(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)