{"id":15072,"date":"2019-10-09T20:29:27","date_gmt":"2019-10-10T00:29:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/?p=15072"},"modified":"2020-03-24T14:07:00","modified_gmt":"2020-03-24T18:07:00","slug":"the-massacre-of-mankind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/2019\/10\/the-massacre-of-mankind\/","title":{"rendered":"The Massacre of Mankind"},"content":{"rendered":"

{4.5\/5} “None of it seemed real to me, and the more I thrust myself into these foolish adventures, the more unreal it felt, a puppet show on the slope of a volcano. I kept thinking of those striking words Walter had used in his Narrative<\/strong>, to catch the mood of the last days he and Carolyne had spent in Woking before the cylinders fell: ‘It seemed so safe and tranquil.'”<\/p>\n

The Massacre of Mankind<\/strong> by Stephen Baxter, published in 2017<\/p>\n

The war with the Martians was in 1907. Thirteen years later, England has made a pact with Germany and Germany has conquered Europe. Flashes are seen on Mars and it’s soon confirmed — a whole fleet of Martian ships is headed for Earth. England mounts a valiant defense but the Martian force is superior.<\/p>\n

This is a sequel to The War of the Worlds<\/strong> by H. G. Wells. I wouldn’t have necessarily picked it up, except it’s by the author of the masterpiece The Time Ships<\/strong>, the sequel to The Time Machine<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The tone of the book is similar to Connie Willis’s Blackout \/ All Clear<\/strong> — both stories take place during a war, but the main characters are not soldiers.<\/p>\n

The speculation about how the early 20th century could have proceeded differently is intriguing. There are many delightful moments, like the Russian soldier and German soldier meeting under a white flag.<\/p>\n

One more quotation: “We were lucky, it was said, that our convoy didn’t include the White Star’s Titanic<\/strong>, thought by many to be a cursed ship since she was almost wrecked by an iceberg on her maiden voyage — saved only by hull armor of high-quality Martian-grade aluminum.”<\/p>\n

I’ve read 12 books by Baxter. I previously reviewed the novel he wrote with Arthur C. Clarke, The Light of Other Days<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{4.5\/5} “None of it seemed real to me, and the more I thrust myself into these foolish adventures, the more unreal it felt, a puppet show on the slope of a volcano. I kept thinking of those striking words Walter had used in his Narrative, to catch the mood of the last days he and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,28,5,8],"class_list":["post-15072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-book","tag-novels","tag-review","tag-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15072"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15757,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15072\/revisions\/15757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}