A Television Series Inspired By Dean Koontz's Novel WATCHERS

This morning I saw fellow Atlanta Horror Writers Association member Andy Davidson posting on Twitter about his lifelong love of Dean Koontz's novel Watchers. Apparently he'd first read it when he was ten and re-read it every year since. I read the book somewhat later--I first got into Koontz in middle school with Cold Fire (the Dickerson Middle School library had it) and read Watchers and Phantoms soon afterward--and so I replied that I would love to see a quality movie adaptation. Unfortunately, most of the films based on it were direct-to-video garbage.

(Seriously, in the first one Travis and Nora, who are married in the book, are a mother and a son. A later version made Travis a military deserter rather than a decorated Delta Force retiree. One looks like a rip-off of Predator. And so on and so forth.)

Andy suggested a television series would be better than a film, something that reminded me of S.M. Stirling's comment at DragonCon many years ago that books made good miniseries. Although my first thought was something like one of those British TV series that lasts for around ten episodes and then done (what I think would be an appropriate adaptation of The Thing in the Woods), then I remembered the original 1960s TV series The Fugitive. Although in the 1990s film the events look like they take place over about a week or two (at most maybe a month), the original TV series ran for four seasons. The Fugitive presumably takes place in the 1960s and the novel Watchers takes place in the 1980s, both before truly large-scale government and private surveillance and tracking. It would be much easier for Dr. Richard Kimble to evade the U.S. Marshals or Travis, Nora, and the super-intelligent dog Einstein to evade the NSA, the KGB, and the predatory monster The Outsider for a prolonged period of time than today.

(It's been years since I read Watchers, but the NSA guys hunting Travis comment on how between his experience as a Delta Force operative and how he and Nora sold Nora's house for cash, tracking them would be very, very difficult. And we see that thanks to Travis's military experience, he knows just how to get false papers.)

The first season could be "everybody meets everybody" and the early hunt for the Outsider, with the climax being the Outsider's killing of Travis's landlady that causes Travis and Nora to become fugitives. The second season and perhaps a third could cover how Travis and Nora are fugitives, their getting stalked by the KGB's assassin, Einstein's distemper scare, and the final confrontation with the Outsider.

Between all the different factions hunting them, how some of them are working at cross purposes (the NSA and the KGB's hired hit-man), and one of them is chaotic force of destruction (the Outsider), a Watchers TV series could last a respectable amount of time. And given fiction's increased interest in exploring social issues these days, one could touch on other topics besides "how will Travis, Nora, and the dog escape the baddies this week" or "how will the NSA keep the Outsider from blowing the cover-up going on a rampage this time."

(In the book Nora, raised as a recluse by her emotionally-abusive aunt, initially has little ability to function in the real world and is stalked and nearly raped by the handyman she hires to work on her house. Given how fearful and lacking in self-esteem Nora is and how inept she is at "adulting" when we begin the story, I could easily imagine her blaming herself and not reporting it to the police if Travis and Einstein hadn't stopped the bastard. And if I remember right, the perpetrator only pled guilty to a lesser charge and got jailed because Travis--a man and a decorated soldier--wouldn't tolerate the police not taking it seriously. Travis's first wife died of cancer they didn't know she had until it was too late, so you could touch on health care, the importance of catching cancer early, etc. And lead NSA agent Lemuel Johnson is so hard-driving and neurotic because his father, a self-made wealthy black man who managed it during Jim Crow no less, raised him without any tolerance for failure whatsoever. One could use flashbacks Lemuel has to meeting Einstein and the Outsider before they escaped the lab to show how just pitiable and messed up the Outsider is despite how to all outward appearances it's a merciless monster. There's a lot of room for thoughtful stuff here.)

And if you make it a 1980s period piece, there's no cell phones or cameras, doing everything in cash isn't really suspicious, stuff like the Patriot Act doesn't exist, etc. That would allow for a much longer show simply because the NSA wouldn't be able to locate Travis and Nora easily, nor immediately locate and squash the KGB. And the success of It and Stranger Things shows that now is a good time for 1980s nostalgia pieces. Barnes and Noble went so far as to even point out that those who loved Stranger Things would really like Watchers.

Blast From The Past Movie Review: 13th Warrior (1999)

For the current season of Myopia Movies, we're pairing freely-available episodes with episodes available only to our patrons. Our episode on the 2009 reboot of Star Trek, for example, was paired with a patrons-only episode on Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (the surprisingly good one with the whales). Now we're pairing Twister, written by Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton, with a patrons-only episode on The 13th Warrior, based on Crichton's novel Eaters of the Dead and partly directed by Crichton himself.

If you want to listen to the podcast (it's available now), sign up for the Patreon here, but in the meantime here's my review.

The Plot

*The real-life historical figure (and in this version of the tale, a court poet of the Abbasid Caliph) Ahmed ibn Fadlan (Antonio Banderas), after an indiscretion involving another man's wife, is sent from Baghdad on a diplomatic mission to the Volga Bulgars in modern-day Russia. Along the way, he encounters a group of Norsemen whose king has recently died. After the king's funeral celebration, an envoy arrives from another Norse king, Hrothgar (Sven Hollter), seeking the warriors' help against an ancient evil. A Norse wise woman prophesies that thirteen warriors are needed to defeat this evil and one must be "no Northman," so ibn Fadlan is inducted into the mission despite his vigorous protests.

Now the thirteen warriors, led by the chieftain Buliwyf (Vladimir Kulich), have to travel to the northerners' homeland, to do battle with the vicious Wendol, a horror that, as the book describes it, "slaughters the Vikings and devours their flesh."

The Good

*The film is entertaining and never boring. It moves along at a brisk clip and made my elliptical sessions go much faster.

*I liked the overall concept. Some people online who seemed to think the book was actually real history basically described it as "Vikings fighting Neanderthals in ancient Russia" and were I a movie producer or book publisher and someone pitched this to me, I'd definitely want more information. More on the Neanderthal part later...

*I liked the initial focus on the Vikings in Russia, before they return to their homeland to fight the wendol. The popular image of Vikings in Western culture is based on their raiding in Ireland, England, and France and the accounts are largely written by monks who were their victims. The Vikings also traveled eastward--they sailed down the great rivers of Eastern Europe to the Black Sea and founded the cities that became the centers of Russian civilization. The Byzantine emperors' Varangian Guard was largely made up of Norse. Vladimir I, the prince of Kiev, converted to Orthodoxy to marry an emperor's sister and assisted him in putting down a rebellion. There were even Norse expeditions on the Caspian Sea, to plunder as far as Iran.

