Set A Course For Suck, Mr. Sulu: Let's Read "Warp Speed" by Travis S. Taylor

The Victorian · Aug 9, 2021

Oooookay, folks. Here's where things REALLY go off the rails, and if you've made it this far then you know that's saying something.

Chapter 19 opens with our "hero" revealing what his plan is: he's going to use the warp field generator to rip the entire facility out of the ground and turn it into a spaceship:

I held up the overview drawing of the facility that Anne Marie had found in the pile of blueprints Calvin had supplied us. "This is what I'm talking about." I thumbtacked the drawing to the wall and drew a big red circle around the facility with a whiteboard marker. If my calculations were right, and if 'Becca's claims of the energy available from the new flubell ECC were correct, we had more than enough power to warp the entire facility out of the ground and use it as a spaceship and weapon. "Where are the enemy?" Okay, I've recovered. It's time to unturtle and come out swinging and kicking!

The Chinese rockets have reached high LEO, beyond the reach of the US missile defence system.

"Do we have any idea what their targets are? Where do they plan to hit?"

"Not exactly sure but the trajectories all track over plenty of U.S. critical targets."

A corner of the flat-panel screen sectioned off and the face of a blue-suit general appeared. "Tabitha we just got this image and we lost contact from Ramstein."

DU
DU HAST
DU HAST MICH

Oops, wrong Rammstein!

So it looks like Germany has just been wiped off the map by either the Russians or the Chinese. Umm, I have to ask...why Germany? California also gets hit, with an impact centred on the Vandenberg Launch Facility. Anson is about to have a breakdown from the sheer horror of what's happening but the "will to see the American way of life survive" and his martial arts training give him the mental fortitude to withstand the trauma.

Another impact, this time at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. The next warp weapon is on a trajectory that will take it over Washington D.C., while the other will be over Roswell, New Mexico in a few minutes (which, it actually turns out, is where Anson and the others have been all this time). He then activates the warp propulsion system, and just like that, the entire facility gets yeeted into space:

The images on the view panel were suddenly dark and then I could see star fields. Good thing the Sun would be to the east of us or we could have fried the cameras. I also started thinking about the amount of oxygen we had trapped in our warp bubble, but I quickly put that out of my mind—as big as our warp bubble was more than enough atmosphere would be trapped in it to keep us going for days or more.

"Tabitha, where is that oncoming traffic?"

Tabitha looked at the data a bit longer. "Anson, I think we're about a hundred kilometers too high and about eight hundred kilometers east of it."

I adjusted our location accordingly and pointed the left camera in that direction. Before long we could see a shiny spot in the view panel.

"There!" Tabitha pointed it out.

"Got it!" I put the software in joystick mode and guided the warp field with the tiny joystick on the laptop keyboard. I flew us to within a few thousand meters of the spacecraft. I called up to 'Becca, "Where are my missiles?"

"The first one is ready, Anson. I'm turning it on . . . now." Immediately following her reply an icon popped up on my desktop.

He launches an MWN (Mini Warp Missile) at the Chinese rocket and yells out that this is "just like Beggar's Canyon back home!" Sorry, Travis T., but referencing an piece of sci-fi that's actually good won't make this novel any more bearable.

The general was talking to Tabitha again. "Tabitha, what is left of Space Command is picking up a huge mass above you on radar."

"No, Mike. That's us. The mass is actually the facility we were using at Roswell. We turned it into a spacecraft. Hey get the radar guy at Space Command directly in contact with us here. We will have him guide us right to the other missiles." Tabitha took the time to smile at me.

"Great work gorgeous!" I smiled with hope we would win this thing, trying not to think about the fact that we only had one more missile left. I began steering toward the west coast of the U.S. If Track Six was one orbit away from the capitol, it would be somewhere over Asia about now. The voice of the radar operator came on the speaker of the view panel.

So they turned the Roswell facility in a spaceship. That shoots missiles. This is so colossally stupid that it might actually be entertaining in the hands of a better author.

Anyway, they manage to shoot down all of the Chinese missiles except one, and now they're out of MWMs. There's only one option left...RAMMING SPEED!!!

"Anson, we have no choice." Tabitha knew what I had in mind. She took my hand without taking her eyes from the screen. "Do it!"

"Don't worry gorgeous, we were gonna dig up the Moon with it. The bubble will hold . . . I hope!" I increased the velocity of the facility and slammed into it. The last enemy warp missile disappeared into a million points of light. The cameras saturated solid white then readjusted themselves.

"Bite me!" I let out a sigh of relief; the warp bubble of the facility had enough power to go faster than light, which was more than nineteen orders of magnitude more energy than needed to destroy that piece of crap foreign rocket. "Tabitha what do you say we take out their ability to ever launch an attack on us again? Lieutenant, get me a vector to Beijing."

