9. Weapons Of Choice

Weapons Of Choice - John Birmingham

I thought the idea behind this novel was very interesting and could not wait to read it. I found out it was the first part in a trilogy and got even more excited about it. The other two are already on the shelf and waiting to be read.

This is a story about a multi-national military task force from the year 2021 that is headed on a peacekeeping mission to Indonesia where Islamic extremists have seized Jakarta. Due to some unrest in the region a research vessel working in the area is also being protected by the task force. That vessel is conducting experiments to create small stable worm-holes. The experiment goes awry and the task force is absorbed by a huge worm hole and transported in time.

They arrive in 1942. Pearl Harbor has already been attacked. Admiral Spruance is in charge of his fleet and headed to Midway for an infamous battle with Yamamoto.

That alone was interesting enough to get me to read the book. Imagine what having weapons systems even a decade more advanced that the ones we currently have and using them against an enemy from the 1940s. The advantage would be overwhelming. Rockets, jets, helicopters, radar, computers, communications equipment, stealth, automatic rifles, night-vision technologies, infra-red, hovercraft, laser-guided technology, body armor, etc etc etc. All of these things did not exist at all in the 1940s.

So, I read the book thinking that all these advantages would lead to an easier war for Americans and possibly a Japanese surrender without having to actually using nuclear weapons. I thought it would be a fun little jaunt for our superior forces onto islands that were in real history some bloody and costly battles with tremendous casualties on both sides.

What I got was different. The naval battle at Midway didn't happen after Spruance's fleet ran into the task force that suddenly appeared. The personnel on the task force were all rendered unconscious for a period of time after the "transition". The task force ships recognized this fact with the sensors and computers on the ships and entered an auto-pilot program. While under auto-pilot is when the 1942 folks located the 2021 folks...and they were multi-national...and there were ships flying the flag of Japan. So, needless to say, despite being like "What the heck is that thing?" the 1942 Americans freaked out and attacked the 2021 ships. The 2021 ships on auto-pilot defended themselves. Both sides take a bunch of damage and history is changed in that instance. No more battle at Midway.

What is so different about that? Nothing. It came after that. About 75% of this book had nothing to do with war at all. It had to do with fitting thousands of people from 2021 into a 1942 world and making it work. Imagine the differences. Racial equality was tremendously different. Women's rights...very different. These two social differences were huge parts of the story. Imagine a black lesbian female being the commander of an American aircraft carrier. No big deal today, but it sure would have been in 1942. Any one of those adjectives (black, lesbian or female) would have meant she would not only never command such a ship, but that she would never even serve on one in any capacity at all.

Those kinds of interactions between peoples of both times were very interesting. Then there was some pretty cool stuff that comes with knowing what would happen before it happens.

For instance, there was a meeting where Admiral Kolhammer (2021) was briefing President Franklin D. Roosevelt and other cabinet and military on the capabilities of his forces. Present at the meeting were folks like Admirals Halsey and Nimitz, General MacArthur, and many others. One of them was general Dwight D Eisenhower. Eisenhower was to become President one day. Since the 2021 folks had all this history in their computer libraries President Roosevelt and General Eisenhower both knew that this was to happen in the future. When Eisenhower disagreed with something Roosevelt said at the meeting Roosevelt said to him "You are not president yet!" That was hilarious to me. Those kinds of things were quite funny.

Another quite funny interaction was when Kolhammer was visiting with Albert Einstein. The conversations were pretty cool.

I was also glad to see that despite all this hardware popping into a world that preceeded the technologies by 80 years that the charachters all realized that they would not suddenly start cranking out tons of cruise missles from American factories. They knew that even with the knowledge they suddenly acquired it would take decades for the undustrial aspects of that technology to catch up to the knowledge they now had.

I figured this would be a fun book to read where the technology would be the star. It turned out that the characters stole the show. It was quite good and I am looking forward to reading the second and third books in the series.

Oh, I almost forgot. The biggest baddest aircraft carrier of them all, the flagship of the multi-national task force...it is the USS Hillary Clinton. It is explained that she was President, a champion of the Navy, and brutally assassinated. Before her death the world had learned not to mess with her because she unleashed the military force upon her enemies ruthlessly. That was an interesting little tidbit from the future that tramsmitted to the past. :-)

Something else I found to be very cool was that there was no Bataan Death March. The tens of thousands of American POWs that actually died horrible deaths in Japanese prison camps were rescued by the multi-national task force. That was the one and only mission performed by the task force against the Japanese forces. The 2021 folks knew it was going to happen and it was important that they prevented such suffering.

Next stop...Auschwitz? I can only hope

22. State of Fear

State of Fear - Michael Crichton

Ecological terrorists attempt to shear off a huge chunk of Antarctica, cause a large loss of life due to flash floods, divert a hurricane into Miami, and cause a tsunami that will hit the West coast of America.

They do all this to "prove" man has caused a global warming problem and catastrophic abrupt climate change is coming.

They try to prove it by causing these things to happen and then blaming it on an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere.

