The Lucky Strike

eBook

Published Oct. 1, 2009 by PM Press.

ISBN:: 978-1-60486-085-6

(1 review)

Combining dazzling speculation with a profoundly humanist vision, Kim Stanley Robinson is known as not only the most literary but also the most progressive (read “radical”) of today’s top rank SF authors. His bestselling Mars Trilogy tells the epic story of the future colonization of the red planet, and the revolution that inevitably follows. The Years of Rice and Salt is based on a devastatingly simple idea: If the medieval plague had wiped out all of Europe, what would our world look like today? His novel Galileo’s Dream is a stunning combination of historical drama and far-flung space opera, in which the ten dimensions of the universe itself are rewoven to ensnare history’s most notorious torturers.

“The Lucky Strike,” the classic and controversial story Robinson has chosen for PM’s Outspoken Authors series, begins on a lonely Pacific island, where a crew of untested men are about to take off in …

Combining dazzling speculation with a profoundly humanist vision, Kim Stanley Robinson is known as not only the most literary but also the most progressive (read “radical”) of today’s top rank SF authors. His bestselling Mars Trilogy tells the epic story of the future colonization of the red planet, and the revolution that inevitably follows. The Years of Rice and Salt is based on a devastatingly simple idea: If the medieval plague had wiped out all of Europe, what would our world look like today? His novel Galileo’s Dream is a stunning combination of historical drama and far-flung space opera, in which the ten dimensions of the universe itself are rewoven to ensnare history’s most notorious torturers.

“The Lucky Strike,” the classic and controversial story Robinson has chosen for PM’s Outspoken Authors series, begins on a lonely Pacific island, where a crew of untested men are about to take off in an untried aircraft with a deadly payload that will change our world forever. Until something goes wonderfully wrong …

Plus: “A Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions,” in which Robinson dramatically deconstructs “alternate history” to explore what might have been if things had gone differently over Hiroshima that day. As with all Outspoken Author books, there is a deep interview and autobiography: at length, in-depth, no-holds-barred, and all-bets-off: an extended tour though the mind and work, the history and politics of our Outspoken Author. Surprises are promised.

3 editions

Phil in SF reviewed The Lucky Strike by Kim Stanley Robinson (PM Press Outspoken Authors, #2)

Politically thoughtful, but I couldn't engage with the story

3 stars

This book has three parts: the story "The Lucky Strike", an essay by Kim Stanley Robinson expounding on the themes of the story, and an interview of the author by Terry Bisson.

The Lucky Strike imagines that the crew of the Enola Gay are not the ones to fly Little Boy to Japan. Instead, the bombardier on The Lucky Strike is very torn about killing 100,000 people and imagines himself saying no, leaping out of the airplane, and worse. I think we should examine our motivations for bombing Hiroshima, but I don't know enough to have a moral opinion whether it was correct in the time. Nevertheless I'm deeply uncomfortable with the choice we did make. Maybe that's why all the second-guessing bombardier Frank January does in the story doesn't resonate; it repeats things I've thought about myself. I can't say "don't read this" because my inability to connect with …

This book has three parts: the story "The Lucky Strike", an essay by Kim Stanley Robinson expounding on the themes of the story, and an interview of the author by Terry Bisson.

The Lucky Strike imagines that the crew of the Enola Gay are not the ones to fly Little Boy to Japan. Instead, the bombardier on The Lucky Strike is very torn about killing 100,000 people and imagines himself saying no, leaping out of the airplane, and worse. I think we should examine our motivations for bombing Hiroshima, but I don't know enough to have a moral opinion whether it was correct in the time. Nevertheless I'm deeply uncomfortable with the choice we did make. Maybe that's why all the second-guessing bombardier Frank January does in the story doesn't resonate; it repeats things I've thought about myself. I can't say "don't read this" because my inability to connect with this probably says more about me than it does the story.

However, Robinson's essay on historical theories, whether they are good to apply to the Hiroshima bombing, and what to make of the alternate possibilities is also not something I connected with. I'm not interested in theories of history like the "great man" theory.

And lastly, I did find some interesting tidbits in Bisson's interview of Robinson, but most of the questions are pedestrian. In some cases, Robinson turns them into something interesting. In other cases, particularly on his writing methods, not so interesting. (Maybe writers will get something from those? 🤷)

Subjects

Fiction
Alternative histories (Fiction)
History
Fiction, alternative history
Japan, fiction
Interviews
FICTION
Alternative History