Well, that was anti-climactic. Obviously we can't have any tension during the final act, otherwise the reader might actually want to keep reading. You see, Warp Speed has brilliantly deconstructed and subverted the tropes of "rising action, climax, and resolution"...or at least that's why I'd say if I had a bad case of Troper Brain.

Tabitha quite correctly asks if Anson has permission to launch an attack on China. While awaiting orders from the president, Anson explains his reasoning:

"We have to take out the enemy's ability to ever build another warp missile now, or we will have another arms race—but this one will destroy the world. Look at the damage already. Few people know about this technology or few could rebuild it. I will guarantee that the scientist that built these missiles are near those launch sites."

"Anson, millions might die."

"As opposed to billions living as Communist Chinese? Besides, millions of Americans have already died. We will do unto -others . . ."

"We will do unto nothing until the President gives us the order."

"Then we have to give him deniability. The meteor strikes will still work as a cover. Nobody will ever believe this story. Even if they claim they detected us on radar we'll just laugh and say they're nuts. Remember, nobody can see us with their own eyes."

"Anson, what do you propose?"

"Just like we planned with the Moon, I'm going to bulldoze China into one huge-ass parking lot. Then I plan to move on to Kazakhstan, then Moscow and Svobodny and any other Russian launch site and then North Korea. They joined the wrong team. Screw 'em!"

Well, folks, this is where the book (and author) go mask off with their genocidal fantasies. Somewhere, Tom Kratman is smiling and nodding...

Anson says that he's going to completely wipe out the Chinese army, navy, and air force. And their government. Tabitha once again reiterates that they don't have presidential approval:

"Tabitha we just got word that if you can give the President deniability then we will go with any offensive plan you have. The President said to hit them and hit them hard." General Tapscott snarled triumphantly.

Tabitha unmuted the room, "Roger that, General. First priority is to remove the enemy's ability to launch weapons." Tabitha nodded to me.

"Lieutenant Black, guide me to Hainan Island." I said.

Well, that settles that, I guess.

"Roger, sir." He vectored me into the South China launch site. I brought the Roswell Air Force Underground Facility down right on top of the launch platform. I lowered the warp field until the warp bubble was half way underground. Now I had a huge five hundred meter diameter bulldozer blade at my disposal. Several times the cameras saturated.

"What is that?" I asked.

"General Ames. This is Lieutenant Black. You are being fired upon by antiaircraft and surface to air missiles. Are you okay?"

"Hold one. Anson?"

I pressed the talkie button. "Jim, are you there?"

"Yeah, Anson, what's up?"

"How are things with the warp system?"

"Everything is fine. We haven't taxed it more than a hundredth of a percent of the required field stress that would be caused from faster than light travel."

I had guessed that would be the case. But you never know. "Everything is fine here." I replied as I continued to level off Hainan Island.

So he's using a flying spaceship Roswell facility to bulldoze Hainan Island. Feel the stupid. Feel the burn.

He completely destroys the island, and that "the island was completely leveled and devoid of life." Wikipedia tells me that Hainan has a population of about ten million, but hey, maybe they're all actually evil and this shocking disregard for human life is actually justified. Our "hero" certainly thinks so.

And he's not finished, either:

I didn't want to take any chances that there would be witnesses. I pushed the top of the island right off into the Gulf of Tonkin. Then I raised up above the Island a few miles and slammed into it at a few hundred miles per hour. This would give the area a small impact-crater look. Just to help with the cover story. I only allowed the warp bubble to penetrate the island about a mile or so. When we retracted from the hole we had made, it filled with water and Hainan Island no longer existed on this Earth.

He then flies to Xichang and destroys the launch site there. The he bulldozes Jiuquan and then Taiyuan and Beijing. He also flies through the Taiwan Strait and "sinks a bunch of ships." The book literally reads "Then, Beijing." A two-word sentence to describe obliterating a city of over twenty million people. Jesus Christ.

After ravaging China, Anson moves on to the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan:

I hated to destroy such a landmark of human space history, but hey, those bastards destroyed Kennedy Space Center. Tabitha and I both apologized to Yuri under our breath. Then we started peppering Russian launch sites. Svobodny went first, then Kapustin Yar, Plesetsk, Omsk, Yekaterinburg, Orenburg, Moscow, and Star City. We then traveled to North Korea and relieved them of all capabilities to make modern warfare.

Again, tens of millions of people are being slaughtered and the protagonist acts like he's shooting dudes in Call of Duty. "Sociopathic" doesn't even begin to describe this. And you know, you just know that the author was probably cackling with glee while writing this.

The entirety of the final battle of World War III had pretty much taken place in a matter of a couple of hours and was now basically over. China, Russia, and North Korea were bleeding profusely. So was the United States, but we were still an unstoppable military might with the mastery of warp field technology. Not that that is what I had set out to do with my life. But we do what must be done in order for our way of life to go on. Or, it will cease being our way of life.

