hinge on the character of Cortez as commander.

However, in the end the Spanish Conquest slipped down to third place behind the other two entries, because if Cortez hadn’t happened when and how he did – say the Cuban governor Velasquez had succeeded in apprehending him – then something like his conquest of the Aztec Empire would have happened at some point, what with that empire poised on the precipice of revolt and the Americas poised on the precipice of pestilence.

That reflects that Cortez and his Spanish forces effectively led a revolt by far more numerous native American allies – compounded by the Spanish advantages in guns and steel, or above all germs, and yet further by the Aztec disadvantage of “an inherently unstable system vulnerable to a loss of prestige under even moderate challenges”.

 

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

(4) MONGOL CONQUESTS – MONGOL INVASION OF EUROPE

 

I ranked the Mongol Conquests just below my god-tier of alternate history plausibility. For the Mongol Conquests, the actual historical outcome seems the implausible alternate history victory scenario, both at their starting point to occur at all and at their finishing point of defeat or withdrawal from the high tide of their conquest.

You have the starting point of the Mongol Conquests, so incredibly exploding out of nowhere. Well, perhaps not out of nowhere. The Mongols – and the nomadic herding tribes on horseback in the Eurasian steppes in general – consistently punched far above their weight in wealth or population as noted by historians Azar Gat, John Keegan, and Walter Scheidel’s “steppe effect”.

Still, the Mongol Conquests are one of a select elite of wars that seem to hinge on one man as commander or conqueror, begging the alternate history question of the great man theory of history – what if that great man didn’t happen? Without Temujin, better known as Genghis Khan, to unite the Mongols and lead them to empire, would the Mongol Conquests have ever begun?

And then there’s the finishing point at the high tide of the Mongol Conquests – when the Mongols seem an unstoppable juggernaut, particularly in their invasions of Europe. Could the Mongols have conquered Europe? The actual historical outcome, the Mongol withdrawal from Europe, seems so much more implausible than the alternatives, particularly when tied with the interpretation that the Mongols withdrew from the historical stroke of fortune for Europe of the Great Khan’s death. However, I tend to agree with interpretations that “the Mongol invasion concluded when the geography was no longer in their favor” – the limits or fringes of the steppe effect as it were.

 

(5) HUNNIC WARS – HUNNIC INVASION OF ROMAN EMPIRE

 

It seemed only fitting to rank the Huns in the same tier as the Mongols for alternate history plausibility, where the actual outcome of the Hunnic invasion of the Roman Empire seems the implausible alternate history victory scenario. The Hunnic defeat at the Battle of Catalaunian Fields seems genuinely miraculous (for the Romans) as does the Hunnic withdrawal from Italy the following year, except the latter even more so from the sheer papal mojo of Leo as Roman imperial envoy.

Indeed, the Huns and Mongols closely resemble each other in their conquests or invasions in Europe.  The former were a more substantial presence in Europe, both in the seat of their empire and their furthest advances westwards, although the latter had far more extensive conquests in the rest of Eurasia. That extends even to the uncanny resemblance that both appeared to withdraw from further European conquests with the historical stroke of fortune of the death of their supreme leader, Attila for the Huns and the Great Khan Ogedai for the Mongols – although the impact of the former was greater and more immediate with the dissolution of the Hunnic empire.

However, historians debate whether the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields was indeed a Hunnic defeat, and whether it was indeed of historical importance in any event. Similarly, historians debate the actual reasons and historical importance for the Hunnic withdrawal from Italy. There’s the arguments or interpretations that Attila’s interest in the Roman Empire was only to the extent of raiding and tribute, albeit on a grand scale, rather than conquest. Hence the Mongol Conquests just edge out the Hunnic invasions of the Roman Empire in my alternate history plausibility rankings.

 

 B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

 

(6) PUNIC WARS – SECOND PUNIC WAR

 

And now we move to alternate history rankings where the historical outcome seems the most plausible, although the Punic Wars also seem to offer tantalizing glimpses of an alternate history of Carthaginian victory. That’s mostly from Hannibal’s tactical military genius in the Second Punic War, although perhaps the better Carthaginian prospect of victory was in the First Punic War, had Rome not adapted itself to Carthaginian naval superiority.

Ultimately however, they’re just glimpses, given Rome’s adaptability and unmatched ability to raise armies, with even Hannibal’s tactical genius just a flash in the pan of Roman victory. Reading Roman military history often prompts me to see the Romans as the Soviet Union of ancient history – winning through the manpower to replace one legion after another.

