I have a new post on Sea Lion Press about characterization in alternate history.
A Thousand Words: Fat Man And Little Boy
Fat Man And Little Boy
Before there was Oppenheimer, there was 1989’s Fat Man and Little Boy, a far less well received movie about the development of the nuclear bomb starring Paul Newman as Leslie Groves and Dwight Schultz as Robert Oppenheimer. Knowing its reputation and knowing my interest in the subject matter, I felt I had to check it out.
Most of the critiques are accurate. The movie does treat the making of the nuclear bomb as a hokey war movie with Newman and Schultz as the cliche general and scientist right out of central casting. The movie is VERY clear on what side its makers are taking in the debate about nuclear weapons (it’s uh, not that of Curtis Lemay) and is not subtle in its points. And yes, it’s historically inaccurate in many ways.
Yet it’s still better than I thought it would be. For all those legitimate issues, it’s a technically well made movie. It may be a hokey war movie, but its direction and (especially) sets are solid. Even the final scene when the bomb finally detonates (spoiler) is interesting in that the filmakers obviously knew they couldn’t do the explosion justice with the effects of the time so they chose an indirect vision that’s surprisingly effective.
It’s not the best film ever, but it doesn’t quite deserve the scorn its gotten. Plus Ennio Morricone’s score is typically amazing.
Review: Crimson Snow
(Warning: This review contains many uses of the words ‘tanks exploding’. It’s a sort of contest to see how often I can fit that phrase in. So let the tanks explode!)
Ryan Aslesen’s Crimson Snow is a science fiction novel about tank battles. It is nothing but tanks exploding. And the occasional cliched angst, but mostly tanks exploding. When tanks are not exploding, the book is not very good. When tanks are exploding, it is mostly adequate. There are actually so many scenes of tanks exploding that they kind of blend in, and the scenes in between the tanks exploding (including one bizarre played-straight scene where the main heroine uses a ‘pleasure bot’), do nothing to add to the coherence.
Because of this, this book depends on whether or not you like tanks exploding enough to look past its flaws. If you really, really like tanks exploding, go ahead and read it. If you don’t, there are better books out there featuring tanks exploding.
(Final “Tanks Exploding” count: 8, not including this sentence)
Nuclear Terrorism Cont.
Back to my “hypothetical nuclear terrorism” reading, and some of the analyses have given me this impression.
So there are some ifs beyond the norm that actually make it more likely. Besides the usual “if you have the resources and personnel for the job”, there’s two things that make the job of the would-be nuclear terrorist easier and their opponents harder.
- Being willing to take the hit of large and likely fatal amounts of radiation during transportation and construction. This is pretty self-explanatory, especially when using comparably “fresh” (and thus high radiation) spent power reactor fuel as an input.
- Being willing to detonate the bomb in a target area closer to the assembly site, even if it’s less damaging and/or prestigious.
However, this narrows the personnel pool even more. It may be a slight narrowing, but it’s still a narrowing. It’s also worth noting that the first point makes a “factory accident” a lot more likely, perhaps countering the advantage of fanaticism.
Five Fuldapocalyptic Years
This blog has been active for five years and now has close to a thousand posts. It’s been a joy to make. And it’s unironically and seriously helped change my view of literature as a whole. When I started the blog, my view of fiction and cheap thriller fiction in general was narrow and (unknowingly) distorted. Now I can see a much clearer picture.
So to all who’ve read and commented on this blog, thank you.
Review: Grant’s War
Grant’s War
Eric Meyer is one of those authors who just writes a ton and ton of ultra-cheap thrillers. I’ll even admit that I had to check to see if he was a real person and not just an obvious pen name shared by multiple actual writers (the answer is “yes, he is a real person as far as I can tell”, by the way). This is the kind of book I’m dealing with when I read Grant’s War.