*And although most of what happens in Eaters of the Dead is fictional, the first part of the book consists of (or is at least heavily based on) the historical ibn Fadlan's account of the Vikings when he was a diplomat in modern-day Russia. Islamic involvement with the Norse (or the early Russians for that matter) is something that isn't well-known either, so I'm glad Eaters was made into a film even though they weren't able to spend a whole lot of time on this part.

*The casting is good. Although some might raise eyebrows at casting Spanish actor Antonio Banderas as an Arab, the Arabs ruled Spain for hundreds of years. Banderas likely has least some Arab background even if it's way back, and he's a box-office draw (even if unfortunately that wasn't enough to save the film). And the legendary Egyptian actor Omar Sharif has a role here as well, albeit not a big one. The Vikings all look the part and have good accents--at no point do we reach "John Wayne as Genghis Khan" levels of miscasting.

*There's some good attention to detail, like the casting of Diane Venora (an American presumably of Italian background) as the Norse queen Wealthow. In the older Germanic languages the "weal-" sound is used to designate "foreigner" (hence the Celtic Welsh and the Wallachians in modern-day Romania) and she's a darker, lithe Mediterranean type, not a big blonde Nordic. Although the book includes the "Venus figurines" as a Wendol cultural icon, the addition of the Wendol general with the "horns of power" alongside the Wendol's priestess-goddess "mother" seems like they were going for some kind of proto-Wicca--the Goddess and the Horned God. The Norse are also extraordinarily brave in battle because of their religious beliefs--they believe the day of their death has been determined already, so there's no point in retreating or trying to hide. And at another point, weregild is paid to prevent a blood feud.

*Some of the dialogue is pretty funny. Herger (Dennis Storhøi) gets the best lines, but Weath (Tony Curran) gets some too. Banderas' ibn Fadlan gets some good moments in, especially when he shows that despite being a little guy riding a small horse he can be pretty bad-ass himself.

*And some of the serious dialogue is legitimately good, like a character who is mortally wounded (in the film cut with a poisoned blade; in the book a gut wound pierces either the stomach or intestine) claiming he will die a pauper. One character promises the burial of a king, but the person instead wishes someone who can "draw sounds" to tell his story so it would be remembered. Spoilers ahead, but you can see the dialogue in the Heartwarming page of TVTropes.

*The soundtrack is really good. A lot of very dramatic music, as befits the subject matter.

The Bad

*It was difficult to tell the various Northmen apart. Buliwyf stands out because he's the leader, is wise enough to recognize the value of writing, and has all the presence and charisma of a particularly large brick. Meanwhile, Herger is funny and keeps calling ibn Fadlan "little brother." However, the rest really aren't developed. TVTropes goes so far as to depict most of their names and epithets (like "Halga the Wise") as Informed Attributes, since we don't see them. That's one of the film's great failings. At DragonCon one year S.M. Stirling said that books make good miniseries or TV shows and adapting Eaters of the Dead into a miniseries or TV show would have been really helpful in this respect. Hey Netflix or Hulu, need something? :) Even a three-hour Lord of the Rings-esque film would have been better.

*The book plays up the differences between Norse polytheism and ibn Fadlan's Islam, but all we get the in film is one line about how ibn Fadlan is from a land where one god is enough but that's not the case in Scandinavia, the fact ibn Fadlan actually has personal hygiene in way the Norse most definitely don't, and some rules-lawyering about how as a Muslim he's forbidden to drink beer or wine but honey-based mead is just fine. The culture shock for the courtly Muslim in the land of violent, unhygienic pagans could have been much more developed. The book plays this up a lot more (ibn Fadlan has a running commentary on the Norse throughout most of it), but most of that didn't get into the film. I don't agree with fellow podcaster Nic's position that his being an Arab Muslim means so little that they could have just made him European or per Jon's suggestion Chinese (for starters, that would be an utterly pointless deviation from the book), but this is still a missed opportunity.

*There's a travel montage depicting the Norse making their way back to what in the book is pretty obviously Denmark from their riverside camp in Russia, but it's disjointed and it's not clear what's really going on other than ibn Fadlan gradually learning Norse and showing off his riding ability to the Norse who look down on his small Arabian horse. Some kind of Indiana Jones-style map-montage depicting their route might've been nice, or at least a more coherent "we're traveling overland through the Russian interior until we get to the Baltic coast and then we're taking ships home" journey would've been better. The Lord of the Rings films' depiction of Aragorn taking the Hobbits to Rivendell and then the combined Fellowship of the Ring traveling from Rivendell to Moria would be a good model, although since those movies came out later straight-up copying wouldn't work.

*In one of ibn Fadlan's prayers, he refers to God as "Father." It's my understanding that that's a very Christian thing, not a Muslim thing at all.

*The book very strongly implies the Wendol are a group of remnant Neanderthals. Ibn Fadlan comments specifically on their heavy, bony brows, for example, and this DeviantArt image of what they should look like includes relevant text from the book. However, other than a comment on how they look like the mating of a human and an animal, this never comes up. When we see them without their bearskin disguises, they look like ordinary people, not Neanderthals or some sort of "ancient evil." For all we know these could be some random tribe of cannibals that have managed to gather a large force of cavalry and get the drop on an isolated Norse settlement, not the monsters the Vikings claim they are. It would have been more interesting if the movie touched on the fringe theory that Norse mythology about trolls were either ancient racial memories of Neanderthals or that a small population of them survived into historic times or the even more fringe theory that most of humans' distinctiveness from other primates came from evolving to defeat Neanderthal predation. It might've cost a bit more, but hiring shorter and more heavily-built actors to play the Wendol and making them up to look just Neanderthal enough (bigger noses, heavier brows) to trigger the Uncanny Valley effect would've been an improvement.

*Per the above, a major villain looks nothing like the Venus figurines or her depiction in the book as a hideously fat old woman. Instead she's this swarthy ninja girl with poisoned weapons. Per IMDB, she was originally portrayed by an older actress, but Michael Crichton (who directed reshoots of the film) thought it wouldn't look good for Buliwyf to fight an old woman. Here's what the character should look like, at least if she were slimmed down a bit.

*It would have been better in a couple of battle sequences if the Wendol were less numerous. It's true the Vikings have metalworking and the Wendol seem to be generally Stone Age, but the Wendol seem to outnumber the Norsemen so absurdly at times that they could bury them in their corpses if nothing else. Think Zulu Dawn (about the Battle of Isandlwana) in which around 20,000 essentially Iron Age Zulu spearmen (with a few riflemen) destroyed just under 2,000 19th Century British troops armed with rifles and possibly even artillery while taking around 2,000 to 4,000 casualties.

The Verdict

Not the best adaptation of Eaters of the Dead that it could have been, but it's not a waste of your time either. 8.0 out of 10. If you want to listen to Myopia's take on the film, go to our Patreon page and sign up.

What If The Paris Commune Had Survived, Expanded...?