 

(7) VIETNAM WAR

 

Another alternate history ranking where the actual outcome seems the most plausible, except perhaps for the timing of it.

At best, modern counter-insurgency has become the subject of intense debate as to whether there are effective or viable strategies for victory by the side countering the insurgency. Even those who propose there are concede that such strategies are necessarily narrow, limited, or operate within hard constraints of discipline and restraint.

At worst, it has become a trope for notoriously difficult prospects of success. The Princess Bride film even adapted it for the iconic gag of breaking the rule “never get involved in a land war in Asia” as the most famous of classical blunders. Funnily enough, military historian H.P. Willmott observed as much in earnest by arguing that Japan was the only Asian country the United States could defeat.

As such, alternative history scenarios usually propose the United States “winning” by not being engaged or involved at all, or at least in lesser degrees. Willmott opined specifically with respect to Vietnam that potential defeat was inherent in the concept of a limited war as one of the limitations.

Occasionally you see alternate history glimpses of American victory, if only leaving behind an enduring state as in the Korean War. I’ve seen scenarios argued with various degrees of plausibility as to how the United States might have “won” the war – that tend to be clustered near its starting point or its finishing point, with the former being more persuasive for obvious reasons.

 

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

 

(8) SECOND WORLD WAR

 

Yes, we’ve come to my wild tier for alternative history victory scenarios, and what else to top it but the Second World War?

After all, it’s the big one for alternate war…and it isn’t.

That’s because of the discrepancy between the fictional depictions of its alternate history victory scenarios and their historical plausibility.

Alternate history scenarios for German victory in the Second World War are the most prolific and popular of all alternate history scenarios – in fiction, such that it has whole anthologies and its own entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (“H!tler Wins”).

And yet, such alternate history scenarios seem so much less plausible than the actual historical outcome of Allied victory – so much so that German victory seems an incredible long shot from the outset, only getting longer the further you go into the war. Indeed, the more plausible alternate history scenarios would seem to involve the Allies doing better than they actually did, including posing the question of how Germany was able to start the war at all. The most plausible alternate history scenarios of German “victory” are those that involve Germany not fighting the war in the first place.

There are alternate history scenarios for Japanese victory in the Second World War but they tend to be only as a consequence or side effect of German victory – often with things looking grim between the two of them after their shared victory (as in The Man in the High Castle, where Germany is planning to attack Japan).

As for alternate history scenarios for Italian victory…I’ll just leave it here like the joke it is. Come to think of it, the whole Axis seems like set-up for a joke, albeit with a black sense of humor for its casualties and destruction – “Germany, Italy, and Japan walk into a war…”

And really, Germany should not regard itself as all that different from Italy when it comes to alternate history victory scenarios – as I like to quip, paraphrasing the witticism that the Soviet Union was just Upper Volta with rockets in the Cold War, Nazi Germany was just Italy with rockets in the Second World War.

 

(9) COLD WAR

 

The Cold War is something of an alternate history scenario paradox, hence its wild tier ranking second only to, well, the Second World War.

On the one hand, its historical outcome of American victory also seems the most plausible, particularly with American superiority at the start and end of the Cold War.

On the other hand, the Cold War offers a plethora of alternative history scenarios, both fictional and counterfactual. In a conflict extending for half a century (or longer if you calculate it from the formation of the Soviet Union in 1917), there’s a lot of scope for American miscalculations or mistakes, more or greater than those that occurred in history, to potentially affect that outcome with varying degrees of plausibility.

Alternate history scenarios for the Cold War are not quite as prolific or popular in fiction as those for the Second World War – but seem more plausible. Firstly, because the communist bloc dominated the heartland of Eurasia, with greater population and resources beyond the Axis in WW2. Secondly, as historian Paul Johnson observed, the impatience of H!tler “made him so dangerous in the short term and so ineffectual in the long term (the very reverse of the Soviet strategists).”

Uniquely among my top ten entries (and for all but a handful of wars in contemporary history), the Cold War also has those alternate history scenarios where everybody loses – the scenario of the Cold War turning hot with a nuclear exchange.

 

(10) AMERICAN INDIAN WARS – SIOUX WARS

 

What the Second World War and Cold War are to alternate history in SF, the American Indian Wars are to alternate history in fantasy.

