Final Impact by John Birmingham

World War 2.3: Final Impact is the conclusion to the Axis of Time trilogy, following Weapons of Choice and Designated Targets. Those books chronicled how, in the year 2021, a UN multinational carrier taskforce was deployed to drive a terrorist insurgency out of Jakarta. Unfortunately, a nearby scientific vessel undertaking experiments into quantum tunnelling accidentally opened a wormhole through space and time, dumping the entire fleet on top of Admiral Spruance's US Navy fleet sailing to relieve Midway in the summer of 1942. With no way home, the UN force's presence rapidly changed the course of the Second World War.


The final novel opens in the late spring of 1944. Both the Axis and Allies are now equipped with considerable technological advances gleaned from the ships from the future. Jet aircraft fight on both sides, and the UN taskforce's immense AWACS and radar capabilities provide the Allies with considerable tactical and intelligence advantages over the enemy. Germany and Japan made alterations to their strategies after capturing some of the ships from the future themselves and these paid off in the short term, with Germany and the USSR concluding a cynical peace and Japan successfully invading Australia and occupying Hawaii. Driven by their superior economic base, however, the Allies are now resurgent, having retaken Hawaii and defeated a German invasion of Britain before preparing their own, improved version of D-Day. The Allies, the Germans and the Russians are now in their own, frantic races to complete the atom bomb before the others, for whoever develops a nuclear arsenal the earliest will likely be the side that wins the war.

Final Impact marks a solid conclusion to the trilogy, although unfortunately some of the more interesting elements that were being developed in Designated Targets seem to have been scaled back. The sociological ramifications of the arrival of the ships from the future continue to be examined, but not quite so cleverly as in the previous volume. The sheer mass of data that the people of the 1940s would have to absorb is overwhelming and you can't help but feel that Birmingham occasionally misses out on a few interesting possibilities (although a scene where John Kennedy quietly arranges for a young Lee Harvey Oswald to be taken into state care is a nice touch). However, with the need to bring this alternate Second World War to a conclusion the sacrificing of some of the quieter elements in favour of the main storyline is understandable. This also explains the somewhat jarring leap ahead of more than a year since the end of Book 2. Several major characters die off-page between the two books, and given the ending of Book 2 it is a surprise to find Hawaii already back in Allied hands. Birmingham obviously felt that expanding on these elements would expand the series to four books or more and I certainly understand him wanting to avoid that.

Final Impact marks a solid ending to the series, with the war rapidly winding down after the nukes start being deployed. Birmingham treats these weapons as the terrible forces they are (some military authors, Turtledove particularly comes to mind, seem to love hurling them around with almost gleeful abandon) and the impact of their use is made clear. The ending is also not particularly neat. The USSR emerges from the war far stronger than it did in real life, with the threat of a real 'hot war' with the Allies seemingly much greater than in reality, but that is not part of the story that the author is telling, so that element is left dangling. As with the prior books, the author mixes action with intriguing historical speculation with solid characterisation and a fascinating contrast of the morales and attitudes of the two time periods: the 'uptimers' are far more inured to war and suffering after twenty years of warfare, whilst the 'downtimers' are prepared to accept far vaster civilian casualties to achieve victory. There is also plenty of humour to be mined, such as SAS commander Harry Windsor having an amusing conversation with his 16-year-old grandmother or disco becoming popular thirty years ahead of schedule, as well as interesting side-effects of the transition, such as questions over who has the copyright on films yet to be made by directors and actors yet to be born.

Final Impact (****) is a solid and worthwhile conclusion to this intriguing trilogy. It is available in the UK from Penguin and in the USA from Del Rey. Birmingham's new novel, Without Warning, which depicts a world where the North American continent was destroyed by an unusual energy phenomenon on the eve of the USA's invasion of Iraq, will be published next week in the USA and I will be reading and reviewing it in the near future.

Designated Targets by John Birmingham

This is the second novel in the Axis of Time trilogy. I reviewed the first book, World War 2.1: Weapons of Choice over a year ago and enjoyed it, although it did fall a little towards being a stock military thriller, despite the excellent premise. The sequel represents a significant improvement in quality.


World War 2.2: Designated Targets picks up the story a couple of months later. Thanks to a wormhole experiment gone badly wrong, a UN multinational taskforce en route to relieve Jakarta from a terrorist incursion in 2021 has been transported back to 1942. Its arrival destroys the American Pacific Fleet just before it defeats the Japanese at the Battle of Midway. Despite this, the arrival of the UN taskforce and its pledge of allegiance to the Allied cause initially looked set to swing the war decisively in the Allies' favour, hopefully ending it months or years earlier than it would have done otherwise. Unfortunately, this proves not to be the case. The Russians, Japanese and the Germans all capture ships from the taskforce which ended up being transported further away and their foreknowledge of the future has enabled them to make drastic changes to their war plans far more quickly than the Allies can adapt.

