Текст книги "Stars and Stripes Forever"

Автор книги: Harry Harrison

Соавторы: Harry Harrison
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DAY’S END

The Duke of Cambridge had stayed in his cabin ever since the Cunard steamer had departed from Washington City. Stayed below in the stuffy fug, looking unseeingly at the shadows thrown by the paraffin light rocking in its gimbals. Only when the swaying of the lamp became more regular, the movement of the ship rolling steadily from side to side, did he grow conscious of his surroundings. This was the motion of the great Atlantic rollers; they must be out of the river now and standing out to sea. He rose, tightened his collar and put on his jacket, went up on deck.

The air was warm and salty, a June day to relish. Brigadier Somerville was standing at the rail; he turned and saluted when the Duke came up to him. They leaned on the wooden rail and looked in silence at the American coastline vanishing behind them. The Duke turned away and grimaced, preferring instead to look at the sails and the laboring sailors rather than the shores of the United States.

“Let the political johnnies take over,” he said. “I have done my bit. It has been jaw-jaw for far too long now.”

“You have indeed done your bit, Your Grace. You extracted terms far better than those originally proposed.”

“Like extracting teeth at times – and just as painful. But don’t diminuate your contribution, Somerville. I faced them across the conference table. But it was your words and your arguments that carried the day.”

“Happy to be of service, sir,” he said, bowing slightly and changing the subject. The ruling classes of Britain looked down upon the brainy ones and thought little of a man who flaunted his intelligence. “The armies are safely home, prisoners soon to be released, a messy affair there at an end. As you said, the politicians can cross the T’s and dot the I’s. The entire matter is well ended.”

“Is it?” The Duke hawked deeply and spat into the ocean. “Speaking from a military point of view it was a disaster. Our invading armies thrown back. Disaster at sea. Canada all but lost to us – ”

“The English in Canada are loyal. They will not join the French in this new republic.”

“They will be hard-pressed not to. And if they go – what do we have left then on this continent? The frozen colony of Newfoundland, that is what. Not what one would call an overwhelming presence in the New World.”

“But we have peace – is that not enough?”

“Peace? We have been at war ever since my cousin first mounted the throne. Queen Victoria’s little wars, I have heard them called. Wars of necessity as the British Empire expanded around the world. We have won them all. Lost a battle here and there – but never a war. And now this. It leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth.”

“We should treasure the peace – ”

“Should we?” The Duke of Cambridge rounded on Somerville, his jaw tight with anger. “If you believe that, well then, sir, you are in a damned minority, sir. The American newspapers crow about their great victory and the people strut about like cocks on a dungheap. While at home there is a continuous growl of resentment that will not cease. Yes, this armistice and this sordid peace were forced upon us. But this does not mean that we have lost the greater battle of Great Britain’s place in this world. Our country is intact, our empire fertile and flourishing. We have been insulted, all of us – insulted!”

“But there is nothing that can be done now. The war is over, the soldiers returned, the reparations to be paid…”

“It is never over – not while the stigma of defeat is upon us. Keels of ironclad warships are being laid even as we speak. In Woolwich the forges glare as guns and other weapons are produced. And our people are not happy, not happy indeed.”

Brigadier Somerville spoke quietly, tonelessly, attempting not to state his own position in this matter. “Then what do you suggest, sir? We will rearm, that is being done now as you say. Armies can be raised, armed and made ready. But then what? There is no cause to start another war.”

“No cause? You have witnessed our humiliation. Something must be done. What – I don’t know. But we shall confer upon this, yes we shall. That pipsqueak general, what was his name? Sherman. Had the bloody nerve to threaten a peer of the realm. Bloody snake and don’t tread on me and all of that. Well I have tread on many a snake and feel no fear in doing so again.”

The Duke turned and looked back at America now vanished in the hazy horizon. He felt the blood rise to suffuse his face as he remembered the defeats and the humiliations. It was more than one could possibly bear. His anger bubbled over and he shook his fist in the direction of that vile country.

“Something can be done – something will be done. This matter is not over yet. That I promise with all my soul and body. This is not the end.”

AFTERWORD

Stars Stripes Forever could be a true story.

The events depicted here actually happened. President Lincoln did have a very secret, secret service that was headed by the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Gustavus Vasa Fox.

A Captain Schultz, purporting to be from the Russian Navy, did turn over plans of the British breech-loading Armstrong cannon to the gunsmith, Robert Parker Parrott.

