Thursday 19 September 2024

Sandra Miesel's Summary Of The Build-Up To Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History

1956. Eisenhower dies. Nixon becomes President in June. US aids Hungarian rebels. Soviet Union backs Egypt in Suez crisis. Middle East war leads to Russian control of northern Iran. Tito assassinated. Soviet Union regains Yugoslavia. Conflict between Krushchev, Bulganin and Zhukov.

1958. Soviet Union threatens Berlin blockade. China seizes Nationalist-held islands. Pre-emptive strike against the West on Christmas Eve. Capitals and military bases destroyed but other territory spared for conquest. US counter-strike more damaging. USSR crosses the Rhine but cannot supply armies. Mutinies within USSR. War of attrition liberates Europe. Conflict continues in Asia. Social conflicts break out in the US and Europe. Worldwide economic collapse.

1964. New possibilities.

6 comments:

S.M. Stirling said...

All perfectly credible, except that they didn't happen...

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

Pat Frank's ALAS, BABYLON, set around the same time, details the struggles of a small town in Florida to survive as the US and USSR fought a nuclear war. The US was victorious, but it came with a Pyrrhic cost.

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

At the time, the USSR didn't have many delivery systems that could strike the continental US -- that was what the Cuban missile crisis was about, after all. They would have gotten -some- nuclear weapons through, but probably not very many. We would have blasted them flat; Europe would have suffered very badly too.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

Even a "few" Soviet nukes striking the US would have been very bad.

I think Khruschev's clumsiness in trying to sneak missiles into Cuba and the crisis that provoked with the US contributed to his fall from power in 1964. His colleagues in the Politburo and Central Committee concluded he was dangerously reckless and erratic.

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Sean: probably true. Of course, that was a nest of piranhas.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

In the monstrous regime Lenin founded only very bad men with the instincts of piranhas could rise to the top.

Ad astra! Sean