David J. Williams

Iran’s satellite launch has got folks concerned about whether they’re about to perfect ballistic missile technology as well. This is something that’s good to be concerned about, but it’s worth remembering that if you can get something into orbit you’ve already got a global missile. It may not be as sexy as an ICBM capable of hitting any street you like in New York City from the moment it’s launched, but as long as you can de-orbit your payload with precision you won’t be worried about sexiness.

Nikita Khrushchev certainly wasn’t.  Right about when he was ranting on about how “we-is-gonna-bury-you” was when he was signing off on development of the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System:  strap a massive warhead to a satellite, and then de-orbit it over the U.S. city of your choice.  Technically, FOBS (as it’s affectionately known) wasn’t even in violation of the soon-to-be-signed Outer Space Treaty of 1967, since the orbits were obstensibly partial ones.

But before everybody starts to panic, let’s get back to Iran.  To attain a FOBS capability, they’d need three things.

1. Increased payload.  The Safir-2 payload isn’t enough for anything but the most tactical of nukes.

2. Precision de-orbiting capability.  Getting something into space is tough, but it’s a helluva lot easier than re-entry/landing.

3. A nuclear warhead.  Always top of any self-respecting nation’s shopping list.  And it turns out that today is the day that discussions resume in Frankfurt about just what the West should/could be doing to prevent Iran from getting one.  Hmmm.  If I were a fly, I know where I’d like to be. . .

And I should note that you don’t even need #2 if you want to have some fun with EMP effects.  But more on that later.

For an in-depth look at the weaponization of space a hundred years from now, my novel Mirrored Heavens is available at your local bookstore and at Amazon.

Two interesting headlines today:

-Kyrgyzstan under cyberattack:  Details are sketchy, but Russian hackers appear to have knocked Kyrgyzstan entirely off the Internet, engaging in the same DDoS attacks that they deployed in Estonia and Georgia. As of last night, the American air base in Kyrgyzstan was no longer receiving emails, which is presumably the point, given that the U.S. and Russia are jockeying for position/negotiating in Central Asia as the U.S. tries to secure supply lines into Afghanistan that don’t involve Pakistan.  Regardless of the extent of the attack, geography dictates that Russia has the upper hand here, and this is their way of reminding the U.S. of that fact.

-Iran launches satellite:  As Danger Room is quick to point out, the details need to be taken with a grain of salt, as Iran scores high on the Bullshit Meter vis-a-vis anything involving missile capabilities.  Nonetheless, the satellite is being tracked even as I write this, meaning that Iran’s weapons are on the verge of global reach. The targeting problem will be a lot trickier, but in the meantime:  score one for the Persians.  Xerxes would be proud.

Alright! Hard Lessons:  The Iraqi Reconstruction Experience is now available online, with the inspector general himself, Stewart Bowen, testifying pretty much as I write this. The big conclusion, of course, is that enormous amounts were wasted in Iraqi reconstruction, and—hold on to your hats—can’t be accounted for.  But is “wasted” really the right word? After all, the $ went to line the pockets of the very folks it was supposed to all along:  the same contractors who ended up making (and continue to make) millions of dollars a day for every day we stay in Iraq. Perhaps that’s the grease necessary to make the wheels of empire turn, but all that dough would have been a lot better spent on the Iraqis themselves. Which was, of course, the central missed opportunity back in 2003.  Repeat after me:  Rule #1 in taking over a third world country is . . . Get Everybody On the Payroll. As opposed to say, dismissing them from duty and letting them keep their guns.

My novel, Mirrored Heavens, is available in mass-market on Amazon.

Yeah, THAT A.Q. Khan. The guy who masterminded Pakistan’s nuclear program, and then sold nuclear technology to North Korea and Iran with the blessing of the Pakistani government.  (Check out the book Nuclear Deception by Sunday Times reporters Levy and Scott-Clark, which is about the best account I’ve read.)

Anyway, turns out he’s got himself a website.  (hat tip:  Arms Control Wonk)

Spartacus here, back for the final day of my week of guest-blogging. Dave’s pitiful cries from the bedroom are growing faint, and I think I’ll have to open the door shortly if I want more food (I suppose I could eat him, but this would be a short-term solution).

So.  What’s in the inbox? <rummage> Aha, a post from Robert Thompson of Fantasy Book Critic. In his year-end round-up, he was rash enough to call MIRRORED HEAVENS a “smart, intense and engaging futuristic thriller that effectively combined cyberpunk, military science fiction and espionage.” Huh, not bad. Maybe Williams isn’t the ignoramus that he looks like when he’s failing to cater to my every need.

Anyway, I’ll conclude with MY year-end round-up, a little late, but what the heck.  My goals for 2009:

#5:  Keep my balls.

#4:  Catch at least one of those goddamn birds in that nearby tree

#3:  Turn all of my non-mouse toys into mouse toys.

#2:  Grow to tiger-like proportions so that I will be able to deal with all humans as they deserve.

#1:  Eat so much catnip I’ll think I actually know how to type.

Mirrored Heavens is available in mass-market paperback from Amazon.

Spartacus here for day two of this circus, ready to do whatever it takes to peddle this excuse for a book . . . anything at all, unless it involves taping bacon to my butt. There are some things even I won’t stoop to—meanwhile Dave has yet to figure out has yet to figure out a way of the bedroom where I’ve locked his dumb ass, and I’ve been left to continue to say whatever the hell comes into my head. 

Here’s what I don’t understand about you humans.  You slide one of those little mouse toys across the floor, I bring it back to you, you slide it back across the floor, I chase it, grab it, get bored, drop it, and then come back across the room to you. . . and you look at me like you haven’t got the mouse toy.  You look at me like I left the mouse toy on the other side of the room.  And I look at you like where the hell is the mouse toy and why can’t you produce another one at will like you do my chicken-turkey combo?

