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I haven't read a good near-future technothriller since Red Storm Rising, but I'd like to get back into the genre if there is something really good there. Any recommendations for new, modern-day or near-future military thrillers with cool weaponry and smart geopolitics?
Possibly a left-field answer, but I recently enjoyed John Birmingham's AXIS OF TIME trilogy (aka WORLD WAR 2.1). The trilogy opens in 2021 with a UN multinational taskforce being deployed to Indonesia, where a terrorist-sponsored uprising has taken control of Jakarta. The taskforce, led by high-tech US, Australian, Japanese and British vessels, just happens to be in the area of an advanced research vessel carrying out experiments into wormhole theory.
Neddless to say, Things Go Wrong and the entire taskforce is caught up in the wormhole and dumped into the Pacific Ocean in 1942, right on top of Admiral Spruance's US carrier force on its way to relieve Midway. All hell breaks loose and time is wrenched onto a new and different heading.
It's a clever trilogy which points out that the simple presence of a futuristic carrier fleet in WWII doesn't mean the Allies are going to win the war easily, as modern warfare is dependent on high-technology items such as cruise missiles which are completely irreplaceable with 1941 technology and production means. It's more the impact of the knowledge of the future that that taskforce has, such as Hitler massacring everyone involved in the July 20 plot two years before it happens or Stalin having Khruschev tortured to death for his denunciation of Stalinism at the 1956 party conference. There's also major sociological schisms, with the contemporary Allied forces shocked by the presence of black people, women, homosexuals, Germans and Japanese people in the multinational force which leads to some interesting social commentary. There's also some great comic relief, such as Himmler working out how to do PowerPoint presentations set to Wagner on a captured laptop and then vowing vengeance on Bill Gates when Windows crashes on him again, or the midshipman from one of the ships who goes and makes himself Marilyn Monroe and Elvis' agent years before they were discovered otherwise.
The author has indicated he might write some stories set in the actual 2021 setting, as a lot of people are interested by some of the high-tech gear (most of which is either on the drawing board or in testing right now) he describes future armies as using and which aren't explored in-depth in the trilogy.
I haven't read a good near-future technothriller since Red Storm Rising, but I'd like to get back into the genre if there is something really good there. Any recommendations for new, modern-day or near-future military thrillers with cool weaponry and smart geopolitics?
James H Cobbs Amanda Garret series you might enjoy.
