The Earth War

Joe Mauser #2+

by Mack Reynolds

In the 21st Century the face of war had changed. Atomic weapons -- out! Bazookas and rockets -- nyet! Machine guns -- maybe. The newest secret weapon -- gliders! East and West had managed an uneasy truce in the arms race by banning ail weapons developed before 1900 -- and restricting wars to local disputes between corporations or companies and unions. It was a crazy way of doing things -- but it worked…until an ambitious Major upset the apple cart, and threw the world’s peace into deadly peril! In this exciting picture of the next century, veteran science-fiction writer MACK REYNOLDS combines mastery of a unique setting with a fast-action story of combat and intrigue.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction

142 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Dallas McCord "Mack" Reynolds was an American science fiction writer. His pen names included Clark Collins, Mark Mallory, Guy McCord, Dallas Ross and Maxine Reynolds. Many of his stories were published in "Galaxy Magazine" and "Worlds of If Magazine". He was quite popular in the 1960s, but most of his work subsequently went out of print.

He was an active supporter of the Socialist Labor Party; his father, Verne Reynolds, was twice the SLP's Presidential candidate, in 1928 and 1932. Many of MR's stories use SLP jargon such as 'Industrial Feudalism' and most deal with economic issues in some way

Many of Reynolds' stories took place in Utopian societies, and many of which fulfilled L. L. Zamenhof's dream of Esperanto used worldwide as a universal second language. His novels predicted much that has come to pass, including pocket computers and a world-wide computer network with information available at one's fingertips.

Many of his novels were written within the context of a highly mobile society in which few people maintained a fixed residence, leading to "mobile voting" laws which allowed someone living out of the equivalent of a motor home to vote when and where they chose.

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Earth War was serialized in two installments in the March and April issues of John W. Campbell's Analog in 1963, during the time that Conde Nast was publishing it as a bedsheet magazine. It appeared under the title Frigid Fracas, an obvious Cold War (forgive me) analog. It's the second of his four Joe Mauser novels. Pyramid published it in mass market paperback format in July of that year with the new title and a nice John Schoenherr cover that looks somewhat like his great Dune works. Baen published this one stitched together with the first book, Mercenary from Tomorrow, as a collaboration with Michael Banks in 1986, several years after Reynolds' death, but I prefer the original versions. It's a socioeconomic satire set in the future 21st century, as most of Reynolds' work seems to be, the central conceit being that war has been rigidly regulated and all weapons developed before 1900 are prohibited. The wars are fought by mercenaries and only occur between local companies or corporations and unions and serve as popular bread-and-circus style entertainments. Reynolds is a pretty good storyteller, and he does manage to tell an adventurous military tale between his ruminations on government and unions and economics, but it's a near thing at times.

[Brendan Huddleston · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5

This is a stereotypical low-quality 1960s sci-fi book where it ultimately highlights the tensions between the West and the Soviet Union.

While it had potential to be really interesting, I found that I didn’t care for almost any characters as they would randomly disappear and reappear thought the story. Also, the plot tended to jump around sporadically to the point where it felt the action scenes could’ve been drawn out more while there was far too much inaction. With little setting descriptions to aid the storytelling, I was left underwhelmed. I would not recommend.

[Tbfrank · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not one of Reynold's better efforts, this novel (the second of four in a series) is notable for its depiction of a stratified Western society controlled by the top 1% 'Upper-Upper's' with the rest frozen into career categories and hooked on televised battles and tranquilizers while surviving on 'inalienable stock' (a variation of welfare) issued at birth; the restriction of warfare to pre-1900 armaments and pitting military forces between mega-corporations and as well as unions; and the notion that despite ideological differences, the West-world and the Sov-bloc have become mirror images of each other. Political or national/international war has been abolished, though the Sov-bloc substitutes wars against rebels for company-based wars. The characterization is minimal, even stereotypical. The action scenes are the better written than the rest of the novel, much of which comes across as didactic. This book is clearly a product of its age.

[Tentatively, Convenience · Rating 4 out of 5]

review of
Mack Reynolds's The Earth War
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 30, 2023

I'm glad Mack Reynolds wrote so many novels. I'll never read them all so there's always the chance that I'll discover another one to enjoy. This is at least the 21st one I've read. There're a total of 85, according to the Great Oracle. The last one I reviewed was The Fracas Factor ( https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ) wch came after The Earth War in the 4 bks of the Joe Mauser series. By reviewing them in reverse order I'm causing a fracture in time & yr whole existence has probably been wiped out. Don't sweat it.

