War Fiction

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Faith in Technology

I could imagine it, the yellow-lit, windowless world of a G.A.S. ship’s engineering section. The jarring crash of a foreign thing–the bulkhead before me split by a cone-tipped warhead. A half-moment of panic before the thing flashed…

     -Endgame

In modern America (and, increasingly, the rest of the world) faith in technology is certainly something we are guilty of. If your iPhone goes on the fritz (or into a body of water) schedules and contact info are thrown into digital chaos. Most cars or trucks can be shut down by a software glitch. If our ballot-casting machines aren’t protected from cyber attack–which likely happened in the 2016 election–how do we weigh a tainted democratic process?

A Look at the Future

In Endgame, the Mitasterites commit an overwhelming force (five Global Assault Ships, around 150,000 soldiers) to the assault on P-75. They need their precious fuel (a rare crystal unique to the frozen world). Success depends on their sabotaging the opposing T.U.’s primary defense–the Cecelia rockets. (These 150-foot monsters carry enough explosives and metal fragments to eradicate most any threat–provided they can reach them.) Enter cyber warfare.

The technology of one computer transmitting code to hijack another computer is beyond me. (The closest I’ve come to grasping code was a class in JavaScript.) But, just as we have the weapon of cyber attack today, we can see the folly of it not working. The Mitasterites (a young, industrious empire) are cursed with arrogance and cockiness. Why wouldn’t their cyber sabotage work?

Clearly, that means not enough of the right people asked, ‘What happens if the cyber attack fails? Or if the system senses an error and reboots itself after seven hours? Won’t our ships be in danger?’

My heart jumped. Raising my own scope to the sky, I imagined a great flowery burst in space.

Could this be the Mitasterites’ Titanic moment? Will they learn? Unlikely.

Lessons Yet-to-be Learned

To heroine June Vereeth and the other T.U. soldiers, the Mitasterites squander grotesque amounts of men and materials on a gamble. They lose P-75–their first defeat brought by a cataclysmic no-win blast, the fuel dump detonated by the T.U. base chief. Losing two Global Assault Ships (and many thousands of crewmen) is a huge black eye in the aftermath. Failing to grasp the tactical error of a cyber assault, they try it again in Destruction. The Cecelia rockets are delayed, not defeated. Ships are put in peril. Men are squandered.

One can assume that only sorrow and stupidity would be on display when observing chunks of starship tumble through the atmosphere. Enlisted soldiers most often pay for their commanders’ decisions. One can hope the general populace learns something from this.

“We won’t get fooled again,” The Who famously sang.

Of course we won’t.

Endgame cover by Greg Simanson Designs. Cover shows characters, rockets and a woman's eye against a green-ice background and twin suns, orange lettering. "The war begins" is added at the top.

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Killing Characters

How do we kill those characters we like?

You can’t write a story about war and not have a death or two, right? For God’s sake, half the characters in ‘Catch-22‘ bite the big one (a few of them memorably, like Snowden). Military conflict and death go hand-in-hand. Some important characters must meet their end.

Other memorable scenes include R.P. McMurphy in ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,’ of course. It was a tragedy that had to happen. Or scientist Matt Hooper from ‘Jaws.’ (Spared in the film, his gruesome literary end would leave anyone in Brody’s shoes with survivor’s guilt.)
Or Sirius Black from ‘Harry Potter and The Order of Phoenix.’ This one bugged me. Harry needs this living ‘family’ member, a connection to the past that was his parents. And the way Rowling killed him off–his being hit by a spell and falling through the gray-veil doorway–left it open for Harry to bring him back. I wonder if the author herself wasn’t sure what to do about him, thus the mystery. Sadly, he never reappears, and Harry is left without any mentors.

A smug Sirius Black, played by Gary Oldman, from the Harry Potter series.

Killing Characters, the How and Why?

Taking the axe to someone we’ve brought to life is a morbid facet of writing. Obviously, many authors really enjoy it (and some are guilty of, er, overkill).

So how do we kill of people correctly? What is appropriate?

I’ve always tried to write with certain parameters in mind. What is likely? What is realistic? Let the answers to these questions inform the all-important ‘How.’

Combat action is very fast. The different accounts I’ve read (such as ‘Black Hawk Down‘) tell how an intense firefight can last a mere 30 seconds, with thousands of rounds traded across an alley. That doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for a tearful, schmaltzy farewell.

The Harsh Reality

In ‘Destruction,’ a lot of people perish. It is, at its heart, a story about war. And, for the sake of being realistic, that meant killing off a gentle character I enjoyed creating–a man I’d like to see in other tales and settings. (They could all be tainted by the barn-door analogy, however, a la ‘Solo.’)

Like June Vereeth’s mentor/boss Joffe in ‘Endgame,’ it happens in a flash. (In ‘Endgame’ all Vereeth knows is that the cave ceiling is collapsing, and she and her friend are being shoved away, by Joffe. After the dust settles, she finds his hand protruding from a pile of rock.) This time, she has to watch it–from a distance, unable to do anything about it, during action.

Justin Edison's Destruction, second in the Woman at War series, will be out in 2018.

It’s what fits. And, in a story where Karma is turned on its head, this likeable man perishes while a sexist asshole lives. Obviously, this echoes real life. Fair? Not a chance. Art imitates life, doesn’t it?

And could any of us picture McMurphy carrying on as a piece of broccoli, anyway?

Endgame cover by Greg Simanson Designs. Cover shows characters, rockets and a woman's eye against a green-ice background and twin suns, orange lettering. "The war begins" is added at the top.

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Editing Destruction

Things are looking up for Captain June Vereeth. With friends, she escaped the madness of icy P-75. She brought a couple trophies (prisoners of war) back from the outlaw world of Shen-Zinkh. Now she’s even having fun climbing the picturesque mountains of Zycarsus with a new male friend, smiling in the sunshine…

Well, not exactly. She and this new friend (nicknamed Hulk) and 30 other soldiers are hauling themselves up 3000 feet into a maddening fogged-in world. They’re looking for a downed freighter. They’re lost, because they can’t use anything electronic and nobody has a map. And those pesky Mitasterites will have some competition for deadliest foe in this abandoned world.

Justin Edison's Destruction, second in the Woman at War series, will be out in 2018.

First draft done, coffee chugged, I’m now editing Destruction (love my cheery title). And it’s going…well, it’s going. To once-again begin the process of editing a book is to wrestle with a bunch of questions.

Is this what I wanted to write?

Is this story good enough?

Do the right people die (it’s about war) or lose their way?

Am I accurately rendering Vereeth and her flaws and strengths?

Can this heroine reconcile the terrible cost of armed conflict, when she’s often stuck with the most difficult choices?

After two years of notes (the opening chunk came to mind before I was done with ‘Endgame‘) do I have the product I need to have?

Am I a good-enough writer for this?

Justin Edison's three available books on a shelf

Justin Edison’s three available books on a shelf

Time will tell.

Maybe.