seanessay.com (under 900 words)
“Hey, sailor!” A United Nations naval contingent steaming near Indonesia, in the future, has my sympathy. Especially as thousands of sailors and marines of several nations find themselves zapped through time, arriving in the mid-pacific, in darkness, there to tangle with the U.S. fleet steaming to fight the Battle of Midway. “…where ignorant armies clash by night.” By dawn, neither force is capable of reclaiming Midway.
On a fresh day the fleets steam together to Pearl. For those who measure long things, the USS Hilary Clinton is longer than 1942’s USS Enterprise. “The other man’s grass is always greener:” “Mac, I tell you, those future women are all wanton, shameless.” There’s more: The navy of the future is shameless too: They have women and Blacks and Asians and Mexicans, even in combat in the marines… serving as NCOs, and as commissioned officers too, with whites taking their orders…” The “contemporaries” are shocked. There’s even an “African American” female gay captain of a battle cruiser, although folks of 1942 don’t know the word gay. They truly hate “pansies” though, thinking, “How dare those “21st century-ers” try to have things their own way?”
They dare because they still have futuristic munitions and computers. And if you want them to share… One of them’s an admiral, so he has clout, but—When he first meets a certain famous WWII admiral, neither man salutes the other…
What’s next? That’s the great question of science fiction.The trilogy is called The Axis of Time, with volume one called Weapons of Choice. The paperback has an “antique” battleship silhouette on the front cover, the back cover has a sleek modern ship, sans turrets and towers and stacks and masts. The writer is an Australian, John Birmingham.
“What’s next” is the futurists, with President Roosevelt’s help, manage to get their own temporary homeland—er, “Special Administrative Zone”—near Los Angeles, ostensibly for using their computer’s encyclopedic archives to tool up factories for cranking out new things for the war effort. By law, within the Zone, the Constitution of the United States in the future applies. Imagine, a Zone where Home-o-sexual Rights mean gays can legally have sex inside their own home! (At last!) Where everyone is respected, regardless of race, religion or creed. Well, some whites don’t want to imagine, and vested interests want to shut down the Zone…
My interest in this “alternate history” series is not the “special effects,” as in supersonic missiles, “caseless ceramic” bullets and so forth, but rather, the people. Birmingham writes with an eye to body language and the cut of clothes. For example, a naval commander, from ’42, has a future girlfriend, a reporter. She’s rich. When he goes with her to a ritzy dinning facility in the Zone he notices that everyone’s body language is not stiff-and-posh; he is surprised at men with loosened ties, amazed at men with their ties off, and decides the men in T-shirts must be artists.
His disturbingly self-confident girlfriend —she’s obviously never heard of the “fragile male ego—” is an “embedded” war correspondent who wears armour, carries weapons. She fights savagely, sending everything back by helmet camera, in real time. Meanwhile, her editor friend, a woman, is back at Pearl, with that boyfriend at her shoulder, bent over a “flexpad,” editing the live battle footage. The young man is equally aghast at both his girlfriend being so savage, and the editor being so remote and cold. “Who are these people?”
The backstory for the futurists is they been peacekeeping against Islamists for 20 years. To these veterans, the “greatest generation” of WWII is awfully innocent.
Just as the boyfriend is too innocent to know that a famous crooner can be a wife beater, and the F.B.I. can spy on loyal senators.
Notables include Einstein and Marilyn, of course, and young Philip Mountbatten on his destroyer, reflecting that his middle aged grandson is older than him. That would be Prince Harry, leading the British commandos.
Some of the futurists are from Germany and Italy, while a great submarine is from Japan. Should the crews be interned? Because of their heritage? My view is that just as U.S. immigrants during my dad’s “Allies versus Axis” war (WWII) would be loyal to democracy, so too would those who immigrated through time, just as today’s Taiwanese, although of Chinese heritage, would bitterly fight to repel any assault landings from China.
Some Social Justice Warriors, none of them famous, forget they themselves are guilty, back at the time the twin towers fell, GUILTY of not seeing that transgender children, and LBTQ kids too, exist, in elementary school, too innocent to “choose” their orientation. Of course, a troll never says “I’m sorry,” never sees a monster in the mirror.
As for the greatest, but ignorant, generation surrounding the time travellers, I sympathize. Even though some readers of Birmingham’s book will be driven to fury: According to the Internet, many people, SJW’s, are hotly self righteous, yelling that any famous historical individual, who was once blind about minority X, has no right to a defence of saying he was “of his time.”
Where’s the justice? I hate those self-described “warriors”—who never risk serving in uniform. This while my mum and dad first met when Dad was on leave in WWII: Of their time.
…
…
Sean Crawford,
Many miles inland,
May 2021
Note: Prince Harry also led aging commandos in one of James P. Hogan’s alternate history novels. In our own time-line, Harry was given a target on his back, “outed,” by a women’s magazine in Australia. (Link) He had to be removed from the lines to avoid endangering the troops around him. Later he flew army helicopters, launched the Invictus Games as a staff officer, and served with Australian commandos before leaving the service in 2015.
Petula Clark sings how The other man’s grass is always greener.
One thought on “Sympathetic to Travellers, Hating Warriors”