I liked this book a lot. No matter which side of the climate change issue you fall on, the story was pretty darned exciting.

It is not one of the best books I have read (well, heard, since it was an audio-book. A long one.)
It is not even one of Michael Crichton's best, but it was interesting.

I am making this a short post because I don't feel like typing very much. I would rather go read more of Under and Alone, which I am enjoying much more than State of Fear.

4. Slatewiper

Slatewiper - Lewis Perdue

Biological warfare with a twist. This time it is not governments controlling the bio-weapons, it is a corporation in Japan with a serious nationalist streak. This company is a global super-company. It is well respected (and feared) throughout the world. Nobody seems to catch on that they don't like anyone who is not Japanese. They hate everyone else.

So, the biological weapon they design can be "programmed" to attack specific genetic makeups. Yes, this is a weapon that is harmless to anyone except the race they decide to kill. There is a bit of dialogue between characters about the superiority of the Japanese race and how Koreans are just dogs, etc etc.

There is a lot of time spent writing about Japanese World War II atrocities and comparing Ishii to Mengele as far as medical experimentation. I had heard that the Japanese were pretty vicious once they landed on the mainland, but I had not heard the stories mentioned in this book, not had I heard of Dr. Ishii or Unit 731. I have ordered some books about the subject and will see how much is fact.

It felt like the author spent a lot of time researching and writing about Japanese history and culture and threw in a heavy dose of biotechnology.

As far as the book, I think it fell short of a rather good potential. Too many times things just fell into place. Either the people involved just happen to have millions laying around when needed, or perhaps they were just the right people in some powerful position to get exactly the thing needed to save the world. It got ridiculous after a while.

I think the biggest letdown was the lack of a climax. The story droned on and on and on. I kept waiting for the big finale...and then noticed I was reading the epilogue. Damn!

No need to go find this book unless you have read others of the genre and have nowhere left to go. It was OK, but no big thrill. I can't quite say it was a waste of time. It was just OK.

28. Prey

Prey - Michael Crichton

An exciting story in typical Michael Crichton fashion...and I think I know what I mean by that this time. I have read a bunch of his books. This one was recommended by a bunch of dudes at work. When I saw it on the shelf at Goodwill, I grabbed it.

It was a very quick read. The story is about a high-tech company that designs nano-bots which are to be used for a new medical imaging system. Well, actually, that was an after thought when they were losing federal funding for the weapons project that they were really working on. :-)

There is a serious amount of scientific stuff as there always is in Crichton's books. Think of the tour part of the Jurassic Park movie before the breakdown. How does it work? Chaos Theory? All that kind of stuff. This time it is centered around the production of nano-robot machines, virus manipulation, evolution, computer programming taken to extremes that I do not know even exist, behavior of biological organisms in swarms/packs/colonies, symbiosis, environmental impact, etc etc etc..... a LOT of scientific stuff.

So much science that the book became very very interesting to me. The story kept on following different theories and tied lots of different reasoning together in larger picture formulas to explain micro level problems.

Then I realized that the science was making the story. The story itself was not the best part of the story at all. in fact, the story itself could have been a 1950's B monster movie (think of Them or The Blob).

Why was this better than those? It is because of the tremendous amount of detail Crichton uses in the scientific parts of the books. It is not just the obligatory Gamma radiation cloud causing problems like in so many other stories. It feels like his "science" could be real. Maybe it is. I don't know.

I thought of his other books. Andromeda Strain, Terminal Man, Jurassic Park, Next. They were the same way. Other than Jurassic Park, these were just OK stories with suspense built in due to some excellent science. Is that bad? No, not really bad. Is it a "formula"? When I think of writing books using a formula I think of Jackie Collins cranking out a zillion books with the same basic story set in different places with different people in different circumstances and the occasional twist. Is that what Crichton has done? Maybe. In some ways I am sure he has. Always science. Always heavily detailed. Always against tremendous odds that seem impossible to overcome. Then again...many people use that same basic premise for books.

It was a good book that I enjoyed. Again, I must qualify that with the fact that I really enjoy the genre. It moves along quickly and kept me wondering what they would do next, though in parts I did not think the actions or words fit with some of the characters very well, but those moments were fleeting.

Check it out.

