Bryce Zabel's Blog, page 25
June 8, 2020
We Can Handle the Truth
Why now is the perfect time to end the UFO cover-up.
April 28, 2020
Game Changer in the Skies
The Defense Department says those Navy UFO videos are real.
June 8, 2014
Going Sidewise
My book Surrounded by Enemies: What if Kennedy Survived Dallas? has been nominated for the prestigious Sidewise Award for Alternate History . This is the award for people who dabble in designing worlds where events turn out differently than they have in our own. Past winners include the dean of alt.history Harry Turtledove (who actually wrote the Foreword to Surrounded), Philip Roth, and Michael Chabon. Let's just say that I'm honored to be in that company.
The award will be given out this August 14 as part of Loncon 3 in London, England, this year's location for the annual World Science Fiction Convention, that annual sci-fi blow-out that's been going on without stop since 1946 (it started in 1939, and paused for World War II).
As you can see from the graphic, there are four nominees, several of whom have been nominated before and won in the past. It's a tough crowd of excellent writers.
Surrounded by Enemies: What if Kennedy Survived Dallas? is available as a trade paperback, ebook, and audiobook. The ebook has now been priced at just $2.99 on Amazon to give more people a chance to read it while the competition is on. The audiobook is narrated by Edd Hall of Tonight Show fame, and he does a compelling read.
Writing this book was a labor of love that I'd been thinking about for a decade. It takes a strong position on its material and doesn't flinch. Win or lose in August, I'm very proud to get this nomination.
Sidewise Award announcement link: http://www.uchronia.net/sidewise/
Amazon link to read the book: http://www.SurroundedByEnemies.com
YouTube video: http://youtu.be/2rxFa95LP1I
November 21, 2013
Why I Brought JFK Back to Life
It’s now been half a century since the shots rang out in Dealey Plaza. To admit you lived through their shock and fury is to be of a certain age. Those of us who were children then, at the end of America's great Baby Boom, have forged countless different paths, but we share in common a question that, over the years, has haunted almost all of us:
Almost since the assassination, writers have speculated about the great things President Kennedy would have done for the country and the world had his life been spared in Dallas. It’s commonly assumed he would have rolled back our Vietnam involvement, enacted landmark civil rights policy, made peace with the Soviets and even finished the attack on organized crime.
That upbeat scenario is probably wishful thinking. Kennedy had a definite to-do list for a second term, yes, but the forces in opposition to his presidency in 1963 were organized and powerful. Let’s shade the question just a bit differently:
What if Kennedy survived the ambush in Dallas?
This new question puts front-and-center the plain fact that Kennedy's survival could not exist in a story vacuum, as if November 22, 1963 were just another day. After all, whether or not Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, the President of the United States still had been targeted for execution in broad daylight on a public street before a global television audience. Life would not have pinged back to normal if the assassin's bullets had missed their target.
Investigations would have been launched to determine if what just happened was an attempted professional hit, a failed political assassination, or the work of a crazed, lone gunman. In any case, the world would have been turned upside down during this period, raising an avalanche of questions and blowback on multiple fronts, particularly since the President would have been alive and asking these questions himself, along with some of the world’s most powerful allies, including a brother in charge of the U.S. Justice Department.
If there were conspirators, they and their target would have regarded each other like scorpions in a bottle. In a cascade of post-ambush cause and effect, these traitors who had plotted to achieve a coup d'état by public murder would have found President Kennedy now physically impossible to get at, protected by enhanced security. In this telling, the system comes unhinged, and the conspirators go after Kennedy by other means after their bullets fail.
There is no doubt that John Kennedy’s presidency was a high point in our nation’s history. What we did not know when we were living through it, however, was that President Kennedy's reckless behavior behind the scenes -- including marital infidelities, secret medical treatments and covert political operations -- kept him always one headline away from disaster. Surviving a well-planned assassination attempt could not have made JFK’s personal weaknesses any easier to disguise. He also had enemies, at the highest levels of the U.S. government, with the means to lay bare the most intimate secrets of his private life. Had they done so, the President’s dark side clearly had the potential to destroy any second term the voters might have granted him.
In imagining that scenario, over the course of a decade I researched and wrote an alternate-history novel, “Surrounded by Enemies: What if Kennedy Survived Dallas?”