A couple weeks ago one of my church friends clued me into the Revolutions podcast by Mike Duncan, which has been going on for awhile and has episodes on the various intricacies of the American, French, Haitian, and Mexican revolutions and a lot of discussion of the different strains of Marxism and anarchism as they build toward the Russian Revolution. I haven't had a chance to listen to all of them yet, but over the last few weeks a lot of driving (especially during my trip to Hypericon--driving from Atlanta to Murfreesboro and back plus a jaunt from Murfreesboro to Nashville to see about getting my books in the city library) meant I could listen to all of the episodes about the Paris Commune. For those of you not in the know, it was a brief Communist-anarchist takeover of Paris that got gruesomely suppressed and the lessons learned from it were quite influential on the Communist revolution in Russia.

One of my big interests is alternate history and although I had myself banned from the premiere AH discussion forum online, I do check in now and then. I decided to see what I could find on the Paris Commune and found a full alternate timeline called "The Spectre of Europe" written by the user whose handle is Reydan. It diverges from real history when conservative politician Adolphe Thiers has a stroke just before the revolt breaks out, preventing him from playing the instrumental role he did in crushing it. As a consequence, the revolutionary Louis Auguste Blanqui isn't preemptively jailed and able to make it to Paris and provides the necessary leadership for the Commune to avoid being crushed, although they do have to make a deal with the Prussian devil to do it.

Highlights of the timeline include...

*The division of France into a very left-wing republic (seriously, most conservative parties are outlawed, although given certain recent circumstances I wouldn't blame them for worrying about the Bonapartists) and a restored monarchy. When said monarchy is defeated in a later war it goes into exile in France's North African colonies, which the monarchy retained when France was partitioned.

*William Jennings Bryan becomes the president of the United States.

*Reform and partition in China.

*One of Kaiser Wilhelm's character flaws is that he was, in addition to being an erratic blowhard, is that he had some very Yellow Peril ideas about the rise of China. Since our world's WWI doesn't happen, we get to see these tendencies flourish and the results are not pretty.

*The rise of a sort of militant agrarianism (in Scandinavia of all places) as an analogue to our timeline's fascism.

The timeline is so popular that it even has a TVTropes page. I would definitely recommend checking it out. Also, don't forget to check out The Revolutions podcast or his History of Rome podcast, all of which are really interesting.

Prussian Generals In Austrian Service and a Tougher Italian Fight for Ethiopia

Awhile back I posted about an alternate timeline featuring our world's Frederick the Great defecting to Austria and having a major impact on world history (early ending of serfdom in Russia, earlier and larger American Revolution, and much more). It was a pretty good timeline and it's still going.

Well, here's another alternate timeline featuring a real-life Prussian general in Austrian service, "The Great Silent One: Moltke the Austrian." In this one, the Prussian military genius Moltke the Elder moves to the Austro-Hungarian Empire as a child. Instead of serving on first the Prussian and then the German Imperial general staff, instead he enters the Hapsburg army and makes his way to their general staff instead. Nothing really significant differs from our world until the Austrians battle the French in the Sardinian War. Then things start getting really, really different. Highlights of the timeline include the humbling of Prussia, the continued survival of Napoleon III's regime in France (and its increasingly anti-British turn), a wiser Nicholas II of Russia influenced by his reformist grandfather and not his reactionary father, and French interfering in the Spanish-American War.

Things aren't looking good for the British as Europe seems to be developing an alternate-timeline version of the Three Emperor's League of Napoleonic France, the enlarged Hapsburg Empire, and Romanov Russia, but given how the French have annoyed the Americans already, it's possible an Anglo-American rapprochement will happen at around the same time.

Moving onward, there's another interesting timeline, "The New Conquering Lion of Judah, Ras Imru!" Ras Imru was a cousin of the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie and one of Ethiopia's most successful generals during the second Ethiopian-Italian war, at one point menacing the Italian rear before his army was wrecked by aerial bombardment using poison gas. Although many often think of the second war as being a one-sided beating of the Ethiopians by Mussolini and company, the Italians weren't doing too well early on. Heck, even later on the Ethiopians had the chance to inflict a major defeat on the Italians that they lost due to feasting before battle for a week.

(I'm MerryPrankster, although I haven't posted in years because the site--especially the political discussion forums--are time sinks.)

In this scenario, the timeline's author uses my suggested point of divergence that the Ethiopians attack the Italians at Maychew earlier and beat them. Despite winning the battle, the Ethiopians know they won't be able to defend the capital against the Italians once the rainy season ends, so they set up a provisional capital at Gore, more defensible against the Italians, and begin implementing long-run plans for a guerrilla war in areas under Italian occupation. The success at Maychew and Ethiopian diplomacy at the League of Nations convinces the League to end the arms embargo to "both sides" that benefited the somewhat-industrialized Italians (who could manufacture their own weapons) but kept the Ethiopians disarmed. Weapons ordered by the Ethiopians but impounded in other European colonies start flowing in, while foreign journalists have more freedom to cover the war (and thus publicize the Ethiopian cause).

In the last update the Ethiopians have abandoned the capital of Addis Ababa (with the exception of some stay-behinds who bushwhack Italian and Eritrean troops entering the city), but the war's not over yet...

Frederick the Great an Austrian General and Marc Antony Surviving: Two Cool Alternate Timelines

Although to avoid wasting time in arguments I've had myself banned from the alternate-history forum for probably close to three years now (the exception being a window where I could alert them to the release of The Thing in the Woods last spring/summer), I do browse the public forums quite a bit. There are some cool ongoing timelines I follow and I just found a couple interesting new ones.

The first is "Dionysus Lives: A Mark Antony Survival Timeline." It diverges from our history with Marc Antony winning the Battle of Actium by leading his army in person and keeping the sixteen legions from abandoning his cause. With his army and fleet intact, the war with Octavian, the future Caesar Augustus, is prolonged and ends up in a negotiated truce where Antony is dominant in the East and Octavian in the West. Antony wages wars against the Parthians and others, but has to deal with the rivalry between his Egyptian wife Cleopatra and his powerful client Herod the Great. It's pretty interesting, especially for enthusiasts of the Late Republic and the personalities of that era.

(One of the few shows I watched after high school was HBO's Rome after all.)

The second is "Odyssey of Fritz, the Turncoat Prince." In real history, the young Prussian prince who would become the warrior-king Frederick the Great ran away from his father with a "friend" (possibly a homosexual lover), but was caught. In this story, he flees on an alternate route south and ends up in Austria, where he befriends (friends only, much to the latter's annoyance) future Empress Maria Theresa and ends up becoming a major Austrian general. Without Frederick's genius organizing Prussia the state runs into...some trouble (not going into more detail for reasons of spoilers), but Frederick rises high in Hapsburg service and has all sorts of interesting adventures. Highlights include a more brutal subjugation of Scotland and Ireland foreshadowing an earlier American Revolution, an earlier emancipation of the serfs, and the woman who in our history became Catherine the Great of Russia marrying into the British royal family.

