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3.0
V-S Day
ByPublisher Description
With a gift for visionary fiction that “would make Robert A. Heinlein proud” (Entertainment Weekly) three-time Hugo Award-winning author Allen Steele now imagines an alternate history rooted in an actual historical possibility: what if the race to space had occurred in the early days of WWII?
It's 1941, and Wernher von Braun is ordered by his Fuehrer to abandon the V2 rocket and turn German resources in a daring new direction: construction of a manned orbital spacecraft capable of attacking the U.S. Work on the rocket—called Silbervogel—begins at Peenemunde. Though it is top secret, British intelligence discovers the plan, and brings word to Franklin Roosevelt. The American President determines that there is only one logical response: the U.S. must build a spacecraft capable of intercepting Silbervogel and destroying it. Robert Goddard, inventor of the liquid-fuel rocket, agrees to head the classified project.
So begins a race against time—between two secret military programs and two brilliant scientists whose high-stakes competition will spiral into a deadly game of political intrigue and unforeseen catastrophes played to the death in the brutal skies above America.
It's 1941, and Wernher von Braun is ordered by his Fuehrer to abandon the V2 rocket and turn German resources in a daring new direction: construction of a manned orbital spacecraft capable of attacking the U.S. Work on the rocket—called Silbervogel—begins at Peenemunde. Though it is top secret, British intelligence discovers the plan, and brings word to Franklin Roosevelt. The American President determines that there is only one logical response: the U.S. must build a spacecraft capable of intercepting Silbervogel and destroying it. Robert Goddard, inventor of the liquid-fuel rocket, agrees to head the classified project.
So begins a race against time—between two secret military programs and two brilliant scientists whose high-stakes competition will spiral into a deadly game of political intrigue and unforeseen catastrophes played to the death in the brutal skies above America.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesV-S Day Reviews
3.0
“I love a good alternate history, and while this one wasn't a home run, it was definitely a solid double. (don't ask me why the baseball metaphor: I don't have a clue).
The basic concept is, drawing on real scientists on Nazi Germany who were interested in rocketry with the goal of getting a man to the moon, are recruited to create a space plane capable of bombing New York to keep the US out of the war in Europe, cancelling the actual Nazi missile program. When MI-6 finds out, they warn the Americans, who pull resources from the Manhatten Project, and set them, under Robert H Goddard, to develope their own spaceship to stop the Nazis.
As a whole, the novel is somewhat lightweight (expanded from a short story that was his first published story, later revised), but I sill really enjoyed it. It even managed to treat the German scientists (Sanger and Von Braun) rather sympathetically. And written with the framing element of the surviving members of Goddard's theme being interviewed for a book seventy years later, we get a few hints of what the future was like after that (Steele's novel The Tranquility Alternative is loosely set in this universe).
I would have preferred a longer, more intense, treatment of the story idea, but it was still a fun read, especially after seeing the far less serious movie, Iron Sky (Nazis on the dark side of the moon!)”
About Allen Steele
Allen Steele was a journalist who covered the space program. He later turned to fiction writing and his first novel, Orbital Decay, published by Ace, was chosen Best First Novel of the Year by Locus. Allen himself went on to be twice nominated for the John W. Campbell award for Best New Writer. He began writing and selling to the science fiction magazines and is a three-time Hugo award winner (and frequent Nebula nominee) for his short fiction. In 2012, he received the Robert A Heinlein award for outstanding published works in science fiction. He and his wife Linda, who is a DJ, now live in Massachusetts.
Other books by Allen Steele
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