No, seriously – stay with me on this one.

For sheer historical implausibility, I would rank the American Indian Wars in general and the Sioux Wars in particular in F-tier or bottom tier, as my top ten entry with the least plausible alternate history victory scenarios.

Perhaps if the native American tribes had been more united, perhaps if they had more allies among other nations willing or able to aid them against the United States in the long term, and above all, perhaps if they had fought against the colonies from the very outset or the Americans had lost the Revolutionary War, things might have been different for them but it seems an impossibly long shot against the pervasive defeats of similar peoples throughout history – and indeed in the same historical period throughout the world elsewhere.

However, I rank it in wild tier for the profile of the Ghost Dance in fantasy – a profile that earns its own entry in the Encyclopedia of Fantasy as a theme in that genre. For example, the definitive war in fantasy, Tolkien’s War of the Ring, is won by a version of ghost dance, with a quest ultimately relying on and succeeding through the providence of a higher power.

In history, versions of the ghost dance recur in wars fought by those facing overwhelming material odds against them and hence resorting to supernatural means or their ideological equivalent in an attempt to win or delusions of victory – cough triumph of the will for the Axis in WW2 cough.

In history, ghost dances almost always in dead silence, not least the Ghost Dance. “In fantasy, where magic exists, and where gods may intervene to help the worthy at the last moment, versions of the Ghost Dance may underlie particularly moving moments when the weak and the honest humble their innumerable foes, or perhaps escape into an otherworld through a portal opened by the pattern of the dance.”

 

Friday Night Funk – Top 10 Music (Mojo & Funk): Special Mention (Funk) (6) Deee-Lite – Groove is in the Heart

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(6) FUNK: DEEE-LITE –

GROOVE IS IN THE HEART (1990)

 

“Don’t forget – the groove is in the heart!”

Nuff said.

Or maybe not. Deee-Lite started in New York as a duo with the fabulous Lady Miss Kier and Ukranian Supa-DJ Dmitry, which became a trio when joined by Japanese Jungle DJ Towa Towa – the latter injecting techno music into their old-school style of dance music.

And they are defined by one song from their debut album – “Groove is in the Heart”, with its distinctive bass guitar loop sampled from Herbie Hancock’s “Bring Down The Birds”.

“Deee-Lite’s reputation may rest on only one hit single, but what a hit. “Groove Is in the Heart” defined the summer of 1990 on radio and MTV with its delicious combination of funk, modern dance sheen, and Lady Miss Kier’s smart, sharp diva ways. Add in guest vocals and bass from Bootsy Collins, brass from the original Horny Horns duo of Fred Wesley and Maceo Parker, and a smooth mid-song rap from A Tribe Called Quest’s Q-Tip, and the results sounded as sparkling now as they did then”.

And whenever or wherever it is playing, it will always get me dancing…

“Deee-groovy!”

 

RATING:

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Top Tens – Fantasy & SF: Top 10 SF Books (Special Mention) (10) Hayford Peirce – “Iceback Invasion”

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Cover of the hardcover edition of Peirce’s short story collection “With a Bang and Other Forbidden Delights” – the edition I own. Yes, I have no idea what’s going on in that cover art either

 

 

(10) HAYFORD PEIRCE –

“ICEBACK INVASION” (1979)

Hayford Pierce earns this entry on the back (heh) of the ironic near-future SF satire of his 1979 story (for Omni magazine) “Iceback Invasion”. In it, sparring Cold War superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, are each groaning on the point of total collapse and being eclipsed by the rising Chinese-Japanese co-prosperity sphere and European Union. The leaders of the Soviet Union conceive a last-ditch plan to bring down the United States (reasoning “what, short of nuclear war, can they actually do to us?”), using illegal Russian immigration – the titular ‘iceback’ invasion – to subvert American elections and politics, but which backfires spectacularly.

When including it in his 2005 short story collection With a Bang and Other Forbidden Delights, Peirce opined that it had not dated well, projected as it was from the United States of the 1970’s (and not least failing to anticipate the fall of the Soviet Union on its own). However, he may have misjudged that, as much of it was to prove surprisingly resonant even forty years later – particularly the scenes in the American cabinet, where President Martinez bemoans “the end of the Republic as we know it” (prompting Secretary of State Richard XYZ to exclaim that reparations to Africa are being paid on time). President Martinez’s exclamation is due to the state of readiness – or lack thereof – for the armed forces, despite the budget of a trillion dollars and Defence Secretary Mildred Haggleman proudly announcing it to be an “exceptionally well-equalized army”, although his concern is for “the potential dangers of a military coup”.

