Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War.By P.W. Singer and August Cole.Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 404 pages; $28.
GEORGE TOMKYNS CHESNEY’S “The Battle of Dorking”, published in Blackwoods Magazine in 1871, was a story about innovation that proved to be an innovation itself. It related, in the form of a memoir written some 50 years in the future, the downfall of Britain at the hands of Prussia, beginning with the destruction of the Royal Navy by high-tech “fatal engines” and culminating in the defeat of the army in the titular battle. An instant cause célèbre—leaders in the Times and all that—and a runaway success, it produced a swathe of imitators and a new way of talking about war that has proved popular ever since.
A distinctive feature of the new genre was that it frequently presented new technologies as decisive, both a thrilling idea and a necessary device if, as the norms of the genre required, dominant nations were to be portrayed, initially at least, as victims. The books also often had messages to impart—of...
from The Economist: Books and arts http://ift.tt/1Nk6AIW
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