|
Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM |
|
|
Join Writer Development Section Writer Development Member Section
This Day in Alternate History Blog
|
Operation
Thunder Child/Operation Lightning Strike
How would the world react if
alien contact were to be confirmed? You?
The public? The government?
The military? Nick Pope, a
Senior Executive Officer from the Ministry of Defence who was once charged with
investigating UFO sightings, attempts to answer this question in his series of
two standalone books; Operation Thunder Child and Operation Lightning Strike.
In the near future, a British radar station detects a series of radar blips from an unidentified aircraft. This rapidly leads to a confrontation between the RAF and UFO's. For the first time the UFO's are operating out in the open and as the fighting between the British and the UFO's get more deadly, the British try to find out what they want and that answer brings them up against a conspiracy run by certain members of the American government. It turns out that
the aliens want the Earth (pun not intended).
They have a massive mothership heading to the earth carrying thousands of
colonists, who claim they want to bring peace and plenty, but their actions
suggest something different.
OTC begins the series on a very
low-key note. The action starts
slowly
with a radar sighting, and then moves upwards into the public view, with some
members of the government unsure of the origin of the unidentified craft and
desperate for answers as the conflict continues.
The battles start off with the UFOs enjoying a huge advantage, but as the
RAF gets more experienced with their new foe, the aliens can be defeated in
battles, even though the RAF needs to go
back to basic weapons. OLS, on the other hand, starts
with the discovery of the approaching mothership by independent observers.
Mainly, the first half of the book involves
political maneuverings as the world governments (although we only see a few
governments in action) try to handle the threat of an alien invasion.
Pope eschews political correctness to note that the major governments of
the world would ignore a UN resolution if it suited them to do so – with
little comeback. Then the world
leaders are invited onto the mothership, and then the aliens attack the earth.
The action ends on a cliffhanger, so hopefully the third book will be
along soon. The alien technology holds
together well, with the aliens having stealth abilities that can either be
altered at will or craft that don’t have stealth systems are mixed with craft
that do. One little oddity was the
ability of the abduction craft that kidnapped Jenny Thornton to remain hidden
– despite the government having a good idea that the craft made regular visits
to her house. It takes an SAS team
at close range to detect and engage the craft.
However, I would have expected
the aliens – particularly after the RAF discovered how to hurt them – to
remain in orbit and drop small rocks on RAF bases to suppress the RAF.
The aliens themselves are a bit
of a mystery. The first book only
shows us the small grey aliens so beloved of the X-Files, while the second book
introduces us to aliens that – they claim – are indistinguishable from
humans. Its not clear if the aliens
have all been changed in that way, but they do seem to have little regard for
the lives of the ‘greys’. Some of the politics are a
little confusing, although Pope does a great job of making the British chain of
command clear to the uniformed. I
wish that we had a complete copy of the Prime Minister’s speech through.
There are also details of how the British government relates to the
media, including spin, news releases and how much truth can be told to
parliament. (One flaw: Pope informs
us that a MP who lies to Parliament would be removed from office – ‘punished
harshly’ is the term used – but Thatcher lied to parliament in the Belgrano
Affair and got away with it.) Some other odd points, however,
the British continue to allow the US to operate listening and spacewatch bases
in the UK, despite their use to spy on the British and indeed actively hamper UK
military operations. I don’t
believe that any sane British government would allow the bases to remain under
US control, even if the elements in the US power structure that ran them were
removed. I would expect at least a
British commander, a full British team and armed support onsite in order to
allow the base to remain operating, with the British having full access to the
information. If the British don’t
have access in the real world, then perhaps its time to tell the US to share or
leave. I, for one, remember the
rumours that the US used them to spy on British and European communications for
commercial purposes (http://www.fas.org/irp/program/process/docs/000219-echelon.htm). Another odd point or two:
The British in OLS are clearly still members of NATO and the EU, despite
there being no help from the EU nations and only ‘in-the-nick-of-time’ help
from America. This is despite the
British often risking their lives and property to save the Europeans, often from
themselves. NATO is a great idea,
but would the British stay in the organisation if they did not help out at all?
The French and Germans have powerful air forces that could have made the
difference in many of the battles, so would their selfishness not ruin the
alliance? Incidentally, there is a
similar point in Eric L. Harry’s Arc Light, where the French and
Germans refuse to join the US in a nuclear/conventional war with Russia.
The books read somewhat
strangely after the events of September 11th and the war in Iraq.
There are references to ‘our Iraqi friend’, the Saudis as trusted
allies, and a statement that the ability to strike at the continental US was
beyond the capability of a real bad guy, but Bin Laden proved him wrong.
Further, the RAF flies planes that won’t be in general service for at
least five years and the US has planes that came straight out of sci-fi. Some quibbles:
There is often more details of British technology and the characters
personal lives than is really needed, although Pope avoids the clinch of having
massive, steamy sex scenes. At
times, Pope falls into the trap of questioning British defence plans,
particularly the lack of SHORAD units, which, while I agree with him, threatens
to turn an excellent read into a rant. The
plan designed by the Enterprise to attack the alien people in Ch. 7 OLS strikes
me as too risky, surely a small atomic bomb could be sent instead.
The ISS is probably useless to the aliens; why not simply destroy it,
while I suspect that the American attack on the alien mothership is impossible.
Finally, OTC suggests that the mothership will arrive within five years,
but OLS starts right after OTC and has the mothership appearing in a few weeks.
There are a few questions that I
would also like to be answered. For
example, what are the political fields like in America, France, Russia and
China? How are France, Russia and
China doing at fighting off the invasion? What
role is played by the other EU nations and Israel?
Apparently, only Britain, America, France, Russia and China were attacked
in OLS, what happens to the smaller nations?
Does anyone use nukes against the alien craft?
And, above all, what happens next? As a final note, it is amusing
to consider the fact that the book needed to be cleared by the Ministry
of Defence prior to publication, which leaves us wondering how much of the book
is fiction. Nick Pope’s website has the
original concept for Operation Thunder Child at http://www.nickpope.net/operation_thunderchild_concept.htm.
|