The British government, newspapers and public were incensed by the Trent Affair. That government did send troops and guns to Canada and seriously considered the invasion of the United States.

The speeches reported here, as well as the newspaper articles, are all a matter of record. The threatening headlines and bombastic newspaper articles published during the crisis appeared exactly as they are quoted.

Captain Meagher, the Fenian rebel, was indeed condemned to be hung, drawn and quartered by the British government. The sentence was later changed to transportation for life to Australia. He was imprisoned in Tasmania, but escaped and went to America where he served in the Union Army.

During the War of 1812 the British did issue the order, in the very words recorded here, to land and destroy property and take the lives of American civilians.

The United States Sharpshooting Corps were excellent shots. Enemy cannon were destroyed by them in the manner indicated here.

Jefferson Davis’s letter to the Governor of Louisiana is a matter of record.

There were over 22,000 soldiers killed at the Battle of Shiloh.

The battle between the Monitor and the Virginia was the first encounter by two iron ships in the history of warfare.

Lincoln’s words on slavery are true and taken from the records. John Stuart Mill’s views on liberty, on American democracy and the state of decay in Europe are quoted at length from his works.

The American War Between the States was the first modern war. Rapid-firing, breech-loading guns and rifles were introduced early in the hostilities.

One week after the battle between the Virginia and the Monitor the North began construction of twelve more Monitor-class ironclads. They were to be armed with incendiary shells that were “filled with an inflammable substance which, when the shell is exploded, burns for thirty minutes without the possibility of being quenched.”

Observation balloons used electric telegraphs to report troop movements, while the railroads played a vital role in moving armies and supplies.

When the Civil War ended the combined armies of the North and the South contained hundreds of thousands of trained soldiers. Not only could this combined force have destroyed a British invasion, but they could undoubtedly have won in battle against the combined armies of Europe – not defeating them one by one but could very well have defeated them even if they had united all of their forces.

Modern warfare began in the Civil War, although it took many years for the rest of the world to realize this.

Events, as depicted in this book, would have happened just as they are written here.

Harry Harrison

WINTER – 1862

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Abraham Lincoln President of the United States

