Stolen from Sean Eric Fagan

[james_davis_nicoll]

Guess the publisher! No googling!

Bailouts and ambitious plans for recovery have failed to rescue the United States’ crumbling economy. The president takes a desperate gamble and strikes a bargain with China to write off America’s debt. It seems a brilliant move, until the Supreme Court is destroyed by a cruise missile in a shocking attack and Manhattan is invaded. China has come to claim what’s theirs. With American captives executed daily in national broadcasts by the attackers, the government in disarray, and US military forces shattered into local militias, all seems lost. Deep in the heart of Texas the American spirit lives on. John David Drury, a young, untried, but highly qualified “four-star general” of a scrappy militia, along with Molly Spitz, a highly-ranked graduate of the Air Force Academy, prepares to lead a strike against New York City.

Comments

[matgb]

Baen is the obvious and easy response, so I'm guessing you're pulling a fast one and it's a house not renowned for this sort of thing.

Tor.

[matgb]

*googles*

Too easy

[w. dow rieder (from livejournal.com)]

Hmm. Starts with a B, right on the tip of my tongue...

Edit: Seems I was wrong. Not a sub-genre I am very familiar with.

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

I'm a little dubious about the infantry leadership skills of an AF 2LT, regardless of how high she was in her class at the Academy.

[redxcrosse.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I would have guessed based on this description it was self-published by a recent AF grad...

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

Turns out the author was a Navy man. Huh. As a Marine, I guess I should make some crack about sailors here.

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

Go for it.

[jimlj1715.livejournal.com]

Why? You're just another branch of the Navy.

[seawasp]

Speaking professionally I would guess that this must be a Baen book.

[seawasp]

Well well well, color me surprised.

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

I'll be damned. (Very probably, I hear my friends murmur.)

[jsburbidge.livejournal.com]

Ditto.

My next question is, who was the Acquisitions Editor on this one?

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

Right there with you.

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

Hmm... Bel Rey? Bace Books? BAW? BESFA Press?

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

"Deep in the heart of Texas the American spirit lives on."

And that ain't all that lives on. Unless you include "tolerance for the execution of the innocent" as "the American spirit".

Surely destroying the Supreme Court is irrelevant? Assuming there's still a Congress and President, there's a deep bench of Federal justices you can promote. If I wanted to strike at the heart of America and provoke fear, the Supremes aren't where I'd start.

[ckd]

Maybe that's what triggered this response. "American captives executed daily in national broadcasts by the attackers" might lead to "Hey, that's our job! Also, why didn't we think of televising them?"

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Also, from Dallas, a part of Texas close to New York rather than buried deep in the heart of a very large state, to Manhattan is over 1500 miles - 2100 kilometers to Unamerican Communist Metric-izers. So what exactly do these doubtless scrappy but disorganized and under-equipped milita guys plan to do about it? Was it too much to ask that the author of an 'American Invasion' story actually look at a map of America?

You might be able to get away with this by having Los Angeles or the Bay Area invaded and letting the occupation forces decide that immediately pressing on into Nevada and Arizona wasn't worth the effort. (Have you seen Nevada?) But I suspect that heavily armed militias may be more popular in Texas than farther west.

[jsburbidge.livejournal.com]

Slytherin! Oops, I mean Baen!

My alternative reaction was along the lines of What is all this, I can't even --

[david wilford (from livejournal.com)]

Setting that stirring passage to banjo music would be undignified - for the banjo.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Baen, right? [googles] Oh, that's unexpected ...

[andrew barton (from livejournal.com)]

That is a shock, indeed.

WOLVERIIIIIIIIIIIINES

[jayblanc.livejournal.com]

You're just trolling to get me to post this again aren't you...

[jamoche]

Yup. Before clicking the comments link, my thought was "Where's that Baen image from yesterday?"

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

You wouldn't be asking if it were Baen, so I'm gonna go with Tor. They've been sliding to shit for a good long while now.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

*shakes head* When your plot's so out-o-whack that Clancy wouldn't touch it...

-- Steve's wondering if there really is a Deepinnaharta, TX, or if folks missed Bugs Bunny's softball.

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

This isn't particularly more insane that Clancy's "And then Japanese fascist businessmen take over the government and use the JSDF to conquer a bunch of Pacific islands without any outcry from the Japanese public" novel.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I remember a Disco Era CBC radio thriller - stop laughing - where the amiable antagonist delivered a speech that went roughly "France ran Canada for many year and then the British and finally the Americans. We of Japan simply feel it's our turn."