It's your basic reactionary fantasy: there are enemies out there who are going to destroy us, so we must do whatever it takes, no matter how horrible to stop them. You'd think that maybe our main character might be just a little bit haunted by the fact that he's probably killed more people than any one person in history, but you thought wrong. Instead, we get this:

"Calvin, this is Anson. How are you guys up there?" I called over the walkie talkie.
"We're getting wet, Anson. It is raining cats and dogs out here."
"Can we come in yet?" Anne Marie asked.
"Get inside," Tabitha interjected.
"Is it over?" 'Becca asked.
"Did we win?" that was Al.
I nodded at Tabitha. She pressed her walkie talkie button.
"We won."

Terra Novan · Aug 9, 2021

The Victorian said:
Umm, I have to ask...why Germany?

Why not Germany? It makes more sense than Colorado at least.

Kuja · Aug 9, 2021

Well. My earlier comparison to The Weapon suddenly got a lot more relevant.

Ultimately the answer to 'why Colorado? why Germany?' looks like Colorado and Germany being recognizable enough that their destruction is meaningful to the reader, but not actually critical to the plot that their destruction will hamper the protagonist in any way. And now we have casus belli to exterminate millions of people with one hand while performing a metaphorical act for this writing with the other, something something hard men hard decisions while hard.

SaltyWaffles · Aug 9, 2021

The Victorian said:
Oooookay, folks. Here's where things REALLY go off the rails, and if you've made it this far then you know that's saying something.

When I first read that sentence, I thought, "Okay, it's going to get wacky, got it."

As I read further, I realized that you didn't mean that it would get wacky, you meant that it would get fucking horrifying. And not in any way that implied skill or wisdom.

I am horrified by so many things in this chapter. Perhaps the first is how inhuman the main character comes across as, except unintentionally so (in other words, the author is exposing himself as not merely a horrible person, but one that is genuinely genocidal and morally myopic in the extreme). He treats genociding tens of millions of people in a couple of hours, personally, like he's just doing a routine. I could understand acting with hatred or rage, given what just happened with Germany and California, but no--he's just satisfied. Not even an ounce of "oh god I just personally killed more people than all wars combined have killed in all of human history, all in the span of a couple of hours". Hell, he doesn't even seem phased by tens millions of Americans and entire states being wiped out, all of Germany being wiped out--he's just, "well, we won in the end, and we've got this warp technology, so it's fine."

What makes this even more absurd is how he acts like carving out really shitty attempts at making massive impact craters (without actually understanding how any of that shit actually works or looks like) is such a hilariously flimsy cover-up that it won't even last a cursory inspection by the first geologist or physicist to inspect any of the scenes. Because impact craters that massive would have to be coupled with equally massive explosions from the impact. Except nothing at all occurred; no shockwave, no boom, no waves in the ocean, no tremors in the Earth.

Even better, this guy somehow forgot about the nuclear submarines that exist as a Second Strike force. Meaning that the US is going to be hit by a whole bunch of SLBMs from both China and Russia, not to mention any ICBM silos that aren't in one of the publicly known sites.

Even better is Anson wiping out Russia and North Korea just because they also happened to be affiliated with China. Genocide by association, that's how a hero operates, according to the author.

(Never mind that this entire scenario is completely insane. Never mind that the arms race Anson claims would have destroyed the world is very obviously going to still happen, just a bit down the line, except now the world will live in the precedent set by Anson himself, which is total annihilation of anyone even associated with your enemy. Never mind that the global economy was basically just nuked and that the United States in particular has been gutted, despite Anson's claims of victory.)

Terra Novan · Aug 9, 2021

Honestly, what happened in this chapter makes sense, since it is basically a nuclear war scenario, and it was going to happen the moment Colorado got wiped out.

The way Anson treats it, however...

A Faithful Echo · Aug 9, 2021

The Victorian said:
DU HAST
DU HAST MICH

Oops, wrong Rammstein!

So it looks like Germany has just been wiped off the map by either the Russians or the Chinese. Umm, I have to ask...why Germany?

Rammstein is named after the US Air Force Ramstein Air Base in Germany, so...

At least it wasn't completely random?

Maugan Ra · Aug 9, 2021

"Anson, millions might die."

"As opposed to billions living as Communist Chinese?"

I... yes, Anson, as opposed to them Not Being Dead. Holy fuck dude, what the hell, when people said "Better dead than red" they were at least talking about themselves. Beyond that, while I can sort of see the argument for attacking both China and Russia (since they have inexplicably just zero-declaration nuked American facilities at home and abroad), the inclusion of North Korea just kind of baffles me. They're uninvolved save by vaguest approximation of common interests, they're no actual direct threat to the US, Anson just randomly decided to obliterate like half the nation because... he doesn't like them and he might as well?