Hannibal Hamlin Vice-President

William H. Seward Secretary of State

Edwin M. Stanton Secretary of War

Gideon of the Welles Secretary of the Navy

Salmon P. Chase Secretary of the Treasury

Gustavus Fox Assistant Secretary of the Navy

Edward Bates Attorney General

John Nicolay First Secretary to President Lincoln

John Hay Secretary to President Lincoln

William Parker Parrott Gunsmith

Charles Francis Adams U.S. Ambassador to Britain

John Ericsson Inventor of USS Monitor

Captain Worden Captain of USS Monitor

UNITED STATES ARMY

General William Tecumseh Sherman

General Ulysses S. Grant

General Henry W. Halleck

General George B. McClellan Commander Army of the Potomac

General Ramsay Head of Ordnance Department

Lieutenant General Winfield Scott Commander West Point

Colonel Hiram Berdan Commander U.S. Regiment of Sharpshooters

General Benjamin F. Butler

Colonel Appier Commander, 53rd Ohio

General John Pope Army of the Potomac

UNITED STATES NAVY

Commodore Goldsborough

Charles D. Wilkes Captain of USS San Jacinto

Lieutenant Fairfax First Officer of USS San Jacinto

David Glasgow Farragut Flag Officer, Mississippi Fleet

Lieutenant John Worden Commander USS Monitor

GREAT BRITAIN

Victoria Regina Queen of Great Britain and Ireland

Prince Albert Royal Consort, her husband

Lord Palmerston Prime Minister

Lord John Russell Foreign Secretary

William Gladstone Chancellor of the Exchequer

Lord Lyons British Ambassador to the United States

Lord Wellesley Duke of Wellington

Lady Kathleen Shiel Lady-in-Waiting to the Queen

BRITISH ARMY

Duke of Cambridge Commander-in-Chief

General Peter Champion Commander of British Invasion Forces

Major General Bullers Infantry Commander

Colonel Oliver Phipps-Hornby Commander 62nd Foot

Lieutenant Saxby Athelstane Cavalry officer

General Harcourt Garrison Commander of Quebec

BRITISH NAVY

Admiral Alexander Milne

Captain Nicholas Roland Commander of HMS Warrior

Commander Sydney Tredegar Royal Marines

CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA

Jefferson Davis President

Judah P. Benjamin Secretary of State

Thomas Bragg Attorney General

James A. Seddon Secretary of War

Christopher G. Memminger Secretary of the Treasury

Stephen Mallory Secretary of the Navy

John H. Reagan Attorney General and Postmaster General

Stephen Murray Secretary of the Navy

John Slidell Confederate Commissioner to France

William Murray Mason Confederate Commissioner to England

CONFEDERATE ARMY

General Robert E. Lee Commander-in-Chief

General P.G.T. Beauregard

General Albert Sidney Johnston

CONFEDERATE NAVY

Flag Officer Franklin Buchanan Captain CSS Virginia

AN INTERVIEW WITH HARRY HARRISON

Harry Harrison’s career as a science fiction writer has virtually spanned the history of the genre. Born is Stamford, Connecticut, in 1925, he grew up reading Astounding Science Fiction in the Borough of Queens in New York City. Following WWII, in which he served as gunnery instructor in Laredo, Texas, volunteering every month for overseas service, Harrison attended a number of art schools, then worked for some years as a commercial artist and art director. From this he moved on to publishing and editing, sold articles and stories, and started his first novel. Finding New York City an impossible place in which to write, he and his wife, Joan, and unprotesting year-old son, Todd, moved to Mexico in 1956. From there to England in 1957. To Italy in 1958. After a quick visit to New York in 1959, where daughter Moira was born, the family moved to Denmark in 1959. The peripatetic Mr. Harrison, at present, resides in Ireland. He is the author of more than forty novels, among them The Stainless Steel Rat books, the acclaimed West of Eden trilogy, Make Room! Make Room! (made into the movie Soylent Green), and, most recently, Stars Stripes Forever, the first in a new alternate history series. His books have been translated into twenty-seven languages, including that perennial favorite, Esperanto. He received the Nebula Award in 1973.

We spoke with him recently about his distinguished career, his memories of the past and thoughts of the future, his long love affair with alternate history, and cannibalism.

Q: What was it like to be an SF writer in the ’40s and ’50s? The Hydra Club, John W. Campbell, Jr., and Astounding – was there a sense among the people involved that you were creating something special and important, making up the golden age as you went along?

A: I grew up as an SF fan in the golden age of the ’30s. The war interrupted. Back in NY after the war I was not sure if I wanted to draw or write. I chose art. But I was also deeply involved in SF. I drew comics, illustrated magazines, including SF, and did a cover for two Lewis Padgett novels for Marty Greenberg of Gnome Press. He took me to a meeting of the Hydra Club – the group of professional SF people in NY. I was right at home there. I did artwork for Damon Knight’s World Beyond, Horace Gold’s Galaxy, and Danny Keyes’s Marvel. (Danny went on to write Flowers for Algernon, among others.) I was so much at home with the SF professionals that I eventually became chairman of the club. I slid from illustrating comics to editing, writing for, and publishing, comics. When the comics died in the late ’40s, I slid sideways into editing SF and other pulps. These were the golden years of SF. Every writer either lived in NYC or came through there. We all knew each other, and there was plenty of cross-fertilization. The money wasn’t much, rates were low, but we were inventing a whole new world.

I grew up reading Astounding, and John Campbell was like a god to me. The greatest pleasure was to work with him, have lunch with him, hear his ideas. And sell him stories. My first six novels were done as serials for Astounding, then sold for books later on. John and I differed greatly on many things, mostly politics. But he respected my views. So much so that he asked me to edit a volume of his editorials. Which I did, but not without a good deal of infighting. Only by threatening to take my name off the cover did I finally convince him that I would not permit inclusion of his far right, exaggerated anti-Communist pieces. I shall miss him.

Q: How has science fiction, and its audience, changed since the Golden Age?

A: Well. Yes, major changes. None for the better, I am sorry to say. Today’s reading audience is pretty dumb and unknowledgeable about SF. (And too prone to read abysmal fantasy.) But the same can be said for the editors, and the writers. The writers of the ’40s are snuffing out one by one and no one is replacing them. I shall keep the flag flying and go down with all guns still firing.

Q: Damn the torpedoes…! The New York SF scene that you describe was a major literary movement that has yet to receive its due – from mainstream critics, at least – although the influence of those writers/editors began to make itself increasingly felt outside the SF community from the ’60s on, until today it’s permeated much of popular culture.

