Posted on 04/09/2002 1:48:41 PM PDT by giotto
JOHN SHIRLEY’S GLIMPSES OF THE 21ST CENTURY American planes, especially the slower gunships, are damaged or sunk by stinger missiles originally provided by the United States, but Northern Alliance forces backed by American Special Forces troops storm Afghanistan... Thousands of young Pakistani men are killed when they join the Taliban in sympathy. The Northern Alliance overruns Kabul, takes over. Though some moderate Taliban leaders had been promised a place in the new government by the US, the Northern Alliance executes them.
A coup by Muslim hardliners takes over Pakistan resulting in removal of all US military presence. The Northern Alliance dominates Afghanistan and deals harshly with guerillas opposed to it, engaging in atrocities. The US is embarrassed by its former ally’s excesses and its treatment of women that is scarcely better than the Taliban’s.
The USA strikes at other al-Qaeda targets in the Middle East. Propaganda by al-Qaeda sympathizers continues to convince naive Muslims in the area that the Mossad staged the WTC attack–despite massive evidence to the contrary and bin Laden admitting involvement–and that the USA is in league with Israel to destroy Islam utterly. This fuels al-Qaeda with personnel and money–money which is primarily stockpiled through intermediaries in old-style Arab money exchange methodologies unreachable by sanctions or "freezes" on bank accounts.
Osama bin Laden is killed or captured and instantly becomes a martyr. Those he’s trained to take over al-Qaeda do so and it continues without skipping a beat.
The USA waffles. They carry out "pinpoint" bombing and one or two commando raids, but lack the will to invade countries–like Syria–protecting al-Qaeda. The US builds up more ground troops but is reluctant to use them.
A nuclear-powered American aircraft carrier is destroyed by al-Qaeda suicide bombers in small boats who target its power plant and nuclear fuel and radioactive substances are discharged into the Persian Gulf-- or the Mediterranean or Arabian Sea --and begin to sicken thousands of people, most of them Muslim.
Meanwhile al-Qaeda is based in Pakistan and Africa and Syria and offshore of the USA. Cheap freighters and fishing trawlers are used as a base of operations and low-grade, "obsolete" short-trajectory missiles are fired from improvised, jerryrigged launchers (which can be detached from decks and hidden below) at USA coastal cities, exploding overhead, as designed, spreading clouds of anthrax or similar biologic threat. Thousands die. US Coast Guardsmen show authentic heroism when the modus operandi of this threat is recognized and they go into action.
President creates the new National Security Force with special powers of search and seizure and arrest grudgingly granted by congress in order to prevent more loss of life on the American mainland…
Something bordering on martial law develops in the USA but doesn’t quite become a police state, although US citizens are often startled when certain neighbors are quietly whisked away in the night never to reappear. However most of these ‘disappeared’ people are merely in custody and really were connected to terrorists. Checkpoints for random searches of large trucks become commonplace. People accept, by degree, more and more security. American Neighborhood Security Leagues are established, these are like Neighborhood Protection groups but aimed at sniffing out terrorism and they sometimes cross the line into vigilantism.
A major American city–probably a coastal city–is lost to plutonium dispersal (or sarin nerve gas) carried out by al-Qaeda. Almost everyone in it is killed, millions are dead. This city is quite possibly Miami as it’s near staging areas in Mexico and South America. (The governments of those countries are not sympathetic to the terrorists, they’re just inefficient about preventing their staging activities.)
(The USA redoubles its armed forces build-up. Massive numbers of ground troops are trained. But they re not deployed.)
In response to the destruction of this major American city, there is widespread anti-Arab sentiment and Arabs are targeted by yahoos, yokels and frightened suburbanites. There are waves of refugees of Arab-American people from the USA to Canada. There is further polarization between Christians and people of other faiths. Some highly Christian-Fundamentalist areas of the USA militate for more "autonomy" and there is a move toward a Christian state–which is quickly suppressed by the new Security Forces.
