Tag: 2000s

Review: Nuclear Safeguards, Security, and Nonproliferation

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Nuclear Safeguards, Security, and Nonproliferation

Every so often I get a textbook that is not really the best to conventionally review at all, much less amongst cheap thrillers. Nuclear Safeguards, Security, and Nonproliferation is one of those books. I feel a little guilty reviewing it because the target audience is scientists and the like who know the math, physics, and engineering subject matter a loooooooooooooooooooooot more than an armchair enthusiast like myself. So yeah, a lot of this goes over my head. And that’s fine.

If the “Type 1 Academese” was understandable and inevitable, the “Type 2” is a legit point of criticism. Despite the fact that anyone who’s read a single piece on the modern history of South Africa would instantly grasp why the post-apartheid government gave up the nuclear weapons, the book explains this in a long and pretentious way. Where I think this is more than a stylistic issue is how it wouldn’t be easy to get its points across to a non-scientist, whereas other similarly dense works on the same topic are still more understandable.

A Thousand Words: Half Past Dead

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Half Past Dead

2002’s Half Past Dead was Steven Seagal’s final effort in mainstream cinema before he collapsed entirely into sus no-budget cheapies. Both a rip-off of the earlier and far better The Rock in the exact same setting (Alcatraz) and the general “Die Hard in a ______” trend that was several years out of date, it did not exactly breathe new life into his career.

A story of supervillains storming Alcatraz (see what I said about that other movie), the film is notable for two things besides just having a washed-up Seagal in it. The first is how desperately they tried to go for the “Edgy Extreme” trend of the late 90s and early 2000s, dragging in rappers and garish overcut camera angles to try (unsuccessfully) to put lipstick on the pig. The second is that this is one of the first appearances of the ubquituous Steven Seagal Stunt Double, used for as much as they could get away with. The “Stunt Double” would reach new heights in Seagal’s later films where it would be used not just for any mild exertion, but for things like walking peacefully.

Amazingly, one of the few highlights is “49er 6”, the femme fatale villain played by a 40 year old soap opera actress (Nia Peeples). She apparently relished doing her own stunts, and that is a far cry from Seagal the Double-Man.

As a time capsule/MST3K-style so bad its good, you could do worse than this movie. But I wouldn’t put it anywhere near the top of the cheap thriller pyramid.

Review: The Soul Drinkers Omnibus

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The Soul Drinkers Omnibus

Since I’ve just gotten (and am enjoying) the new Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader game, I figured I’d review a book (series) from that setting. An old set of Space Marine novels, the Soul Drinkers Omnibus covers the titular chapter. Is it good? Uh… not really.

The biggest problem is the characterization. It’s not that they’re one-dimensional bolter shooters. No, it’s that they’re worse. Namely, that these ancient super-warriors come across as ridiculously dumb and naive for people in their position. The plot involving the Soul Drinkers and their fall from grace involves a lot of contrivances and bad judgement to the point where I frankly felt they deserved to get wiped out.

There’s better 40k books around, so I don’t recommend these.

Review: After The Downfall

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After The Downfall

Harry Turtledove’s 2008 After The Downfall is not an alternate history per se. Rather it is an example of the dreaded “isekai” that started with Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court. A German soldier gets warped from the Battle of Berlin to a fantasy world and then stuff happens. A lot of stuff. A lot of predictable stuff.

This is not one of Turtledove’s better books. Take a ridiculously obvious and unsubtle plot/message, writing that can’t make up for it, and one of the fastest intro-to-sex-scene ratios I’ve ever read. And the “payoff” of that isn’t worth it, trust me.

The best I can say about this is that it’s a sincere attempt at something different and not a series installment stretched out over a long time to get more money. But that doesn’t make the actual book any better.

Weird Wargaming: The All Union US Military, Part 1: Army and USMC

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So the conventional forces of the United States in All Union, unlike its superpower counterparts, have not been the most central to any of my drafts (yet…). Therefore I figure I should infodump some of my musings on it right now.

Background

The reformation of the USSR brought about a period of aimlessness among the US Army. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the former Warsaw Pact states forming an independent de facto buffer, priorities became much lower. Going from all of Germany to the northern tip of Norway and Thrace is somewhat of a downgrade.

That being said, there has been a shift of forces to the south. The US 9th Infantry Division is in Turkish Thrace to, in the event of a Thraciapocalypse, serve as a mobile counterattack force. The lighter 51st Infantry is in Northeastern Greece near the triple border to make sure the rival NATO countries play nice serve as a tripwire for any Soviet-Bulgarian push south.

The need for “Americi-BTRs” that historically was filled by the Strykers came in the form of LAVs, both the LAV-25/Piranha of real life USMC fame for that branch and the unrelated but similarly named LAV-300/600 series for the Army.

The medium-ization of the Army came as followed: Two brigades in existing heavy divisions with their Bradley mech inf brigades replaced with LAV mech inf brigades ie BMP-BTR mixes, two “medium-heavy” divisions based around LAV-300s with a divisional tank battalion that would stay behind on lower-intensity deployments, and one “medium-light” division with the LAV-300 series, more uparmored HMMVs as the infantry carrier, and no organic tanks. For the USMC, the Seventh Marine Division came into being, along with Combined Arms Regiments (mixes of tanks and LAV-Bisons proposed in real life) for the three active USMC divisions.

