Possible War
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A rather large sub-genre of military fiction and the Techno Thriller, Possible War works are works dealing with a hypothetical, but semi-plausible conflict in the world at the time they were written. Accuracy may vary, as many of these tend to be works trying to increase defence spending.
Can be split into the more plausible techno-thrillers and the more alarmist "invasion literature".
There are a number of popular settings for this, depending on who the relevant "main enemy" was at the time of work.
Alien Invasion is basically this In Space. See also Phlebotinum Du Jour.
UK vs. Germany or France
Published between 1871 and 1914. Started with The Battle of Dorking. Before 1903, the invader was France. With The Riddle of the Sands (not one of these, technically speaking), switched to Germany (the Entente Cordiale and all that).
NATO vs. Warsaw Pact
World War Three in Europe, a very popular genre, especially in the 1980s. Nuclear weapons here will be rather restrained in their use, if used at all.
- Red Storm Rising
- The War That Never Was
- The Third World War
- Team Yankee, set in the same scenario, which focusses on a tank company.
- Red Army
- Wargame: European Escalation the two factions are NATO and Warsaw Pact, which are later subdivided into four countries. NATO(USA,France,UK,West Germany) Warsaw Pact(USSR,Poland,East Germany,Czechoslovakia).
North Korea vs. South Korea and the US
The "Second Korean War".
- Larry Bond's Red Phoenix
- Dale Brown's Battle Born
China vs. Taiwan and the US
US vs. Iran
Just before The Great Politics Mess-Up, Harold Coyle (who also wrote Team Yankee) published Sword Point, which featured a three-way war between the USSR, Iran, and the USA. USSR invades for the oil US opposes USSR, and Iran doesn't want either of them.
- Tom Clancy's Executive Orders Iran has taken over Iraq and renames itself as the United Islamic Republic. They soon plan to attack Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. But the UIR makes a bad choice when it commits terrorist attacks against the USA, with Jack Ryan as President Action, who has the US strike back against the UIR, and has its leader assassinated.
Others
- War of the Worlds was written as one of these.
- The Great Pacific War is about a naval contest between the United States and Japan. It was written 16 and set 8 years before those two countries actually did go to war.
- Lightning In The Night written in 1940 after the fall of France, it serialized a Germany-USSR-Japan invasion of the USA in the mid 40s after the surrender of England. An anti-isolationism propaganda piece. Actually suggested the war would start with an attack on Pearl Harbor, and end with atomic bombs.
- Larry Bond's Cauldron (1993): France and Germany vs. the former Warsaw Pact states, the UK and the US
- Tomorrow When the War Began and its sequels
- The Sixth Battle (1992): South Africa and vs. the neighbouring states of South Africa and the Eurasian Republic (a largely reconstituted USSR)
- The EndWar series of the Tom Clancy franchise is a scenario of what might happen if humanity created a system of lasers that made nuclear weapons obsolete, the E.U. and Russia emerged as superpowers equal to the United States, and we all had a great big war. Oh, and there's peak oil too as a reason, which is how Russia managed to regain power in the world.
- Motofumi Kobayshi's manga Battle over Hokkaido and Tokyo Wars with Japan vs. USSR.