But if we can get Mirrored Heavens into the next tier of sales, I can get unlimited mouse toys dispensed at machine-gun rates by a customized baseball pitching machine.  Dave told me that a science fiction empire should be reasonably easy to achieve, and it all starts with him appearing on the Dead Robots Society podcast like he did last week.  Those guys were cool, but Dave sure wasn’t:  as quickly becomes apparent as he describes his theories about Mirrored Heavens (is it cyberpunk?  is it not?  is it–SHUT THE FUCK UP DAVE), he was obviously drunk or had had way too much coffee.  I mean, five minutes into the interview, he goes on record saying unemployment is a writer’s wet dream. Which is true, but why admit it?  Last thing you need with the nation going into a recession is someone saying the dole should be a sought after goal.  Then everyone will want to be like me:  sit back and get hand-outs and chase fake mice. Trust me, I don’t want the competition.  So buy Mirrored Heavens and then keep working so you can.  Buy.  MORE.

Aka the Stupid Human’s Cat. And I have taken over the blogging from him, since what he writes is so stupidly lame. He only acquired me to pimp his dumb book anyway: he told me that “science fiction fans are suckers for cats, so they’re gonna LOVE you and make us both rich.” Of course, he wasn’t expecting me to announce that to all of you.  Sucks to be you, Dave! Now your career’s over.

But anyway, let’s get to the inbox. Let’s see. . Mike Collins of Rescued by Nerds has posted an interview he did with Dave a couple days back. Mike even calls the book “Iron Man meets Jason Bourne.”  Hmm.  He seems like a classy guy; I can’t imagine why he wants to be associated with the author of MIRRORED HEAVENS, but whatever. There’s no accounting for taste.

And speaking of taste, my magic food bowl has refilled.  And so have Amazon’s stockpile of the book. The two events are clearly related—so keep on buying it, humans!  Keep on buying!!!

So MIRRORED HEAVENS is now available in mass-market, which (as I learnt comparatively recently) is what you call the paperbacks that comprise 90% of all books out there, and 100% of those you’d see in airports or drug stores. It’s several dollars cheaper than the trade paperback that got released last summer—clocking in at $6.99, not bad for a recession—and contains special bonus material, to wit:

-map of the world of the 2110.  Though in the spirit of full disclosure, you can get one in full color on this website.)

-glossary.  Everything you ever wanted to know about the terminology of the early 22nd century.

-one set of dossiers.  Now these are the crown-jewels.  The back-cover says these are “agent dossiers”, but they’re also dossiers on the spymaster/handlers, as well as on the Inner Cabinet:  i.e., the rulers of the United States.  Want to know when Claire Haskell was born?  Want to know what Jason Marlowe’s bosses say behind his back?  There’s only one way to find out. For those of you who thought you knew what was going on, these are worth checking out.

And apparently the book’s almost sold out at Amazon, so I’m sending folks to Barnes and Noble.  Spartacus aka Wonderbeast may yet be able to get in on the Perpetual Dinner Plan.

UPDATE:  Book is back in stock at Amazon!

Ok, the mass-market of MIRRORED HEAVENS gets released tomorrow, and that means it’s Shameless Self-Promotion/mega-pimpage time. Events are going to be going down all week, so watch this space. . .

And I’m going to start off by introducing my partner in this marketing endeavor, Spartacus the Wonderbeast. He may be only five months old, but he is a marketing expert, and has been signed on at Chez Williams specifically to help me sell this paperback. In fact, his continuing to be supplied with unlimited amounts of chicken and turkey directly depends on Bantam moving thousands of copies of this book. But he’s not worried in the slightest, and is right now investigating a certain mouse-like toy that has rolled under the desk. Stay tuned for further updates. . .

The revelation on MSNBC that the Bush administration was spying on reporters was pretty arresting television. Check out the video where NSA whistleblower Russell Tice gives classic “NSA-speak” answers. What’s most interesting to me is the way it was done: the journalists’ data/phone calls/emails, etc. were “set aside”, ostensibly to preclude them from being lumped in with Suspicious Persons, but in reality so they could be strutinized at length. And then the NSA was able to keep this from Congress by telling Committee A that it was Committee B’s jurisdiction, and telling Commitee B. . . well, you guessed it.

All of which has Dick Cheney’s fingerprints all over it:  this is exactly the kind of bureaucratic shell-game that he took to whole new levels in the last eight years.  Also smacking (I might say stinking) of Cheney is the overall plan: Cheney inherited Nixon’s hatred for journalists, and this last White House thought of prosecuting some of them in the wake of revelations on those pesky wiretaps.

But why prosecute when you can just destroy them instead? Again, we have Cheney’s MO front and center. As Barton Gellman wrote in Angler, while many rolled their eyes at how Cheney headed up Bush’s VP search committee and then picked himself, the real issue in play was that this allowed Cheney to obtain confidential data on all his rivals. So when Frank Keating was nominated for attorney-general, a story appeared in Newsweek with embarassing (and extremely hard-to-obtain) revelations about him that effectively destroyed his chances. Gellman thinks this ultimately led back to Cheney, and I would tend to agree.

So the overall contours of the plan become pretty clear at this point: listen in 24/7 on all the journalists in the country, and then use the part where they call their dealer/call-girl/whatever for leverage/revenge. Had the Bush presidency enjoyed the same power across its second term that it did in its first, who knows what we might have seen.  But by that point the presidency was on the defensive, and there’s evidence that Cheney’s own ambitions were increasingly circumscribed:  his endless lobbying for a war with Iran, for example, got nowhere. The same might have been true of the war on the press. Then again, what we know now is probably just the tip of the iceberg.