Peter Bryant (1)Critiques

The true genius in this book is how Stanley Kubrick came up with Dr. Strangelove out of this story. Red Alert is a serious Cold War Doomsday novel much like Fail-Safe even with a similar ending. Kubrick follows Peter Bryant’s basic plot line but layers it with insane black humor to provide a bizarro-world take on the whole “duck-and-cover” life in the Sixties. Skip the book and go straight to the film.

An excellent, terrifying work. However, it is also one of the few writings which the movie based upon it surpassed it. Peter Bryant despite his intense pessimism, saw a way out: the world lived on, the bombs didn't go off, and Russia and America began working towards world peace.

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I found both the book the film was based on, and the novelisation of the film, quick reads. Neither of the books is very funny. With Red Alert that is entirely intentional; it is written as an Awful Warning, and even so a couple of the better lines survived to the film in improved form. By contrast, the book-of-the-film leaves out a lot of the good lines and really brings home just how much the film owes to Kubrick's directorial genius.

Intense story of nuclear bombers headed for the Soviet Union and the mistaken outbreak of World War III. It was the source for Dr. Strangelove, which morphed into a very black comedy. This book plays everything straight, but will still entertain you with its doomsday scenario.

USA og Sovjetunionen, sidst i 1950'erne
Øverstkommanderende på en amerikansk flyvestation Sonora, brigadegeneral Quinten, beslutter sig for at benytte sig af heldige omstændigheder til at forsøge at starte 3. verdenskrig. Han er motiveret af at ville gøre det rigtige for sit land, samtidigt med at han ved at han selv er dødssyg og ikke har lang tid igen. Han kan ene mand sende en eskadrille bombefly mod Sovjet, fordi der eksisterer en plan "R" til brug for den situation, hvor hele USA's kommandostruktur er blevet tilintetgjort men hvor en enkelt tilbageværende base har ildkraft nok til at kunne slå igen. Samtidig har han ændret dagskoderne til kommunikation med flyene og givet de to andre officerer, Bailey og Hudson, der kender den kode, fri til at gå på jagt.
Hans næstkommanderende er på jobrotation med en anden officer, major Paul Howard, hvilket også giver ham lidt ekstra råderum. Quinten sætter basen i krigsberedskab og afbryder kontakten med omverdenen efter at have ringet til sin chef, general Franklin, og fortalt ham at han har iværksat et first-strike angreb og at han råder Franklin til at sende resten af flyene afsted.
Quinten ved ikke at russerne har installeret automatiske dommedagsbomber i ural-bjergene. I tilfælde af udslettelse af fx Moskva vil en række kobolt-bomber automatisk sprænges og sprede radioaktivitet over hele kloden. Efter højst et år vil hele kloden være blottet for liv på jordoverfladen.
Præsidenten giver ordre til at storme Sonora-basen uden hensyn til tab. Det lykkes, men Quinten begår selvmord og koderne er derfor stadig en hemmelighed. Howard gætter sig til dem og næsten alle bombeflyene bliver kaldt tilbage. Et enkelt af dem har fået beskadiget radiomodtageren og fortsætter. Den ser ud til at ville ødelægge byen Kotlass, og den amerikanske præsident lover russerne at de må ødelægge Atlantic City som gengæld, hvis det skulle ske. Til alt held er den beskadigede bombemaskine ikke i stand til at nå helt frem og bomben er også beskadiget, så kun tændsatsen på nogle få hundrede kilotons eksploderer.
Bogen slutter med at den sovjetiske leder og den amerikanske præsident taler sammen for at forhindre gentagelser, så måske opnår Quinten faktisk at skabe fred på jord.

Bogen "Fail-safe" minder lidt om den her. Faktisk så meget at Peter Bryant lagde sag an. Det endte i et forlig, hvis detaljer aldrig er oplyst. Peter Bryant er forresten en pseudonym for Peter George, en engelsk forfatter, der også skrev "Commander-1" og som begik selvmord i 1966.

Interesting read, especially when you compare and contrast it to the movie, "Doctor Strangelove", which was based on this novel. The book is serious, while the movie is darkly satirical. Much of the basic story is the same, though details vary.The entire (though not long) novel takes place during only about a 2-3 hour period. That, along with the nature of the story (nuclear war) makes for a fairly high state of tension throughout, but it is never sensationalized or over the top.Interestingly, there are a few aspects of the story that reminded me of the movie "Failsafe" -- in particular the ending -- and upon poking around at Wikipedia, I see that the author of this book sued the author of [b:Failsafe|6017374|Failsafe|Ian Prattis|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266459403s/6017374.jpg|6192731] for plagiarism (and settled out of court).

This book is quite neat, but I’d imagine you’d only be interested in it because of the Kubrick remake (Dr. Strangelove), or because of its place in with the multitude of other “WWIII”/nuclear holocaust stories around the time of the Cold War. The basic plot revolves around a crazed air-base commander who uses a flaw in the "fail-safe" plans to set off a series of attacks on Russia--a move that could have more dangerous consequences than he perceives. Here enters the rest of the higher government (including the President himself) to try and "save the day".

Unfortunately, a book like this was somewhat like futuristic speculative fiction at the time, but since Cold War is over, it just reads like another alternate history book. There are a few things that, when reading, I felt were still relevant today—especially when thinking about the North Korea Missile Tests, the Iraq War, choosing your enemies and things like that—but for the most part, it’s just a curiosity piece.

Most of the problems I have with this book spring from the printing and the publisher. If you want to get this book, DO NOT get the blackmask.com edition. I’ve seen a few people complain about “typographical” errors with Blackmask, an Indy publisher; and this is not to mention their “recent” entanglement with Condé Nast Publications for printing and selling books that were out of print, but still under the copyright of Condé Nast. Even the lack of good-quality graphics on the cover may provide a tell-tale sign.

There are many spelling and grammar errors—I’m guessing this comes from the fact that the novel was probably scanned and converted to text before being published independently. In a novel that takes place in the course of two hours, it’s extremely confusing when the publisher has even overlooked the times at which different chapters occur.

If you want this book, you aren’t going to find a good copy new—so search for it used on abebooks.com or something. Chances are your old book will have better spelling and grammar than this new one!

also published as 'Red Alert', this is the novel on which Kubrick's 'dr. strangelove' was based. anyone familiar with the film will know the basic plot, which follows events after a mad US air commander sets about bombing the USSR with nuclear missiles, at the height of the cold war. This is a serious drama about how close the world came to nuclear disaster, and lacks the comedic twist that was so brilliantly added to the film version by Kubrick and Peter Sellers. Well worth the read for anyone who is interested in the cold war.