Reviewed by Tatiani Rapatzikou, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

Throughout its ten chapters, this book's emphasis is placed on the 'what-if' political scenarios and technomilitary innovations that feature in certain speculative narratives produced in the UK as well as in the US. Charles Gannon's analysis starts from Victorian/Edwardian Britain and ends with post-Cold War America. The combination of textual analysis with historical as well as political facts offers readers a multidimensional approach, as it enables them to assess the primary texts examined from a literary as well as socio-cultural perspective. This makes the present book a useful source of reference to anyone interested in transatlantic superpower politics in relation to science fiction, technothrillers and apocalypse narratives.

Gannon commences his discussion with the publication of George Thomkyns Chesney's 'The Battle of Dorking' (1871) and the political influence that its future-war scenario exerted on Britain's home defence policies. In the same chapter, a number of other texts are introduced, such as Hugh Oakley Arnold-Forster's 'In a Conning Tower' (1888) and P. H. Colomb's The Great War of 189—; A Forecast (1893), serving as models of the different text types that developed within the future-war genre. By examining the publication as well as the political facts behind each text, Gannon is interested in the amount of influence each one of them exercised on the political scene and the general reading public in relation to the amount of factual and futuristic military information that fed into these narratives in terms of weapon design and warfare practices. As Gannon's second chapter clearly highlights, most of these texts were initiated by the newspaper and pamphlet editors of the time who wished to ensure the on-going circulation and profitability of these narratives. In particular, Gannon devotes the whole chapter to the Alfred Harmsworth and William Le Queux partnership which was marked by the publication of The Invasion of 1910 (1906). Also, Gannon reveals the 'professional scaremongering' tactics Harmsworth and Le Queux employed as well as the inaccurate data, maps and descriptions that the book contained. By tracing the publication history behind this text, Gannon discloses the strategies that the editor and writer resorted to by mainly relying on the sensational description of military technologies and the brief references to trench fighting scenes. Gannon attentively describes the inconsistencies, oversights and technological anachronisms one finds in this narrative by comparing it to actual First World War warfare facts without overriding the 'unintentional insights' this book offered into the socio-political reality of the time with regard to the dehumanization aspects of combat.

In the third chapter, Gannon is dealing with the military technologies—the tank, the submarine and the airplane—which were 'prophesized' by a number of English near-future war writers. For this reason, he brings to the reader's attention texts, such as H. G. Wells's 'The Land Ironclads' (1903) and The War in Air (1908), Arthur Conan Doyle's 'Danger!' (1914) in addition to stories written by Captain Vickers and Ernest Swinton, attempting to show in this way how literary endeavor gradually shaped cultural consciousness in relation to scientifically innovative warfare. What Gannon indicates in his discussion is the extent to which these texts altered the 'strategic conduct of war' by confronting readers with new 'technological variables'. In the case of Vickers and Swinton, it is their military and engineering background that informed their writing, while in Well's case, it is his gift for 'microscopic anticipations' with regard to scientific innovation that ensured the popularity of his stories on both sides of the Atlantic. By focusing on the analysis of textual excerpts as well as on the discussion of the marketing strategies that writers and editors resorted to, Gannon reveals the nationalistic anxieties that burdened the 'pre-1914 mind' in the UK which later in the twentieth century would shape superpower politics and tactics in both Britain and America. This issue is further explored in the next chapter which Gannon dedicates to Wells who is described, according to the chapter's title, as 'the far-future war prophet of Edwardian England.' The analysis here concentrates on two of Wells's narratives, The War of the Worlds (1898) and The World Set Free (1914), both dealing with extreme technomilitary innovations: the laser weaponry, the strategic bomber and the atomic bomb. Gannon here comments on Wells's accurate descriptions of the 'physical and social destruction of an all-out atomic war' and the 'violences perpetrated by colonizers' which in The War of the Worlds are described under the guise of a Martian attack. Holding up a mirror to human nature itself, Wells's texts comment on the development of technocratic armies, dehumanization and military omnipotence. The textual excerpts that Gannon introduces in the discussion effectively highlight Wells's anticipation of 'humanity's increased destructive power' in relation to the forthcoming Second World War superpower politics and events.