WestOrEast · Aug 9, 2021

"General Ames. This is Lieutenant Black. You are being fired upon by antiaircraft and surface to air missiles. Are you okay?"

"Hold one. Anson?"

I pressed the talkie button. "Jim, are you there?"

"Yeah, Anson, what's up?"

"How are things with the warp system?"

"Everything is fine. We haven't taxed it more than a hundredth of a percent of the required field stress that would be caused from faster than light travel."

Truly, a thrilling fight to end the story with. Who can forget how Luke Skywalker parked his X-Wing in front of the Death Star's main cannon, pointing and laughing as the laser bounced off of his ~~plot~~ shields?

Avernus · Aug 9, 2021

Maugan Ra said:
"Anson, millions might die."

"As opposed to billions living as Communist Chinese?"

I... yes, Anson, as opposed to them Not Being Dead. Holy fuck dude, what the hell, when people said "Better dead than red" they were at least talking about themselves.

Um, no? They were talking about everyone. I recall a general back in the day being quoted as how he'd consider it a win after a nuclear war if there were only two Americans left alive, as long as there was only one Russian left.

General Thomas S. Power said:
Restraint? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards. At the end of the war if there are two Americans and one Russian left alive, we win!

It's been long enough since the height of the Cold War that a lot of people have forgotten just how crazy the leadership was.

Also, "General Power" is totally a comic book antagonist name.

Terra Novan · Aug 9, 2021

Avernus said:
It's been long enough since the height of he Cold war that a lot of people have forgotten just how crazy the leadership was.

It's also why, while Anson's treatment of what is essentially a nuclear war is repulsive, the situation itself is not surprising at all because this is exactly the kind of thing that was going to happen after Colorado, even in RL.

I am more surprised that nuclear exchange did not immediately happen after that.

Avernus · Aug 9, 2021

Terra Novan said:
It's also why, while Anson's treatment of what is essentially a nuclear war is repulsive, the situation itself is not surprising at all because this is exactly the kind of thing that was going to happen after Colorado, even in RL.

I am more surprised that nuclear exchange did not immediately happen after that.

Yeah; I mean, that's a plot hole as various people have pointed out. Realistically, the missiles would have flown pretty much immediately and the Chinese would have expected that to happen; so the last thing they'd have done is just blow a big hole in the middle of the US for no particular reason.

dptullos · Aug 9, 2021

The most impressive part of the story is the bit where the protagonist commits a genocidal killing spree while experiencing absolutely no emotional reaction.

General Thomas Power would have been gleeful at the thought of wiping Moscow off the map, but the protagonist kills millions of people with roughly the same feelings that I have in checking milk and eggs off the grocery list. The massive plot holes would be more understandable in a proper spite fic, where the whole point is for the protagonist to slaughter the author's enemies while giggling.

At least Victoria made the author happy at the thought of murdering all the liberal college professors with broadswords. This work doesn't even have the decency to take satisfaction in the scenes of mass murder it portrays.

Cobalt-60 · Aug 10, 2021

At least Kratman's Hard Men spare a thought (or at least a meaningful glance) for all the lives they've lost. This schmuck just treats it like he's playing Minecraft. And it's told with all the emotional impact (and tension) of the world's most boring let's play. Our Hero has spent more time explaining his hate for the medical profession than for the millions of people he just murdered.

Bassoe · Aug 10, 2021

So this is essentially AH.com's Bargain FTL, only the Dark Forest War is treated as a victory rather than an apocalyptic tragedy.

Good news, tomorrow someone invented gravity manipulation/reactionless drive technology capable of making anything into a practical SSTO and allowing for FTL by reducing a spacecraft's mass to zero which can be assembled on a low budget by any halfway-competent engineer in their garage and anonymously leaked the design specifications on the internet.

Life is everywhere. Sol has earth and life swimming around under europa's glaciers, in this it is the exception, most solar systems have more than just two biospheres. The entire galaxy is open to human colonization as literally every group that can throw together the money for a starship can have their own planet. Considering the size of the galaxy, it'll be generations before everywhere is colonized and "vote with your ~~feet~~ hyperdrive" ceases to be a viable political tactic. Why have a shared market or diplomatic contact if you have the functionally unlimited resources of a whole new planet and minimal shared cultural values with everyone else meaning you can happily never have to interact with anyone outside your echo chamber colony again? Who cares if the morons behind Operation Red Dog and its ilk have their own planet, so long as there's nobody beside them there for them to hypothetically hurt and you also get one?