We begin w/ a variety of names for inebriation.

"In other eras he might have been described as swacked, stewed, stoned, smashed, crocked, cockeyed, soused, shellacked, polluted, potted, tanked, lit, stinko, pie-eyed, three sheets in the wind, or simply drunk.

"In his own time, Major Joseph Mauser, Category Military, Mid-Middle Caste, was drenched." - p 5

The reader is introduced to Freddy Solingen, a Telly reporter who specializes in the fracases.

"He looked up, beginning his grimace of discouragement. "Go away," he muttered nastily. The other's identity came through slowly. One of the Telly news reporters who'd covered the fracas; for the moment he couldn't recall the name.

"Joe Mauser held the common prejudices of the Category Military for Telly and all its ramifications. Not only for the drooling multitudes who sat before their sets and vicariously participated in the sadism of combat while their trank bemused brains refused contemplation of the reality of their way of life." - pp 6-7

Indeed. How many people get wasted & take a thrill ride watching a movie about a serial killer? They wdn't find it so entertaining if a serial killer were making THEM their victim.

""You know one of the big reasons you're only a major?"

"Joe Mauser looked at him.

"The Telly reporter said, "You haven't got any moustache."" - p 9

That's why after I got 12 moustaches on my head ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/H1979mo... ) I went from not even being in the military to being a Major General for the military in a country where I'm not even a citizen! ( https://medium.com/@idioideo/what-am-... ) & I'm no manufactured hero, either!

""Come off it, Major. You've been around long enough to know heroes are made, not born. We stopped having much regard for real heroes a long time ago. Lindbergh and Byrd were a couple of the last we turned out. After that, we left it to the Norwegians to do such things as crew the Kon-Tiki, or to the English to top Everest—whether or not the Britisher made the last hundred feet slung over the shoulder of a Sherpa." - p 13

"Freddy Solingen laid it on the line. "When it's all been accomplished, you'll be an Upper. I'm ambitious too, Joe. Just as ambitious as you are. I need an In. You'll be it. I'll make you. I have the know-how. I can do it. When you're made, you'll make me."" - p 14

Well, I guess it's better than being a Downer, like the following:

"["]What I was thinking was that at first the Roman games were athletic affairs without bloodshed. It wasn't until 264 B.C. that three pairs of slaves were sent in to fight with swords. By 183 B.C. the number had gone up to sixty pairs. By 145 B.C. ninety pairs fought for three days.

""But that was just the beginning. They really got underway with the dictators. Sulla put a hundred lions into the arena, but Julius Ceaser topped that with four hundred and Pompey that with six hundred, plus over four hundred leopards and twenty elephants. Augustus beat them all with three thousand five hundred elephants and had ten thousand men killed in a series of games. But it was the emperors who really expanded the ludi. Trajan had ten thousand animals killed in the arena to celebrate his victory over the Dacians, not to mention eleven thousand people.["]" - p 34

Why stop there, right? How about over a million people w/ a plandemic?

"He said flatly, "I've never had much regard for those categories in which a man makes his living battening on human sorrow or fear, Sam. That includes in my book such fields as religion, undertakers and their affiliates, and even most doctors for that matter." He added, to explain the last inclusion, "They profit too much from illness, for my satisfaction."" - p 49

But why stop w/ gladiators? Let's come a little closer to the present, shall we?

''No, no. In the First War. All those early fighters. Baron Von Richtofen, the German, Albert Ball, the Englishman, René Fonck, the Frenchman. And all the rest. Werner Voss and Ernst Udet, and Rickenbacker and Luke Short. Flying those rickety Fokkers and Albatross, Spads and Nieuports.

"Joe nodded at last. "I remember now. They'd have a Vickers of Spandau mounted so as to fire between the propellor blades. As I remember, that German, Richtofem, was top in the genre with some eighty victories to his credit."

""Okay. They called them dogfights. One aircraft against another. You're going to reintroduce the whole thing."" - p 55

Ah.. Those were the days, right? Early airplanes w/ extremely limited flying capabilities being flown under circumstances where it's a desperate kill-or-be-killed situation & in wch the plane might fail at any moment? It's so romantic! Personally, I'd rather be fucking. Well.. Freddy & Joe's little plan didn't quite work out &..