Pierce was probably accurate in his 2005 assessment when he opined “there’s enough black humor in here to keep it amusing two decades later, along with enough bare-knuckles satire to offend just about everyone”.

RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Top Tens – Fantasy & SF: Top 10 SF Books (Special Mention) (9) James Tiptree Jr – “The Screwfly Solution”

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Cover of James Tiptree Jr story anthology Her Smoke Rose Up Forever including the title story and “The Screwfly Solution”, by Tachyon Publications in 2004, paperback edition – the edition I own

 

 

(9) JAMES TIPTREE JR –

“THE SCREWFLY SOLUTION”

James Tiptree Jr was actually the pen name for Alice Bradley Sheldon, one of my favorite writers of science fiction stories, with her own distinctive voice.

She also had some of the most evocative and lyrical titles for her short stories – “And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side” (although technically she borrowed her title from John Keats’ La Belle Dame Sans Merci) and “Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light!” are two of my favorite titles as well as stories.

However, the title of my favorite Tiptree story is not so lyrical – with its prosaic title of “The Screwfly Solution” – but is as evocative and haunting as any of her more lyrically titled stories. Its subject is also not so lyrical, that recurring SF trope of alien invasion. As I have said elsewhere, SF is still all Morlocks and Martians to me, with the latter evidenced by my soft spot for alien invasion stories. Of course, in the most realistic alien invasion stories, spacefaring aliens would have such technological advantages over us that they would wipe the floor with us, metaphorically speaking – to such extent that we may not even perceive the invasion, as in this story.

The title references the sterile insect technique, a technique of eradicating the population of screwflies by the release of sterilized males that compete with fertile males to reduce the population – a reference made clearer by one of its characters, Alan, a scientist working on parasite eradication. However, in this story, we’re the screwflies, but with a much more violent distortion of human sexuality – as an epidemic of murderous male violence against women starts to spread across the globe. Some scientists suspect a biological cause, but their voices are not heard amidst political inaction, or worse, elaborate misogynistic rationalizations for the violence. One such rationalization is a new religious movement that is spreading along with the murders – the Sons of Adam, who believe that all women are evil and that removing them will return the world to paradise, when angels shall return to earth.Alan realizes that the epidemic causes male sexual impulses to instead become violent homicidal impulses and he too is infected. His wife Anne flees to the Canadian wilderness where, in the end, pursued by an entire society bent on femicide, she sees one of the ‘angels’ that will inherit the Earth.

There is also an annual James Tiptree Jr Award for works of fantasy or science fiction in a similar vein to her stories.

RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Top Tens – Fantasy & SF: Top 10 SF Books (Special Mention) (8) Robert Sheckley – Options

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Cover of the Pan Science Fiction paperback edition – the edition I own

 

 

(8) ROBERT SHECKLEY –

OPTIONS (1975)

One of science fiction’s most unsung qualities, particularly to those not familiar with the genre, is the extent to which it can be a profoundly comic or satirical medium, often subversively so – which is ironic given that comic science fiction is perhaps the most accessible to readers outside the genre.

Robert Sheckley was primarily a humorist of science fiction, typically writing absurdist and satirical comedies with a thin veneer of a science fictional premise or setting. Sheckley’s “numerous quick-witted stories and novels were famously unpredictable, absurdist and broadly comical”.

Sheckley shone through his playful short stories. My personal favorites are his absurdist satires of human mores, typically through the lens of alien observers or human societies on other planets. One such is “Pilgrimage to Earth”, in which humanity’s home planet, exhausted of its material resources to offer its former space colonies, resorts to space tourism for more intangible commodities – “Earth specializes in impracticalities such as madness, beauty, war, intoxication, purity, horror and the like, and people come from light-years away to sample these wares”. Wares such as romantic love – as a vendor exclaims, other planets have tried it and found it too expensive or unsettling, but Earth specializes in the impractical and makes it pay.

However, it is in Sheckley’s longer fiction that we find more extended satires or absurdist comedies from science fiction premise – which brings us to my favorite Sheckley novella, the absurdist and anarchic Options, in which Sheckley plays with story itself. It starts off in a reasonably linear narrative, in a comedic play on an classic pulp science fiction premise – ostensibly about the marooned protagonist Tom Mishkin’s attempt to get a spare part for his spaceship stored in a cache on an alien planet. To protect him, he is assigned a Special Purpose Environmental Response or SPER robot.