Bad news, Hyperdrive also effectively allows for RKKV superweapons on the limited budget and engineering skills of any pissant little terrorist/freedom fighter group or mass shooter and space warfare is highly equalized since a fifty dollar hyperdrive-driven kamikaze drone built by civilian insurgents is enough firepower to kill a multimillion dollar space battleship built by wealthy goverments or corporations in one shot every single time.

WW3/The Dark Forest War begins within the decade as some group which would otherwise inevitably be defeated and destroyed builds RKKVs and carry out MAD retaliation strikes and escalates uncontrollably into the most destructive day in human history, with the total human population dropping lower than it's been since the toba supervolcano catastrophe and earth and a couple dozen of the more populated/well-known colony worlds being rendered inhospitable.

War becomes functionally futile, since the blatantly suicidal nature of conflict between hyperspace-capable superpowers is obvious to anyone sane. By definition, given their presence in space, every single remaining nation-state is a hyperspace-capable superpower. With that in mind, the Brennan Treaty*.

"Don't use hyperspace weapons against anyone since they'll retaliate and both of you will die."

Lesser warfare is theoretically possible, but pointless, given that as soon as one side starts losing, they can threaten hyperspace MAD and force a stalemate.

Unfortunately, this doesn't take into account people who aren't sane enough to abide by MAD, so every few hundred years, there's another apocalyptic Dark Forest War started by a single sufficiently crazy individual, but as long as new planets are discovered and/or old planets recover from the RKKV-induced nuclear winter from humanity's last attempt at colonizing them at a rate higher than civilizations destroy themselves, humanity survives, and if anything, the total species population is orders of magnitude higher than the modern world, but ends up stuck in a Motieish cycle of perpetually blasting our civilizations to smithereens, then fleeing to new colonies. So basically, the space western ideal of tiny and isolated communities, forever. An in-universe excuse for space opera clichés.

Planets with populations in the low thousands maximum, distributed only in a single settlement around the original spaceport? No point in expanding on a single planet, that just means you've got more targets in one location.
Extremely stratified cultures? When any form of inter-conflict equals apocalyptic MAD and you've got functionally unlimited planets to settle, having more than one nation on a single planet is a pointless risk.
Space people/cossacks? Well, that's just practical. If your civilization moves around, its enemies don't know where to fire the RKKV and all you've got to worry about is civil war.

Alternative options people have attempted have included:

Abandoning all advanced technology sufficient to build spacecrafts/RKKV weapons and not telling their children it had ever existed. Consequentially, the resulting luddite civilization basically underwent the Partition of Africa, part two, orbital high ground and drone armies edition when other humans who hadn't spurred advanced technology came along and saw a hospitable planet with untapped natural resources and no MAD defenses to keep them from taking it.
Orwellian total surveillance and totalitarianism with the intention of being able to spot any citizens building RKKV superweapons before they could finish and use them. Consequentially, the resulting civilization was destroyed in a shootout between the Thought Police and dissidents having taken Alexander Solzhenitsyn's advice** while armed with weaponry with firepower measured in continents.
Creating transhumanist cybernetic hiveminds without individuality. While it arguably works, there's nothing besides MAD to prevent ordinary humans from outside the collectives from firing RKKVs at them and individual collectives still can't expand beyond a single planet because lightspeed lag would fracture them into new individuals***.

Which brings us to aliens. There aren't any. Life is everywhere. Mind is not. On something like a whole ten percent of hospitable planets discovered, xenopaleontologists have found remaining signs of technological civilization in fossils, mass extinctions, out of place orebodies and previously exploited natural resources, but universally, every single time sentient aliens evolved, they killed themselves in MAD warfare within a century of developing the technological capability to do so. Humanity hasn't actually escaped this trap at all, we've just acquired the technology for space colonization, so the self-inflicted destruction of planets full of us is now merely a setback rather than specieswide extinction and as long as we spread to new worlds at a higher rate than we destroy old ones, our species will survive.

* Named after Donald G. Brennan, originator of the term Mutually Assured Destruction.
**

The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn said:
What would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive? Or if during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? The Organs would quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!

***

Judas Unchained by Peter F. Hamilton said:
...it doesn't believe that any of its interstellar settlements will rescue it, should they survive our nova bombs. It knows they will devolve into independence and thus become its enemy just like all the other immotiles used to be...

WestOrEast · Aug 11, 2021

An idea I had, to make the Chinese less dumb is for them not to launch a warp missile at all. Instead, a Chinese politician/general/scientist/whatever learns about the missiles being built and is horrified at what his country is planning. He goes to the US to warn them and that's how the... heroes... learn about what is being planned. Sure, there's no first strike, but given how it's nothing more than a bloody shirt in the novel as is, what's lost?

Of course, then the defector would see what America, or at least the rampaging nut waving the American flag, does in retaliation, with all that genocide from the last chapter. He'd have to be horrified and full of regret over his actions, seeing that there's no difference between China and the US.