A: That old devil, Kingsley Amis, once described science fiction as going from “Beowulf to Finnegan’s Wake in fifty years.” That is, from the first crude, barely literate pulps to writers getting more involved in form than content. This is true, but a simplification. This kind of writing is but one rivulet in the estuary that SF has now become. From the broad, mighty river of the Campbellian Astounding years, the river has now branched into countless separate streams. Just look at the diversity: not only the academic forms favored by the Chip Delaneys, but fantasy, horror, alternate history, future war, heroic fantasy, Arthurian legendry, female fantasy, and more. This is good in that new writers can explore tempting fields of endeavor, bad in that so much is produced that good new writers can easily be ignored. Not to mention established writers who see their sales diminish as more and more titles are loaded into the field. Or fields. I don’t think this growth rate is sustainable. With too many titles chasing too few slots, there will be a night of long knives – or a slow hemorrhaging to death – someday soon.

Q: As someone whose career has stretched from the Golden Age to the end of the millennium, what kind of future do you see for SF?

A: SF is filled with false predictions; I will not attempt to join mine to their number.

Q: Tell us how Slippery Jim DiGriz, a.k.a. the Stainless Steel Rat, got his start.

A: I was writing narrative hooks for practice. The term goes back to the pulp magazines. You started your short story manuscript over halfway down the double-spaced first page. A “narrative hook” was something so intriguing that you “hooked” the editor into turning the page. At that, he would buy the story since he rarely read that much of a submitted manuscript. (The first four paragraphs of the first Rat book is that hook.) I was intrigued by my hook, so I wrote a story to explain it. And another. Amplified into a book. Then a sequel. Then on. It was never planned that way. I have just finished the tenth and last Rat book. Even good things have to end.

Q: Do you have a favorite opening line or hook among all your books?

A: No, because an opening line is a thing of flux for me. Years ago I copied out fifty opening lines of books I admired. I found out an interesting fact. They were all different. Since then I have simply started my novels. Then, when finished, in the light of what was to come, I have gone back and rewritten the opening page. Polishing it well in the light of the shadows cast by coming events.

Q: You’ve worked with two of the most influential editors in SF – John W. Campbell, Jr., and Brian Aldiss – men with very different, one might almost say antithetical, editorial sensibilities and conceptions of what SF could or should encompass. Can you describe what effect your experiences with them had on your writing?

A: Brian and I met and became close friends. We are very different kinds of writers but very much in agreement as editors and critics. We started the first critical SF magazine, SF Horizons. And did fifty anthologies together. In the very beginning we agreed not to differ. That is, we both liked every story we printed. If one of us had reservations, the story was out. Working with Brian was a revelation. In our constant examination and evaluation of other writers, there must have been some effect on our works.

Q: Did you ever collaborate as writers?

A: We did try once. Brian had started a story where, I don’t remember how, all the oceans dry up. I carried on with it and it died a natural death. It wasn’t his novel, or mine, and just didn’t work.

Q: Two words: Soylent Green.

A: Yes, well. Simply, a mostly fair adoption of a very good and seminal book: Make Room! Make Room! (He said humbly.) The first book, fiction or nonfiction, to deal with the problem of overpopulation. The producer, Richard Fleischer, and Chuck Heston wanted to do it as an overpopulation book. MGM didn’t think the topic was important enough. They only bought it because it was about cannibalism.

Q: Not that there’s anything wrong with cannibalism! Has history borne out the concerns you raised in Make Room! Make Room!?

A: I was correct right down the line, because all of my predictions on population and overconsumption were taken from specialist studies. The powers fighting birth control are still fighting, and killing, in the name of saving life. Birth rates are falling in the West, not because of morality, but because of selfishness. Instead of a new baby, people prefer a bigger TV and better holidays. This started first in Germany, and now many countries have hit zero population growth or lower. Selfishness also means that we are almost totally indifferent to zooming Third World population growth, followed by land destruction and famine. The little wars only exacerbate the existing situation. When plagues start reaching us from Africa we might take some notice.

Q: Many of your novels and novel series feature alternate worlds or histories: Tunnel Through the Deep, The Hammer and the Cross, the Eden books… You re not just jumping on the alternate history bandwagon with Stars Stripes Forever. What is it about the form that appeals to you as a science fiction writer?

A: I didn’t know there was a bandwagon! As you say, I’ve been there before. I am a great fan of Alternate History (AH) and have always written it. It’s important to remember that AH is the only kind of SF that H. G. Wells did not write. He invented the rest: time travel, invasion from space, et cetera. But not AH. Therefore, this is a field of human endeavor that has not been staked out. The rules are to be invented as you go along. There is not much good, or even bad, AH around because to do it well it requires a lot of work. And all writers are naturally lazy. AH requires months, years of research. You have to like it to do it. My interest in the Civil War goes back to the ’40s. My library is quite large. Rebel in Time came out of this, while I was still shaping Stars Stripes. It has really been cooking for thirty years or more.

