March Madness WWIII Style: Final Four Part II

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Two more blockbuster books squaring off. Winner goes to the championship bracket and the loser goes…..well, back to the bookcase. 😊

Alas Babylon (Blue Region Champion) vs Team Yankee (Gold Region Champion)

Two World War III-themed novels with little in common between them, unlike yesterday’s competitors. The time periods in which these two works were published only serves to widen the contrast even more. Alas Babylon was published in 1959 and fits the bill as an apocalyptic novel with a healthy dose of technothriller DNA. Team Yankee, published in 1987, is a purebred technothriller regarded as a pioneer of the modern day technothriller genre. Differences aside, both novels captured public attention and were quite popular. Alas Babylon highlighted how a hypothetical nuclear World War III would affect the residents of a small Florida town, while Team Yankee focused on the life of a US Army tank-heavy company-sized unit in a largely conventional World War III.

Alas Babylon’s war was a relatively short-lived affair, fought over a period of 1-3 days and engulfing most of the world. The significance of the military aspect in this book is apparent from the first page. Randal Bragg, the main character, is a Korean War veteran. As conditions deteriorate in his town, Bragg unconsciously turns to his training and combat experiences to guide him through unfamiliar situations and sets the tone for his demeanor in the aftermath of the nuclear exchange.

His brother, Mark, is an active-duty USAF O-6 assigned to SAC headquarter in Omaha as an intelligence officer. Through his eyes the readers are given the backstory and explanation of why and how global conditions have deteriorated. The final minutes of peace, as well as the first minutes of the war are also presented via Mark Bragg. This perspective will leave a lasting imprint on the reader. Pat Frank, the author of Alas Babylon, did his homework well. He presented a realistic (for the time period)  war scenario, and the military details in the narrative were unlike anything seen to that point.

In essence, Frank was the Tom Clancy of the late 1950s. The details, from SAC operations to the infighting at the Pentagon between admirals in favor of submarines and those who supported aircraft carriers, was on target. Frank’s descriptions of nuclear attacks and their aftereffects were graphic and authentic. On the downside, the book is not a traditional WWIII read. The post-war period is where the focus is centered. Between the time of Orlando’s destruction and the arrival of USAF rescue personnel roughly twelve months later, the military aspect is minimal.

Team Yankee’s center of gravity is World War III entirely. In the pre-war passages the situation and characters are introduced. The World War III scenario established in Third World War is used by author Harold Coyle as the backdrop once the balloon goes up. However, the prologue is made up of news story excerpts that set the stage for a lead up to war that is quite different from that found in Hackett’s book, a fact that has never been explained to my knowledge.

Team Yankee is an average company-sized unit commanded by Captain Sean Bannon, a relatively average US Army O-3. We watch him and his unit fight the war from start to finish, mainly through the eyes of Bannon, his officers and NCOs. Instead of the big picture, Team Yankee concentrates on a small piece of the battlefield and one unit. The experiences of Bannon and his men move the plot along from the first battle at the border through to the last shots of the war somewhere in East Germany. Readers are treated to a detailed and realistic picture of the team at war. Unit tactics, and weapons effects highlight a vivid look at how a NATO-WP war in Germany could’ve looked in the late 1980s. Coyle uses his own experiences as an armor officer to construct a narrative about men and machines at war. The end result is novel that spent a lengthy amount of time on the NY Times Bestseller List and captured the imaginations of most of its readers. Although it did not have the level of influence on popular culture that Alas Babylon did, Team Yankee has continued to remain relevant even decades after the end of the Cold War. Mostly because soldiers and their wartime experiences always make a good yarn. Yet even beyond the literary world, Team Yankee has been influential and remains popular. Just ask anyone who is into miniature wargaming (Steve, John and a few others, I’m looking at you). This last factor establishes the fact that Team Yankee is still alive and kicking in modern times. Whereas, aside from periodic reprints and occasional talk in the Sci Fi literature world, Alas Babylon has been fairly quiet through the first two decades of the 21^st Century.

At the end of the day, that’s enough for Bannon’s tanks and PCs to emerge victorious.

Winner: Team Yankee