David J. Williams

A front-page article in the Washington Post yesterday asserted that U.S. dominance in space is slipping, with lots of examples to prove the point: the recently launched Japanese lunar orbiter, the upcoming Chinese space walk, Israel’s nanosatellites, etc. But the article, which draws from a study undertaken by Bethesda, MD consultants Futron, is a somewhat awkward pastiche of two separate trends. On the one hand, it’s to be expected that the lead of the U.S. would decline in relative terms, as more and more nations get in on the act. It’s a little like the initial wave of industrialization: first Britain built its factories, but other nations were quick to follow suit, a development that Britain could do little about.  Indeed, more nations getting into space in a robust way is a good thing, and should be welcomed as such.

But, on the other hand . . .  the U.S. space program really is floundering, in absolute terms. Yes, the nation remains ahead of the competition, as can be seen in Futron’s space competitive index, published in The Economist. But the Shuttle gets retired in 2010, and then we’ve got a five year gap during which no American spaceship will be able to reach the International Space Station. Paying the Russians to take us there will be our only option, until the Constellation comes online five years later.

Or never.  Which is an increasing risk at this point.  We’re obviously heading into an era of ever-tighter budgets, and NASA’s programs tend to be one of the first things to get cut.  All the more so given that the U.S. public could give two shits about what happens after the Shuttle.  Or, for that matter, the Shuttle itself.  Hell, the only way it can make the news anymore is as flaming wreckage.

Which is what makes the post-Shuttle plans such a total pull-your-hair-out-while-you-bash-your-head-into-a-wall missed opportunity.  NASA had a big chance to get people’s attention again, and all they could come up with is something that looks to the average American suspiciously like a repeat of Apollo (only more expensive, with both earth AND lunar orbit rendezvous).  They’d have been far better advised to head to Mars, or start mining asteroids . . . or anything besides something that everybody in this country knows Tom Hanks has already done.  As Bob Mahoney argued so cogently in The Space Review earlier in the year, when it comes to PR, NASA really blew it.  Again.

But not everybody has lost the plot.  While NASA lurches toward the budget axe, the Pentagon keeps on trucking.  Because one of the areas where the U.S. still remains unchallenged in space is with regards to military hardware:  we’ve got as many satellites in orbit as all other nations combined.  Without those sats, the ultra-precise weaponry of the U.S. war machine would be reduced to near-uselessness.  And if anyone ever gets into a position to challenge those sats .  . .

And that, as I’ve argued before (and as the Post article implicitly underscores), is likely to be the dynamic that ultimately shifts this whole equation.  Ultimately, the only REAL reason America ever came up with for getting into space in a serious way is because the other guy was doing it.  Sputnik got us off our butts in the 1950s/60s, and I suspect that something similar is going to happen again.  Put it this way:  the Moon will be a LOT more interesting to the American public when the Chinese start walking around on it.  Which won’t happen for a while yet.  But there’s an awful lot that they and others can get up to in the meantime.

I’m guest-blogging over at Bantam Spectra’s Facebook page for the next few weeks. Spectra told me there’s a lot of aspiring authors over there, so I figured I’d start things off with a post about How To Get Your Novel Published. You can click HERE for the whole thing; it’s (obviously) all just my opinion—or rather, represents my potentially idiosyncratic experience in getting published—but I sure wish someone had told me something similar back in 2006 when I was first gearing up for a tilt at the publishing windmill. Perhaps there’s a way for me to email this back in time to that struggling, desperate fool who didn’t understand critical things like (a) the REAL solution to the “can’t get publisher without an agent/can’t get agent without a publisher” paradox, or (b) what all the query-letter advice books overlook, or (c) the actual key to success . .  .though I guess given how things turned out, it’s a bit of a moot point now. Fortunately.

But hey.  What are you still doing here anyway?  Go check out the post!