Unfortunately, the robot is programmed for another planet. However, that premise becomes an increasingly loose framing device as the non-linear narrative descends into a mass of diversions, non sequiturs and musings – “a deliberate cosmic shambles, an explosion or disintegration of story logic, a comedy of cliches and crossed lines, and a joke on the very act of story-telling”.

RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Monday Night Mojo – Top 10 Music (Mojo & Funk): Special Mention (Mojo) (5) The Smiths – How Soon is Now

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(5) MOJO: THE SMITHS (MORRISEY) – HOW SOON IS NOW (1984)

B-Side: Disappointed (1988)

 

“And you go home and you cry

And you want to die”

 

Well that pretty much sums up the common perception of The Smiths, depression tempered by apathy, or melancholy tempered by ennui. As an acquaintance of mine once quipped, summing up the ambience of The Smiths as “I’d kill myself if I could be bothered”. However, that is something of a misplaced stereotype of the Smiths and lead singer Morrissey (yet another musical artist known by his mononym) as ‘miserabilists’, albeit with an element of truth. While Morrissey’s combination of witty lyrics and campy vocals often seemed (or outright were) superficially depressing, they also often full of self-deprecatory or mordant sense of humor. They were also combined with guitarist Johnny Marr’s jangly, catchy pop-rock melodies.

Introducing its leading lights, Morrissey and Marr, effectively introduces The Smiths – that quintessentially British (albeit led by Morrissey and Marr of Irish origin) alternative or indie rock band that endured from 1982 to its breakup in 1987 or effectively as long as the rest of the band could put up with Morrissey (and something which has increasingly been difficult for the rest of the world to do whenever he opens his mouth to do anything but sing). But while it endured and since, The Smiths have been a cult favorite and one of the most important or influential bands to emerge from the British independent music scene of the 1980’s.

 

“I am the son

And the heir

Of a shyness that is criminally vulgar”

 

And which other Smiths song to choose than “How Soon is Now”? Ironically, it was originally released in 1984 as the B-side of another single, it has since become something of a Smiths signature song – noted by Marr to be their “most enduring record” and “most people’s favorite”, which is also ironic as many consider it not to be representative of the band’s usual style.

Of course, some may recognize the song from 1996 film The Craft – and from there it seems to have been associated with young witches such that it also was the theme song of the television series Charmed.

And for the B-side of this entry, I’ll choose something from Morrissey’s (early, more Smiths-like) solo career – the highlights of which are in his compilation album Bona Drag. And while I was tempted towards “November Spawned A Monster”, mainly due to its music video of three minutes of Morrisey writhing in a mesh-shirt (in the desert), I ultimately went with my favorite “Disappointed”, which was not released as a single.

 

“Drank too much

And I said too much

And there’s nowhere to go but down”

 

After all, who hasn’t been there?

 

And as for the balance of my Top 10 The Smiths / Morrisey songs:

(3) Suedehead (1988)

(4) Every Day is Like Sunday (1988)

(5) November Spawned a Monster (1990)

(6) What Difference Does It Make (1984)

(7) Bigmouth Strikes Again (1986)

(8) Panic (1986)

(9) Shoplifters of the World Unite (1987)

(10) Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before (1987)

 

RATING: 

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Top Tens – Fantasy & SF: Top 10 SF Books (Special Mention): (7) Richard Matheson – I am Legend

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Recurring cover art for the book (or in a similar style), which seems to originate from the Gollanz SF Masterworks edition

 

 

(7) RICHARD MATHESON –

I AM LEGEND (1954)

Richard Matheson was legend.

A legend of fantasy, science fiction and horror – writing novels, short stories and scripts or screenplays.

I’m tempted to give this entry to his most famous work to Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, arguably the most iconic Twilight Zone episode, but really in the end there can only be one – his 1954 novel I am Legend.

Forget the Will Smith film or any other cinematic adaptation, all of which vary in their faithfulness to the novel and its lone survivor protagonist Robert Neville – which were a major influence and precursor to the zombie apocalypse. Except of course in I am Legend, it was a vampire apocalypse. Robert Neville is apparently the lone survivor (at least in Los Angeles) of a pandemic, in which the victims resemble classical vampires. At night, swarms of them surround his house. During the day, he stakes them and forages supplies.