Two problems with this, though. One is that the defector's story is much more interesting than what we're getting and should be the focus of the story. The second is that there's no way Taylor would write a good Chinese person, especially not one motivated by trying to avoid massive death tolls.

Susano · Aug 11, 2021

A Faithful Echo said:
Rammstein is named after the US Air Force Ramstein Air Base in Germany, so...

No it isn't. Probably. There has always been the rumour that the band was named after the Ramstein air show disaster in order to be edgy, but the band has always denied that - saying that, being East German, behind the Iron Curtain at the time, they weren't even aware of that incident, and that "Rammstein" is just completely made up. Just throwing "hard sounding" words together.

Bassoe · Aug 11, 2021

Really, at this point, an apocalyptic war is inevitable, assuming it hasn't already been started by second-strike MAD launches from chinese nuclear subs, the good news is, with the hyperdrive, it may be possible for some fraction of humanity to escape the battleground and consequentially, extinction.

Terra Novan · Aug 11, 2021

Bassoe said:
Really, at this point, an apocalyptic war is inevitable, assuming it hasn't already been started by second-strike MAD launches from chinese nuclear subs, the good news is, with the hyperdrive, it may be possible for some fraction of humanity to escape the battleground and consequentially, extinction.

It is already an apocalypse. Because, seriously, an explosion that is powerful enough to wipe out the entire state of Colorado and Germany will do numbers on the rest of the planet.

Avernus · Aug 11, 2021

Bassoe said:
Really, at this point, an apocalyptic war is inevitable, assuming it hasn't already been started by second-strike MAD launches from chinese nuclear subs, the good news is, with the hyperdrive, it may be possible for some fraction of humanity to escape the battleground and consequentially, extinction.

Not really; realistically, they don't yet have the technology to create a self-sustaining civilization away from Earth. They'd just die a bit slower.

The Victorian · Aug 12, 2021

Well folks, it's looks like the worst part of the story is over. Our "heroes" have managed to secure victory at the end of World War III, although, as others have pointed out, something tells me that, realistically, it would be a very short victory. The author seems to have forgotten that China and Russia both have ballistic missile submarines that exist for the exact eventuality described in the novel. Second, the whole conflict is being covered up as asteroid impacts, but people are going to be a just wee bit suspicious that so many impacts just happened to occur on major cities and military sites.

Tabitha begins the chapter by saying:

"As I'm sure that satellite imagery will verify, all launch facilities in China, Russia, and North Korea have been totally eradicated. The governments of each of these countries have been destroyed along with their abilities to make war. In fact, we would like to see global satellite imagery data here to see the extent of the damage. Perhaps we will learn more efficient methods for using this technology. And it's always good to see the havoc one has caused after a battle to maintain perspective of its horror. Hopefully, we won't need it for warfare again.

"It is possible that some of the knowledge of the warp technologies used in today's battles remains in the enemy locations since we didn't remove the entire populations of these countries. And it is always possible that they have sleeper contingencies. However, they have much larger problems now than building weapons to take over the world. Survival should be first and foremost on their minds. Most likely they won't be able to survive without aid from the rest of the world. My guess is that our economy will suffer greatly from our disaster relief also.

Something tells me that the phrase "take over the world" is not something used seriously by the military brass in any country, but what do I know? And that last line about "disaster relief" has me shaking my head. The phrase implies something like the aftermath of something like a hurricane or an earthquake and not, you know, the total and utter collapse of society.

She goes on to say that only the US should maintain mastery of warp technology, and that an intelligence gathering effort should be undertaken to determine if anyone else has access to this kind of technology. Anson follows up with a speech about how he intended to use the technology to travel to distant stars and search for alien life, but it seems like humanity isn't read for this kind of power.

The President had little to say other than the fact that nobody would ever know that World War III ever took place. The events of today would be reported as impacts of meteors from space. He issued an executive order compartmentalizing all knowledge of the warp technologies and all data was to be moved to the far side of the Moon away from the Earth.

In essence, he had excommunicated all of us from the human race. Maybe it wouldn't be that bad. Once we got there and got settled, living on the Moon could be pretty cool. Maybe. Besides, we would have to be awarded near infinite resources to maintain such a facility and conspiracy. We had infinite power with the flubells. And if we ever needed anything, hell, we could just fly down to Earth at night and abduct it. I thought of some funny crop circle patterns that I was planning to make with a warp field on some of those trips also. Hey if there is a fire, you have to throw gas on it.

See what I said above. There is no fucking way this cover story about "meteor impacts" will stand up to even the slightest scrutiny.

Anyone involved with the project is sworn to secrecy and told that, if they ever go public with what they know they'll subject to...get this...intense ridicule. We then get this howler:

Debunking government conspiracy nuts is always easy. Who really believes in Roswell, alien abductions, and flying saucers? Nobody does in public, because it labels him or her as nuts.

