Review: The Death of Russia

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The Death of Russia

It’s uncommon but not unheard of for a book to have its premise done better by something else in more or less every single way possible. So is the case with The Death of Russia, an alternate history story told through exposition and snippets about Yeltsin dying in the early 1990s and the world sinking into chaos. AH enthusiasts will also know that Zhirinovsky’s Russian Empire was another alternate history story told through exposition and snippets about Yeltsin dying in the early 1990s and the world sinking into chaos. Both started off as forum timelines and then were commercialized.

The first issue one notices is the writing style. Namely, giant breathless blocks of text. The timeline tries to do the “snippets from in-universe books and the like”, but this falls flat because all the “sources” read exactly the same. The second issue is the relentless grimdarkness. While based on stuff that sadly did happen, this just feels gratuitous. There being no real characters or anything but pure exposition makes both problems all the worse.

Eventually things spiral into a nuclear World War III. However, it’s worth noting that a fake interview with Evangelion’s producer starts off the chapter in question. Since pop culture is an obsession of the online AH fandom, this is not exactly a good start. The strike itself is no Arc Light or Red Hammer 1994. I actually fell annoyed at how a (mostly) survivable nuclear war, a topic that fascinates me, was handled so badly. It’s handled with all the grace of a minor league sportsball game report. Namely, a minor league game report written by an basic computer program that saw the box score.

In fact, what’s honestly interesting about the final nuclear exchange, besides the teeth-gritting “it doesn’t work like that” inaccuracies, is how it demonstrates a critique I’ve had for a while now. In the footnotes, the author doesn’t cite those two novels, or any real study on a limited/counterforce-heavy big nuclear strike that would leave society survivable. No, it’s another timeline, an earlier one called Able Archer 83.

But for any normal reading, I’d just say “read Zhirinovsky’s Russian Empire instead”.

A Soviet Romanian War Photo

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Had too much fun making this “recon aircraft photo” of wrecked armored vehicles in a field in Stable Diffusion. I actually found it was easier to just make the field and then inpaint in the wrecks. And if it’s a high altitude, somewhat blurry photo, that makes the imprecision regarding tanks and the like less important.

A common sight in September 1998 and after. Soviet air supremacy led to fields full of destroyed and abandoned Romanian vehicles throughout the country.

Review: Carrying the Fire

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Carrying The Fire: An Astronaut’s Journeys

Long considered one of the two best astronaut memoirs (the other being Mike Mullane’s Riding Rockets), Carrying the Fire is the autobiography of Apollo 1 command module pilot Michael Collins. He got to go to the moon but not walk on it. Collins insisted on writing the book all by himself without assistance, and it paid off. Not only was he a capable pilot and astronaut, but he turned out to be an excellent author as well.

With both humor and majesty, Collins tells the story of flight and the moon program. Anyone interested in outer space should get this. It’s an excellent book and even greater autobiography. While it’s not nearly as fresh as it was in 1974, that’s a small and inevitable “problem” to have. This is a great book.

How Computers Destroyed (And Could Save) Cover Art

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I just found this great article called “When Movie Artwork Was Great.” Long story short, the cover was an important part of advertising, and thus was worth the expense even for otherwise low-budget productions. A combination of computer tools making it easy to do a basic cover (Ie, it’s not like “you have to hand-draw it anyway…), and lower production values as the industry got squeezed meant that generic photoshopped mush took over.

It felt very familiar to me because the exact same thing happened concerning book covers for exactly the same reasons. Weirdly enough, otherwise high-profile books tended to have minimalist covers from the get-go. But trashy pulps that couldn’t even keep the main character’s name consistent (I’m not joking) would have spectacular covers from the likes of Gil Cohen and Ken Barr.

Now it’s just-look at the book section of a grocery store and you’ll know.

I mentioned the ability to improve book covers at very little cost as one of the upsides of AI art. Now that I’ve gotten more into it, I can say even more comfortably that something quickly makeable with the least controversial models (closed source, public domain only, etc…) and only small amounts of manual tweaking could leave most contemporary covers in its dust.

