WAR REIMAGINED
The Oppenheimer Alternative
Robert J. Sawyer can trace the origins of his newest novel, The Oppenheimer Alternative, back to a very specific source.
Granted, it isn’t a particularly lofty one.
But the prolific science-fiction writer has strong memories of watching an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man, the 1970s action series featuring Lee Majors as steely-eyed bionic man Col. Steve Austin.
This particular storyline featured Austin tracking down a plane carrying an atomic warhead that has crashed on an island in the South Pacific. While there, he encounters an old Japanese soldier who had remained hidden for decades and therefore missed the news that the Second World War had ended.
It wasn’t so much the novel premise that hooked the teenage Sawyer but the unusual sentiment Austin expressed about how the United States ended the war by dropping atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He expressed regret, telling the old Kamikaze pilot that “a lot of us wished it had never happened.”
“It was the first time I had ever heard anybody say that it wasn’t a necessity,” Sawyer says in an interview with Postmedia from his home in Mississauga, Ont.
“It wasn’t the only way to end the war. It wasn’t the logical, rational, greatest-boon-for-the-greatestnumber utilitarian decision that it has always been presented as in history books. This has been percolating in the back of my mind.”
As with the creation of many Sawyer novels, this percolation would end up mixing with a number of other factors in the lead-up to his 24th novel. There was plenty of research, an intriguing what-if scenario, the author’s growing fascination with some of the real-life figures behind the dawn of the atomic age and a desire for him to break new narrative ground by entering the trippy sub-genre of “alternate history.”
It all fits into Sawyer’s approach to writing these days. The multiple Hugo and Nebula award winner, who was named a member of the Order of Canada in 2016, admits his primary motivation as a novelist is to challenge himself and make things “difficult.”
The Oppenheimer Alternative is entirely populated by historical figures and set in the historical backdrop of 1930s to mid-1960s United States, all of which required meticulous research. That included getting inside the head of titular physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who Sawyer presents as an intensely flawed and conflicted man haunted by his role leading efforts to build the bomb as head of the Manhattan Project.
Of all the real-life characters in the book, it was Oppenheimer who intrigued Sawyer the most. Unlike a number of his peers,
Oppenheimer never wrote an autobiography to shine light on his inner life.
More important to Sawyer, he never had the opportunity for redemption in real life.
This alone would have made him rich fodder for any novelist. But when you are one of science-fiction’s most successful writers, there are certain expectations. So Sawyer decided to fold in a twist by having Hungarian physicist Edward Teller’s research lead to the discovery that the sun is set to destroy the entire inner solar system by the year 2030. This forces Oppenheimer to team up with Albert Einstein, computing pioneer John von Neumann and rocket designer Wernher von Braun to save mankind.
It’s an intriguing what-if scenario, but the heart of the novel remains the ethical and moral ramifications of dropping the bombs, acts that Sawyer says are now ripe for a sober re-evaluation on the 75th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki being destroyed.
Sawyer turned down offers from bigger publishers when told they wouldn’t be able to release his new book until 2021. It was imperative to him that The Oppenheimer Alternative come out in 2020 to coincide with what he assumed would be widespread reflection about the bombings.
Sawyer says he already knew that the bombings were in large part meant to be a demonstration of power to Josef Stalin. But the more he dug into the history of the U.S. decision to drop the bombs, the more surprising the motivations seemed.
“What shocked me when I was doing this research was to discover that Japan had been making back-channel overtures to surrender for a year before the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” Sawyer says.
“Both FDR and then Truman, who followed FDR in the last days of (the Second World War), decided to make a public declaration that Japan had to surrender unconditionally. There was only one condition that Japan wanted: That Hirohito remain on the throne because they believed their emperor to be divine. In other words, it was comparable — if the United States were being trounced by Japan in the war, if it were the other way round — for Japan to say ‘You must renounce Jesus or we will not accept the surrender of the United States.’ The United States would have fought to the last man.”
Hirohito, as it turns out, stayed on the throne for another 40 years because the U.S. lost interest in that condition after the bombs were dropped. It was scandalous, Sawyer says.
“The war was prolonged for an entire year to allow the Manhattan Project to complete its work even after Hitler had committed suicide in the war in Europe, which was the ostensible reason for developing the atomic bomb: to get it before the Nazis did,” Sawyer says.
Seventy-five years later, scholars are finally shining a light on this and challenging what Sawyer calls the “military propaganda” that brainwashed an entire generation and beyond into believing the bombings were necessary to save the countless Allied lives that would have been required for a land and sea invasion of Japan.
“Most of that generation has passed and we can now soberly reassess the incredible machiavellian nature of the Manhattan Project,” he says.
It’s sure to spark conversation. Part of the promotional campaign for The Oppenheimer Alternative is to present Sawyer as an expert interview subject for anyone wanting to explore the 75th anniversary of the birth of the atomic age.
Throughout his career, Sawyer has earned a reputation not just as a bestselling writer but also a futurist and commentator, able to extrapolate on issues of science, medicine and ethics. So it’s hardly surprising that he has been in high demand when it comes to discussing the strange COVID-19 world we all find ourselves in.
Sawyer has opinions about working from home and the need for broader research into battling viruses. He acknowledges that the pandemic is a “disaster” and that it is our generation’s war. It’s just a much cleaner one that those our parents, grandparents and other ancestors lived through, he says.
“Vietnam was an absolute nightmare,” he says. “(The Second World War) went on year after year after year. People banded together, worked together, worked communally. We’ve gotten off easy,” he says. “As generational disasters go, this is one we can get through.”
What shocked me when I was doing this research was to discover that Japan had been making back-channel overtures to surrender for a year before the bombs were dropped.
Author Robert J. Sawyer