Both timelines are ongoing, so check back often. I know I will.

News Article Roundup 6/6

It's been a long time since I've done a "News Article Round-Up" post featuring interesting news articles and commentary. Here goes...

Michael Bay is Giving "Britain's Loneliest Dog" 15 Minutes of Fame-Not only has Michael Bay included this no doubt incredibly sad and bored shelter dog in Transformers: The Last Knight, he's also going to try to get her adopted. I've got friends who criticized Michael Bay for his various excesses, I wrote "The Revenge of the Fallen Reboot" because I was so disappointed with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and I never even bothered with Transformers: Age of Extinction, but I think this is a really cool thing to do.

The Zoo That Wants To Release Wild Elephants In Denmark-This article is about "rewilding," or restoring places to their pre-human state. Some of the more radical variants involve bringing lions, tigers, elephants, etc. to North America and Europe. There's this article I found on The Atlantic that describes the emptying of rural parts of the U.S. So long as people aren't forcibly displaced or endangered by more dangerous types of wildlife, that doesn't seem like a bad idea to me. The reintroduction of wolves in various places doesn't seem to have caused problems.

This is Africa's Most Overlooked Achievement And It's Changing the Lives of Millions-Africa is one of many places that's skipped a generation of technology--for example, areas that never had landline phones now have lots and lots of mobile phones. This article describes another area where Africa has "skipped a generation"--a lot of rural villages now have small-scale solar power and wind power as opposed to feeding off gigantic industrial power-plants. This is pretty cool, as it provides Africans with modern technologies while at the same time avoiding the environmental problems gigantic power plants, huge power-line infrastructures, etc. Decentralized power generation would be the way to go for the whole world and it looks like Africa's leading the way.

Engineered bacterium inhales carbon dioxide and hydrogen and excretes fuel alcohols-Get enough of this going and goodbye greenhouse effect. I have heard some concerns about the bacteria potentially getting out of control and causing problems, but perhaps there's the possibility of engineering them so they can't reproduce beyond a certain point? Think the "terminator gene" to avoid GMO plants spreading their genes to wild plants.

Ten Slavic Spirits and Monsters You've Probably Never Heard Of-For those of you who are into writing science fiction, fantasy, and horror, here are some new critters for you to use.

Enter Hiero Desteen, Pursued By Mutant Wolverines-This isn't really a news article per se, but it's still pretty cool. It's a linked series of blog posts in which the blogger, who's a college professor somewhere, re-reads and comments on the novel Hiero's Journey. I first read that novel in high school and it was a big influence on my Wastelands series. I re-read both the first book and the sequel The Unforsaken Hiero recently and they're still fun. The blogger's comments are also pretty darn funny, including the following commentary on the first chapter:

Things are looking dark for Hiero, and it appears that our novel is about to become a short story, when of a sudden Gorm the Bear comes out of hiding and bites S'nerg in the balls.This was probably the point at which, while I was first reading Hiero's Journey, I realized I was going to finish the novel. You just don't get mutant-bear groin-biting in conventional stories.

I hope all of the above content interested you...

What If Stalin Had Survived His Stroke?

My self-ban from the alternate-history forum won't expire until the end of this week and I might re-ban so I can avoid unnecessary distractions from finishing and submitting Little People, Big Guns over the summer. However, I can still read the forums and I found something else you guys might appreciate...

Twilight of the Red Tsar

There's a book called Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar that compares the Communist absolute ruler of the Soviet Union with the Russian monarchs of old and I'm guessing that's where the user whose handle is Napoleon IV derived the title. The gist of it is that Stalin survived the stroke that killed him in our history.

That's not a good thing because he was apparently planning another Great Purge, this one with a particularly anti-Semitic focus. Given Russia's history with Jew-hating, there's the possibility of a second Holocaust within a decade of the first one.

Highlights of this timeline include the use of nuclear weapons, poison gas, and weaponized germs, rifts within the Communist movement (that usually followed Moscow's line), a Chinese messianic movement in the vein of peasant millenarian revolts that occurred in the dynastic past, and Richard Nixon. And there are a lot of allusions to the Book of Revelation in the chapter titles.

Enjoy!

How A Major War Could Have Started In Ukraine: An Alternate Timeline

Most of the stuff I've been posting on the blog from my alternate-history forum has been counterfactuals of fictional scenarios like things going differently in A Song of Ice and Fire or what-not.

Here's something a bit more grounded in reality, and based on current events to boot. It's entitled "And To Think It Might Have Happened: A Ukraine War Timeline." The point of divergence from our history is that on March 14, during the Russian takeover of Crimea, a Ukrainian missile boat fires on a Russian corvette and cripples it, forcing it to be abandoned. The Russians sink the missile boat with aircraft. Things mushroom from there, with the Russians launching a massive aerial attack March 17 followed by a ground invasion March 19.

*The Russians take Luhansk pretty early and advance all the way to Kharkiv. The Ukrainians put up a spirited fight, but their resistance crumbles when supplies and ammunition run out. The new government in Ukraine early on had problems paying its soldiers, so keeping them supplied in wartime is going to be even more of a problem.

*Kazakh troops are fighting alongside the Russians.

*Kiev gets bombed, nearly killing the Ukrainian president.

*NATO doesn't intervene in Ukraine's defense, although they do share intelligence on Russian movements and even fly aircraft in western Ukraine as a show of force. The latter course is really quite risky, given the possibility of an accident.

*By March 25, the Russians are approaching Kiev itself. The Ukrainians for the most part have fallen back over the Dnieper. The Russians announce their intentions to annex occupied Ukraine.

Then a British passenger jet gets shot down, escalating things even more. Right now NATO troops have been deployed to Europe in large numbers and the Russians are preparing to intervene in the Baltic States. The Russian secretary of defense has just resigned (and been arrested) rather than participate in something this risky.

This is a really interesting timeline. The last date was yesterday and the update before that was around three days ago, so there might be a new installment by this weekend.

Russia Intent on Making Itself Leader of the "Anti-Western" World

Here's an article from the Washington Post I found online today that I wanted to share with you all. The gist of it is that although U.S. President Barack Obama states the U.S. is not in a new Cold War with semi-dictator Vladimir Putin's Russia because the latter lacks an ideology and a bloc of nations surrounding it, the reality is somewhat opposite. Putin instead seeks make Russia (and by extension himself) the leader of a bloc of nations opposed to "Western" values that include, among other things, tolerance of homosexuality, social liberalism in general, etc.