So yeah, shed a tear for the running silhouettes and clunkily shopped-in muscle men. I know we’ll all miss them so much.

A Thousand Words: M. D. Geist

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M. D. Geist

One of the most infamous animes of the 1980s, M. D. Geist was a crudely made original video animation that sank into obscurity. Or it would have if the head of western distributor Central Park Media hadn’t taken a liking to it and pushed it forward. Because of this, there’s been a backlash against the excuse-plot gorefest of a power-armored monster fighting through a sci-fi apocalypse that is M. D. [Most Dangerous] Geist.

That said, it doesn’t deserve to be listed as one of the worst of all time, as it too often is. Like fellow mid-1980s pop culture phenomenon We Built This City by Jefferson Starship, though lacking, there’s a lot worse out there. As cheesy fun it “works”. And that’s often what you need.

Review: Cadia Stands

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Cadia Stands

Of all the Warhammer 40K factions, my absolute favorite by absolute far is the Imperial Guard (or as they’re supposedly called now, the Astra Militarum). So I had to read Cadia Stands, about the 13th Black Crusade (definitely) and one guardswoman’s struggle to survive and escape-supposedly. I mean, the saying correctly went “Cadia Broke Before The Guard Did”, meaning that the forces of Chaos had to literally destroy the world to win.

The book is kind of disjointed. There’s a lot of battle vignettes. Minka Lesk, the young guardswoman in question, is supposedly the main low-level character. But she’s mostly just basically there and little different from all the other Imperial viewpoint figures. So, did I not like it?

NO! HERESY! There’s little wrong with a bunch of battle vignettes, and this is the kind of subgenre that’s incredibly hard to get exactly right. So while it’s not the best, this is a perfectly serviceable action novel.

Creative Update

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Unfortunately, my work on All Union’s successor has been slowed due to two factors, one unpleasant and one very pleasant. The unpleasant reason is that it’s been getting hot and, worse, allergies are in full blast. The pleasant reason is that I just got an excellent new computer, so that’s been occupying a lot of my time.

While I still want to do Soldiers of the Void, my original planned direct successor, I’ve found my creative muse leading towards a less militarized, more political thriller that I’ve called A Period of Cheating. The driver of that plot is nuclear arms control negotiations, and I’m already having a lot of fun.

The Nuclear-Pentand?

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The term “nuclear triad” is a familiar one. It means the three main delivery systems-aircraft, land installations, and naval ones. Or rather, the three main American delivery systems. See, it’s easy to see the grouping of three when you have only deployed three types of strategic platforms: Silos, aircraft, and submarines.

From this American point of view, mobile ICBMs in use by other countries fit into the land part of the triad, and the oft-proposed surface ship bases would fit into the naval part. However, the proposed anchored capsules on the bottom of the sea have more in common with silos than mobile submarines.

So in a different world where nuclear basing was more widespread, the term “Tetrad” or “Pentad” could be used. A tetrad of silos, mobile land missiles (whether via truck, train, hovercraft, or Wienermobile), aircraft, and submarines. Or a pentad of all that plus surface ships.

Review: The Cold Hand of Death

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The Cold Hand of Death

Brent Towns’ latest Team Reaper thriller as of this post is The Cold Hand of Death. It can basically be described as the technothriller equivalent of gulping down an energy drink in a distorted physics chamber where time moves faster. It’s like the book never goes more than two pages without a shot being fired or something blowing up. There’s the usual world-in-crisis technothriller plot, but even this is warped up to ludicrous speed.

I’ve mentioned the previous installments as being fast-paced, but this takes them to a totally different level. It’s like comparing a fast propeller plane to an SR-71.

It just feels excessive. The writing is not bad. It aces the action scenes, and that’s what a thriller needs to get right. But the best action writers of all time would struggle to keep any book interesting if it had as many battles as this one. This is like a deep fried gummy candy. It’s not inedible, but it’s just not the sort of thing you’d want to eat/read lots of.