Mack Maloney’s Wingman Series: Backstory

When many folks think of World War III fiction, the classic titles of the genre generally come to mind at once, like Red Storm Rising, Team Yankee and Third World War. But it’s worth remembering that the WWIII genre is deep and offers a wide variety of titles to suit a variety of tastes. There …

World War III Themes In Contemporary Pop Culture Part III

Over the last decade, Hollywood has shown an increasing reluctance to make any films that might portray the People’s Republic of China in a bad light. The reasons for this are simple. The international market is of great importance for the major studios. China makes up a large chunk of that market, so appeasing the …

World War III Themes In Contemporary Pop Culture Part II

In the later half of the 00s, at a time when WWIII-themes in fiction, television and cinema were scarce, a handful of notable books and television shows were released. Together, they managed to keep the WWIII genre afloat through some difficult times. The 2006 TV series Jericho was one of those life rafts. The show …

World War III Themes In Contemporary Pop Culture Part I

The portrayal of World War III in contemporary works of fiction and movies is notably different from those works produced in the last decade of the Cold War. The fall of the Soviet Union 1991 ushered in a quiet period on the WWIII front that lasted through the next fifteen years with a handful of …

WWIII Pop Culture: Amerika

The 1987 television miniseries Amerika is barely remembered these days, and is regarded as one of the biggest flops in television history. And it was a flop, there is no disputing that. Amerika was a seven night, fourteen-and-a-half hour marathon miniseries depicting life in the US one decade after a Soviet takeover. Preceding its release, …

WWIII Pop Culture: By Dawn’s Early Light Part II

By Dawn’s Early Light’s greatest asset is its combination of cast and perspective. The story structure is the engine that propels the plot. Instead of one storyline, By Dawn’s gives the viewer four major plotlines moving in the same direction, all closing in on the same convergence point. It has more in common with a …

WWIII Pop Culture: By Dawn’s Early Light Part I

Nuclear war movies generally share similar plotlines, components, and even underlying messages. In probably 99% of these films the viewer is treated to graphic scenes showing the wanton destruction of cities, and wholesale slaughter of millions of innocent men, women, and children. The obligatory towering mushroom clouds and flashes of blinding white light are presented …

World War III Pop Culture: The Day After Part III

Even though The Day After received accolades, and rave reviews this doesn’t mean the finish product was a flawless movie. There were mistakes, just as there are in almost every movie ever made. Some were noticeable and identified by many viewers rather quickly. Others were more subtle and provincial, picked up mainly by residents of …

World War III Pop Culture: The Day After Part II

The lead up to nuclear war presented in The Day After is a textbook example of a late Cold War era escalatory scenario. It is practically an exact copy of the ones used in Title X wargames at the time, and very similar to what could be found in military publications of the ‘80s. Realism …

World War III Pop Culture: The Day After Part I

On Sunday, 20 November, 1983 a distinctly unique television movie aired on ABC here in the United States. The subject of the movie was one considered to be taboo at the time, and to an extent it remains so today: Nuclear war. Specifically, the effects of a nuclear conflict on a group of average American …