Below is cartoon showing Russia's supposed glories (including the Soviet victory in WWII and the space program as well as its medieval heritage) in contrast to the supposed decadent drug-addled homo-fascism of the European Union. Click on the image to see all of the gory details.

The first thing that came to mind was not some political stand or another (my opinion on that matter can be found here), but the world my Afrikaner stories "Coil Gun" and "Picking Up Plans in Palma" (both of which appear in my collection Flashing Steel, Flashing Fire) take place in. The world features a cold war between the League of Democracies, led by the United States, and a bloc led by the Afrikaner Confederation, a white supremacist empire spanning the Indian Ocean basin. Here's the timeline.

Members of the latter bloc refer to their alliance as "the Self-Determination Compact." It consists of various illiberal regimes like the Confederation, the Taiping regime in southern China, Tibet, the Persian Empire, Thailand, the Hejaz, the Rashids, Afghanistan, and the Sikh Empire. Ostensibly a defensive alliance against outside forces threatening their "traditional cultures," what they really are is an anti-Enlightenment pact consisting of a white-supremacist/Christian-supremacist empire, a weird semi-theocracy, a theocracy, several monarchies, and a semi-theocratic state with a weighted franchise much like old Prussia that gives the Sikh minority disproportionate power compared to the Hindu and Muslim majority.

The sort of Enlightenment liberalism represented by the United States and its allies is a threat to these more-or-less anti-democratic regimes. It's like the anti-revolutionary Holy Alliance was brought forward a century, its obscurantism toned down just enough to permit the kind of military advances science provides (to a point) and prevent a total explosion of the oppressed masses (the Confederation is a democracy for whites like apartheid South Africa, while most of its allies have at least some constitutionalism going), and allowed to claim the language of self-determination for foreign consumption.

Fortunately I'm thinking that if something like this is Putin's aspiration, it's likely that China is going to end up in charge, not Russia. Russia is a glorified petro-state, while China has a productive economy. By alienating Russia from Europe and the United States, Putin more likely has doomed it to a future of being dependent on China.

Redividing Eastern Europe, Or My Crimea Post...

According to the latest news, Russian forces are pulling back from the Ukrainian border. It looks like this particular crisis might be winding down. That being said, diplomatic negotiations are still ongoing and the troops might not be withdrawing all that many or all that much.

Here's an idea I had that might permanently deal with Ukraine (and Eastern Europe) as a flashpoint between Russia and the West. A grand bargain, if you will:

*Allow Russian annexation of Crimea, southern and eastern Ukraine, and Transnistria. Those areas are Russian-speaking and (generally) fonder of Russia than their Ukrainian kindred further west.

*Immediately allow western Ukraine (henceforth to be called Ukraine) into NATO and the European Union. The same with Moldova, with or without annexing Moldova into NATO/EU member Romania.

*Not sure what to do about Belarus. It seems to be a puppet of Russia anyway so if Putin leaves it be or decides to bring law into alignment with fact and annex it too, oh well. It's not a NATO country.

I imagine a lot of people will scream that this is appeasement, but Europe--whose primary problem this is--seems rather ambivalent about the Crimean situation rather than freaking out about the Russian armies being on the march. Furthermore, the US is poorly-placed to intervene.

As long as NATO exists and stands strong in defense of its member states, a cold-blooded calculating crocodile like Putin is not going to do anything too obvious. Though Russia is a powerful state, it is vastly weaker economically than the U.S., let alone the combined West. Russia is dependent on selling oil and gas to sustain its power, which is not a good thing in the long run even if it does give them leverage with the European countries that buy its gas.

Look at the Cold War. The USSR stomped on states in its own sphere, but despite its vast military power extending much further west than today, NATO kept Western Europe safe. The West is even stronger vis-a-vis Russia today than it was during the days of the Cold War. This formalizing of the spheres of influence of "the West" and Russia in Eastern Europe will give everybody something they want, let Putin save face, and eliminate the East-West tug-of-war over individual countries as a potential cause for instability and even war.

So let the Russians have some of their old sphere. Let them think they're standing strong against the homosexual drug-dealing fascists or whatever of the decadent West. My proposal, if implemented, leaves Russia "reigning in hell" so to speak, in the long run doomed to stagnation apart from Europe proper and contained by the NATO alliance without any non-NATO countries (in Europe at least) to easily bully.

More Entertaining Alternate Timelines...

Here are some more entertaining alternate timelines, courtesy of AH.com...

May 1945: Quisling Makes a Run For It

In real history, the Nazis' Norwegian stooge Vidkun Quisling, whose name has become synonymous with treason, surrendered to the Allies, was tried, and was executed. In this scenario, Quisling, fearing ending up like Benito Mussolini (executed by the Resistance), decides to go on the run. The story follows him on his adventures throughout newly-liberated Europe, the Norwegians hot on his trail. Those who like Villain Protagonist stories (although Quisling isn't malicious or cruel, he did aid and abet Hitler) will like this one, plus since he's not really mean, he's easier for those who aren't villain fans to sympathize with than, say, Eichmann.

Decisive Darkness: What If Japan Hadn't Surrendered In 1945?

In our history, the twin shocks of the atomic bomb and the Soviet invasion of the Japanese land empire were what it took to get the Japanese to surrender in 1945. But even after that, there were some die-hards who preferred death to defeat and they attempted to stage an anti-surrender coup. In our history they failed. In this history, they succeeded. The effects so far include Kokura getting the third atomic bomb and a Soviet invasion of Hokkaido. Given the widespread hunger even after the surrender, this timeline is going to get nasty. Some people have even used the phrase "American Japan" in an annexation sense, which would only be possible with eight-digit casualty figures.

With The Crescent Above Us

In real history, the 1877 Russo-Turkish War was an Ottoman defeat, with the British preventing the Russians from imposing fairly draconian terms. However, the Ottomans had several advantages that (based on the Wikipedia article) they squandered due to making foolish assumptions about how the Russian army would fight. This timeline diverges from our with the Ottoman war minister Hussein Avni Pasha not being assassinated, leaving the Ottomans with a much more effective military leadership. Things go much better for the Turks this time around. The author of the timeline is a Muslim, so he's got an inside perspective.

Bayonets Won't Cut Coal: The Socialist Republic of Britain

Some of my reading for graduate school leads me to believe there were widespread fears of a massive general strike in Britain in late 1914, a strike that didn't happen due to the beginning of World War I. However, sweeping issues under the rug doesn't necessarily eliminate them. In this timeline, the Anglo-Japanese Alliance is renewed and that spawns more changes culminating in massive labor unrest and ultimately a left-wing coup turning Britain into a socialist regime governed by the trade unions, with the old upper class (including no less than Winston Churchill) in exile in the Commonwealth plotting revenge. I'm not really familiar with labor history and I'm generally not sympathetic to hard-left politics, but this is a really interesting situation. It does require a fair bit of bad decisions by the British ruling class and one really bad bit of bad luck to get there though.

