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r/printSF•
PinkTriceratops

World War III in Sci Fi? (though I’m reluctant to ask…)

I might be asking for trouble and trauma with this post, but part of what science fiction is for is imagining possible futures so that we can avoid the worst of them and pursue the best possible outcomes.

So, are there particularly good treatments of how a third world war might unfold? Novels or short stories?

(Not trying to rile people up about current events, just looking for what SF authors have imagined.)

Posted Mar 1, 2022, 12:18 AM UTC

53116
svarogteuse•

Have you tried the massive body of sci-fi literature in the 50's and 60s during the height of the Cold War? Alas, Babylon, The Postman, A Canticle for Leibowitz, Nineteen Eighty-Four, admittedly most of its post-WWIII because the war only lasts about 20 minutes, about the time it takes the ICBMs to reach their targets. Look at sci-fi short-story collections during the period.

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PinkTriceratopsOP•

A Canticle for Leibowitz is in my stack… maybe I should give that a shot

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one_is_enough•

Lord, I wish I could read that again for the first time.

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CubGeek•

My first exposure was through a full-cast/music/sound-effects/etc audio dramatization of the story. BLEW MY MIND. And then I immediately went out and bought the book and enjoyed it again :D

1
bernardmoss•

It’s been on my shelf for 5+ years. Is this my sign?

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greyetch•

Its good!

10
unshavedmouse•

An absolute gem

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misomiso82•

Great book.

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themadturk•

Alas, Babylon is one of my all-time favorites. Not science fiction, really, but then I'm not sure you need science fiction to do WW3 really well. It's very hopeful, but was also written when bombers were still the primary method of delivery and a nuclear war might be survivable.

On The Beach, of course, is one of the best (and most depressing). Also, though it's very much stuck in its time (the late Cold War), Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising is really good if you want a superpower conflict that doesn't go nuclear.

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misomiso82•

Tom Clancy has some great stuff.

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cgknight1•

Clancy's work I consider Science Fiction because it features self-made millionaires (Jack Ryan) who spend all their time worried about the 'little guy'.

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misomiso82•

Good comment. Also Tom Clancy is great generally.

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MojarraMuncher•

Alas, Babylon holds up. I just listened to the Audiobook and it is written in a very satisfying tone and prose way ahead of its time.

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jtr99•

The Postman

Published in 1985, actually. But still very cold-war influenced -- I'll give you that.

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svarogteuse•

And 1984 was published in 1949. The examples weren't 50s and 60s novels but additional ones that came into my mind.

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jtr99•

My mistake, sorry. I misunderstood your meaning.

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Aliktren•

EON - war literally happens during the story and goes nuclear.

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mattj1234•

The 80s and 90s were the golden age for this genre:

Tom Clancy’s “Red Storm Rising” comes to mind. Like most literature of the “war-competence-porn” genre is pretty much focused on the military.

Team Yankee by Harold Coyle

On the Beach by Neville Shute - a classic bar none.

Warday by Kuneitka and Streiber

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one_is_enough•

I wish there were some of these set in a post-drone world. It just seems that drones change everything, sorta like reading scifi from before the advent of smartphones . . . hard to ignore their absence in something supposedly taking place in the future. I can read things in the context of the times they were written, but scifi is always more interesting to me when it is a plausible future.

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raevnos•

Joe Haldeman's Forever Peace. The main character is a part time military drone pilot.

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mattj1234•

Reminded me you might like the “Red” series by Linda Nagata. She maybe has the best take on future war that I have read.

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one_is_enough•

I’ll check it out. Thanks!

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mattj1234•

“Ghost Fleet” by Singer and Combs was written in 2016 and seems like a modern take on major power conflict. I actually have the book in my library I just haven’t gotten around to it. Watching all the videos and reading the news from Ukraine and Azerbaijan gives me my fill…

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Jepensepa•

The first part, based on real and theoretical scenarios, is great. The second part, based on story writing and character depth, is terrible.

At least that was my experience. The story felt like a cheap Tom Clancy knock off.

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mattj1234•

Drones are just one more weapons system and would change some of the dynamics. That said, I am sure there is an audience for this sort of book and they are being written. It’s just we don’t see the hype we saw back in the 80s and 90s for Tom Clancy.

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mattj1234•

Would add the “Red” series by Linda Nagata. Maybe the finest take on future war - especially world war - that I have read since Clancy.

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cha5e•

Came here to suggest WarDay. I read after the Cold War ended but it felt the most accurate depiction of a limited nuclear war.

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troyunrau•

Tom Clancy’s “Red Storm Rising”

Is probably the most relevant to events today. It is almost prescient. USSR declares war to save their failing economy.