[seawasp]

Something like that line was used somewhere in Cussler's Dirk Pitt novel "Dragon", IIRC.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

Curious coincidence; the Cussler novel about the US trying to annex Canada by recovering a secret treaty, Night Probe, dealt with the sinking of the RMS Empress of Ireland. Today is the 100th anniversary of that sinking.

-- Steve knows it really is coincidence, but playing "6 degrees of random factoid" is fun!

[(Anonymous)]

That book was the third Dirk Pitt novel I read, and the one that made me give up on Cussler altogether. Never mind the utter nonsense of a 'secret treaty' for Britain to *sell* Canada to the US; it was the train robbery bit that I just couldn't swallow....it was as bad as anything by Dan Brown!

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a premise for a sitcom, actually. I know a couple of writers who could possibly turn it into comedy gold with some solid research help. The right scripts, and it would become a Japanese-Canadian co-pro.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

And you can always sell a story about evil Americans plotting to destroy Canada up here.

(Trying to remember how the Americans in FASS 1986 introduced themselves. The final part was "and strip-mine Algonquin Park!" Always got a laugh)

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Until we all learned about the "Ring of Fire" further north.

Not so much of a joke anymore, that idea.

[timgueguen.livejournal.com]

Sounds like the kind of thing Richard Rohmer would have written.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

My goodness, Rohmer's still alive. And writing, although nonfiction and a historical novel lately.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

Baen?

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

Oh. It read SO like a Baen book.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

My rule of thumb is if the evil tyranny of evil is about Those Darn People, it's Baen and it is Economics Made Stupid, it's Tor.

[w. dow rieder (from livejournal.com)]

Oh there was plenty of Economics Made Stupid at Baen, at least when I was still looking; The major problem of a lot of the 'Humans in space, Because' stuff is economic.

It may well have been less obvious than other things, though.

[(Anonymous)]

Tor, because James Nicoll is setting up the assumption that it's Baen.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

Well color me surprised!

[agharta75.livejournal.com]

Well, my second thought was right. (I discounted the first as being too obvious.)

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

Imma gonna say the publisher that has become smug, hypocritical and superior to everything, while behaving more like a cult every year. It has three letters rather than four, but does not start with D, though the letter it does start with rhymes with both D and B.

It's probably the destruction of NYC -- i.e. meaning Manhattan -- that suggests that one to me and that according to the blurb the writer understands money and finance and the relationships of war and gold. China has no need to start a war over debt. For one thing they hold the largest gold reserve on the planet -- and they pretty much own Africa -- which is where the war zone already is and will only get worse. The U.S. is getting ready to move in. China owns all of Africa's resources! We gotta get 'em back!

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

NYC isn't destroyed, it's occupied. If you're trying to collect the collateral on the big loan you made, you don't set it on fire.

[james-angove.livejournal.com]

The federal debt that "China" "owns" is unsecured. It doesn't have any collateral.

Which is part of the more general problem of the premise, which is a complete failure to understand what Treasuries are or how they work. Or that household finance is not a useful tool for imagining the finances of a sovereign power, which by definition cannot run out of the money to pay debts denominated in its own currency.

Although I just bet that this guy is so stupid he is strongly in favor of policies that would result in the closest thing to the debt scenario he is talking about, on the finance/debt side.

[james-angove.livejournal.com]

(I know you know that. I was trying to reply to the person above you).

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

One hesitates to encourage a bad writer, but it seems to me that a Great Power occupying an important port/finance center within a Minor Power in order to satisfy debts is historically plausible. (Secured or unsecured, and denomination of the debt, seem to me problems that could be rationalized; if a Great Power wants to occupy a Minor, the `legal' grounds will be made.)

Making China a power Great enough and the United States one Minor enough (in the near future) that the occupation could be done (or would particularly want to) is a tougher problem.

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

And, as mentioned elsewhere, the supply chain from China to Manhattan is brutal. (Do I mean supply chain? Supply logistics, maybe?) It would make much, much more sense for China to invade San Francisco -- significant impact to the financial system, but closer to home.

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

Germany actually had a war plan against the United States that involved that sort of thing prior to the First World War, though the emphasis was more holding one or more coastal cities hostage (and trashing their harbour facilities) rather than occupying them outright.

It was more plausible than China doing the same thing, which is the lion's share of the credit I'll give that idea..

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

That's less insane. The two nations at least share an ocean. The US Navy has put considerable thought and effort into preventing people from delivering unwanted shells and bombs to American harbors, but it makes sense for German planners to have looked over the possibility.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

Ack. I meant to type, "doesn't understand money and finance and the relationships of war and gold ... "

Ack gack arghhhhh!

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

And, New York, what? The author can't take ten seconds to look at a map of what I must assume is his own country and notice that New York is on the wrong side to be invaded by China?