More to come…

A Thousand Words: Action PC Football

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Action PC Football

From the same company as Action PC Baseball comes [American] Football. It’s a season simulator that can offer both historical and (my favorite) draft seasons. It has a similar minimal visual interface (that can be enhanced by the player if they add more stuff into the folders) and a similar statistical crunchiness. This later part makes it more interesting than Baseball.

See, in baseball, each plate appearance is basically its own thing. It’s a high variance sport where even having a great shortstop and centerfielder on the other team just makes getting hits a little less likely. But in football, if you have two excellent safeties, a good pass is a lot less likely. Both Action PC games simulate this well.

So Action PC Baseball is more a relaxing “see what happens” game. Action PC Football is a more cerebral and demanding game. They’re apples and oranges, but both are tasty.

Review: C3

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C3: Nuclear Command, Control, Cooperation

Written by former Strategic Rocket Forces officer Valery Yarynich, 2003’s C3 is an in-depth look at Cold War (and beyond) nuclear war command systems and their hazards. Although having access to then-secret info in Soviet times, Yarynich was no Viktor Suvorov and did not sensationalize (in fact, he provided one of the first detailed and level-headed descriptions of the infamous Perimetr/Dead Hand system). The result is one of the best nonfiction books on nuclear war that I’ve read.

As it is written by a former Soviet officer, you do get waves and waves of charts and equations that attempt to quantify something relating to military technology. But you also get lots of clear, simple explanations that make a layperson able to understand this well. In terms of everything from organizational charts to what the “nuclear briefcase” even is to why scissors were found to be a weak link in the command chain (seriously), it’s incredibly illuminating.

If you have any interest in nuclear war or command systems whatsoever, I highly recommend this book. I’ll also just say that it’s an excellent research resource…

A Thousand Words: Progear

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Progear

What do you get when you push an inherently limited genre as far as it can go? Probably something like Progear, a 2001 Capcom arcade “shmup”, the classic Gradius-type arcade game where you control a little spaceship moving around on a scrolling field. Only this “spaceship” is a World War I-type fighter plane, and the game has a very dieselpunk theme that I like. The graphics are very good, being (or at least looking like) beautiful sprites in an age of polygons.

The story is utter nonsense, and I have to wonder how much of it is due to iffy translations and how much is due to just limited information. Basically a group of young pilots have to fight off a conspiracy of posh Victorians led by a lion-man, and I’m not making that up. It feels like you only got ten seconds of a thirty-minute show and had to piece everything together from there. But this is a classic video game where such stuff was par for the course.

The gameplay is nothing to write home about, as it’s the same “fire away, use limited power ups, and try and dodge at least some of the impossibly large number of projectiles heading your way” formula. But that’s a fun formula for a reason. And whether by accident or design, one boss seemed to mock the formula. In a game where your ship faces right and only right, the boss tries to counter by…. moving to the left of the screen. Too bad you have homing missiles.

This is not a deep game, even by the standards of arcade classics. It’s not the most polished or fair game. But it is quite the fun game, and a sign of how far “handmade” graphics could go.

Review: Expedition Mars

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Expedition Mars

Martin J. L. Turner’s Expedition Mars is an analysis of what a manned voyage to the red planet would take. It’s a very detailed analysis that includes a final hypothetical trip. It’s a very good and interesting book. The problem is that it’s not a very accessible book.

This is a very math heavy book full of calculations. There doesn’t even feel like an attempt at making it readable by someone not terribly knowledgeable in the field (ie me). It’s fine to make an apple instead of an orange, but if I don’t like apples (actually I do like real apples but that’s not the point), I’ll say it.

If you like a hardcore book on Mars exploration, I recommend it. But only if.

Review: In The Presence of Mine Enemies

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In The Presence of Mine Enemies

Harry Turtledove’s In The Presence of Mine Enemies is an expansion of a previous short story that tells the tale of a secret Jew in an Axis victory world. There’s turmoil in the Reich, and Turtledove’s classic “obvious historical parallel” is to the late USSR with obvious “Gorbachev” and “Yeltsin” figures. This is a very frustrating novel, and it shows both Turtledove’s strengths and weaknesses at full blast.

The obvious strength comes from its set pieces. The story it was based on was widely acclaimed, and in particular the “August Coup” is very well done. It also has an interesting advantage in that it’s one of the Axis victory novels that is the least unintentionally glorifying of them (as described in this post). The only wunderwaffe are the ICBMs the Germans used off-camera to blast the Americans into submission after World War II, and it’s hard to imagine a less romantic setting than the last days of the USSR. Finally it has a sinister tone and unromantic in general. The reformists are still racist (ie we want elections, but only involving “proper Aryans”), and the “August Coup” is foiled not by any fluffy ideals, but by exposing the Jewish heritage of one of the conspirators.

That works. The rest of the novel does not.

It’s long, slow, and padded out with stuff like games of bridge repeated constantly. Much of the book is given over to a lame love triangle drama. While the parallelism is understandable, it can get a little too blatant at times. The good parts of this book are great, but the bad parts dramatically outnumber them. It’s an interesting discussion piece, but I wouldn’t really recommend it for pleasure reading.