It is not a time-travel story with a protagonist sent back to save JFK (a continuing fascination right up through last year’s Stephen King book, 11/22/63). That kind of political science-fiction usually sees an idealized and heroic JFK through rose-colored glasses. Rather, this narrative sheds light on the shadowy events of late 1963 in the context of the constitutional crisis they easily could have triggered. To the best of my knowledge, this is a new way to examine the what if of JFK and ends up illuminating what the stakes were in our own timeline.
Here’s a world where, fifty years earlier, history’s tree grew another branch. Where journalism and the counterculture ignited a political explosion over Watergate in the 1970s and led to Nixon's impeachment in our world, Kennedy's battle with the treasonous forces of conspiracy in the 1960s in the alternative scenario probably would have triggered an implosion in JFK's reputation. Rather than the steady drip of scandal we’ve experienced over the past five decades, the events surrounding a failed JFK assassination might have gotten seriously out-of-hand, and fast.
Many people now see The Warren Commission Report as the greatest work of American fiction published in the twentieth century. Still, it’s been impossible to ignore the importance and validity of the “Oswald acted alone” pushback we've seen recently, from Stephen King’s book to Bill O’Reilly’s Killing Kennedy to legendary prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History. And it’s nothing new. Even back in the immediate aftermath, the Byrds rewrote the popular folk song “He Was a Friend of Mine” to say, “His killing had no purpose / No reason, no rhyme.” In my opinion, that is the wrong sentiment wrapped up in a classic melody.
"After a lifetime of casual reading on the topic compounded by this recent intensity of research, I’m simply swayed that whatever role Lee Harvey Oswald actually played on history's grand stage, his was not a one-man show but one populated by and synchronized with multiple unseen actors. That is the point of view from which I wrote my fictional account."
Since we live in a time of often bitter polarization, it is also worth noting that I’m a lifelong Democrat who remembers when America's two great political parties at least tried to work together for the good of the country. I wrote this book because, to me, its scenario is a fascinating what if, not because of any agenda involving President Kennedy. This alternative history depicts Kennedy — accurately, I believe — as an enormously charismatic man whose intelligence, political mastery and legendary charm could not, ultimately, disguise his deeply human flaws. Those engaged by the events of this story are encouraged to begin their own research and draw their own conclusions.
The plain reality is that Jack Kennedy had a lot of things he was hiding and there were numerous powerful men who wanted him dead. If those conspirators had taken their shots and missed, President Kennedy would have come back at them not only with a vengeance, but also with a carefully constructed strategy. The very existence of Attorney General Robert Kennedy and his family loyalty guarantees that. I’ve come to see this entire story, despite its many working parts and vastly different points-of-view, as the story of two brothers. Had the shots fired in Dallas, Texas missed their target on November 22, 1963, they still would have set the 1960s ablaze, turning John and Robert Kennedy into the original conspiracy theorists. Their story from this alternate world needed to be told and I've enjoyed telling it.
"Surrounded by Enemies: What if Kennedy Survived Dallas?" is available in print, ebook and audiobook formats.
Get Book on Amazon @ SurroundedByEnemies.com
Read More About It First @ WhatIfKennedyLived.com
October 1, 2013
What if Kennedy Lived?
What really would have happened next if John Kennedy survived the ambush at Dealey Plaza?That’s the premise of my new novel, Surrounded by Enemies: What If Kennedy Survived Dallas?, that boldly reimagines a post-1963 political scenario focused on what we now know about the secrets of the Kennedy presidency.
My intention from the beginning has been to engage my readers without resorting to sci-fi gimmicks. That meant not dodging political controversy from the right or the left. Instead, I've tried to follow facts and related assumptions where they practically led without political correctness. This means looking for the balance between not putting the flesh-and-blood John Kennedy on a pedestal but also not writing a hit piece.
While not everyone will agree with all my choices, I've embraced the intrinsic drama as best I know how. Don't just take my word for it, though, here's a recommendation from a man whose work you've seen before:
"I have always had a deep love for classic what-if stories, but the best ones are often the alternate events that probably came within a millisecond of actually happening. That is precisely what Bryce Zabel has done here, painstakingly designing JFK's life post-1963. I have some experience with shattered timelines and altered realities, but this one kept me guessing every page."