The bad news first. Some punk(s) has/have stolen several laptops right out of Clarion West’s 08 residential house. Thanks to the generosity of the Seattle/Clarion West community, replacement laptops have been secured for the summer, but that still leaves students facing the need to ultimately buy new laptops (to say nothing of the mental stress incurred in losing critical files/data). If you’re able to donate or contribute in any way, contact Leslie or Neile at infoATClariontWestDOTorg.

On a happier note, I’ve sent in to Bantam “exclusive bonus material” for the mass-market paperback version of THE MIRRORED HEAVENS. The mass-market will thus represent the first time any excerpts from my glossary will have seen the light of day, but what I’m really excited about are the “character dossiers.” These consist of files on (a) the agents, (b) the handlers, and (c) the Inner Cabinet (i.e, the rulers of the United States):  they’re written from a senior Praetorian perspective, and they shed new (and, I think, interesting) light on the book’s events.  They also point the way toward the sequel, but that’s another story . . .

(To start reading from the beginning of this essay, click HERE. And by the way, Happy 4th.)

Though the Eurasians possessed no equivalent to the Raft, their own navies didn’t lack for funding. This was in large part due to the fact that the most interesting thing about the ocean was, as ever, what was lurking beneath the surface. In fact, the seas were essentially the only place where mobile weapons/vehicles could be hidden from satellite surveillance. Such surveillance was far better than in the 20th century—when it had essentially been nonexistent—but it still remained far from perfect against a deep-running, stealthy submarine.

All the more so against a submarine capable of suddenly attaining “warp speed”: because, ultimately, the one factor above all else that guaranteed that naval items would be a priority item in the defense budgets was that the speed of 22nd century undersea warfare promised to render that of the previous century slow-motion—literally. Tapping the possibilities inherent in supercavitation technologies allowed the development of vessels that could reduce hydrodynamic drag by traveling inside superheated, self-generated bubbles of water vapor and gas—and that could thereby move at hundreds of kilometers per hour, irrevocably altering the pace at which undersea warfare would be conducted.

A critical byproduct of supercavitation was that it intensified the urgency of anti-submarine strategies, particularly in the vulnerable areas near the coast. Just as with geosynchronous orbit, technological/strategic realities drove a mutual understanding regarding the positioning of munitions here as well:  by the 2080s, the two powers had tacitly agreed to recognize the extension of territorial waters to four hundred kilometers out. Most admirals believed that even this was not enough, given the speed of hypersonic missiles and the reality of directed energy.  Accordingly, those four hundred kilometers were awash with underwater sensors, sea-bottom stations, mines, and anti-submarine submarines.  Destroyers cruised the surface and prowled around ocean-going platforms of varying size, while swarms of jet-copters patrolled the skies.

To be sure, littoral waters were an area where the U.S. (despite the positioning of the Rafts as forward attack platforms) had much more to lose than did the Eurasians, since so many of the large American launch pads were situated in relatively close proximity to the coasts.  The United States therefore poured tens of billions of dollars into its Atlantic and Pacific Walls, which extended as far south as the northern parts of South America.  Nor did Navy (and, eventually, NavCom) officers ever tire of arguing that these defense lines should be extended all the way to the Horn (a strategy that would mean absorbing the few neutral territories situated down there).  It could also be assumed (though no one ever admitted it) that both sides had positioned strongpoints at various places in the deep trenches across the world’s oceans, as these avenues represented logical points of concealment for approaching attack submarines.

In this regard, the most studied and speculated-upon undersea theater was that of the Arctic Ocean, across which the two superpowers directly faced each other at a relatively short distance.  The ice-packs may have been dwindling, but they were still much in evidence—and they would make it even more difficult for space-based and aerial recon platforms to intervene in the ever-shifting game played out by hunter and hunted in the most frigid of all waters.

(For Part One of this essay, click HERE.)