The usual conspiracy-junkie nitwits spread the rumor that all of this is a UN/New World Order plot to take over the USA using this crisis as an excuse, fostering another wave of domestic terrorism further confusing all issues.
Saudi Arabia is taken over by al-Qaeda sympathizers in the Armed Forces. Osama’s protege takes over Saudi Arabia, becomes Mullah/dictator.
Another smaller US city is lost to a Hiroshima-sized nuclear weapon which is constructed in the USA from smuggled-in components.
Stunned by the loss of millions of citizens, America finally decides the only way to suppress terrorists is to completely take over their bases of operation, i.e. the countries they operate from, especially (at this point) Saudi Arabia. America declares war on select countries and invokes NATO charter rules from the 1940s, pulling reluctant European allies into the Third World War. WWIII is non-nuclear, except when the terrorists get small nukes. The fear of escalation is widespread.
Iran and India reluctantly side with the USA. Russia remains supportive but does not provide troops.
The US finally commits ground troops and there are several years of real war. Nerve gas plays a major part in the war. New technologies are brought into play including exquisitely controlled remote vehicles–both ground and air robots–and this turns the tide. Many ‘soldiers’ are sitting in trailers or bunkers way behind the lines looking into monitors operating vehicles (some of them no bigger than a paper airplane) remotely, via the tiny TV cameras on them. They send the smaller ones into enemy caves, camps, right past oblivious sentries, and detonate them once inside. But there are more than a million casualties, from all the various sides, many of them civilian. Cancer in the local populations is widespread in later years due to depleted-uranium dust from American artillery and minor exposure to diluted nerve gas.
The allies take Saudi Arabia, Syria, Pakistan–the latter is annexed to our allies, India. This leads to extensive guerilla war against the "occupiers."
Sympathetic puppet governments make backroom deals with American corporations to root out Muslim extremism. Muslim-extremist terrorism, as a result, falls to near nil.
Widespread fallout from plutonium terrorism, biowar-plague of various kinds, economic chaos and famine are now a problem worldwide and the USA. In many areas one in two people have some form of cancer as a result of the war’s many toxins.
All this results in a call for action which is countered by a fear of military dictatorship —these two considerations cry out for one solution: A United States of the World. And the UN votes to create one, more definitely powerful than the UN. And legislative bodies within member states ratify it.
The new UN/USW is not dominated by the USA but has a tendency to be led by it. It has one particular characteristic that makes it especially different from the UN: A massive international army with the will and empowerment to instantly invade (facilitated by pinpoint drops of International Special Forces from orbit) which enforces the United Nations Human Rights laws and anti-terrorist laws and laws governing egregious pollution.
This organization, further characterized by its large internationally-staffed military and its decisiveness with respect to certain baseline rules, is seen as the only means to control a feverishly populated, troubled, volatile global society. It’s the way to prevent a fourth world war. This loose armature of something like world-government (though they’re careful not to call it that), is also characterized by its hands-off attitude in all other respects.
All member nations retain sovereignty *except with respect to certain fixed rules* about fostering terrorism, weapons limitations, pollution, and so on. Nations refusing to become members are out in the economic cold, are excluded from trade, and soon request membership.
Paranoid American isolationists and religious fundamentalists claim this is the beginning of Magog or some other bugaboo from Revelations, and try to resist. They are ruthlessly put down.
This brings us up to the year 2016 or so... NEXT in Part Two (coming soon):
PART ONE
Genetic engineering and bioengineering catch-up and revolution…
I like the "invading Saudi Arabia" part, though...
Yes.
CyberBunk is the better term for it.
Thanks for posting this piece!
general thrust makes some sense....
That's what I thought too, but Gibson has called Shirley "cyberpunks' Patient Zero, first locus of the virus, certifiably virulent." Neuromancer (1984) was significantly influenced by Shirley's 1980 novel City Come-Walkin'.
I'm a little unclear on what distinguishes cyberpunk from ordinary science fiction. A list of important cyberpunk authors I found included, believe it or not, Mary Shelley. As to who fathered this particular monster, I guess it's a matter of opinion.
Kewl!
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