— Damon Lindelof, writer/producer, Lost, World War Z,
Star Trek
Timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, Surrounded by Enemies aims to deliver a supercharged but thoroughly plausible alternative narrative of the JFK era. After the charismatic president lives through a horrifying broad daylight assassination attempt, JFK and his attorney-general brother Bobby become the first conspiracy theorists, each determined to strike back at their enemies. t's not the first time I've been down the JFK road:
"Bryce Zabel and I went down the road of revising the Kennedy historical record together on the NBC series Dark Skies. This time instead of giving new meaning to the established JFK chronology, he's created a brand new one altogether. Surrounded by Enemies is an exhilarating ride, full of twists and turns that never were, but surely could have been."
— Melissa Rosenberg, writer/producer, Twilight films, Dexter
Meticulously researched, Surrounded by Enemies: What If Kennedy Survived Dallas? is now available as an eBook through Amazon, iBook, Nook and other sellers, and as an audibook on Audible.com that is compellingly narrated by Edd Hall (the Tonight Show). Within two weeks, it will be available as a print edition. It is the first in a series of alternate history novels under the alt.Worlds imprint from Stellar Productions. Here's a snippet from the Foreword that comes from the dean of alternate history writing:
"Plausible development, building from what we know about what really did go on, and a whacking good story… Surrounded by Enemies delivers on both, big-time. So hold on to your hats, folks. You’re in for quite a ride."
— Harry Turtledove, author, How Few Remain, Guns of the South
It's about the political earthquake and Constitutional crisis that the Kennedy years could easily have turned into. After all, today's historians seem to have reached the conclusion that JFK was skating on thin ice, thanks to his personal indiscretions, always just a headline away from disaster. My co-author of the 2012 book, A.D. After Disclosure, Richard Dolan, wrote the Preface:
"Of all the what-if scenarios ever written about JFK, this is the one that rings true. It is an account that takes us deeper into the clandestine world that JFK himself tried, and ultimately failed, to gain control over during his life in our timeline. In the parallel history of Surrounded by Enemies, Kennedy’s struggle only intensified after Dallas, and the entire nation bore witness."
— Richard M. Dolan, author, UFOs and the National Security State
The 50th anniversary of John Kennedy's death is November 22, 2013. The book -- eBook, tradepaperback and audiobook -- is waiting for you to experience when the subject is being discussed nationwide.
Here's a video that is a news talk show straight from the alternative universe where John Kennedy survived, on their 50th anniversary, talking about his legacy.
If you'd like to know more, please visit our book site, our Facebook page, our YouTube Channel or our Twitter page. The book is available as an eBook, audiobook and print edition. Please join the discussion on our Facebook page and/or leave a review on the Amazon page.
NEW FACEBOOK PAGE @ https://www.facebook.com/surroundedbyenemies
September 21, 2013
Not Killing Kennedy: What if JFK Lived?
For as long as I can remember, people have speculated about what would have happened had JFK survived the attack at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas on 11/22/63.
After spending a lifetime wondering about this, this year, on the eve of the 50th anniversary of those tragic events in 1963, I’ve written a novel that lays out my answer as to what the aftermath might have been.
“Surrounded by Enemies: What if Kennedy Survived Dallas?” provides a controversial answer because it’s not a look through rose-colored glasses about all the great things JFK might have done, nor is it a time-travel adventure about rifts in the space-time continuum. My premise is political, pragmatic and grounded in a basic truth. Namely, that if an assassin or assassins had shot and missed on November 22nd, then President Kennedy would have woken up in the White House on November 23rd, knowing that the day before somebody had tried to execute him in broad daylight on a public street before a global television audience.
SurroundedByEnemies.com - Written by Bryce Zabel - Graphic Art by Lynda Karr
I have some good company in thinking and writing on this subject of John F. Kennedy's survival. Last year, the 800-pound gorilla of fiction, Stephen King, laid out his own vision in his novel, “11/22/63.” This year the political commentator Jeff Greenfield will release his own book, “If Kennedy Lived.” While there have been other treatments in the past, their two books and mine are the 2013 leaders of the "what if" alternate history of the JFK years and the Kennedy Administration. Some thoughts...
Surrounded by Enemies: What if Kennedy Survived Dallas?
Life would not have pinged back to normal -- not for the Kennedy administration, and certainly not for the forces that tried to murder him. There would still have been investigations into the shooting but they would not have been colored by respect and grieving for a martyred President. Instead, the questions would have been asked during a national presidential election. John Kennedy would have found himself in a political fight for survival, even after the actual physical threat of Dallas had passed.
Indeed, I argue that President Kennedy and his brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy might very well have found themselves playing the roles of the nation’s first conspiracy theorists. They would have know far better than most just how many people might have wished JFK could be eliminated.