Oh Travis T., you sweet summer child...though to be fair, this book was written some time before conspiracy theories started becoming really widespread. Still, though, the author has clearly never interacted with a real conspiracy theorist before, because if he had then he'd realise that all of your "debunking" and "refutation" will count for bugger all when interacting with them. Simply put, too much of their identity is wrapped up in the conspiracy for any kind of logic or reason to penetrate.

Anson goes back to look at his house and discovers it's been trashed, no doubt by the same people who got to Al's house. But he's not concerned for his safety, because the people paying the mercenaries have all been wiped off the face of the earth.

We spent a few hours cleaning up. It made us all feel normal again to do menial daily type tasks. Jim, Al, and I drove to town and picked up some steaks, hamburgers, hotdogs, buns, potatoes, charcoal, chips, dips, limes, lemons, margarita mix, and a lot of beer. We stopped by the package store on the way back and picked up some ice and tequila and triple sec and decided we better get more beer.

By the time the grill was ready for the steaks, burgers, and dogs, I had about three beers down. My fiancée stepped through the back door wielding two very large margaritas. The sunlight nowadays was redder than usual because of all of the dust thrown into the upper atmosphere from the Warp Weapons of the Secret War. The strange reddish summer sun illuminated the glitter in Tabitha's blue bikini top in a most unusual way. Her cutoff denim shorts brought out her, uh Southern charm. And the fifteen or twenty degrees cooler weather than usual for July brought out some of her other, uh perky, features. She sure didn't look like General Tabitha Ames the astronaut and warrior-leader of the super secret Warp Weapons Contingent of the United States Space Force. I chuckled inside.

Like, holy fuck, dude. You just got finished killing hundreds of millions of people, probably creating the worst humanitarian disaster in world history, and the one thing on your mind is how great your girlfriend's tits are? I can't even begin to imagine this level of detachment.

I wiped my hands off on my Kiss the Physicist Please apron and then planted my hands on each side of her face. "I love you," I told her, then kissed her again. Then the hamburgers flared up and I had to attend to the grill. I never did get a margarita.

And thus ends an extremely brief chapter. Don't worry, there's only two more chapters left to go...

Bernkastel · Aug 12, 2021

This chapter just adds to the "enemy populations are nothing but targets" vibe of the previous chapter. It's just "we stomped the enemy, great, time for a barbecue with my sexy girlfriend". It feels like the author cares much more about flexing on hypothetical softhearted people about how tough he is rather via a "this is how I would solve conflicts" fantasy than about the enemy his side has destroyed.

Valmond · Aug 13, 2021

I am somewhat amused by Travis T calling anyone else nuts based on their beliefs.
Because this book does not read like something written by a person with reasonable views on reality.

Avernus · Aug 13, 2021

What it seems like to me is a throwback to some of the worse aspects of "classic" sci-fi, but without any of the good parts to make up for it. A focus on dull technical minutiae, "eccentric" beliefs that are just wrong, and a Hard (White American) Man Making Hard Decisions killing vast numbers of (foreign) people without guilt because doing so is the only "logical" choice; it's all something I could see in some story from the 1950s or 1960s.

Eric Heckathorn · Aug 13, 2021

This is the sort of thing that gets the judge at a murder sentencing to use phrases such as "depraved indifference to human life".

The Victorian · Aug 17, 2021

Well, looks like this is the penultimate chapter. Don't worry, the hurting will be over soon.

The wedding planning had gone off without a hitch. The girls had decided it would be best to have it in the big nondenominational church downtown. Tabitha somehow pulled some strings and managed to get us in on such short notice. She spread the rumor that the NASA Administrator, Secretary of Defense, and the Vice President were on the invitation list. Things started happening. Of course, I'm not sure that Tabitha hadn't really gotten an R.S.V.P. from any of their offices, but it was a good ploy one way or the other. Imagine my surprise when not only were they there, but they were seated next to the President himself.

You know, I must admit that I'm surprised the ~~author~~ protagonist didn't throw a bitch fit about being married in a church, followed by a lengthy tirade about how religion makes people dumb.

We get several paragraphs filled with mundane details about the wedding and reception. Did you know that the guests had their "choice of blackened trout or chicken as the entrée" and that the "wedding cake was typical in shape and three tiers high"?

A week later they're back in Roswell, preparing for their exodus to the moon, and we get a rather lengthy infodump about their new habitat:

Along with the trailer park, we had permanent homes constructed. We now had more power with the modifiable warp field and the flubell ECCs. So, we planned a much larger facility. The central dome would be seven hundred meters now instead of three hundred. There would be two other domes three hundred meters in diameter for the manufacturing plant and the lab. We would have much more space.