But then, I suppose the answer would be that California is too full of "lie-berals" and he doesn't know anything, or care, about Seattle.

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

That was pretty much my first thought. I guess they bribed Panama to not tell anyone about all the troop ships going through the canal one night?

[bruce munro (from livejournal.com)]

Perhaps they sneaked them into Chinatown?

[kuritzky.livejournal.com]

Is it OK to read other people's comments before guessing?

[martin-wisse.livejournal.com]

Before looking: Baen is too obvious, while Tor does seem to do well with right wing paranoia sci-fi as well, so I'm going for them.

[timgueguen.livejournal.com]

My first response was "Vox Day's mom?"

[timgueguen.livejournal.com]

I wonder what the President in the story will be, a thinly disguised version of Barack Obama, or a thinly disguised version of Hillary Clinton.

[timgueguen.livejournal.com]

BTW, the author, Ken Shufeldt, sounds like his writing is at bad fanfic levels of quality. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=la_B005VHWC0S_B005VHWC0S_sr?rh=i%3Abooks&field-author=Ken+Shufeldt&sort=relevance&ie=UTF8&qid=1401396075

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

An excerpt is here, because I am a sharing-type person. http://www.amazon.com/Tribulations-Ken-Shufeldt/dp/product-description/0765365588/


WHEN BILLY WEST woke up, he opened his eyes to a wondrous sight: Open space filled his entire field of view, and his mind was struggling to understand where he was. As his mind cleared from the night’s sleep, he remembered they were on board their spaceship, Genesis.
Once he was fully awake, he smiled to himself as he remembered their wedding night. He turned his head to look at his new bride, Linda Lou, whose head was resting on his shoulder as she slept. As he was enjoying watching her sleep, she began to stir. She opened her beautiful dark brown eyes to an amazing sight. The walls of their room were still transparent and allowed her to see the grandeur of space.
She lifted her head off Billy’s arm.
He said, “Hi you.”
She smiled and said, “Hi yourself, husband.”
As she replayed their first night together in her mind, she felt his mind touch hers.
“I love you so much. Last night was everything I dreamed it would be,” Billy said.
“It was neat. Wasn’t it? Space is so beautiful. I thought it was awe-inspiring when we used to lie on the grass and look up at the stars, but this is amazing. Are you ready to get up and go and eat some breakfast?”

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

*That's* why the name seemed familiar. (http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/3391206.html)

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Mr. Shufeldt, bless his heart, can't write for crap. I have read several hundred SF books a year for the last 40 years, and in that time have only put down three books without reading them all the way through. This is number three. And I read all the Perry Rhoden books in the '70s, which for any of you old codgers who remember should establish a good baseline for bad books

[(Anonymous)]

Oh dear:

"I should have known by the names of the alien characters in the prologue (Adamartoni and Evevette)"

Wasn't that made illegal back in the 50s?

-- Paul Clarke

[asyouknow-bob.livejournal.com]

Huh. "Their spaceship " would appear to have artificial gravity.

[martin-wisse.livejournal.com]

That whole "turning his head to look at his bride who is quietly resting her head on his shoulder" thingy is worse.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

That's -- really horrible writing.

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

Indeed.

Given current social trends in the U.S.A. and Europe, just how many people save themselves for the wedding night IN SPACE?

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

Well, if a trustworthy genie had told me that the secret to owning a spacecraft of the sort just described was to be a virgin until marriage, I think I could have held off.

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

Honestly, that wasn't the part that jumped out at me. It was this:

"It was neat."

There's a setup here for a John Updike-like disappointing marriage IN SPACE, but I bet the author doesn't take advantage of it.

Also, FWIW, when I taught college in North Carolina there were several students who got married right after school, apparently in part because they were saving themselves (a fellow teacher was close with a lot of her students, and tended to get the lowdown). I was surprised it was still happening, but there you go.

[redbird]

That blurb suggests a really weird idea of the Supreme Court, if nothing else. On a year-by-year basis, yes, it has major influence; that doesn't mean missing a few weeks would matter to many people. I suspect that if all nine justices were killed in a single attack, the president would send the senate three or four senators as nominees and say "get this done quickly so the terrorists don't win, we can get back up to nine judges later."

The only good thing about being unable to keep up with the things I want to read is that there's no danger of picking up this sort of dreck.

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

Yup. I'm pretty sure if Manhattan was occupied by a foreign power, the news that the Supreme Court was killed in a missile strike would be about page A4 at best.

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

In the Times, it might well be relegated to the Arts and Leisure section.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

If it isn't Baen it ought to be...

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Farrar, Straus and Giroux?