All of the attention upon space left the leaders of the non-space services scrambling to assert the significance of their own theaters (though they hedged their bets by building up their own space-based presences). They experienced mixed success in this regard. Perhaps the fiercest such debate centered on the role that the sea would play. Unsurprisingly, the navies of both sides argued that Neptune’s arena would be a crucial one, and they mounted a wide range of arguments to support their claim.

The experience of the U.S. Navy in developing and making its case is particularly instructive. Its officers contended that since all the nations across the three Eastern continents were either neutral or Eurasian vassals, attacks launched from the oceans were the most immediate route, save from space itself, to deploy U.S. munitions without warning into the East’s defenses.  Indeed, at the core of the Navy’s calculations was an attempt to replicate a key component of its strategy during the First Cold War:  namely, encircling Russia and China with a series of bases capable of projecting force into their homelands.

The question, though, was the nature of that force.  The dominant naval platform of the 20th century, the aircraft carrier, had become obsolete long before the full resurgence of the Eurasian powers.  Carriers were simply too vulnerable to waves of torpedoes and ever-faster cruise missiles.  An increasing proportion of the force in any one carrier group had to be dedicated solely to protecting the carrier—yet such precautions failed (in spectacular fashion) against more than one “rogue state” in the first two decades of the 21st century.

The solution to all this was as radical as it was expensive:  since a maneuvering boat was essentially motionless relative to onrushing hypersonic missiles, why bother trying to build any evasive capability into a capital ship at all?  Why not make it motionless?  Thus was conceived the Raft (also called the Floating Fortress, in homage to Orwell): several kilometers along each side, racked with weaponry, and boasting full-length runways, as well as space launch facilities.  In the eyes of their designers, two factors made the Rafts a survivable proposition:  first, most of their weapons could be utilized for defensive purposes against oncoming missiles (e.g., the craft possessed a myriad smaller lasers that could be trained directly upon such incoming targets) and, second, a Raft was so large that even a direct hit was unlikely to be fatal.  When possible, Rafts were placed on or near the equator to maximize their space-launch potential.

It can safely be asserted that the construction of such behemoths laid to rest any notions that the U.S. navy was run by hidebound reactionaries wedded to the capital ships of a previous generation—but how they would perform were they to be put to the test remained to be seen.

NEXT:  UNDERWATER WARFARE

One of the things that’s weird for a first-time author is to have people you’ve never even MET saying stuff about your book. Some throw rocks. Some throw roses. But every once in a while someone says something so totally on-point you feel like that they’ve read your mind. And understood exactly what you were trying to do.

Such a man is Dave Hutchinson, one of the illustrious editors of the Strange Pleasures anthologies (which are well worth checking out). On his blog, Dave writes that “if [THE MIRRORED HEAVENS] was a film it would be the loudest ever made, and it would make the most kinetic of Michael Bay’s movies look like Merchant-Ivory productions.” Be still my beating heart . . . nor does he stop there, going on to commend the book as having “a body-count that makes Neal Asher’s bloodiest book (and I’m an Asher fan) look like an average Saturday night out in Newcastle.”

Which is the single best soundbite yet.

He #$# rules.

Of course, he then accuses me of all sorts of serious stuff too:

While this is thick-ear stuff dialed up to eleven, Williams is also asking pertinent questions about memory, espionage, loyalty, the use of weapons, possibly even what it means to be human. The prose is…unsettling. Choppy. Terse. Stripped-down. A little unusual in places. The dialogue is off-kilter and occasionally very funny. The geopolitical background is nicely thought-out. There’s a point where several rugs are pulled out from under the reader which I didn’t see coming. It is enormously fucking complicated, and I lost track of who was screwing whom, and I’m going to have to read it again to get it straight in my head, which will not be a trial.  I finished The Mirrored Heavens and came out blinking into the sunlight slightly stunned. I found myself comparing it to Neal’s stuff, but really this is a different kind of horse. I can see this not being to everyone’s taste, but I liked it a lot.

