WWIII Fiction

[Gusington]

I have been interested in picking up Wargame: European Escalation from Steam and wanted to know what you guys suggest for companion WWIII reading.

I haven't read any similar fiction since college but when I did it included some Larry Bond and similar authors. I am assuming a lot of good stuff has been released in the last 20 years. I know a lot of people like Team Yankee too...got my eye on this. What else do you suggest?

Thanks all.

[Staggerwing]

Ralph Peters' Red Army comes to mind, though it's become a bit dated, as has Team Yankee. The latter's author, Harold Coyle, has some other novels out, my favorite being The Ten Thousand, that deal with military conflict in Europe in the post USSR period.

[MetalDog]

There was a book written in the 80's by a British general.  Hackett, I think.  And I believe the title was Third World War.

[Staggerwing]

^I forgot all about that one! It was more of a fictional chronicle of WWWIII that a novel but it's a great read, sort of like reading an AAR.

[undercovergeek]

i found red storm rising good for wetting the appetite for NWAC

[Shelldrake]

i found red storm rising good for wetting the appetite for NWAC

+1 Great read - one of my favorites. Cauldron by Larry Bond is also quite good. Casting France as the bad guy is an interesting switch.

[bayonetbrant]

Hackett had two: The Third World War and the Third World War, the Untold Story

Team Yankee was a standalone from Coyle that was also adapted to a comic (and then collected into a graphic novel) back in the late 80s.

Coyle's later books: Bright Star, The Ten Thousand, God's Children, Code of Honor, Trial by Fire, Sword Point, etc follow a lot of the same characters through their military careers.  You can read them all as a standalone, but if you read them in the order he wrote them (and I'm too lazy to look it up right now) then you follow Scott Dixon from being a major up through a retired general when his son comes on the scene.  LT Nancy Kozak shows up in Trial by Fire as a platoon leader and ends up as a LTC in later books.  He's written some since then and I'm not 100% sure he's using the same characters but I think so.

Clancy did the same thing with Jack Ryan, but the one WWIII novel (Red Storm Rising) was the one that didn't feature his usual cast of characters.

Now, if we can get LB on the job, we could get Amazon links for the GH affiliate relationship put in here for all those books.

[mirth]

The Hackett books are interesting, but a little on the dry side. I think Red Storm Rising is still the best of the bunch. I reread it every few years.

[Airborne Rifles]

The War that Never Was by Michael A. Palmer is probably my faovroite WWIII novel.  Not a traditional novel but more a chronical in the vein of Hackett's books, but I found this one far more interesting as it focuses solely on the military aspect at the operational level as oposed to Hackett's books which dealt with a lot of grand strategy and geopolitics.  Lots of fodder for wargames in this book too because much of the focus is on peripheral campaigns in places like Norway and Turkey that lend themselves a little better to interesting and balanced scenarios.

[Gusington]

Thanks guys. I have actually read those WWIII books by Hacket and I read Cauldron by Bond. I think I can still remember a scene from Cauldron where tactical nukes are used to sink an aircraft carrier. At 16 that scene blew my mind! The War That Never Was and The Ten Thousand sound cool, going to look those up. Keep'em coming!

[bayonetbrant]

Gus,
I wouldn't read The Ten Thousand without reading Sword Point and Bright Star first.  And if Trial by Fire or Code of Honor come in the sequence, I'd read those, too.  The sequence isn't terribly important b/c the stories don't truly build on each other, but it'll be easier to keep the characters in sequence.

Also note that The Ten Thousand is NOT a NATO-WarPac novel.  It's a US division fighting their way from Ukraine/Poland across Germany to Bremerhaven against the Germans, with a couple of Russians in tow.

[Gusington]

^Cool thanks. I read the description, I like the sound of The Ten Thousand.

Also - I am going to poke around and see if there are any newer titles about a Third World War on other fronts, check out speculative fiction and non-fiction too. If anyone has any info on those areas please post!

I know this kind of borders on chintzy what-if books but I'm willing to take that risk as it's something I haven't explored in a long time. I think the war in Syria has sparked my interest as well as Wargame: European Escalation.

I'm interested in what events in Syria would have to come to for the larger powers (Turkey, Israel, Russia, China) to get more involved and even commit forces. The downing of that Turkish F4 could have been a real disaster in another era.

[Airborne Rifles]

I know this kind of borders on chintzy what-if books but I'm willing to take that risk as it's something I haven't explored in a long time. I think the war in Syria has sparked my interest as well as Wargame: European Escalation.

I'm interested in what events in Syria would have to come to for the larger powers (Turkey, Israel, Russia, China) to get more involved and even commit forces. The downing of that Turkish F4 could have been a real disaster in another era.

Well, if the whole idea of how events can spiral out of control interests you than The Third World War by Humphrey Hawksley may scratch your itch.  It's basically about conflict between India and Pakistan spiraling out of control into nuclear Armageddon between the US, China, and Russia.  I thought the book itself was pretty poorly written and many of the events unrealistic and unbelievable, though, so read at your own risk.

[Gusington]

^HA well I'll use your recommendation to steer clear of that one.

[Shelldrake]

Other WW3 reading possibilities are The Zone series of books by James Rouch and the WWIII series by Ian Slater. I can't comment on how good they are as I have not read any of them yet.

http://www.author-management.com/author.htm
http://www.ian-slater.com/bibliography.php