The Germans and Russians have negotiated a ceasefire and now the Germans are concentrating their forces in Normandy and Calais, aware that capturing Britain before the US begins building up its invasion force there in strength is critical. The Japanese have withdrawn significant troops from China in order to launch a full-scale invasion of northern Australia, forcing MacArthur to divert resources to the building of immense fortified lines around Brisbane. The UN taskforce's precious stocks of missiles and advanced ammunition, which cannot be replaced, are running low. However, the US industrial machine is already rapidly adjusting to the information the taskforce has brought with it, with more advanced tanks (to replace the deathtrap Sherman M4s), aircraft and weapons from later in the war being rushed into production early.

The book's storyline follows several military campaigns, notably the invasion of Australia and the German preparations to assault southern Britain, but at the same time also concentrates on the sociological impact of the arrival of the fleet from the future. J. Edgar Hoover's authority has been eroded with the revelation of his personal habits, resulting in him using the FBI's resources to try and destroy the UN taskforce commander's credibility, making great comment of his force's use of women, coloured and (ironically) homosexual troops, not to mention the fact that the taskforce includes German, Russian and Japanese contingents. Meanwhile, the Russian and German high commands are undergoing pre-emptive purges in light of the revelation of the 20th July plot against Hitler and those Soviet leaders who later usurped Stalin's chosen succession after his death (Beria gains some revenge on Khruschev in a rather unpleasant scene). There's also some nice gallows humour here, as Hitler's initial rage at discovering the 'treachery' of several prominent Nazi leaders (notably Goering) late in the war is muted by his tearful appreciation of them going to their graves defending Nazism at Nuremberg.

Birmingham uses the situation for humour to good effect on several occasions, such as Himmler using grandiose musical accompaniment to his PowerPoint presentations (using a captured laptop) and later berating Microsoft for its badly-programmed products. Meanwhile, an American entrepreneur snaps up the rights to represent the 7-year-old Elvis and 16-year-old Marilyn Monroe long before they became famous in the 'other' timeline. As Britain faces the prospect of invasion, the BBC telecopies prints of later WW2 movies and Kenneth Brannagh's Henry V to bolster morale, whilst wiseguys in New York City become overnight fans of The Godfather and The Sopranos. However, the Allies decide to hold back on showing Schindler's List until they really need to fire up the populace against the Nazis.

Birmingham also holds fire on some of the elements he went overboard on in the first book. The poor prospects for black people, women and homosexuals in the WW2 era was rammed home a bit too often to the point where it slowed the progression of the story. In this sequel these elements continue to be pursued, but more subtly through the narrative rather than being info-dumped every few chapters.

There are some weaknesses, most notably the idea that Stalin would agree to a peace deal with Germany when he is told that Russia will win the war in Europe anyway seems massively out-of-character and extremely unlikely. Birmingham suggests that Stalin agrees to this to make preparations for the Cold War against the USA, but this isn't very convincing. Mostly, however, Desginated Targets (****) is a more thoughtful and interesting exploration of the issues raised by its impressive premise, whilst still featuring a lot of action.

The novel is published by Penguin in the UK and Del Rey in the USA. The final novel in the trilogy, Final Impact, is also available now and I hope to get to it shortly.

Weapons of Choice by John Birmingham

John Birmingham is an Australian author who caused a bit of a stir in his homeland a decade ago with his cult debut novel, He Died With a Felafel in His Hand, a look at housesharing in Australia in the 1980s and 1990s. However, his latest work is an altogether different beast. The Axis of Time Trilogy is a high-paced, high-tech alternate history thriller, probably what Tom Clancy and Harry Turtledove would come up with if they were locked in a room together.


The book opens in the year 2021. The western world has been at war with terrorist extremists for almost two decades. London and Tokyo have suffered massive terrorist attacks which outstrip even 9/11 in ferocity, Iran and Iraq have fought a second and bloodier war, and the west's military forces have become used to fighting with ultra-high-tech arms and equipment against a shadowy enemy often hiding amongst civilians. When extremists seize control of Jakarta and begins executing foreign nationals, the United Nations authorises a massive military response. An enormous flotilla of ships from half a dozen nations assemble under the leadership of Admiral Kolhammer on his flagship USS Hillary Clinton (who in this timeline was President and a great champion of the US Navy until her brutal assassination). A research vessel conducting atom-smashing experiments in an attempt to create stable wormhole technology is caught up in the flotilla when her escorts are ordered to join it. Ill-advisedly, they continue with their experiments in the midst of the fleet, and accidentally destroy their vessel by creating a 15km-wide wormhole which sucks the entire fleet into it and dumps them in the North Pacific in June 1942. Right on top of Admiral Spruance's fleet sailing to relieve Midway Island.

