There Will Be War #09: After Armageddon

I started reading the "There Will Be War" series edited by Jerry Pournelle when it first was published in paperback back in the early 1980's and enjoyed them very much. However, even then the political, social and economic commentaries tended to rub me the wrong way. I always believed that the science fiction stories were so good that including anything else was a detriment to the collection. Science fiction is such a broad subject that it is possible to include any social or political commentary that you want. Now that the "mighty" Soviet Union has collapsed of its' own weight and proven to be nowhere near the dangerous powerhouse claimed by intense conservatives, stories about the Soviet threat are interesting only from a historical perspective. The science fiction stories in this book are excellent, although somewhat depressing. All start from the major premise that a planet-altering catastrophe has occurred and the survivors are trying to rebuild society. Of course, human nature gets in the way and groups are fighting over the remaining resources, with greed, jealousy and all other emotions sometimes winning out over group survival. Nevertheless, there is an undercurrent of optimism, as there will always be some who are idealistic enough to band together and construct a new civilization from the trash of the previous one.

This series marked the first time that I attained the Nirvana known only by those who've had their fiction published professionally, thanks to John Carr's patience with me and his willingness to see potential in my work. Despite this, I think I'm objective enough to rate this book, and the series, fairly. Like all anthologies, it's uneven, and marked heavily by the editors' own beliefs. Still and all, for those in search of good military SF in short story form, as well as non-fiction articles on the subject, picking this whole series up is a good idea.