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Some books come to us when they're needed most. For reasons which are probably (if not profoundly) wrong, I'd like to suggest Crisis on Terra-Bravo is one of them.
Technically, it actually came to us a bit too soon. Back in August 2013, the father-son writing team of Jeffrey and K. M. Fortney self-published what appears to be their first e-book, Foothold on Terra-Bravo. "One of the first things I learned," the elder Fortney later wrote, "is that we'd better have something ready for the readers if it turned out to be a hit." It's unclear whether Fortney believed this ever actually happened. The bar for "hit" status being considerably lower in self-publishing—let's call it nearish ground level—it's perfectly plausible that *Foothold'*s four exceptionally so-so customer reviews on Amazon ("not bad," "reminds me a bit of a canceled TV series") qualified it as an instant classic. In any case, the Fortneys immediately got to work on a sequel, and Crisis on Terra-Bravo came out in December that same year.
The sequel didn't fare as well in the reviews. Or review, singular, as there's only one on Amazon. But it is the superior title—and not just because I find the word "foothold" repulsive. No, Crisis on Terra-Bravo is the better book because it speaks to our present fears and failings in a very particular and unique way.
Perhaps sensing its moment, Crisis resurfaced earlier this year on Kindle Cover Disasters, the Tumblr from which I select the e-books to review for this column. In need of some pure, relevant sci-fi after enduring genocidal lizard-men and Russian werewolves with tender lips, I knew the time for Crisis was now.
I wasn't wrong. Two pages of prologue in, the authors give us this: "By 2018, the growing Islamist Global Caliphate movement consumed the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia, and toppled many Western European nations." In other words, a month before President Obama referred to ISIS as the "J.V. team," Jeffrey and K. M. Fortney self-published an e-book predicting the takeover of the planet by a worldwide caliphate. Yes, this was going to be a work of sci-fi that, in the genre's grand (some say largely abandoned) tradition, would engage with the present moment.
But it's not the Islamists the Fortneys blame for the end of the world. Or not just the Islamists. It's—well, let's visit Terra-Bravo first.
Society as we know it is over. American politics becomes so polarized we start killing each other, making our borders vulnerable to the terrorists. The only hope is to establish a colony in a new world. So a group of scientists builds a portal to some kind of alternate-reality Earth, known as Terra-Bravo, where a group of Americans go to set up Colony One. It seems to be somewhere in western Texas.
Of course, not everyone who crosses over to the new world wants to see it succeed. Sleeper agents have infiltrated Terra-Bravo, and their mission is to bring it down from the inside. The book opens as one such agent tries to ambush and kill Brigadier General Kent Morgan, our hero and the leader of the colony. The criminal, Ducotte, fails and gets captured. But he's a crafty bastard, and it's not long before he escapes and takes Kent's daughter hostage. The standoff scene outside the med-center is tense. Kent and his younger brother, Cord, try to talk the madman down. Who is he? Why is he doing this? Then they figure it all out:
"The Morgan brothers shared a sudden realization: Ducotte was a Liberal-Progressive."
I think I yelped when I first read that.
Kent continues:
"It was you and your kind who turned their backs on the Constitution... The Progressive Movement spent the latter part of the 20th Century consolidating its power within the old US. They gained controls of the schools and universities to indoctrinate the young. They controlled the media to continue that indoctrination, spread lies, and isolate the American People."
From there, Crisis becomes an e-book-length argument for a conservative utopia. As Morgan and his friends exterminate the sleepers, they build a new republic where everyone's armed, the death penalty prevails, and crime reaches an all-time low. Also, everyone's pregnant. Seriously: I've never experienced more live births in a single book. I counted 10 in total, most involving tears and kisses and cooing. So much weird cooing.
It's metaphorical, in a way: The Fortneys want you to be reborn into their perfect vision of society. So you should humor them for a time—before you decide whether to run out screaming.