25. The Cobra Event

The Cobra Event - Richard Preston

This book was written in 1997 and is about a biological terrorist attack on New York City. Supposedly, Bill Clinton, then President of the United States of America, read this book and then had the federal government to a feasibility study on the events that were fictionalized within the pages. In my opinion, it is possible that something like this could take place.
I enjoyed reading the story and identified with a few of the characters. Some of them were a little over the top. One guy was a UN weapons inspector in Iraq and did some things that would probably have gotten him killed in the real world. Most of it was pretty believable.
One part of the book really got me freaked out. Every once in a while I will have a dream in which I am stuck somewhere and waiting to die. Nobody can find me to help me get out. I am going to be there until I either starve or suffocate. These dreams really freak me out, make me sweat, get my heart racing, and then I can't sleep any more. Whatever.
One part of the book has a character chasing the terrorist through unfinished subway tunnels under the streets of New York. He ends up in a small tunnel (18x24 inches) to escape a bio-grenade and the concrete behind him collapses. He is trapped. He has lost radio communications because he is under ground. Nobody knows where he is. He starts to panic. The descriptions used by the author of what this man was feeling and thinking were so familiar that I was getting short of breath. Then the character creeps forward and ends up hanging upside down in a vertical shaft, unable to move, in the dark, with nobody knowing he is there. The terror that scene put in me was unmatched by anything I have ever read. Just thinking about it is freaking me out. I think I will stop writing about that now. Ugh.
The writing was extremely technical concerning the whole biological stuff. Production of viruses, DNA manipulation, descriptions of bio-labs, equipment used for detection and production of biological agents, etc etc. If you like technological stuff you will like this book.
My father-in-law works for General Dynamics Advanced Technical Products division. He is a systems engineer and has been working on the chemical-biological detection machines used by the military. These were deployed all over the country after 9-11. He saw this book and was very interested in a thing called the Felix. It is a fictional machine that does pretty much exactly what his machine does. I will lend him this book and see what he thinks.
SPOILER PARAGRAPH: In case you care, the terrorist gets killed in a horrible way, some people die in horrible ways also, but the HUGE catastrophe is narrowly avoided. There are casualties, but not what it could have been. That was predictable. After the story ends there is a kind of epilogue where the genetically engineered virus has made it's way into the rat population...therefore leaving the future up in the air. Yeah yeah yeah.
I enjoyed this one and would recommend it to people who like the techno-thriller type of books. I love them.

Next - Michael Crichton - Sep 08

I couldn't do it. I put the book down and started reading other things. I have read his work before. The list of Crichton novels includes: "Airframe", "Jurassic Park", "The Andromeda Strain", "The Terminal Man". I liked them all...but this time I just couldn't get into the book.

Was it the book or was it me? I am not sure. I will find out one day when I pick it up and try again.

Without Remorse - Tom Clancy

This is my favorite book of the Jack Ryan universe.

This book is not the first book published, but it is the first book chronologically in the "series".

It takes place during the Vietnam War and shortly afterward. This book explains to us all how John Clark/John Kelly becomes who he is. Why is he involved with the CIA and black operations throughout the Clancy novels? This book explains it all.

This story involves drug dealers and prostitution in Baltimore, POW camps in Vietnam, the Mafia, corrupt cops and the CIA.

I loved it and will read it again one day.

A- - Recommended if you enjoy the genre

Red Storm Rising - Tom Clancy

This is one of my favorite books. I read it when it was first published in the late 1980s. It was about a third world war sparked during the cold war. The players (countries) are obvious. The scope of what was covered during the war (land, air, sea, intel, diplomacy, etc) was amazing and still the story flowed.

Read this one if you like war stories.

A- - Recommended if you enjoy the genre

Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan World in the Orient

"Debt Of Honor" and "The Bear and The Dragon"

These were two of my favorite Clancy novels. Both have the Jack Ryan world charachters. Both are heavily military books.

Debt of Honor is a war between the US and Japan.

The Bear and The Dragon is a war between China and Russia. The US is fighting alongside Russia in Russian territory.

Both were excellent stories with many different plot lines. I would recommend both books.

A- - Recommended if you enjoy the genre

Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan World in Eastern Europe

I continued reading the Jack Ryan world books and will divide them into categories.

The first I will cover here. They include books that are centered around the Cold War/CIA-KGB. I had read most of these in the past, during the 1990s. The ones remaining were "The Cardinal of the Kremlin" and "Red Rabbit".

The Cardinal was a very good read where the CIA gets a KGB dude out of the Soviet Union. This book had a lot more of an intelligence and spy related theme than most of his books. They are usually very much military or police operations. This one was all about the black ops and behind the scenes intel world. It was good, but not my favorite Clancy story.

Red Rabbit is another book written in the Jack Ryan world. This one also goes back in time a bit. The plot here concerns another defector from the Soviet Union, but this time he is a KGB agent. Another exciting story where I felt like I was sitting on the edge of the cliff.

Rainbow Six - Tom Clancy

This is the book that got me reading again. In March 2006 I spent a month in Ukraine. I took this book with me because it was thick and would occupy some bored time. I had read some Tom Clancy books in the past and had enjoyed them quite a bit. So, I took this one with me and I read it.

Rainbow Six was exciting and made me want to read more. Many of Clancy's books are like a long series. The stories have the same charachters popping up over and over again. They call them the Jack Ryan books because Jack Ryan is the charachter most of them are centered around. Rainbow Six is an offshoot from them. Ryan is not the central charachter.

This book is about an international counter-terrorist group set up in England that gets involved in a plot to attack the olympics with chemical weapons, along with some other events. It was quite detailed, fast paced, and very exciting to read.

It was so good that I ended up reading every one of Clancy's Jack Ryan books that I had not previously read. I read them all before the end of 2006.

A- - Recommended if you enjoy the genre