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[deleted]•

I second Warday. The description of hearing the nukes going off from far away really stuck with me. I also enjoyed some alt-history that’s kind of in this vein…

When Angels Wept - Eric Swedin

and The 2020 Commission Report - Jeffrey Lewis

If you just want books about WW III you can’t go wrong with Arc Light -Eric L Harry

War competence porn is my new favorite genre description. You can add Larry Bond - Cauldron (evil French and a reunified Germany), Larry Bond - Red Phoenix (evil North Koreans are more competent than real life) Chieftains - Bob Forest-Webb (whoops, Fulda Gap) the painfully long yet incredibly interesting trilogy by Adam Yoshida about a world war between china and the west, “A Thousand Points of Light”, “A Land War in Asia” and “The blast of War”, Dragon Strike and the similar Third World War - both by Humphrey Hawksley. You also can’t go wrong with Trinity’s Child by William Prochnau but that last one can be hard to find.

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[deleted]•

[deleted]

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Lone_Sloane•

The Third World War: August 1985. By General Sir John Hackett.

A little dated (it came out in 1978) but the most realistic and best-reseached.

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WillAdams•

As a continuation of it, there's the Ted Quantrill trilogy:

https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/one-of-my-tinfoil-hat-theories

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DocWatson42•

Seconded! ^_^

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DarthLeftist•

i just read that entire webpage and idk how i feel now. lol Its really a sequel to Hacketts book? Which I just read btw

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WillAdams•

It is one of several books/series which uses that as the backdrop.

Probably the most sci-fi example.

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c1ncinasty•

Harold Coyle based his novel Team Yankee on the scenario described in Hackett's book.

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themadturk•

Thank you, I was trying to remember the title and author on that!

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FrancoManiac•

Warday is 100% what you're looking for.

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pusherman23•

In the mid-90s I read a book called Arc Light, which (at the time) seemed like a really realistic story about a limited nuclear exchange version of WW3...not sure how well it's aged. More of a techno-thriller than science fiction book.

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c1ncinasty•

I tried finding a copy of this book a few years ago. For some reason the book really stuck out for me because it out-Clancy'd Tom Clancy in several ways. Still holds up.

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[deleted]•

Yeah, Eric L Harry. Good book but I couldn’t get into any of his other books.

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mg_ridgeview•

No one's mentioned yet, but I'd recommend Swan Song. The description of the state of the world before the bombs drop was the most powerful part of the story for me. Not to mention how eerily it mirrors what we're going through in at least some ways.

Oh yeah and Ken Follet's recent novel Never, which is turning out to be scarily prescient.

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PinkTriceratopsOP•

I didn’t realize Follet had written such a story, interesting.

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misomiso82•

Love Ken Follet.

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anticomet•

So it's not really WW3, but Iain Banks wrote The Algabraist in response to the Iraq war and I've been thinking about it a lot recently.

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Bleatbleatbang•

Eon by Greg Bear

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PinkTriceratopsOP•

Yeah, it fits. Gotta say I didn’t love that book. Starts out pretty good, but loses its way……

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MadScientistWannabe•

It is dated, but it is one of my favorites. The concept behind it is fascinating, though I found the alien society a bit bland. It essentially predicts emojis.

I hate emojis.

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Aliktren•

it predicted them before they were a thing really though, and tablets you could swap the memory sticks with and libraries with the entirety of the earths knowledge - such a good book

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Aliktren•

Mirsky was such a great character - his ending Arc is what I like to think religion could actually be if it was real

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Bleatbleatbang•

I was put off by the last third of the book and didn’t bother with the sequels. Are they any good?

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Aliktren•

Its been a while but i loved them all, yeah

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HipsterHighwayman•

The Last Ship by William Brinkley focuses more on the aftermath, but the lead up is pretty good.

Level 7 by Mordecai Roshwald is a good first person tale.

I'll add to the chorus singing the praises of Warday. It's an excellent, journalistic story of a limited nuclear war.

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INTHEMIDSTOFLIONS•

Sir this is a fiction sub.

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squidbait•

My dad was a MAD scientist at Los Alamos. He felt, Warday by Strieber and Kunetka was the most accurate depiction of a limited nuclear war ever written.

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7LeagueBoots•

Wikipedia, GoodReads, and the Science Fiction Encyclopedia have sections devoted to this specific subject:

They're all SF (speculative fiction), and are, arguably, all science fiction as well as they deal with something that is yet to happen and, for the most part, try to do so within a non-fantasy type framework. Some are more 'thriller' than 'science fiction', but the borders of these things are fuzzy and there is a lot of overlap.