And now for a timeline of my own...

Muslim Europe, Christian Middle East

It's not nearly as insane as it sounds, I promise. In our history, the Persians and Avars occupied most of the Byzantine Empire and besieged Constantinople from both sides. The siege failed and both were beaten back, but the slugfest weakened both Byzantium and the Sassanid Empire to the point the new Islamic Caliphate seized most of one and outright devoured the other. The Eastern Roman Empire isn't so lucky this time, which will have its effects, including weakening the little-o orthodox church in favor of the big heresies like Monophysitism and Nestorianism. I wrote this years ago, but I was recently inspired by one of my graduate classes to start writing a story set in this timeline. It'll be around the time of the Battle of the Straits of Messina...

My Return To Fanfiction.net: A Tale of the Draka

Awhile back, I posted about two alternate Draka timelines I'd written for my alternate-history message-board. Sometime later, I found some people discussing my timelines on another Internet forum and one person complained about how they had to join the site in order to view them.

This morning on a whim, I posted on my Facebook fan page to see if anyone would like to see these timelines and I got three "likes" within thirty minutes. Never being one to disappoint my fans, I started copying and pasting from the original thread, now many years old, and posting them on fanfiction.net.

Behold, "The Dragon and the Bear: An Alternate Drakaverse." The early stuff is up now and I'll be posting the rest of it over the next several days.

Long ago, when I finished "The Revenge of the Fallen Reboot," I said I would not write anymore fan-fiction and would instead focus on my original work that can actually make me money. What I'm doing now fulfills the letter of the promise, since this is material I wrote years ago. Furthermore, I have many, many more Facebook fans now than I did then and providing them with content will keep them interested while I produce more original stuff. Given the popularity of the Draka novels among the alternate-history community, this will also help cement my position among them in preparation for the publication of my original material.

So sit back, relax, and enjoy a world where there's no Stalinist purge, the German invasion of Russia gets stopped a lot faster, Operation Valkyrie succeeds, and the evil Draka get what's coming to them. Robert Heinlein, Carl Sagan, and Pope John Paul II make appearances.

The Second Napoleonic Wars: An Alternate History Scenario

I was checking on my alternate-history forum this morning and I found the following scenario:

A Heartbeat Away from Greatness: A Timeline of Missed Opportunities

Although I took a class on 19th Century Europe in college, I don't remember a whole lot about Napoleon III, the Austro-Sardinian War, etc. Given how I do remember a lot of discussion about Garibaldi and Italian unification, that is rather odd. Either way, late 19th Century Europe is generally not an area I'm interested in.

That being said, this is a very interesting scenario. The point of divergence from our history is that King Frederick William IV is not incapacitated by a heart attack in August of 1857. This leads to Czar Alexander II feeling more secure about his western border, which makes him more open to an alliance with Napoleon III against the Austrians in support of Napoleon's plans for Italy.

Right now, the Austrian Empire is foundering, with its armies even more devastated by this timeline's version of the Battle of Solferino, Emperor Franz Josef himself under siege in Italy, and Russian armies occupying Austrian Poland. Something very significant just happened, but I'm not going to reveal any big spoilers other than it's, in TVTropes terms, a Crowning Moment of Awesome for both Garibaldi and Franz Josef.

Faux historical documents from later in the timeline reference this period as "the second Napoleonic Wars" and timeline author (the user whose handle is yboxman) referenced how a general European war wasn't provoked by the four smaller wars of the late 19th Century even though it easily could have been, so the mayhem is just beginning. Furthermore, American Civil War hasn't happened yet, so we might see someone (President James Buchanan or his successor, who may not be Abraham Lincoln this time around) gambling on a short, victorious war to paper over sectional tensions and/or try to jump on Britain's back a second time and hope things go better than 1812 or the Union and the Confederacy ending up on opposite sides of the European conflict and making this a world war.

A Former Soviet Solution To Antibiotic Resistance

Antibiotic resistance is a growing problem throughout the world.  Overuse of antibiotics, especially pre-emptively soaking animals in them or people badgering doctors into prescribing them antibiotics for viral infections (which cannot be treated by antibiotics) or other issues, has led to many diseases becoming resistant to more and more antibiotics.  People taking them until they feel better and then stopping is also a major problem.

Here're some links showing just how dire the situation is.

Drug-resistant "white plague" lurks among the rich and poor

Health chief warns age of safe medicine is ending

In our globalized world, foolish antibiotic policies in India have led to antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis strains in Britain. An antibiotic-resistant bacteria that gets on an airplane could well trigger another pandemic.  Tuberculosis was the 19th Century's version of AIDS--compare the musical Rent and the opera La Boheme.  I remember reading about immigrant screening at Ellis Island and how people who had tuberculosis were turned away.  Thanks to human foolishness, an older killer has undergone a not-so-glorious resurrection.

A member of my alternate-history forum whose name is Jello Biafra said in the former Soviet bloc, bacteriophages were used for decades as an alternative to antibiotics.  Basically a bacteriophage is a virus that kills bacteria.

Here's an article about how there's research into bacteriophages capable of killing MRSA, which is a very dangerous disease.

British biotech boasts antibiotic breakthrough

The article on phage therapy describes many hurdles to use of bacteriophages.  The most aggravating of these, and the one most easily dealt with, is regulatory.  The FDA is apparently very reluctant to approve such things, and given how individualized the treatment is, it might be necessary under current law for the FDA to approve each and every individual treatment.  That would be bloody absurd.

The FDA should lower the regulatory barriers to bacteriophage research.  In fact, given the lack of interest in the private sector in researching bacteriophages for various reasons, it might be prudent for the FDA to fund the research.   I generally favor small-government solutions to problems, but if there's market failure going on and the stakes are this high, it's time to be pragmatic.  An antibiotic-resistant pandemic could kill tens of millions, while fear of such could throw a wrench into the globalized economy that has helped contribute to a generally-peaceful world.

(Per my comment about Ellis Island, imagine if it became necessary to screen travelers from India for super-tuberculosis.  Heck, imagine if it became neccesary to quarantine India entirely.  That would be a very bad situation.)

Book Review: "Twelve" by Jasper Kent. Spoilers!

I came across Pyr, a science fiction and fantasy imprint of Prometheus Books, at DragonCon this year.  One of the books they had available for purchase was Twelveby Jasper Kent.  I remembered seeing Pyr's booth at DragonCon some years back, with Twelve being listed as coming soon, so my curiosity was already piqued.  It looked interesting, so I bought it. Here goes the review...