Since the first ship that Spruance positively IDs is a Japanese reconnaisance vessel attached to the UN force, he orders his ships to open fire. In a matter of hours the course of history is changed as the retaliatory strike from the UN fleet wipes out the US Pacific Fleet before they realise what has happened. Once that realisation sets in, the UN force has to work very hard to keep history from unravelling and earn the trust of their new colleagues.

It's a pretty solid, high-concept basis for a novel, essentially a reverse of the 1980s movie The Philadelphia Experiment on a much bigger scale with a dash of Harry Turtledove's Worldwar saga thrown in for good measure. Birmingham makes several references to this series in his book: President Roosevelt, upon hearing that twelve thousand people from eighty years in the future have shown up with enough firepower to wipe out several dozen cities, states, "Next you'll be telling me the space lizards have arrived!" There are also references to Steve Stirling, another alternate history author.

At first it appears that the war is going to be pretty one-sided. As is shown in several engagements, the UN Taskforce possesses weapons so advanced they can obliterate entire Japanese fleets and industrial centres from hundreds of miles away. However, their weapons stocks are finite and the industrial base required to build new ones will take decades to establish. Also, in an interesting move, the incredulity which greets the arrival of the Taskforce is amended somewhat by it being in line with Einstein's own theories (Einstein has a couple of brief but amusing appearances in the novel, and in a funny scene is given a laptop as a gift). Unlike Turtledove, Birmingham tries to keep the famous historical figures restricted to brief cameos, with really only Admiral Yamamoto and Admiral Spruance receiving significant time on the page.

Birmingham's portrait of the world of 2021 is pretty grim, showing a world where the War on Terror has grown in size to endanger the lives of everyone, with suitcase-sized nuclear bombs destroying large chunks of major cities and the world militaries becoming hardened to the point of heartlessness with regards to mass casualties and suffering. Yet he also contrasts this nicely with WWII. WWII weapons may be vastly inferior, but in enormous quantities they maul the Taskforce quite badly on its arrival. And whilst the entire world may be at war, the clearly-delineated lines between good and evil, right and wrong give the people hope for survival and eventual victory, whilst the soldiers from the future are altogether more cynical and downbeat.

This interesting sociological portrait is probably the greatest strength of the novel and is what lifts it above other identikit military thrillers from the Clancy/Brown school of writing. The other thing is Birmingham's clever depiction of futuristic technology. Since the book is only set fourteen years hence, it doesn't go too overboard, although some may feel the use of implants capable of shooting medicine straight into soldiers and sailors at AI command is a little bit more advanced than that. The US fighter jet of choice is a more advanced version of the F-22 Raptor (which has just entered service in real life), whilst the new standard US supercarrier is the George Bush-class (actually, in real life, it's going to be called the Gerald Ford-class, but the novel was written before that decision was made).

Despite Birmingham's technical proficiency and his intriguingly bleak outlook of the future, he suffers from some weaknesses. Whilst the shock the 1942 US miltary feels at fighting alongside female, black, homosexual and Asian officers is perhaps understandable, Birmingham does repeatedly make the point about the period being casually rascist, sexist and homophobic to the point where it starts to get a bit tedious. There are also some leaps in logic in the middle of the book. The first half or so is pretty much entirely devoted to the shock of the Transition (as it is called) and its aftermath and barely covers 24 hours. The second half covers another month or so and ranges over a much vaster area, from Moscow and Berlin to Tokyo to Los Angeles and Brisbane. The transition between the two styles is a little jarring. Given the size of this novel (just shy of 800 pages) compared to the two sequels (450 and 380 pages respectively) one wonders if splitting this book in half to make the change in style work better would have been a better idea.

At heart, this book is an above-average military blockbuster with an interesting SF twist and better-than-normal characters. As the series progresses and moves further away from real history, I suspect the books will get less interesting (as happens with most Turtledove series), but the first book leaves enough cliffhangers and unresolved plot points to make the sequel, Designated Targets, worth a look when Penguin publishes it (presumably at the end of 2007. I'm particularly looking forward to seeing how Britain's Prince Harry - in the novels an SAS Captain in his late 30s - is treated in the sequels, where he apparently plays a bigger role.

Weapons of Choice (***½) is a solidly enjoyable if not revolutionary SF thriller. It is published in the UK by Penguin. It is available in the USA from Ballantine. The second and third books, Designated Targets and Final Impact, are already available in the USA and Australia and will be followed by two more books set much later in this alternate history.