And I can die now. My life is complete. If any artsy girls with dyed red hair are out there wearing powered armor, feel free to come on over and zap me.

In my post of yesterday, I made the statement that “[Fed chairman] Bernanke is clearly floundering amidst the crisis that [former chairman] Greenspan spent his career postponing.” At least one commenter has wondered why Greenspan did this, given his focus should have been on the overall economic health of the country. And I’m here to tell you why:

Because he was a chickenshit.

Oh, it wasn’t entirely his fault. As the commenter in question points out, there’s no doubt that Alan Greenspan succumbed to pressure from the Prez, thereby turning what should have been the culmination of a great career into a mockery of everything that career stood for. But Greenspan was just doing his utmost to prevent an economic downturn at all costs.  Costs that included the risk of an even greater economic downturn in the future.  Thus the lowering of interest rates to rock-bottom levels across the early part of this decade.  Thus the ignition of a housing boom that rapidly got out of hand.

But that nonetheless did what it was supposed to:  propel us out of the recession of 01/02.  And something that’s worth noting about that recession is this:  it was the first in American history where our leadership denied its existence throughout its existence.  It was only after it was safely in the rearview that the dreaded R word could be pronounced at the highest levels of state.  And I would argue that there’s a sense that we never truly recovered from it:  that the housing boom constituted, essentially, a false recovery.  All we did was create a mountain of debt that’s now threatening to suffocate us.

Yet before we rush to blame Bush and Greenspan, we should take a good, hard look in the mirror.  Because that’s where the ultimate culprit resides.  Because lately the American public’s relationship with that thing called Reality has been getting pretty dysfunctional.  Something our leaders are smart enough to see . . and cowardly enough to accommodate (and, I might add, greedy enough to exploit).  The American people don’t want to be in a recession.  So . . presto . . no recession!  It’s easy, see?  We just hit the magic button and keep printing more money and your homes keep increasing in value and you can keep on fucking borrowing and borrowing and keep on buying SUVs because we know the only thing that’s as unlimited as dollars is oil and besides daddy I mean Dick Cheney said the american way of life is non-negotiable and you wouldn’t want to see what kind of electoral temper tantrum I’m gonna unleash on any goddamn commie who tells me that it’s NOT . . .

But let’s not get carried away here.  Because Dick also said use your last ten bucks to buy THE MIRRORED HEAVENS.  There’s no better way to spend it.  Trust me on this.

Grim day yesterday, as oil rose into the stratosphere and stocks took it on the nose. Just to put things in perspective, we are now on track for the worst June on Wall Street since the Great Depression. What’s really scary here is that it’s not just oil prices that are driving this; the market was also reacting to clear signals that the credit crisis (which bankers were so eager to assure us was now behind us) remains in its early stages. Worse, Fed chairman Bernanke is clearly floundering amidst the crisis that Greenspan spent his entire career postponing. Barclays Capital warned its clients yesterday that central banks have flunked their “first major test in 30 years”, and that their pumping of money into the economy has given them “zero credibility . . .and the Fed has negative credibility, if that’s even possible.”

Harsh words.  Maybe too harsh, given that it’s not just the Fed’s fault.  The stupidity of the much-vaunted stimulus packages passed by Congress and signed by the Prez this past spring is now manifest: at best that stimulus had no impact; at worst, it persuaded just a few more debt-stricken consumers to stagger to their local Circuit City for a TV they couldn’t afford.  We’ve been sleepwalking for so long; what’s ten more minutes after you’ve already hit the snooze button fifty times?  But unfortunately the scene now is like that at Arthur Dent’s house in Hitchhiker’s Guide:  the bulldozer is right outside the window, and it’s about to come crashing through.  Royal Bank of Scotland just issued a warning that the “chickens are about to come home to roost”, and that by September the markets will be in full, devastating retreat.  It’s hard to see how that scenario can be avoided now.