Twelve tells the tale of Captain Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov, a Russian officer during the Napoleonic Wars.  He and some other officers have been assigned to operate separately from the main Russian army to cause trouble for the invading French.  When one of them takes the liberty of calling some old comrades from the war against the Turks who are very good at killing the French, everything seems peachy.

Until Danilov gets a little too curious and discovers just what manner of monsters they've allied themselves with...

The Good

*I really liked the concept.  I haven't seen a lot of historical fiction or speculative fiction set in Russia, so this was doubly interesting.

*The book is well-paced and never boring.

*The author's attention to historical detail is good.  Distances are measured in the traditional Russian measurement of verst, while the events of the book are dated using the Julian calendar, which was used in Russia at the time, rather than the Gregorian calendar, which was used in Western Europe.  He even describes the difference between Russian and Western European horseshoes, the latter of which aren't adapted for the icy conditions of the Russian winter.

*The fact that the twelve who arrive to help fight the French are vampires is not immediately revealed.  One has the chance to learn along with Danilov just what the Oprichniki--Ivan the Terrible's secret police, which our heroes name the twelve--are.

(Unless you read the blurbs on the back too closely, but I'll get to that later.)

*The Oprichniki's chief introduces them to the Russian characters before returning to Romania.  The twelve of them are all named after the Twelve Apostles, with the one named for Judas having a rather interesting trait--I'll reveal that later in the review.

*There are some very vivid descriptive bits, like a scene where Danilov witnesses the Oprichniki throwing a body out of a barn.  He describes how the body has had a good bit of flesh gnawed off and then sees the look on the dead woman's face and realized the only reason the vampires had decided to stop eating was because the victim had died. He then sees the vampires torturing and feeding on the dead woman's husband in the barn.  One of the vampires bites off some pieces of him and spits something out.  When Danilov comes in during the day to kill the vampires, he finds what the vampire spat out--the man's wedding ring.  He then subdues one vampire and tortures him for information by opening the barn door to expose him to the sun and then closing the door again to allow him to regenerate.

"The vampire was a torturer's dream.  Continuous pain could be inflicted because the body would be continually refreshed."

Wow.

There's another scene where Danilov stops to think and sits on a log.  When he gets up, he disturbs the snow and reveals a silver chain.  He digs for it and finds it's a bracelet and what he thinks is a branch is actually a human hand.

"I had not been sitting on a log, but on a frozen, rigid human corpse."

Now that's a good way to end a chapter.

There's another scene where another character takes a vampire prisoner and both of them are caught in a blizzard.  The vampire ends up frozen solid and buried in a snowdrift, but cannot die.  Danilov digs the vampire up and the sun starts melting the remaining snow and ice--and igniting the vampire.  The vampire's flesh ignites, which ignites his clothing, which burns away and reveals more flesh, which is in turn ignited by the sun.  Once the fires start going on his clothes and flesh, the vicious cycle accelerates into a continual chain of combustion.

*Danilov is a realistic human being with flaws.  In this case, away from his wife for a long period, he visits a prostitute named Dominikiaa and becomes quite attached to her.  That's a realistic problem for someone to get into in a wartime situation.

The Bad

*The book jacket describes how the behavior of the twelve new arrivals reminds Danilov of the legends of the voordalak.  Given how it isn't revealed until well into the novel that the Oprichniki are in fact vampires, using the less-familiar Russian word was a good idea.  The problem is, one of the first blurbs on the back of the book calls it "good vampire-hunting fun."  I would have enjoyed the book much more if I hadn't known going in that the Oprichniki were vampires and discovered it along with Danilov.

*When Danilov cannot bring himself to kill Dominikiaa after he believes she has allowed herself to be made a vampire by Iuda, he very quickly reaches the conclusion that he would be damned if he killed her and damned if he allowed her to escape, so he decides that if he's going to go to hell anyway, he should allow Dominikiaa to make him a vampire so they could go to hell together.  I can understand his moral dilemma--he can't bring himself to kill Dominikiaa but would have any deaths vampire-Dominkiaa inflicts on his conscience--but his solution is really quite bizarre considering his hatred of the vampires.  Furthermore, this decision is made entirely too easily, in the space of about a page.  And he's really detached about it too--he even thinks this would be a chance to look back and remember his own death.

*The revelation that the vampire Iuda wasn't actually a vampire, but was in fact a human who traveled with the vampires and had deceived them into thinking he was one of them was really lame.  If he had been with the vampires for an extended period of time, one would think these creatures--who prey on humans the way we feed on lower animals--would have noticed.  That does provide a reason for him to be named after Judas, but he doesn't actually betray the vampires.  Of course, if he was a Russian-born vampire who retained loyalty to his people and opposed the Oprichniki when they began feeding on Russians as well as French, that would make him a bit more interesting...

The Verdict

An entertaining read.  8 out of 10.  The sequel, Thirteen Years Later,has been released in the United States, as has the third book in what will be a quintet, The Third Section.  Kent will continue the story all the way to the Russian Revolution, so how things turn out will be very interesting.

An Alternate History Scenario I Liked (And Contributed To)

The members of my alternate-history forum whose handle is Eurofed likes larger and larger states, I believe on the grounds that internal stability over larger areas promotes economic development and human welfare.  To that end, he has devised various alternate timelines featuring this, some featuring this unification done by the good ("The United States of the Americas and Oceania"--the U.S. includes Canada from the get-go and grows from there) and the very bad ("The Long Night Falls," a victorious Third Reich uniting Europe and the Middle East).

This one, however, is my favorite

Europe of the Three Empires

Basically, the Roman Empire expands even more than in our history, incorporating Mesopotamia and reducing Persia proper to vassalage and expanding deeper into Europe, giving them a more defensible border (the Oder is shorter than the Rhine and can tie into the Danube as a barrier).  Eventually the enlarged Roman Empire splits apart due to religious and cultural-linguistic (Latin/Greek) differences and a third empire emerged in Russia and Scandinavia based on the Norse, the Goths, and various steppe influences.

There was a lot of discussion about just how big the Roman Empire could get and stay functional.  Geography is one problem, as is the slow speed of communications.  Eurofed is not a believer in geographic determinism--he said India remained disunited even though it doesn't have a lot of division-encouraging geographical features.

My handle on the board is MerryPrankster and I posted a lot of suggestions, including how the Norse and Western Romans would divide up territory (I favored the Norse taking Britain), how the East-West political split might happen, and the East-West religious split might develop.  In particular, if we're going with a Christian East that develops our history's religious-authoritarian Byzantine political culture and a pagan West that is comparatively freer, I figured there'd at least be some Christians who would believe a state church to be an abomination and oppose brutality and tyranny being done in the name of Jesus.

