Black Chamber by S.M. Stirling
In this book, he is starting yet another alternate history series. The change in history is that President Taft dies of a heart attack, right before the Republican convention in 1912. This allows Theodore Roosevelt to win the nomination, and then go on to beat Woodrow Wilson like a rented mule in the general election. This puts a progressive the the White House with a history of getting things done! Things like nationalizing the railroads, and then extending that federalized transportation to airships. Creating a Federal Bureau of Security that weeds out those who don’t agree with the course of America as defined by the “Progressive Republican” party. Charges of anti-American activities get you 30 years of hard labor building roads and working on national parks. The problem of Mexican bandits crossing the border and raiding Americans was solved by invading Mexico and turning it into an American protectorate. Any Mexicans who objected to that were tracked down by the Army, the Federal Bureau of Security, the members of the Black Chamber, Roosevelt’s black ops group. But this story really isn’t about all of that. It’s an adventure story. World War I, or as it was known at the time, “The Great War”, was in full swing, and Roosevelt didn’t’ declare War when the US wasn’t ready to fight it like Wilson did. America is going to fight, but when it is well prepared with trained troops with good equipment. The Germans know this too, and have a plan to stop it. Enter Black Chamber operative Luz O’Malley Arostequi. Daughter of a former Rough Rider and a Cuban aristocrat. She goes boards a airship bound for Europe under cover as a Mexican resistance fighter. She is to link up with a German agent code named “Imperial Sword”, and find out what the German’s plans are and how to stop them. A dashing good adventure story, as defined by someone else being in a lot of trouble very far away. A good read both as an adventure story, and for S.M. Stirling’s observations into history. This includes the observation that Theodore Roosevelt was a compassionate moderate compared to his daughter Alice.
Author: Mark Urbin
Quote of the Day
You may go play video games if you wish.
Remember this: Walk away now and you walk away from your interest in history, your ability to tell a good story, your ability to translate dreams into reality; leaving the next generation with nothing but recycled, unimaginative first-person shooters, online quasi-historical strategy games, yet another multiplayer NFL game, violence-laden driving simulations, and mindless revisions of innumerable cute Japanese animations. Depart now and you forever separate yourselves from the vital gaming legacies of James Dunnigan, Steve Jackson, Gary Gygax, Marc Miller, Loren Wiseman, Frank Chadwick, Andrew Keith, William Keith, John Harshman, Professor Barker, and Richard Tucholka.Turn your backs now and you snuff out the fragile candles of Board Gaming, Miniatures, Fantasy and Science Fiction Roleplaying, and when those flames flicker and expire, the light of the world is extinguished because the creative thought which has moved mankind through the decades leading to the millennium will wither and die on the vine of abandonment and neglect.
— John Kwon on the Traveller Mailing List
Monday Book Pick: 13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened In Benghazi
13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened In Benghazi by Mitchell Zuckoff and the Annex Security Team
Since today is 9/11, six years after the terrorist attacks against Americans in Benghazi (killing four American, including the US Ambassador to Libya), I’m repeating my pick from May 2, 2016
Mitchell is a journalism professor at Boston University. This is not a political book. It is a detailed account of what happened on September 11, 2012 in Benghazi. It details what the security arrangement were, including the use of local militia groups, who was where during each of the multiple attacks, who died, who was wounded, and what the responses by the State Department, and the rest of the US government, were at the time.
Quote of the Day
“I went to Communism as one goes to a spring of fresh water, and I left Communism as one clambers out of a poisoned river strewn with the wreckage of flooded cities and the corpses of the drowned.”
— Arthur Koestler (1905-1983) Hungarian – British author
Quote of the Day
“What do you do if you are the New York Times and 20 people show up to the white-supremacist rally that you had been breathlessly billing as further proof of the normalization of hatred in the Donald Trump era? Expand the definition of “white supremacist” to cover a large portion of the American electorate and its representatives.”
Quote of the Day
I love that people are acting like if elections were fair, Hillary would be president. If elections were fair, Hillary wouldn’t have been the democrat nominee to begin with.
Monday Book Pick: Monster Hunter: Nemesis
Monster Hunter: Nemesis by Larry Correia
This is another book not focused on Owen Zastava Pitt. This one is told from the view point of the infamous MCB Agent Franks. So there is a lot of violence, even for a Larry Correia novel. Franks history is covered, from how he found his way into this world, learned how to deal with humanity and why he is so focused on killing monsters. One of the interesting parts was how he came to American during the Revolutionary War and the contract he entered into with the United States America (written and signed by Ben Franklin after he rebuilt Franks). The story revolves around how STFU (Special Task Force Unicorn) violates that contract. This is one of my favorites in the series. Franks is a bad ass MoFu and like Jake and Elwood, he’s on a mission on from God.
Quote of the Day
“Even though socialism in its many forms has never succeeded in producing anything but death and chaos – the proletariat dictatorship never withers away; in fact, it only grows stronger in a totalitarian centralized government – dreams of a perfectly just and equal society never fade. In fact, like a monster from an old sci-fi movie, they continue to jump back up out of the swamp just when you think the monster is dead.”
— Charles Sasser, historian and author
SciFi Quote of the Day
“Young man,” Harkaman reproved, “the conversation was between Lord Trask and myself. And when somebody makes a statement you don’t understand, don’t tell him he’s crazy. Ask him what he means. What do you mean, Lord Trask?”
Excerpt From Space Viking by H. Beam Piper
Quote of the Day
“That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.”
— Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States of American and author of the Declaration of Independence.