Meaning that the Fed will be confronted with the dilemma they’ve been so desperate to avoid for so long.  Raising interest rates offers the only hope of stemming the runaway inflation that rising oil and commodity prices are threatening to unleash.  But the impact on the long-deluded American consumer will be nothing short of catastrophic . .  and that’s a word that I fear we’re going to hear a lot more of in the weeks and months to come.

Just got word from Bantam that they’ll be releasing THE MIRRORED HEAVENS as a mass-market paperback next spring! Which is, of course, fab news. And which will give those folks who haven’t read the book one last chance before the sequel hits bookshelves. Best of all, the mass-market edition will feature some “bonus material”: in all likelihood, character dossiers and excerpts from the glossary. (And it’ll have to be excerpts because the original glossary I wrote was about 20 pages long, and is unlikely to see the light of day, even on the website. Sigh.)

Meanwhile the trade-paperback version of the book continues to plow ahead, appearing on i09 last week in a very cool profile. Actually, to be precise: it was my interview in Rescued by Nerds that was being featured on io9. Special thanks to Mike and the whole team over at RBN; not only does their blog have the best name ever, but I was able to get in all sorts of cool soundbites, including Who Would Win If the Book’s Mechs Were to Go At It, Why Chapters Are So Boring, and Why Powered Armor Is Akin to Beef Stew.

All of which makes utter sense in context.

I think.

Further out in space, the Americans held a considerable advantage: until the Zurich Treaty, they enjoyed a monopoly on the Earth’s only natural satellite. They also controlled L2 (the libration point behind the Moon), L1 (situated just in front of the Moon), as well as L5, at sixty degrees angle to the Moon. The Eurasians, by contrast, only controlled a single libration point, that of L4 (by virtue of the Russians having placed a “research station” there shortly after Olenkov came to power), and—in the wake of Zurich—a quarter of the Moon (though by 2110, the extent to which they had consolidated their foothold here was open to question).

Yet the actual significance of such dispositions was open to debate. Certainly the Americans had aggressively deployed resources to the Moon. Furthermore, in the years preceding Zurich, the hindmost libration point figured increasingly in their plans as the site of a reserve fleet that could cover their Lunar assets. But some prominent figures in the U.S. military (none of them in SpaceCom, it should be noted) argued that the Moon was a dangerous diversion. They pointed out that, since it took even the fastest spacecraft two days to cross from the Earth into the Moon’s orbit, any attention devoted to Earth Beyond was by definition a waste of resources. Even the utility of the Moon as a directed-energy weapons platform seemed problematic to such strategists: why put them there when you could simply deploy them closer to Earth?

This private stance aligned with the Eurasians’ public one. For, denied most of the key points in the Cislunar regions, Russia and China instead concentrated their efforts on areas closer to home—or so they claimed. While the ongoing war of words between the two superpowers lies beyond the scope of this inquiry, it is worth noting that the Eurasian rhetoric made much of the American near-monopoly on the Moon and nearby points. Even after Zurich, the press in Moscow and Beijing accused the United States of seeking to conquer the Solar System, or—with perhaps less hyperbole—of harnessing the resources of the Moon in order to dominate the Earth.

Yet, such rhetoric aside, there was much evidence to believe that, in reality, the Eurasian military viewed Cislunar space as crucial. And not just because of the resource issue. Helium-3 and off-Earth minerals were important, yes—but the really critical thing about Cislunar space was that it represented the high ground in the invisible topography of the Earth-Moon system. The amount of energy required to get material to the Cislunar was far greater than the amount of energy required to get material to Earth from the Cislunar. And the policy of Olenkov in this regard—to build up L4 as one of the greatest fortresses of all time—was thus matched by his successors: even post-Zurich, they studded their own slice of the Moon with bases. Yet what kind of combat might transpire on the Lunar surface—or among the libration points—remained unclear.

NEXT: NAVAL WARFARE