Brett:
There was, however, a lot of worry about Germany’s commercial ambitions and about their Kaiser, who everyone in the British ruling class - and every Prussian peasant - knew was as mad as a meat-axe (though few would dare say so in public) …. so the paranoia about invasion by Germany was probably justified to a certain extent.

There are some interesting parallels between Kaiser Bill and Mr G W Bush. Invasion anyone? A nice quick little war?

I’ve often wondered if publishing “The Riddle Of The Sands� may have forestalled the Kaiser’s cousinly plans for Great Britain.

Unlikely, because Germany never seriously considered invading Britain. Its navy drafted a few amateurish warplans ca. 1900 but as it never came close even to parity with the Royal Navy, there was little chance of having to put them into effect. (Luckily for the German army!)

Dusting off my sources again, there was a big kerfuffle resulting from Riddle, which resulted in the first of several official committees to examine the invasion question, but the practical result of this was zero (no extra spending, no redeployments). And if it hadn’t been Childers who alerted everyone to the German “threat”, it would have been somebody else (probably le Queux) … such was the paranoia of the day.

Kim:
You are right. “War Of The Worlds”, like “THX-1138″, was both science fiction and, for the astute, comment on the current situation and on the immediate future. B.E.M.s from Mars are allowed to wear pickelhaubers too if the fashion strikes their fancy.:-)

Everyone:
Not quite off-topic but …. I’ve googled high and low without success trying to find a German TV serial (4 parts?) broadcast by the blessed AD-FREE!! SBS around 1990~1992 called “Johkenin” or something like that - about village life in East Prussia from 1938 up to and beyond the Soviet Red Army invasion.

Moorcock has written about Le Queux, I think.

Back to the broader theme, I was thinking of some of the feminist sf of the 70s which does try to imagine non-patriarchal worlds (and often has libertarian/anarchist themes as well) - at its best, like Doris Pisterchia and Ursula Le Guin’s early work, it’s superb, precisely because it is so imaginative. At its worst, just like the invasion literature perhaps, it’s appallingly dull and dry because it’s too didactic and fails to imagine a utopia but rather stays well and truly within this world and casts stones.

The author I would choose as the exemplar of the genre is William le Queux, who really set the bandwagon rolling in 1906 with his hugely popular The Invasion of 1910, and was such a bad writer that in the middle of Spies of the Kaiser he swapped the names of the two protagonists — the brave intelligent one and the dimwitted but faithful sidekick — apparently without realising it! So he has it all.

But for all that, if you only read one, Riddle is certainly the one to read, with maybe Wodehouse’s parody “The swoop!” for a chaser. I’m also fond of the movie, Michael York makes a fine Carruthers, wot wot.

Yes, that way they always get to write the happy ending. Another well flambéd one liner Ants.

Bob F, stop being so defensive. It sounds like you’ve written a lively and popular thriller. Wish I could. More power to your elbow.

But history and literature, and the history of literature, is chokkas with otherwise entertaining yarns claiming never mind the width, feel the quality ‘cos it really could it happen here. But it never does as the future is never what we remember - aside from a few prescient fragments by PK Dick and JG Ballard.

Speaking of which and of “invasion fever”, it’s also worth revisiting Saki’s novel of the UK under German rule, “When William Came”. HH Munro (Saki) was a very shrewd professional political pundit and a writer of genius yet when it came to how the looming WW1 would play out, he got it utterly wrong.

It’s still a good read though, especially at the end when the aristocratic protagonist is briefed by a high Tory matriarch to make the supreme sacrifice - that is to become a travelling salesman moving through the countryside fostering insurgent cells to fight the hi-tech occupying power.

Like the Japanese flight simulator addict who tried to hijack a plane to fly under Rainbow Bridge, I see great merit in shepherding our cultural warriors back into the realm of fiction.

Well said. As a student of environmental policy and an employee of an environmental agency I recently struggled with why the concept of a sustainable society was so hard to grasp, why we continually need to re-argue the case for it and why it is most frequently articulated as economic sustainability, rather than social or environmental sustainabilty.

It wasn’t until I listened to a talk by David Suzuki that I realised what I was missing, and therefore what most of us were probably missing: a vision for the world in 30 years time. I had no idea of what a sustainable society would look like other than “better”, so therefore I was letting other people decide how it would develop.

A good story revolves around conflict in a plot line, so perhaps sf writers have more to work with when they imagine society in disarray. It may be difficult to find a recognisable protagonist in a society-wide shift to renewable energy, or water conservation, on which to base a sf novel of this nature, but you do have an excellent point Mark. What other genres and forms of communication can be used to create the imagery that the left needs to inspire the shifts that they are arguing for?

Though the jihadi attacks had little direct, long-term impact on the United States, the true importance of the 9-11 martyrdom was that it induced the former regime to over-extend itself in fruitless and expensive military engagements around the world. The political and economic consequences of this U.S. response were profound and long lasting. After all their short-lived triumphs in the Islamic homeworld, the Crusaders fled, grown weary war, eager to return to their idle pursuits. This great retreat left the West no safer than before, but instead drained it of capital, manpower and, most importantly, will.

Yeah, I know it’s ridiculous and impossible to imagine.
all best
Robert