And the novel’s central twist is in his titular legendary status. Spoiler warning from 1954 – his cozy vampire-killing post-apocalyptic routine is disrupted when he finds an apparently uninfected woman, Ruth. He takes her in, but is surprised to learn that she is actually infected. What’s more, she is one of a population of infected that have slowly recovered, rebuilding human society and developing medication to overcome the worst symptoms of infection (such as those of the feral vampires that swarm his house). Indeed, she is an agent sent to apprehend him. And as that new society apprehends him (for execution), he learns the irony underlying the title – to the new society, he is the monster stalking and slaying them. They view him as he previously viewed the feral vampires, a remnant of old humanity now a monstrous legend to the new humanity.

Again – but really, do yourself a favor and help yourself to his other works, particularly his short stories – which offer cracking good reads that lodge themselves in your mind afterwards. Indeed, I could (and should) do a Richard Matheson Top 10

RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Top Tens – Fantasy & SF: Top 10 SF Books (Special Mention) (6) Ray Bradbury – The Martian Chronicles

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The classic cover art by one of my favorite fantasy & SF artists, Michael Whelan – it’s only part of his full art, which I believe some books featured as a wraparound cover (fair use)

 

 

(6) RAY BRADBURY –
THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES (1950)

When I think of Mars, I still dream of the Mars of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles (with one or two other fictional exceptions).

The Mars of Ray Bradbury is not a scientific Mars – a cold, dead planet – but a mythic Mars, an eternal planet of dreams.  Of course, Ray Bradbury identified himself not as a writer of science fiction, but as a writer of fantasy, particularly by reference to The Martian Chronicles – “Science fiction is a depiction of the real. Fantasy is a depiction of the unreal. So Martian Chronicles is not science fiction, it’s fantasy. It couldn’t happen, you see? That’s the reason it’s going to be around a long time – because it’s a Greek myth and myths have staying power.”

The Martian Chronicles are stories of the human and markedly American colonization of Mars in a manner analogous to the frontier, with the native Martians akin to the native Americans (a parallel that would also be played for laughs in Futurama).

Indeed, my very favorite Martian Chronicles stories involved the native Martians – those dark-skinned, golden-eyed Martians, those telepathic and empathic shape-shifting Martians. In “Ylla”, the titular frustrated Martian wife has telepathic dreams of the incoming astronauts of humanity’s first expedition to Mars. Her jealous husband denies her dreams, but senses her inchoate romantic feelings towards the interlopers and shoots them under pretext of hunting.

By the time of humanity’s third similarly doomed expedition to Mars in “The Third Expedition” or “Mars is Heaven”, the Martians have become more hostile than Ylla’s telepathic tryst, perhaps in a telepathic premonition of their own doom at the hands of humanity. The expedition finds an exact replica of a town from Earth, populated by their lost, loved ones – who lure them into the houses and then bury them the following day, shifting between their human and Martian forms. The Martians’ doom had come in any event, as the fourth expedition finds the Martians all dead from chicken pox.

And yet the Martians have their ghost dance on Mars. In “The Night Meeting”, a human colonist encounters a Martian, with both of them seeming to inhabit their own parallel worlds of Mars. Each is translucent to the other and has the appearance of a ghost – the colonist sees only ruins where the Martian sees a thriving Martian city, and the Martian sees only an ocean where the colonist sees his settlement. In “The Martian”, a sole surviving Martian empathically takes the shape of a colonist couple’s dead son, but is tragically torn apart by contact with more human colonists, exhausted from helplessly shifting shapes to all their hopes and dreams of lost loved ones. And in “Dark They Were and Golden Eyed”, human colonists are transformed into Martians.

Ultimately, the human colonists have their own ghost dance, as Mars is decolonized by nuclear war on Earth. In “There Will Come Soft Rains”, an automated house on Earth continues to perform its daily duties, even while the family’s silhouettes are permanently burned into the side of the house. And in “Million Years Picnic”, the father of a family that has fled the war to Mars shows them the Martians, their own reflections in a canal.

RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Top Tens – Fantasy & SF: Top 10 SF Books (Special Mention) (5) L. Sprague de Camp – Lest Darkness Fall

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The somewhat cheesy Mass Market paperback edition on Amazon (and also historically inaccurate since the book is set in Ostrogothic Italy) – all covers I’ve seen for editions of the book are cheesy (fair use)

 

 

(5) L. SPRAGUE DE CAMP –

LEST DARKNESS FALL (1939)

 

Sprague de Camp is sadly somewhat obscure these days, despite being a major figure – and prolific writer – of the so-called Golden Age of Science Fiction in the 1930’s and 1940’s, chumming around with better remembered writers such as Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov.

His novella Lest Darkness Fall has had more lasting influence, at least for my enduring love of alternate histories, particularly alternate histories created by time travelers from our own time. Written in 1939, it “is certainly one of the earliest and most influential” of the alternate history genre.

Visiting the Pantheon in Rome, protagonist Martin Padway finds himself transported by a mysterious storm to sixth century Rome – and sets out to singlehandedly stave off the impending Dark Ages. The western Roman Empire has fallen, but the Ostrogothic Kingdom that has replaced it in Italy is suitably stable for Padway’s purpose.

Fortunately, Padway is a capable individual for this tall task – I’d have been royally screwed. For one thing, he is a scholar of the period (hence his visit to Rome) and speaks Latin. He also knows double-entry bookkeeping – which, with his knowledge of Arabic numerals, he shares with a Roman moneylender to borrow money without the usual usurious Roman rates. He also knows how to distil brandy, which allows him to create his own profitable business. And so on, through using his money to create, by trial and error, the technologies of communication to prevent the Dark Ages, while becoming increasingly involved in politics and war to preserve the Ostrogothic kingdom from its opponents, particularly the encroaching eastern Roman Empire.

As I said, Lest Darkness Fall inspired my long-lasting love for alternate histories, particularly alternate histories through time travel, which become even more fun when you don’t just send individuals back in time, but whole groups or even towns – such as John Birmingham’s Axis of Time trilogy (in which a twenty-first century naval battle group is transported back to the Battle of Midway and find themselves fighting a very different Second World War) or Eric Flint’s 1632 series (in which the whole town of Grantsville in modern Virginia finds itself transported back to Germany in the Thirty Years War).

And as a side note, similarly to de Camp in Lest Darkness Fall, Asimov retold the history of the fall of the Roman Empire, but as future history rather than alternate history in his Foundation series – and his Galactic Empire would in turn seem to be an influence on the similar Empire in Star Wars).

Close runners-up are his light fantasy Harold Shea or Compleat Enchanter stories, written in collaboration with Fletcher Pratt. The premise of those stories is that the protagonist and companions use symbolic logic or the ‘mathematics of magic’ to travel to parallel worlds in which fantasy, myths and legends are real – Norse mythology, Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (where Shea meets his wife Belphebe), Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Kublai Khan, Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, the Finnish Kavela and Irish mythology. These stories had a certain resonance for me as they seemed to symbolize the magic of reading fantasy itself.

 

RATING:

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Top Tens – Fantasy & SF: Top 10 SF Books (Special Mention) (4) Warhammer 40k

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Cover of the Warhammer Space Marine video game released in 2011 (fair use)

 

 

(4) WARHAMMER 40K (1987 – PRESENT)

 

Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned.
Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim darkness of the far future there is only war.
There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

Warhammer 40,000 – usually known as Warhammer 40K – is the closest SF equivalent to Dungeons and Dragons, in terms of a game encapsulating its genre. It doesn’t have quite the same breadth of encyclopedic treatment of genre themes and tropes as Dungeons and Dragons, given that it is confined to its space opera setting. But what a setting!

“Warhammer 40,000 is your Standard Sci Fi Setting injected with a cocktail of every drug known to man and genuine lunar dust, stuck in a blender with Alien, Mechwarrior, Starship Troopers, Star Wars, and teeny, tiny sprinkles of Judge Dredd and 2000AD, embellished with spikes and prayer scrolls, bathed in blood and turned up to Eleventy Zillion (and then set on fire). Twice. With 8ft chainsaws.”

Although I’m surprised that quotation doesn’t reference Dune along with Star Wars – as well as Nemesis from 2000 AD, with that storyline’s Termight Empire led by the supremely xenophobic Torquemada. Not to mention the obvious influences of H.P. Lovecraft and J.R.R. Tolkien – but they’re obvious influences on almost everything in fantasy or SF. Also apparently Paradise Lost according to the game’s creator.