They hire a contractor to build five eight-person spacecraft, each of which will be equipped with a warp drive and thus be capable of faster-than-light travel. I hope they have some kind of "causality compensator" installed in order to prevent any egregious causality violations arising from the relativity of simultaneity...

This is followed by several pages worth of details regarding the construction of the lunar dome and the associated infrastructure.

Everything was finally complete and people began moving in. Jim and I had the idea of building a mountain bike trail around the Town, Lab, and Plant. We cut trails inside the domes on the outer circumference and then used a small warp bubble to cut switch back trails alongside and up and over (or down and under in some cases) the tunnels that connected the various domes. We added a couple of whoops and a few doos. We even stuck in a "hellacious up hill" and a "screaming elevator shaft down to hell." We put up historical markers explaining that this was "the first mountain bike trail in space don't ride when raining."

There's also a martial arts school, because the author has to make sure that this spiffy new lunar facility has all of his own personal hobbies accounted for.

Anson starts brainstorming about a personal warp field, that could be used to greatly enhance the user's strength (or perhaps work a bit like Mass Effect biotics). He also considers using a warp field to generate a huge gravitational lens that could be used to observe distant galaxies. But what he really wants is interstellar travel, and so far they've yet to prove that their spaceships can reach FTL speeds.

And finally we get some self-reflection on the sheer havoc that would have been unleashed on earth during the warp weapons conflict:

The last estimate of dead was somewhere around sixty-five million Americans, one hundred million Chinese, forty-seven million Russians, and two hundred thousand North Koreans. There were countless acres of forests and wildlife destroyed. Last count was three hundred or more species of animals and insects were now extinct. It was estimated that the damage was in the trillions of U.S. dollars. The three hypercanes caused by the Warp Weapon impacts pumped a tremendous amount of dust and moisture into the upper atmosphere. And there was talk of the subsequent moderate greenhouse effect causing higher coastal waters and much larger tropical regions for the next hundred or more years. Like Huntsville wasn't hot and humid enough already. Now it would be like beach weather without the beach. Oh, there was some talk about "nuclear winter" kinds of nonsense and ice ages and other things, but none of that really panned out scientifically. Just our weather was a little more erratic is all.

So yes, this battle was several times deadlier than World War II. But don't worry, Anson assures us, because "humans are quite resourceful."

However, and I'm not just trying to justify myself here, the Earth is becoming a better place now. China finally had to really open its borders to Western business or it was going to starve to death. The destruction of most of the Russian government destroyed a lot of their organized crime problem since most of the crime bosses were government officials. The Russian people asked us for help. So we moved in and helped them prop themselves up and clean up their act a little. Europe joined in to help since they were least affected. Although there was no longer a Germany, the rest of Europe was trying to help. Interestingly enough, no governments tried to take advantage of the situation. Also, the stock exchange was unfrozen a few weeks ago. World trade is back to normal or much better. Again there was some initial concern about global climate changes causing mass crop failures and global starvation. And once again this was mostly junk scientists making noise to get themselves on television. All of that original Carl Sagan nuclear winter nonsense continued to rear its ugly head—idiots. I wanted to strangle some of the fools I saw on TV bitching about the coming ice age and the end of the world.

This guy REALLY has a hang-up about China not welcoming American businesses, doesn't he?

But aside from that, there are hundreds of millions dead, and this guy is talking about stock markets. And his statement that "the world is becoming a better place now"...I mean...where do I even begin with that?

Anson goes on to say that some "Islamic Jihad fools" went and car-bombed the American embassy in Kuwait because...well...

Then they claimed that the meteors were due to us being the infidel and some other nonsense. About fifteen Americans were killed and a few from other countries. And we didn't do a damned thing! For now the world still depended on oil so we had to let those fools act as they had for thousands of years. Like fools.

Oh yeah, did you think the author was going to end this novel with taking the opportunity to make a swipe at the Middle East, did you? The part about "thousands of years" is what really gets me. Ancient Egypt, Persia, Mesopotamia...all "fools." I mean, they didn't even have warp drive!

Predictably, Anson turns his attention to devising a new system of generating electricity that will "put the Middle East out of business in no time" and "then they won't have to put up with the bastards."

Only one more chapter to go (plus the Appendix), and I promise that the next Let's Read won't be quite so unbearable...

Set A Course For Suck, Mr. Sulu: Let's Read "Warp Speed" by Travis S. Taylor

Elven Supremacist

Cheeky Naegi is Cheeky

I'M A SQUIIIID

I am dissapoint, son

Cheeky Naegi is Cheeky

Abomination

Cheeky Naegi is Cheeky

Abomination

Cheeky Naegi is Cheeky

Abomination

Elven Supremacist

The Witch of Miracles

Abomination

Elven Supremacist