"Cogswell said brittlely, "They found against the use of aircraft, other than free balloons, in any military action. They threw the book, Mauser. The court ruled that you, Robert Flaubert and James Hideka be stripped of rank and forbidden the Category Military. You have also been fined all stock shares in your possession other than those inalienably yours as a Westworld citizen."" - p 75

Don't be so down, Joe - so what if your dogfight turned into a catfight? Everything might just work out for the best.

"He looked again at the telly-mike on his desk. "Miss Mikhail, in my office here is Joseph Mauser, now Mid-Middle in caste. Please take the necessary steps to raise him to Lower-Upper, immediately. I'll clear this with Tom, and he'll authorize it as recommended through the White House. Is that clear?"

"In a daze, Joe could hear the receptionist's voice. "Yes, sir. Joseph Mauser to be raised to Low-Upper caste immediately."" - p 92

"Over the years, the Frigid Fracas had laid its chill on tourism, so that now travel between West-world and Sov-world was all but unknown, and even visiting the Neut-world was considered a bit far out and somewhat suspect of going beyond the old-time way of doing things." - p 93

I'm sure that you, dear reader, have been quick enuf to realize that in the above "Frigid Fracas" = Cold Cuts &/or Cold Storage & that the whole passage is a metaphor for running a deli. Same goes for the following passage in wch code is being used to discuss wch is better: bagels or rolls?

"["]Perhaps, for a moment, we four can lower barriers enough for me to explain that whilst in the West-world you hold your fracases to," he began enumerating on his fingers, "one, settle disputes between business competitors, or between corporations and unions; two, to train soldiers for your defense requirements; three, to keep bemused a potentially dangerous lower class . . ."" - p 97

It seems that the argument in favor of bagels is gradually dominating the debate.

"["]Marx once wrote that when true Socialism had arrived, the formula would be, from each according to his abilities and to each according to his needs. Unhappily, due to the fact that the Proletarian Paradise is surrounded by potential enemies, we have not as yet established this formula. Instead, it is now from each according to his abilities and to each according to his contribution. Consequently, the most useful members of our society are drawn into the ranks of the Party, and, contributing the most, are most highly rewarded. The Party consists of somewhat less than one per cent of the population."

""And is for all practical purposes, hereditary," Andersen or Dickson said." - p 98

Ha ha! Reynolds is a 'man-after-my-own-heart', or whatever the expression is. He criticizes both the West-world & the Sov-world. It's worth keeping in mind that: "From 1946–49, Reynolds worked as a national organizer for the SLP" [Socialist Labor Party] but that "the publication of How to Retire without Money, to which Reynolds contributed under the byline Bob Belmont, led the National Executive Committee of the SLP to charge Reynolds with "supporting the fraudulent claims of capitalist apologists, viz, that capitalism offers countless opportunities to those who are 'alert'" and caused Reynolds to resign his membership from the SLP." ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mack_Re... ) As such, he was in a good position to be aware of the foibles of both of these opposing ideologies.

I went to Hungary in 1997 for a 3 part Neoist festival (see "Hungarian": https://youtu.be/QBTFTpscd4M?t=3684 ) & I DID notice that Hungarian food seemed monotonous in contrast to what I was accustomed to. Paprika, e.g., was heavily used & meat dominated. There was one vegetarian restaurant in Budapest called the Marquis de Salat.

"From the first, she gloried in pörkölt, the veal stew with paprika sauce, in rostélyos, the round steak potted in a still hotter paprika sauce, in halászlé, the fish soup which is Hungary's challenge to French bouillabaise, and threatened her lithe figure with her consumption of rétes, the Magyar strudel. All these washed down with Szamorodni or a Hungarian Riseling, the despair of a hundred generations of connoisseurs due to its inability to travel. When liqueurs were called for, barack, the highly distilled apricot brandy which was still the national tipple, was her choice, if not Tokay Aszu, the sweet nectar wine, once allowed only to be consumed by nobility, so precious was it considered." - pp 101-102

Reynolds seems to've been not only a politically theoretically advanced thinker but also significantly pragmatic. Whenever he gets into details about something physical rather than theoretical I always appreciate the clarity of what he presents.

