Before we talk about Rommel & Patton (AKA The Hour of the Fox) I want everyone to acknowledge that I was right, and it was going to boil down to a last page decision to accept an offer or not.
(Kelly clicked the heels of his shiny boots together. Fools! Incompetents! Why didn't they listen to me!)
So yes, Richard Rohmer can reduce even the great tides of history to a series of meetings and an up-or-down from the head office. Richard Rohmer's Life of Jesus would be fifteen Last Suppers, followed by JC taking an offer to God, "What if this cup passed from me?" and God saying No.
I haven't even read the jacket copy on Starmageddon, but I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that Earth is running out of something (despite the best efforts of our wise, quasi-military planetwide government) so we have a war with aliens over space minerals, and after a while they send us a peace offer and a plan to merge technologies. Will we accept? Is it a trap?
Will Z'rk deposit 20 billion credits into our space account?
A last page decision to accept an offer or not? That was a bold prediction, Chris; bolder still since the actual decision features in the novel. Rohmer could've done as he did with Exodus/UK, making us wait for Starmageddon with the Hour of the Fox coming to pass well in the 'eighties when 99 luftballons create havoc with the V-1s.
ReplyDeleteYou are getting me excited that Starmageddon might take place in space....
ReplyDelete...and I know it doesn't.
Chris - you definitely nailed the ending. You win the contest: in the future, you get to make the last blog post here and end it with a decision to accept an offer or not.
I thought it would be Omar Bradley making the call, though. Never saw Stalin coming. But then, neither did the 20th century. Hahahahaha!
ReplyDeleteIt really is killing me that you guys don't have your copies of HTWAB$, where Rohmer explains:
Suspense
Never, never answer a tantalizing question that you've posed in the book until you absolutely have to. Keep the reader guessing until the very last minute.
And, as Brian points out, sometimes even after the very last minute. Like the next book. Where you ignore it, take it all back, or have your characters find oil somewhere else.
Stan, are you saying you've inititiated Starmageddon?
Starmageddon will begin tomorrow when I reach the library- unless someone, after all these years, beats me there and checks it out before me.
ReplyDeleteBrian - how do you do italics in the comment box? I don't get the option.
I don't want to get ahead of everyone on "Starmageddon," but I couldn't have been wronger. It's not Lucas Star Wars, it's Reagan Star Wars. Disappointing. Also, there seems to be a KAL 007 thing cooking. So I'm afraid he'll repurpose "Massacre" research the way he reused "Patton's Gap" for "Rommel and Patton." Serves us right, for eating dessert first.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of refreshments, someone's drinking vodka with the Russians on page 21 of "Starmageddon" and you'll never guess what they're eating.