THE LUNA MISSILE CRISIS

In this SF novel, an alien mothership blunders into a historic Soviet space flight, triggering conflicts and mayhem between Russia, America, and the extraterrestrials.

SF authors Bruno and Castle recast the 1960s Cold War with an alien encounter of the unfortunate kind rather than Cubans. A vast mothership carrying an amphibious race (the Vulbathi) materializes in 1961, by chance—or perhaps God’s design; a few Roman Catholic characters ponder this—in the path of Yuri Gagarin’s manned space flight, killing the pioneer cosmonaut. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, assuming American aggression, launches his nuclear arsenal, which the advanced Vulbathi divert but don’t exactly neutralize. A belt of Eastern European countries becomes the “Dead Curtain,” irradiated and strewn with alien refuse and weird aftereffects (shades of Arkady and Boris Strugetsky’s first-contact classic, Roadside Picnic). Three years later, the Vulbathi—known in human slang as “Toads”—sojourn on the moon in an uneasy détente with Soviet, American, and Chinese officials, who covet their superscience and maintain peaceful relations despite the traumatic history and the black market in copied Toad gadgets and arms. Kyle McCoy was a foot soldier in the early Dead Curtain American-Russian-Vulbathi skirmishes who miraculously negotiated a cease-fire. Now, he is prominent in the DAR—not the Daughters of the American Revolution but the Department of Alien Relations. He is invited to an interspecies summit meeting to chart a future. But deadly sabotage, assassination, and terror ensue. Meanwhile, it goes unappreciated that present at the scene is not really Kyle but his ne’er-do-well twin brother, Connor, a junkie, con man, and part-time Hollywood actor, who switched places. Yes, that’s right, and more than one character marvels at this groaning cliché. The authors’ hell-for-leather approach brims with battles, betrayals, and cartoony villains, including a recurring New York City Mafia crime lord (who ultimately gets a more positive evaluation than the statesmen and politicians). President John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Neil Armstrong, and J. Edgar Hoover are among the real-life eminences who show up (seldom in a flattering light), though a sense of nostalgia gets dispelled by the occasional anachronisms in the prose. Still, there are no cellphones or PCs in this diverting roller-coaster ride through what-if time and space.

Action-jammed, entertaining, and sometimes profound pseudo-history SF despite the pulpy plotting.