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PinkTriceratopsOP•

Interesting!

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DarthLeftist•

interesting indeed

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hamhead•

What do you mean in terms of "sci fi"? To me Clancy's Red Storm Rising will always be the peak of WW3 fiction, but it's not really sci fi in any way we'd normally recognize. It's straight up military fiction (and of course, dated at this point).

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[deleted]•

[deleted]

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DocWatson42•

Actually, there was such a missile.

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Saylor24•

The irony is that Clancy (a real estate agent with zero military experience) heard some bits and pieces about the US military working on a stealth fighter (what became the F117) and made up the F19, then wrote what he believed would be plausible missions for it (taking down bridges, engaging anti-air defenses, etc). He was so close to the mark that the US intelligence agencies interviewed him to find who had leaked him classified info.

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Max_Rocketanski•

Let me add to this...

I'm old enough to have read the book when it originally came out. It was public knowledge that the Air Force was working on a 'stealth bomber' (what became known as the B-2), but there was no talk about a 'stealth fighter' (although in hindsight, it seems pretty obvious that the Air Force would want a fighter that evaded radar detection).

So the general public knew the military was working on stealth technology, but no one in the general public knew if or how well it would work during combat.

So when reading about Stealth Fighters in Red Storm Rising in the 1980s, fighters that were invisible to radar and whose existence had been kept secret from the Soviets, it did seem a bit SciFi-ish at the time.

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Kantrh•

The checks were done because Don Quayle thought Clancy could stir up public enthusiasm for the space program if he was a consultant for the White House Space Council.

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hamhead•

The ASM-135 existed

And the F19 is just a logical progression of fighter technology.

I mean, is it super near term sci fi? I guess. But that’s really separating grains of sand.

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[deleted]•

[deleted]

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hamhead•

Sure, like I said, I guess you can call it that but it’s extremely near term sci fi… at this point, it’s even historic. It’s basically the F35.

So you’re not wrong. Just really splitting hairs there.

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TheJester0330•

Yeah I was gonna say I think asking in a science fiction sub is going to lean more toward apocalypse/post apocalypse rather than actual world War 3 type content. General fiction/military fiction would be a much better fit

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OzzExonar•

2034

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AnnieLikesItRough•

I read this book called The Last Ship after people were making fun of the show by the same name and said the book was better. It is about group of navy sailors who participate in nuclear WWIII and try to survive after. I read it awhile ago, and I remember the first half being more interesting than the second, it goes on a very weird tangent. Like out there......

Book was written by a US navy Captain I believe so the shipboard stuff is semi-plausible supposedly.

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Sunfried•

I recall picking that off the shelf but I didn't read it. It was a kind of re-imagining of "On the Beach," IIRC.

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AnnieLikesItRough•

I gotta read "On the Beach" Still. Going on the to read list. I was gonna read it at some point, but I don't read super bleak too often.

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Bleatbleatbang•

The second half was thoroughly bonkers.

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AnnieLikesItRough•

Fully agree. Second half was off the rails, and I definitely was judging the author at that point. Took me out of the story. I am mostly mentioning the book because of the first half.

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alphawolf29•

Red Army by Ralph Peters tells the story of a hot-cold war from various russian soldiers. I found it a very interesting perspective. It's military fiction though not sci fi.

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raevnos•

And his The War In 2020 is mildly MilSF in the technothriller sense - various nasty new weapons and other technology. Also a bit dated for obvious reasons.

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yp_interlocutor•

I was going to recommend his War in 2020, which is still military fiction but has a few sci fi elements. It's a WWIII story, and while the alliances in it might be off the mark, I feel like there's a lot he got right. (Also, I think he's an unusually decent writer for military fiction...I actually cared about his characters, for example)

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[deleted]•

[deleted]

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70ga•

Ghost fleet is ok

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3xtr4-ch1vken•

I didn’t mind ghost fleet but 2034 by Elliot Ackerman is rock solid. As it is more recent I think it seems more realistic and weaves in modern geopolitics. Though it’s more speculative fiction than sci fi I think op would enjoy it.

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70ga•

2034 by Elliot Ackerman

haven't read that one, thanks for the suggestion

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Alexeon•

Super futuristic cyberpunk Ghost in the Shell's timeline involves not only a nuclear WW3 but also followed by a non-nuclear WW4 and they're still around doing cyborg stuff and not living like cavemen... so that's something.

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PinkTriceratopsOP•

That’s something indeed 👀

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ropbop19•

Weird World War III, the anthology from Baen, edited by Sean Patrick Hazlett, is quite good.

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