My novel is presented as a commemorative 50th anniversary retrospective assembled by contemporaneous journalists on the staff of a fictitious newsmagazine, Top Story. Its narrative incorporates professionally designed faux-magazine covers depicting JFK with luminaries he actually meets in my parallel universe, including the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. The iconic cast of 1960s characters also features Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Neil Armstrong, Cassius Clay, Marilyn Monroe, F. Lee Bailey, Lenny Bruce and, of course, Lee Harvey Oswald.
11/22/63
Stephen King’s book, "11/22/63," came out in 2012 in plenty of time to ride the wave of interest in the 50th anniversary commemorations. King’s book couldn’t be more different than “Surrounded by Enemies.” The master of horror has gone for a straight-down-the-line time-travel extravaganza that weighs in at multiple pounds and over 900 pages. All of those pages deal with his protagonist going back in time with the exception of maybe three at the end that deal with what a new lease on life might have done for Kennedy and the world.
King is interested in telling a classic story that asks two key questions: If you had the chance to change the course of history, would you? Would the consequences be what you hoped?
While my main characters are the Kennedy brothers themselves, King tells the story of a thirtysomething Jake Epping, a high-school teacher who gets a chance to go back in time to 1958. He decides to stay there so he can prevent the assassination of President Kennedy five years later.
Honestly, the go-back-in-time-to-save-JFK angle has been played before -- in a 1985 Twilight Zone reboot episode, in a couple of (really) low-budget films and several books. I’ve created an Amazon “Listmania” list that lays it all out if you’re interested.
So King’s approach, seen from 35,000 feet, may not be wholly original but his execution is. It’s an excellent novel. Those few pages that he spends on the aftermath of saving John Kennedy’s life don't seem to be meant to be realistic in any way, so it may be unsatisfying if that’s why you read the book. Also, Stephen King has come to the conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and has written his book from that point-of-view. I don’t buy it (the conclusion) but, as I say, the man is a brilliant writer with a momentous imagination and a command of the craft of writing like few others.
If Kennedy Lived: The First and Second Terms of President John F. Kennedy: An Alternate History
What is known about Jeff Greenfield's new book (besides the fact that it has one of the longest titles out there in the market today) is minimal. "If Kennedy Lived..." doesn’t come out until October, literally just before the countdown to the 50th anniversary.
We do know that it, too, will be a big deal, given Greenfield’s reputation as a political prognosticator and his recent success in the world of alternate history with his other book, “Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan.” Another book with a title, sub-title, and sub-sub-title. I think his publisher must be thinking keywords!
Greenfield, like myself, has worked at CNN but, unlike myself who was just a kid waiting to shake RFK’s hand in the 1968 Oregon primary, Greenfield was writing speeches for him back then.
We can anticipate that Greenfield’s closeness to the Kennedy family, and his mainstream political credentials, will probably make his book a well-informed but, possibly, less adventurous exploration than, say, Stephen King’s and certainly my own. I saw that Greenfield said his book would be “agnostic” on the angle of an assassination conspiracy. I just don’t see how that is possible in a “what if” on the topic, although I’m sure he will show us all when his book comes out.
Not Killing Kennedy
As a dramatist and as a Kennedy passionista (my NBC series Dark Skies began in the Kennedy Administration), I think all three of these selections are a cut above. King, Greenfield and myself all probably hold John Kennedy in relatively similar high esteem. My fellow travelers here seem to come at it from an atheistic (King) or agnostic (Greenfield) POV on the subject of conspiracy. The big difference then is that I think a conspiracy is a fact and have constructed my narrative to tell the “what if” in a way that I think is unique insofar as this sub-genre of Kennedy books has gone.
Here's a video that is a news talk show straight from the alternative universe where John Kennedy survived, on their 50th anniversary, talking about his legacy.
If you'd like to know more, please visit our book site, our Facebook page, our YouTube Channel or our Twitter page. The book is available as an eBook, audiobook and print edition.
Related articles
Corsi's Kennedy overtakes O'Reilly's Kennedy
First Brother: Conspiracy Theorist
If Kennedy Lived
'Parkland' Clip: The Fight to Save Lee Harvey Oswald (EXCLUSIVE)
JFK Art Project Spreads 'Love' Around Dallas
Bestselling author's JFK investigation surges!
JFK: 50 years later "There's still a healing going on"
