Designated Targets
Designated TargetsJohn Birmingham

Designated Targets (2005)

John Birmingham

Creators: Liked

It's World War II and the A-bomb is here to stay.The only question: Who's going to drop it first?The Battle of Midway takes on a whole new dimension with the sudden appearance of a U.S.-led naval task force from the twenty-first century, the result of a botched military experiment. State-of-the-art warships are scattered across the Pacific, armed to the teeth with the latest instruments of mass destruction. Nuclear warheads, rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47s, computer-guided missiles--all bets are off as the major powers of 1942 scramble to be the first to wield the weapons of tomorrow against their enemies. The whole world now knows of the Allied victory in 1945, and the collapse of communism decades later. But that was the first time around. With the benefit of their newly acquired knowledge, Stalin and Hitler rapidly change strategies. A Russian-German ceasefire leaves the Fuhrer free to bring the full weight of his vaunted Nazi war machine down on England, while in the Pacific, Japan launches an invasion of Australia, and Admiral Yamamoto schemes to seize an even greater prize . . . Hawaii.Even in the United States the newcomers from the future are greeted with a combination of enthusiasm and fear. Suspicion leads to hatred and erupts into violence.Suddenly it's a whole new war, with high-tech, high-stakes international manipulations from Tokyo to D.C. to the Kremlin. As the world trembles on the brink of annihilation, Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt, Hitler, and Tojo confront extreme choices and a future rife with possibilities--all of them apocalyptic.From the Trade Paperback edition.

ISBN:
9780345457158
Length:
448 pages

Genres: science fiction

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John Birmingham"The action is nonstop, the characters very real--and very different from each other--and, to coin a phrase, it makes you think." --S. M. Stirling, author of Island in the Sea of TimeIn the year 2021 a multinational fleet--experimenting with untested weapons technology--pitched through time, crash-landing in 1942. The world is thrown into chaos as Roosevelt, Hitler, Churchill, Tojo, and Stalin scramble to adapt to new, high-tech killing tools, and twenty-first-century ways of war.For "uptimers" like Britain's Prince Harry and the men and women who serve aboard the supercarrier USS Hillary Clinton, war is a constant struggle with their own downtime allies, who are mired in ignorance and bigotry.As the Allies counter the Nazi assault and set off for the coast of France, Japan begins to buckle, soon every battle will be played out in a lethal dance of might and intelligence, unholy alliances and desperate gambles, and each clash will be fought with the ultimate weapon; knowledge from the future.Thanks to the historical records, all sides know that two superpowers will emerge, while the losers will be pounded into submission. But time has shifted on its axis, so none know who will survive, or how peace will take hold in a world turned upside down. These are the questions that John Birmingham brilliantly answers in his critically acclaimed adventure of war and imagination.Praise for John Birmingham's Weapons of Choice"Birmingham's enthralling battleground mixes provocative historical fiction and socially conscious futurism."--Entertainment Weekly"High-tech intrigue and suspense similar to the works of Tom Clancy."--Library JournalFrom the Trade Paperback edition.

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