Q: In Stars Stripes Forever you postulate a Machiavellian attack by Britain against America in the midst of the Civil War. Can you tell us a little about the history, and the alternate history, that went into the book?

A: Some years back I did my sums and realized that not only was the Civil War the first modern war, but the combined forces of North and South would make up a modern army that could engage all of the other armies of the world at one time. And win. This knowledge stewed along there until the time was right. Serendipity. I had the background material and rudiments of the plot. When I dug into the material I had and put things together – there was the story. I’m glad I waited this long because I am hitting at the right time. With the end of Communism, the U.S. has lost a goal… which was just “anti.” We have to rethink the future. By going into the past I have produced one possible answer.

Q: Rethinking the future by going into the past – a phrase combining the science fiction writer with the historian! As opposed to rethinking the past by going into the future, which one could say is the raison d’etre of much SF, from Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy onward.

A: I have said that AH is the newest and best thing on the SF horizon. When Doc Smith’s galactic wars were new, along with Isaac’s Foundation, they were good fun indeed. But that was fifty years ago. Attempting to revive them now is a mug’s game. The life is gone from the corpse, and no matter how many volts you pump into it, it is still a corpse. SF became popular – and great – because it had no limits and was set to explore anything. That challenge is still there and is what is important. Not retreading tried ideas.

Q: Even a historical novelist such as Patrick O’Brian, whose books are justifiably renowned for their scrupulous fidelity to historical fact, confesses to having “taken great liberties… within a context of general historical accuracy.” How does this apply to writers of alternate history such as yourself?

A: Great liberties? No. An AH writer cannot take liberties with fact; at least, not up to the point where the story begins – the twist that changes history. Only then can history be bent and mutated. But always dealing with the real past and projecting changes into a possible, and new, future.

Q: Exactly. It seems to me that AH in its “pure” form (if such a beast exists!) consists of taking the cards dealt by history, reshuffling them, and dealing them out again, then playing the hand through without introducing a wild card. Postulating as a history-altering event a British attack on a war-torn USA and CSA is a different order of “alternate” entirely from having a killer asteroid strike during the Battle of Gettysburg.

A: I beg to differ with your poker analogy. The cards are not reshuffled in AH. There must be truth, solid truth, up to the nexus where change begins. In the case of Stars Stripes, Prince Albert’s death occurs just a few weeks earlier in time. Then we watch the ripples spread out from this change: how, one after another, events are altered, small changes growing into larger ones until there is a new history that is just as realistic as the one in the history books. This is directly opposed to the killer asteroid you mentioned. That is the easy way out. Showy perhaps, but very easy to write. The slow slog of slightly altered history and the widening of events from that tiny change is the way I much prefer to go.

Q: You currently live in Ireland. Do you consider yourself to be an expatriate writer?

A: I left America in 1956 because I needed time and space to write my first novel. Mexico was cheap and fun: I could write and enjoy a different society. It is not that I left the States for any reason; I went to another country for a lot of reasons. I went to England, then Italy, then Denmark (seven years), then Ireland because there was a great joy in seeing new languages, cultures, what might be called inspiration. I am still an American writer, as S S proves.

Q: Can you tell us what you’re working on now?

A: I’ve just finished The Stainless Steel Rat Joins the Circus, the tenth and last Rat book. And I have delivered the final manuscript of Stars Stripes in Peril. This, and the last in the trilogy, Stars Stripes Triumphant, should see me well into the next millennium.

Q: Going back to Soylent Green, are there any plans for other movies based on your books?

A: The Rat books have been under option for twelve years. And every year we expect to do it. Closer to cinematic reality is The Technicolor Time Machine. Mel Gibson optioned it awhile back. A screenplay has been done by Marshall Brickman, who had written a number of Woody Allen films. Allen has agreed to play the second lead. If all goes well, production should start this fall.

Q: Woody Allen and Mel Gibson? Alvy Singer meets Mad Max? Now that’s what I call alternate history!

A: It should be great fun. If you remember the novel, the second lead was a con man film producer, guilt-ridden, stumbling into an unknown future. Perfect for Woody Allen. And Mel will be your perfect Viking. He told me that he hates Vikings. Perfect role for him since he projects self-hatred so well in some of his roles.