Warhammer 40K drew heavily on its publisher’s previous fantasy game Warhammer – hence the name – but has long since diverted from and totally eclipsed its fantasy predecessor. Whereas the fantasy game had a smattering of optional SF elements – primarily advanced technological weaponry as artefacts or relics left behind by a long-gone race of spacefarers – the SF game went further in the opposite direction, space opera fantasy in the style of Star Wars or SF with substantial fantasy elements.

“It adapts a number of tropes from fantasy fiction, such as magic, supernatural beings, daemonic possession, and fantasy races such as orcs and elves; ‘psykers’ fill the role of wizards in the setting”.

Its setting and plot is far too complex for a single entry – indeed, it could easily be its own top ten (or several top ten lists, given the volume of game material) – but stands out for the grim darkness of its tagline, which has evolved into a meme, as has much else in the game.

As its title indicates, it is about 40,000 years or so in the future. Humanity has a galactic empire (yay!) but that empire sucks (boo!), although the galaxy beyond that empire sucks even more – factions and forces against which the Imperium of Man is desperately trying to hold the line, against overwhelming odds in the long run.

That’s pretty much it. Oh sure – there’s the basic plot summary from Wikipedia:

“The setting of Warhammer 40,000 is violent and pessimistic. It depicts a future where human scientific and social progress have ceased, and human civilisation is in a state of total war with hostile alien races and occult forces. It is a setting where the supernatural exists, is powerful, and is usually untrustworthy if not outright malevolent. There are effectively no benevolent gods or spirits in the cosmos, only daemons and evil gods, and the cults dedicated to them are proliferating. In the long run, the Imperium of Man cannot hope to defeat its enemies, so the heroes of the Imperium are not fighting for a brighter future but raging against the dying of the light.”

Or the evocative summation from TV Tropes – “the most basic summation of the game’s plot is that our galaxy has been twisted into an unfathomable horror where an eternal, impossibly vast conflict occurs between several absurdly powerful genocidal, xenocidal, and (in at least one case) omnicidal factions, with every single weapon, ideology, and creative piece of nastiness imaginable cranked to an outlandish extreme… and even it has a Hell”

Perhaps the most interesting aspects of the game are its factions – foremost among the Imperium of Man as the default human protagonist faction. As previously mentioned, it sucks – an absurdly dysfunctional, paranoid, fascist theocratic state under the God-Emperor of Mankind, who now resembles some bizarre combination of mummified Egyptian pharaoh and Aztec god sustained by thousands of daily sacrifices.

The imperial cult holds sway throughout the empire – enforced by “a futuristic Inquisition” that ruthlessly hunts down anyone with even the slightest taint of the heretic, the mutant, or the alien, even going as far as destroying entire planets, just to be sure.

Science and technology have stagnated – “partly because they are treated with fear, ignorance and magical superstition” and partly because of “the Adeptus Mechanicus, the secretive, deranged machine cult that maintains the Imperium’s technological base. The latter have a point though, as technology is a portal for daemonic corruption – and The Warp, a corrupted parallel dimension connected to the material universe that provides the Imperium’s lifeblood as its only means of faster-than-light Travel, is incredibly dangerous.”

And then you have the forces of the Imperium holding the line – “the Space Marines (capricious, fanatical, genetically engineered Knight Templar Super Soldiers) and the Sisters of Battle (equally fanatical, pyromaniacal battle nuns) serve as the Imperium’s special forces, while the Imperial Guard, its at least trillions-strong regular army, takes disregard for human life to new and interesting extremes”.

For all its obvious dystopian dysfunction, the game publishers have to keep reminding fans that the Imperium’s “fascist totalitarianism is bad” – partly because they tend to be the point of view faction in game material, partly because they are indeed often awesome and cool in humanity’s last stand desperately holding the line, and partly because all other major factions are as bad, if not far worse.

You have the Aeldari or space elves, the Tyranids who consume everything else into themselves, the Necrons seeking to wipe out all organic life, the Orks modelled on fantasy orcs – and looming hungrily behind them all, the daemonic forces of Chaos.

Not bad for a game that primarily consists of miniatures or models, albeit with rulebooks – hence the special mention here.

Like many others, I don’t play the game – which seems to involve substantial expenditure of time and money in the ever-proliferating miniatures that are the basic components of gameplay – but enjoy the lore, of which there is an incredible volume beyond the game, not least in published tie-in books and comics.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD-TIER – OR IS THAT GOD-EMPEROR TIER?)