Weapons of Choice
by John Birmingham

Time travel may well be theoretically possible (at least going into the past) but as far as we know no one has ever done it. But what if someone did? And what if that someone were a 2021 multinational and multiracial carrier force, led by Americans and full of Navy and Marine personnel, that was sent back to 1942 just before the American - Japanese Midway battle?

You've likely seen stories like this before but Birmingham does a bang up job of making this book (the initial in a trilogy) really come alive. He does this by the simple fact of including human nature as a character in his book. The Americans from 1942 are initially happy to have assistance from the Americans of 2021 while the modern Americans are delighted to give it.

However this starts to change almost immediately as many of the 1942 Americans have zero use for feminism, racial equality, modern fitness techniques, non-smoking or any of the other ideas we take for granted. They become very wary of and coolly hostile to their countrymen and countrywomen from the future. They view the idea of taking orders from women of any race or blacks of either gender with profoundly deep disdain. They don't get why a carrier is named after a woman President (The USS Hilary Clinton) And they are desperate to prevent these ideas from spreading. For their part the modern Americans think that the 1942 Americans all sound like actors from old Warner Brothers movies and are generally eager to change things as quickly as possible.


However not all of the multinational ships made it through the wormhole in one piece or under American or allied control. The 1942 Japanese, Germans and Russians have gotten their hands on some of the modern military technology and worse yet, on history books. So Stalin, Tojo, Hitler and others are able to see what mistakes they made. And the countries that had nuclear programs or were thinking about them are ecstatic or frightened to find out that not only are such weapons possible, but the future Americans have them.

This entire book is an example of chaos theory in action on political, scientific, military and even romantic relationships. Some members of the 2021 multinational force that came through the wormhole are Japanese or Indonesian. They're not sure they want to be fighting their own great grandparents or fighting on the same side as the 1942 British and Dutch who intend to reestablish white colonial rule in SE Asia. This was a really fun book that was crammed with realistic characters. You can probably pick it up for cheap. I did.