 First edition | |
| Author | Robert Conroy |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Alternate history novel, thriller |
| Published | September 21, 2011 |
| Media type | Ebook |
Castro's Bomb is an American alternate history ebook written by Robert Conroy. [1] It was first published on Kindle on September 21, 2011. [2]
In 1963, a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis, the leader of Cuba, Fidel Castro, and the Cuban Army use weapons left behind by the Soviet Union to seize the United States military base at Guantanamo Bay and then plan missile strikes against America. US President John F. Kennedy tries desperately to retain his leadership and to keep the war from escalating into World War III.
Castro's Bomb was a finalist for the 2012 Sidewise Award, Long Form. [3] Blaine Pardoe considered it to have "huge gaps". [4]
The history of Cuba is characterized by dependence on outside powers—Spain, the US, and the USSR. The island of Cuba was inhabited by various Amerindian cultures prior to the arrival of the Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus in 1492. After his arrival on a Spanish expedition, Spain conquered Cuba and appointed Spanish governors to rule in Havana. The administrators in Cuba were subject to the Viceroy of New Spain and the local authorities in Hispaniola. In 1762–63, Havana was briefly occupied by Britain, before being returned to Spain in exchange for Florida. A series of rebellions between 1868 and 1898, led by General Máximo Gómez, failed to end Spanish rule and claimed the lives of 49,000 Cuban guerrillas and 126,000 Spanish soldiers. However, the Spanish–American War resulted in a Spanish withdrawal from the island in 1898, and following three-and-a-half years of subsequent US military rule, Cuba gained formal independence in 1902.
Cuba's foreign policy has been fluid throughout history depending on world events and other variables, including relations with the United States. Without massive Soviet subsidies and its primary trading partner, Cuba became increasingly isolated in the late 1980s and early 1990s after the fall of the USSR and the end of the Cold War, but Cuba opened up more with the rest of the world again starting in the late 1990s when they have since entered bilateral co-operation with several South American countries, most notably Venezuela and Bolivia beginning in the late 1990s, especially after the Venezuela election of Hugo Chávez in 1999, who became a staunch ally of Castro's Cuba. The United States used to stick to a policy of isolating Cuba until December 2014, when Barack Obama announced a new policy of diplomatic and economic engagement. The European Union accuses Cuba of "continuing flagrant violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms". Cuba has developed a growing relationship with the People's Republic of China and Russia. In all, Cuba continues to have formal relations with 160 nations, and provided civilian assistance workers – principally medical – in more than 20 nations. More than one million exiles have escaped to foreign countries. Cuba's present foreign minister is Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla.
The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis in Cuba, the Caribbean Crisis in Russia, or the Missile Scare, was a 35-day confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union, which escalated into an international crisis when American deployments of missiles in Italy and Turkey were matched by Soviet deployments of similar ballistic missiles in Cuba. Despite the short time frame, the Cuban Missile Crisis remains a defining moment in national security and nuclear war preparation. The confrontation is often considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full-scale nuclear war.
Harry Norman Turtledove is an American author who is best known for his work in the genres of alternate history, historical fiction, fantasy, science fiction, and mystery fiction. He is a student of history and completed his PhD in Byzantine history. His dissertation was on the period AD 565–582. He lives in Southern California.
The Sidewise Awards for Alternate History were established in 1995 to recognize the best alternate history stories and novels of the year.
The nuclear arms race was an arms race competition for supremacy in nuclear warfare between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies during the Cold War. During this same period, in addition to the American and Soviet nuclear stockpiles, other countries developed nuclear weapons, though none engaged in warhead production on nearly the same scale as the two superpowers.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch is an American writer and editor. She writes under various pseudonyms in multiple genres, including science fiction, fantasy, mystery, romance, and mainstream.
Steven H Silver is an American science fiction fan and bibliographer, publisher, author, and editor. He has been nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer twelve times and Best Fanzine seven times without winning.
Blaine Lee Pardoe is an bestselling and award winning American author and military historian, known primarily for writing the Battletech and MechWarrior: Dark Age series of science fiction books, business management books, military history, and true crime works.
The Cuban Project, also known as Operation Mongoose, was an extensive campaign of terrorist attacks against civilians and covert operations carried out by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in Cuba. It was officially authorized on November 30, 1961 by U.S. President John F. Kennedy. The name Operation Mongoose had been agreed at a prior White House meeting on November 4, 1961. The operation was run out of JM/WAVE, a major secret United States covert operations and intelligence gathering station established a year earlier in Miami, Florida. It was led by United States Air Force General Edward Lansdale on the military side and William King Harvey at the CIA and went into effect after the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion.
"The Undiscovered" is an alternate history short story by William Sanders that won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History. It was originally published in the March 1997 issue of Asimov's and, in addition to its Sidewise Award nomination, was nominated for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Award. It was subsequently reprinted in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifteenth Annual Collection, The Best Alternate History Stories of the 20th Century, and Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Year's Best Science Fiction.
Cuba and the United States restored diplomatic relations on July 20, 2015, after relations had been severed in 1961 during the Cold War. U.S. diplomatic representation in Cuba is handled by the United States Embassy in Havana, and there is a similar Cuban Embassy in Washington, D.C. The United States, however, continues to maintain its commercial, economic, and financial embargo, making it illegal for U.S. corporations to do business with Cuba.
Joseph Robert Conroy was an author of alternate history novels.
United States Atlantic Command was a Unified Combatant Command of the United States Department of Defense. In 1999, U.S. Atlantic Command was renamed and given a new mission as United States Joint Forces Command.
Punta Brava is a small suburb located just to the southwest of Havana, Cuba, with a population of roughly 1500 inhabitants. It is one of the wards of the La Lisa municipality.
1942 is an alternate history novel written by Robert Conroy. It was first published, as an e- book, by Ballantine Books on February 24, 2009, with a hardcover edition following from the same publisher in March 2009. The novel won the 2009 Sidewise Award for Alternate History.
Brian A. Dixon is an American author, primarily of short fiction. He was born in Connecticut. His first published short story, "The McMillen Golf Penalty," was awarded the Shannon Searles Fiction Prize by Connecticut Review in 2002. He has since published short fiction in a number of outlets in addition to work on plays and novels. Dixon served as the editor of Revelation magazine, an independent literary magazine about the apocalypse. Columbia & Britannia (2009), an alternate history anthology edited by Brian A. Dixon and Adam Chamberlain, was nominated for the 2010 Sidewise Award for Alternate History. Dixon and Chamberlain are also the editors of Back to Frank Black (2012), a volume of original essays and interviews celebrating Chris Carter's Millennium.
Eric G. Swedin is an American author of science fiction and academic nonfiction works. He is a professor of history at Weber State University in Utah. Swedin is the 2010 long form winner of the Sidewise Award for his alternate history novel When Angels Wept: A What-If History of the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was a consultant for the Emmy Award-winning documentary, Clouds Over Cuba, which was created for the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
The consolidation of the Cuban Revolution is a period in Cuban history typically defined as starting in the aftermath of the revolution in 1959 and ending in the first congress of the Communist Party of Cuba 1975, which signified the final political solidifaction of the Cuban revolutionaries' new government. The period encompasses early domestic reforms, human rights violations continuing under the new regime, growing international tensions, and politically climaxed with the failure of the 1970 sugar harvest.
Rising Sun is an alternate history novel written by Robert Conroy. It was published by Baen Books as a hardcover book on December 4, 2012 and then was released online as an ebook 11 days later on December 15, 2012 before being published as a paperback book on October 29, 2013.
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