The premise is simple. It’s a war novel where protagonist Jack Grant, after being (mostly) falsely convicted, faces the stereotypical “army or jail” choice. He chooses the army just in time for 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan. And he gets there just in time for a scene where he grabs a red-hot AK by the barrel and throws it aside before dispatching its wielder in a fistfight. So, in other words a lot more Jon Land than Jon Le Carre.
While this book is not exactly one that contains deep characterization or excellent literary fundamentals, it’s nonetheless good by the standards of the assembly-line slop that makes up its genre. And that alone is enough for me to recommend it.
CMO 64 Bit
Command Modern Operations has finally been officially updated to run as a 64 bit program instead of the 32 bit one it was previously. The list of changes and additions in this mega-update can be seen here. It’s quite the big leap!
Hungary’s Humongous Divisions
In the late 1940s, Hungary, fresh off Soviet conquest and the statistical worst hyperinflation ever recorded, was rebuilding its military. Not surprisingly, the plans reportedly called for a force structured along Soviet lines and doctrine. But surprisingly, the centerpiece was on ridiculously large infantry divisions. How large? Paper strength of at least 25,000 people, but that doesn’t describe all of it.
No, comparing the number of infantry battalions ultimately under divisional control draws this insanity into better perspective. The archetypical triangular infantry division has nine (three in each of three regiments/brigades). The square division largely rejected as too big and clunky had twelve (three in each of four regiments). This had sixteen. Four regiments of four battalions each.
There’s a reason why these actually weren’t made and why, even beyond the impact of the 1956 rebellion and short leash, Hungary’s army in actuality remained conventionally Soviet-styled for the rest of the Cold War.
A Thousand Words: The Natural
The Natural (Movie)
There are several things that are all true about the Robert Redford movie The Natural, the baseball story that “adapts” Bernard Malamud’s novel of the same name to the screen.
- It is a shallow and sugary but well-shot and well-made movie.
- It is about as faithful to the original novel as a Minnesota politician is to her husband.
- It’s perhaps the most prominent sports alternate history ever made.
The first part needs the least explanation, except to highlight how amazing Randy Newman’s score is. The second part is the more interesting to explain. See, the novel is in many ways just as shallow as the movie, while being far more mean spirited and, frankly, dull. One great inherent part about filmmaking is that via the trick of “the ball hits something which goes boom”, you can see what awesome thing Roy Hobbs did instead of just having someone say “he lead the league in homers and triples and hit lots of home runs until his character brought him down.”
The final point needs some attention. See, Roy Hobbs and the New York Knights obviously did not actually exist, much less win the 1939 National League pennant. But a more important thing is that instead of taking place in a vague “sometime in the past” the way the book did, this has a specific date (1939), and said date is several decades before the filming and release of the movie. If that’s not alternate history, than what is?
Solving The Madness
Ok, “How many shells were fired in the opening megabarrage of a multi-front offensive operation, such as a Fuldapocalypse or All Union’s invasion of Romania?”
Going with the latter because it’s my book, I finally have an answer that’s easier than a vague “Over a million.” Going with “Sustainability of the Soviet Army In Battle” and “Front Operations 1977” as main sources.
A unit of fire for each artillery piece translates to about 80 for 120-122mm, 60 for 152mm, 160 for BM-21s, and 120 for smaller mortars (sust., pg 68). GENFORCE Mobile has similar numbers but adds 40 for big 203+mm pieces. I’ll just split the difference and say 70.
“Thus, for instance, in armies operating on the axis of the main attack, the expenditure of artillery and mortar ammunition in the first day of combat actions without the use of nuclear weapons may be 2.0 to 2.5 units of fire” (front. pg 309)
A front is described in the same document as having 3,400 to 4,200 artillery pieces (front pg. 12), so a very basic napkin calc for two fronts gives 1,176,000 shells. That’s about 25,000 tons even if you assume “only” the weight of a D-30 round for each shell.
So yeah, 100-150 x the number of total artillery pieces for an extremely basic ballpark figure.
Fuldapocalypse Fiction 