"Joe explained. "The knife designed by Jim Bowie was made by a smith named James Black, of Washington, Arkansas. Bowie made himself so notorious with it that the blade became world famous and Black made quite a few exact copies. Various other outfits tried to duplicate his work, but actually none succeeded in producing the perfect balance in such a large knife that made it practical for throwing. It turns over once in thirty feet exactly. All I had to do was get Rákóczi fifteen feet away from me, and he'd had it. And his own knife, when he tried to reciprocate, was off balance."" - p 126

"["]Marx and Engels wrote that following the revolution the State would wither away." The colonel laughed acidly. "Instead, in the Sov-world it continually strengthened itself. A new class, as the Yuoslavian Milovan Djilas called it, had been born."" - p 132

& I have a bk by Djilas called Memoir of a Revolutionary, wch is the 2nd volume of his life story, wch I still haven't read yet. To quote from the back inner jacket bio from this:

"Until his expulsion from the Communist party in 1954, Milovan Djilas was a Vice-President and one of Tito's chief associates. Since then he has twice been imprisoned for periods totalling more than nine years."

Yugoslavia has long been of interest to me largely b/c I was once lovers w/ a Yugoslavian woman who told me that Tito's positive characteristic was that he managed to keep the various ethnic groups functioning cooperatively w/ the unifying state:

"After the Allied victory in World War II, Yugoslavia was set up as a federation of six republics, with borders drawn along ethnic and historical lines: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. In addition, two autonomous provinces were established within Serbia: Vojvodina and Kosovo. Each of the republics had its own branch of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia party and a ruling elite, and any tensions were solved on the federal level. The Yugoslav model of state organisation, as well as a "middle way" between planned and liberal economy, had been a relative success, and the country experienced a period of strong economic growth and relative political stability up to the 1980s, under Josip Broz Tito. After his death in 1980, the weakened system of federal government was left unable to cope with rising economic and political challenges." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup...

Once Tito was no longer around, Yugoslavia fell into civil war w/in roughly a decade. That aside, here's a brief section from near the end of Memoir of a Revolutionary that'' give the reader a feel for who he was:

"Dedijer insisted on my meeting with Ribnikar, whom I hadn't known personally, to attempt to win him over. That was in the fall of 1940.

"After a long discussion at the first dinner party at Ribnikar's villa, I forced him to waver. After the second dinner party we parted friends. After the third dinner party he was convinced that the Trotskyites were not only wrong, but connected with the fascist secret service.

"Jara was harder to break. But before long she also accepted our positions. She was much younger than her husband, and to while away the time she wrote Surrealistic verse and cast longing looks at other men. She even tried to seduce me, but she was not successful. Not because she wasn't good-looking, but because I stood firm on my Communist moral standards, which I myself had helped establish, and because I couldn't imagine any other relationship with the wife of a friend. Our relationship, which she has incorrectly described in one of her books, evolved into a certain fondness, of which her husband was aware and which never exceeded the proper limits, regardless of what may have been on her mind." - p 377, Milovan Djilas's Memoir of a Revolutionary, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1st edition, hardback, 1973

& that's that. As always, Reynolds manages to be thoughtful at multiple levels while writing an easily readable & entertaining pulp novel. Bravo!

[Joachim Boaz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full review: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...

2.75/5 (Below Average)

"First serialized as “Frigid Fracas” in the March, April, and July 1963 issues of Analog, ed. John W. Campbell, Jr. I am unsure how much was modified for the 1964 novelization.

In part due to my recent focus on science fiction that references the organized labor movement, I decided to return to Mack Reynolds after a fourteen-year hiatus. Reynolds’ radical political affiliations intrigue [...]"

[Tom Tancredi · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's Mack Reynolds. the characters talk like it's a noir, the politics are cold-war, the plot is random, and the love interest is pulpy. What are you doing tonight that is better than this? Probably nothing, that's what. Light a cigar and read it with your favorite beverage. And slap you wife's rear - you married her for a reason.

[Joachim Boaz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full review: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...

2.75/5 (Below Average)

"First serialized as “Frigid Fracas” in the March, April, and July 1963 issues of Analog, ed. John W. Campbell, Jr. I am unsure how much was modified for the 1964 novelization.

In part due to my recent focus on science fiction that references the organized labor movement, I decided to return to Mack Reynolds after a fourteen-year hiatus. Reynolds’ radical political affiliations intrigue [...]"

[Limopilot · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a decent read - A bit slow, but a good socio-political sci-fi that so many writers have attempted. I liked the way that Reynolds withdrew the human race from the less than intelligent view of war (in his eyes).
It was well paced and short enough to enjoy and not be bored with.