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Note About the Hackett Continuum
May. 5th, 2007 09:40 pmNow I'm wondering if I want to make my exploration a play-by-LJ-Community game. My own experience of character rape over a Yahoo!-community game gives me pause about the idea.
FP
FP
The Hackett Continuum and My Place In It
May. 4th, 2007 01:43 pmHey.
I've been re-reading Sir John Hackett's Third World War books and will probably follow it up with re-reads of Red Storm Rising and Team Yankee, which were also set in the same world and events. The first book is now almost thirty years old.
Stunning revelation #1...the President of the United States in that time/space was--Fred Thompson! Same last name, same politics, same background. Somehow I think Hackett either came upon him through research or just had a wildly accurate coincidental guess. (Fred was known, if not famous, for his work with Howard Baker in the Watergate investigation and hearings.) I wonder if Fred recognized himself in these books and maybe there is some dismotivation for him to run for President because of it.
Stunning revelation #2...even if the war itself was a missed prediction, some of Hackett's predictions did come to pass. He saw that in the Muslim world, sectarian differences would always undermine any attempt to unify the region. He correctly predicted the downfall of Sadat in Egypt (tho' for the wrong reasons--Hackett blamed neo-Baathists rather than the heretics of the Muslim Brotherhood); he incorrectly predicted the survival of the Shah's regime in Iran. He predicted the downfall of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq but again missed the reasons and the timing. He came very close about the downfall of Idi Amin Dada's rule in Uganda (but changed the name of the character he was talking about just in case). He expected an escalation in Southern Africa and that apartheid would be undone--by military force from without.
Hackett expected a much more intense war in Central America than what actually happened in Nicaragua/El Salvador (and it could have happened! Many attempts by the Communist Bloc to build up the Sandinista regime's military with modern weapons were interdicted by other nations).
He also mostly saw the events in Poland correctly too, but who could have guessed that the Polish underclasses would have a champion outside their borders--in the form of Pope John Paul II?
I could go on and on...but my focus now is what I would have been doing in that version of alternate history.
I'm starting in November 1984. I've just been rejected by the Draft Board--due to a background check.
FP
I've been re-reading Sir John Hackett's Third World War books and will probably follow it up with re-reads of Red Storm Rising and Team Yankee, which were also set in the same world and events. The first book is now almost thirty years old.
Stunning revelation #1...the President of the United States in that time/space was--Fred Thompson! Same last name, same politics, same background. Somehow I think Hackett either came upon him through research or just had a wildly accurate coincidental guess. (Fred was known, if not famous, for his work with Howard Baker in the Watergate investigation and hearings.) I wonder if Fred recognized himself in these books and maybe there is some dismotivation for him to run for President because of it.
Stunning revelation #2...even if the war itself was a missed prediction, some of Hackett's predictions did come to pass. He saw that in the Muslim world, sectarian differences would always undermine any attempt to unify the region. He correctly predicted the downfall of Sadat in Egypt (tho' for the wrong reasons--Hackett blamed neo-Baathists rather than the heretics of the Muslim Brotherhood); he incorrectly predicted the survival of the Shah's regime in Iran. He predicted the downfall of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq but again missed the reasons and the timing. He came very close about the downfall of Idi Amin Dada's rule in Uganda (but changed the name of the character he was talking about just in case). He expected an escalation in Southern Africa and that apartheid would be undone--by military force from without.
Hackett expected a much more intense war in Central America than what actually happened in Nicaragua/El Salvador (and it could have happened! Many attempts by the Communist Bloc to build up the Sandinista regime's military with modern weapons were interdicted by other nations).
He also mostly saw the events in Poland correctly too, but who could have guessed that the Polish underclasses would have a champion outside their borders--in the form of Pope John Paul II?
I could go on and on...but my focus now is what I would have been doing in that version of alternate history.
I'm starting in November 1984. I've just been rejected by the Draft Board--due to a background check.
FP