In the following two chapters, the book's perspective changes as the commentary now focuses on the America's 'growing fascination with, and development of, future-war fiction'. For this reason, Gannon offers an overview of the literary trends, practices and technological innovations that dominated and influenced the American imagination and politics from the 1920s until the early 1970s with attention paid to atomic annihilation and atomic-war survival scenarios. Some of the writers he mentions are: Robert Heinlein, Poul Anderson, Joe Halderman, John McHale, Kris Neville, James Kunetka, Whitley Strieber and Pat Frank. However, Gannon approaches American Science Fiction writers and texts from a social and political rather than a literary perspective. As for the post-Second-World-War anxieties and 'silo psychosis' that tormented the American public, Gannon does not limit the discussion to literature only but also looks at the films which were produced in the UK and the US, as explained in chapter seven. In particular, Gannon concentrates on the different approaches the British and American directors adopted as it concerns the bomb image. Some of the films Gannon refers to are: Dr Strangelove (1964), The War Game (1969), The Bedsitting Room (1969), The Day After (1983), Threads (1984), 1984 (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991). What Gannon actually wishes to point out here is that the 'relationship between the bomb and American attitudes played a large role in defining the new political position, praxis, and identity that abetted America's evolution into a modern superpower'. By resorting to the intersection between political and literary fact, Gannon efficiently underscores the 'simultaneous dread and expectation' that characterized the American public psychology with regard to the possibility of using atomic weapons. Through the examination of psychological survey findings and literary as well as cinematic examples from both the UK and the US, Gannon concludes that the American film industry in the decades following the Second World War insisted on the projection of an 'imaginative cartography that seems as much a reflexive projection of America's frontier history as it does a sober assessment of a realistic nuclear aftermath'.

In chapter eight, Gannon examines how 'the atomic bomb impelled the development of the rocket and the associated fields of space technology' with reference made to the influence that post-Second-World-War science fiction exerted on the evolution of technomilitary and political reality in the US. By drawing on examples from aero-space engineering, space military innovations and speculative fiction, Gannon is interested in pointing out the importance of the latter in introducing the public to the kind of innovative technologies which would be later adopted by superpower science experts. Moving through political, scientific, military and literary texts, Gannon is interested in emphasizing the linkages that there are between these disciplines. For this reason, Gannon draws on Konstantin Eduoardovich Tsiolkovsky's, Robert Goddard's and James R. Randolph's scientific discoveries, as these were inspired by certain speculative writings. Also, he refers to Arthur C. Clark, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury who were requested to be interviewed on the day of the Apollo 11 moon landing, proving in this way that speculation can merge with reality. In addition, reference is made to the political and military stir Ben Bova's and Jerry Pournelle's writings created in relation to the space technologies that featured in the pages of their fiction. With America's military expertise now directed towards the annihilation of natural and space-bound threats, Gannon turns the reader's attention to the level of automation and computer precision required for the sustenance of these technologies. This point is further explored in chapters nine and ten where Gannon's commentary starts with Heinlein's novel Starship Troopers (1959) due to its 'high level of familiarity with, and even expertise in, diverse aspects of military doctrine, tactics, and technology'. He then proceeds with the 'very-near-future technothrillers' by Tom Clancy, Larry Bond and Harold Coyle, while embellishing the discussion with weaponry statistics and technical specifications. As Gannon argues, the introduction of AI and cyborg military technologies in fiction, as proven by the specialized technology featuring in the books already mentioned, led to the development of new narrative devices, since there seemed to be more interest in recording weapon effects rather than personal experience. With attention paid to Poul Anderson's Kings Who Die (1964), Coyle's Team Yankee (1987) and Clancy's Red Storm Rising (1986), Gannon refers to the 'dehumanization and depersonalization' issues that these texts dealt with and the combat efficiency that the new technologies ensured.

With Rumors of War and Infernal Machines, Gannon effectively co-examines a diverse array of fictional and factual information coming from both the UK and the US. As for the technological information provided, Gannon carefully guides the reader through the technomilitary technology that appears in a number of key speculative narratives, delineating at the same time the development of the military and political strategies employed both in real-time and fantasy battlefield scenarios. In addition, Gannon's well-documented endnotes and epigraphs at the start of every chapter make this book a valuable resource for the general reader, scholar, undergraduate and postgraduate student who wishes to explore the point where technology, politics and future-war literature intersect.

© Symbiosis, 2005