Our history, after all, saw one person of note in the early church (for some reason I'm thinking it was Arius of Alexandria, founder of the Arian heresy) who claimed Constantine did not scourge the back but tickled the belly and "damned the soul with gold."  Not to mention the Biblical justification for imposing Christianity and "Christian" political positions by force on society as a whole is somewhat lacking--when Paul told believers to pray for kings, it was so that they would become Christians and thusly not persecute Christians anymore, not to impose Christianity on everyone with the sword.

Maybe I'll try to write fiction set in something similar to this world, but that would require having an actual plot (for the fiction) and an actual timeline, starting with a divergence from our history.  I suggested some of the conquests be made during the Republican period, since the Republic was actually more aggressive than the Empire (the Emperors wanted to avoid war when possible to avoid having victorious generals threaten them) and more inclined to keep conquered territory.

Perhaps Caesar doesn't get assassinated and sets off for his war against Parthia?  He can get assassinated later, maybe if he goes on a power trip after beating the Parthians and makes himself king (or people think he will try to make himself king), and we can still have our world's Augustus.

My Two Alternate Draka Timelines and Machiavelli

This morning, I added an update to my alternate Draka timeline "Limited Alliance-Draka War in the Late 1940s or Early 1950s," which is available in the Alien Space Bats forum of www.alternatehistory.net/Discussion. 

This update described a massive effort by the Roman Catholic Church to rescue the illegitimate children of Citizens and their high-status servants (such as the Janissaries) and the women of conquered nations, who were in danger of abuse in the areas where the Domination of the Draka had been driven out, and find adoptive parents for them in the West.

(In our history, the children of American soldiers and Vietnamese women were often abused.  These children would be subject to even more outrageous behavior, considering the more brutal circumstances of both the occupation of their countries and their own conception.)

Think Operation Babylift from the end of the Vietnam War (3,300 children removed from South Vietnam before it fell to the Communists), only on a much bigger scale--750,000 children in three or four months.

The next update will focus on the liberation of Tibet from the Domination, a feat largely accomplished by the Indian Army and the Gurkhas, and the beginning of the Sichuan bombing campaign from bases in Tibet and eastern China.

(The Sichuan Basin is incredibly defensible and has been under Draka control since soon after WWI and democratic governments don't spend soldiers recklessly--I intend for the region to be heavily bombarded using nukes and conventional weapons before the ground invasion, if there even is one.  This will enable a relatively cheap Alliance for Democracy victory manpower-wise but sow the seeds of discontent for later relations between China and the Alliance--later generations of Chinese might not remember Draka rule firsthand but they will know all about residual fallout, high rates of cancer, birth defects, etc.)

This is the second alternate Draka timeline I've written for AH.com.  The first one, "The Dragon and the Bear," features General Lavr Kornilov realizing the danger from the Draka the Russian Empire would be in if the Bolsheviks were to stage a coup and a civil war break out--in the canonical Draka timeline, the Draka took Russian Central Asia during the Russian Civil War--and manages to successfully pre-empt the October Revolution.  From there, Kornilov and Alexander Kerensky industrialize Russia using both capitalistic methods and a kinder, gentler version of Stalin's technique (exporting grain to fund industrialization, only this time without starving several million people to death) to prepare for the inevitable war with the Draka.  The non-purging of Russia's best commanders and better development of "deep operations" also helps.

In both timelines, as long as the Domination can keep the war on other people's territory, it is a terrible foe.  However, once enemy armies invade the Domination itself, the Draka quickly find themselves in trouble--the presence of foreign armies provokes massive slave revolts that, even if crushed, require the presence of troops needed elsewhere to fight the invaders and in some cases overwhelm the Draka and their serf loyalists.  Plus the masses of slaves that will take the opportunity to run away rather than jump the master and the strawboss will make good laborers and (with training) soldiers for the invader. 

In "Limited Alliance-Draka War," it takes roughly a month for the Draka to be driven out of Norway, Sweden, and Finland, three months for the Draka to be ejected from Korea (due to their ability to mobilize anti-Japanese Koreans to fight Japan-based invaders), and maybe two or three months for Western Europe to the Rhine and China to the Sichuan and Gobi Desert to be liberated.  I don't remember "The Dragon and the Bear" well, but I think from the beginnings of the Russian invasion of Draka-occupied Afghanistan to the arrival of Russian forces on the Persian Gulf and Shatt-al-Arab, it takes maybe six months to a year and when the Final War comes, it takes around two years for the Domination (at this point all of Africa and the Middle East to the Taurus Mountains and Shatt-al-Arab) to be completely destroyed.

When I was a student at the University of Georgia, I had to read "The Prince" (which I think I had in The Portable Machiavelli--I don't have the book with me right now) and I remember Machiavelli discussing in either "The Prince" or "The Art of War" that a weak state is strong on offense but can be easily beaten on its own soil but a strong state is stronger at home that it is abroad.  He used the examples of Carthage and Rome--Carthage's army under Hannibal was strong enough to win many victories in Italy but was beaten at Zama when the Romans invaded North Africa, while Rome weathered years of Hannibal rampaging through Italy, raising new armies as the old ones were beaten, and eventually took the fight to Carthage itself.

According to the Wikipedia entry on Zama, the Roman general Scipio Africanus was able to recruit many "local defectors" and Numidian cavalry to fight the Carthaginians, who were very reliant on mercenaries to man their armies.  The Carthaginians, who had waged war in Italy for years, crumbled fast.  The Draka are in a similar situation--any invader to their territory is likely to pick up a lot of local support, especially if the people in the area remember a time in which they were free, and their support base is going to consist solely of Citizens (outnumbered 9-1 by their slaves) and higher-status serfs and probably not all of those.

For those who are interested, here're the links to "The Dragon and the Bear" and "Limited Alliance-Draka War."  I posted the first one on fanfiction.net (well, most of it--I still have a few entries left) on fanfiction.net, but in order to see the second one, you'll need to be a member of AH.com.

The Dragon and the Bear: The Domination vs. Russia

Limited Alliance-Draka War in the Late 1940s or Early 1950s

Although the site has consumed a huge amount of time that could probably be better-spent, being a member there has taught me a whole lot of real history (in order to know what might hav happened, you need to know what did happen and why), provided me with a place to receive criticism for my own alternate-history scenarios, led me to read a whole lot of books I wouldn't have even heard of (such as The Lost Legion, stemming from a discussion about a Roman army that may have ended up in China), and even inspired my Afrikanerverse, in which I have written two stories I've been trying to sell.

(Neither has been sold yet, but the editors do like them--one wasn't bought because it didn't fit with the other stories in an anthology, not because it wasn't good.)

I also met up with several members when I studied abroad in Britain in 2006.  Maybe I should find that photo of the group at that pub and post it on Facebook...

For those of you who need background on the Draka fictional universe, here's a link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Domination