Madoc.us: Red Tide

Red Tide

A Night At Frida's	Newsreels	Stencils
Top Cover

One of the things I like most about Baen's Bar is the breadth of historical knowledge I encounter among the folks who hang out there. When you add its strong military bent along with its science fiction interests you're bound to soon get a bunch of folks speculating about key points in history and what, for want of a nail, might have happened differently. Alternative history tales have been around since the first person asked themselves "what might have been if this had happened instead of that?"

One such discussion that got started back in '03 was about what might have happened had the Soviets not been content with just half of Europe at the end of World War Two and had suddenly turned on the Allies as soon as the Germans had been beaten. This has long been one of the more intensely debated "what if's" of modern history and there's much that would have made sense, from Stalin's perspective, for him to have ordered his Red Army to do a Channel Boogie the moment the Fascists had truly been crushed.

The main thing keeping Uncle Joe from having issued such an order was the Soviet's full knowledge of our Atomic Bomb project. They had this information thanks to all the spies the Soviets had successfully inserted into the Manhattan Project and throughout our government and society. Thus the Soviets knew that if they tried grabbing western Europe we'd soon be raining nuclear hellfire down upon their armies and then down upon their factories - and if that failed to show Stalin the error of his ways then we'd be raining our Atom Bombs down upon Russia's cities.

But what if the Manhattan Project wasn't ready by the summer of '45? With no Atom Bomb hanging over his head, Stalin might well have given those orders. What got this particular "what if?" started was some speculation about the advanced weapons projects the Nazis had going by '45 and what might have come of them had the war lasted longer. This led to a discussion of what it would've taken to make the war in Europe last longer than it did and that led to some speculation about that Channel Boogie. From this came speculation about how the Allies would have fared against the mighty Red Army Juggernaut. Among the many things that came of that was speculation that we'd be so hard pressed we'd have rearmed the Germans and turned them loose on the Soviets to help us in our fight against them.

There was also a lot of thought given to just how deeply the Soviets had penetrated our military, our government, our media, and our nation at large. Turns out, the Soviets really had done an excellent job of getting their agents in place and of recruiting a number of "fellow travelers" to their cause. All dancing to Moscow's tune. Luckily, things didn't get hot between the western Allies and the Soviets during the war and we began to get serious about rooting out the Communists after the war.

Yes, McCarthy was a lowlife scumbag who used the anti-Communism fears to further his own sordid political career. But there really were Reds in the US government and they really were doing their best to destroy our Republic. That McCarthy was part of the anti-Communist effort doesn't change actual facts of Soviet penetrations.

With all this in mind, I wrote up several short stories. The first one, Stencils, was my first attempt at something of a screenplay. I did it that way as it was the images in it which wanted to be the central focus of the tale. The next tale I wrote up, Top Cover, was about what I thought the new air war over Europe might be like. Next I brought the setting back closer to home, setting A Night At Frida's in Mexico circa the spring and summer of '45. The last tale I wrote, so far, in this thread was Newsreels and that one is set even closer to home with it taking place in the nation's capitol.

If you would like to learn more about me – just ask! Drop me a line and we’ll see what happens. I can be reached
here at: madoc@madoc.us.

You can also try using Yahoo Messenger as I’ll have that one sometimes while I am at work or at home.

My Yahoo handle is:

madoc62

Until later then,

Madoc

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This page was last updated on: 08 April 2004