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While Tony Blair lines up behind the Bush administration in positing war with Iraq as a clear-cut case of good versus evil, some of his countrymen provide persuasive commentary that such a dichotomy is never the case. War is only black and white in movies from the 40s; in reality, it runs blood red, and its tributaries are not always so easily or clearly defined. Which isn't necessarily to say that war is never unjustified or unavoidable; only that the "make-believe" needs to be sifted from the actuality in hopes of making reliance on it less likely.

Ironically, it is the purveyors of "make-believe" who articulate doubt upon this simplistic precept invoked by both sides in any conflict. Although British writers Christopher Priest, Richard Morgan, and China Miéville may all be shelved together in the SF and Fantasy aisle, each works in decidedly different sub-genres to provide compelling commentary on the considerable shades of gray between the seeming dark and light. It is perhaps unfortunate, then, that as genre writers they are less likely to be part of the overall conversations about this issue in the cultural mainstream. Not that it's going to have all that much influence on the people who actually decide such matters.

Christopher Priest's The Separation has been characterized as alternate history, but that is not quite accurate. Alternate history plays the game of "What if?" to extrapolate how world events may have changed had, say, Kennedy not gone to Dallas, while certain socio-economic-political trends remain immutable even as the context changes (see, in particular, the work of Harry Turtledove). The Separation, however, is more in the tradition of Philip K. Dick's "multiple history" of mirroring realities breaching into one another. Indeed, The Separation reminds me a bit about Dick's The Man in the High Castle -- where Dick portrayed an occupied America that lost World War II, Priest imagines a peace treaty negotiated between Great Britain and the Nazis in 1941 in which both Hitler and Churchill are removed from power as part of the deal to end hostilities. In both books, these alternate realities receive hints of a parallel reality in which history turned out differently, i.e., the way it actually turned out (at least in our universe). With all due respect to Dick, Priest has taken this concept to a somewhat more artful level.

Jack L. and Joe L. Sawyer are identical twins, rowers who competed for Great Britain in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Their half-German heritage and fluent command of the host country's language draws the interest of Rudolf Hess, who seems fascinated with the idea of how the twins could exchange roles without anyone realizing the difference. Both brothers fall in love with a woman whom they help escape from emerging Nazi persecution. Joe marries her. Jack has an affair with her. Jack joins the RAF and pilots bombers that often, wittingly or accidentally, hit largely civilian German targets. Joe becomes a pacifist, a Red Cross volunteer who pilots an ambulance to rescue the innocent victims of the German Blitz of London.

Stuart Gratton is a present-day historian interested in the pivotal role played by J.L. Sawyer in the war. Gratton lives in a reality in which a Nazi peace proposal by Hess ended the war in 1941. He receives the papers of a J.L. Sawyer, an RAF bomber pilot who was involved in the British interrogation of Rudolf Hess to determine the authenticity of a Nazi peace proposal. But something is wrong here, because this J.L. Sawyer deemed Hess an imposter, and the war continued. In Gratton's history, this J.L. Sawyer died in the last bombing mission of the war on May 10, 1941, when another J.L. Sawyer helped play an instrumental role in brokering the treaty with Hess that ends the war the very day his brother is shot down.

There's a lot going on in this remarkable novel beyond the game of "What if"? For one thing, there is motif of how the reliance recollection and tainted perspectives color how history is depicted. There's also the effect ordinary people can have on extraordinary events. And, of course, there's the consideration of what might have happened had another road been taken, another decision point that could have branched differently than it did.

But the overarching intent is a realistic portrayal of the moral ambiguities of war from two seemingly polar viewpoints: the unquestioning bomber pilot who in defense of his country knowingly causes innocent casualties and a conscientious objector uncertain, at times, of his convictions who suffers war as a target of enemy bomber pilots equally unquestioning of their purpose. This is not, I don't think, an anti-war novel. Rather it is a meditation on the horrors of war that are not so neatly categorized as moral or immoral in the way our leaders would like us to think. And to consider, without coming up with an indisputable answer, whether adopting the methods of our enemy is somehow justifiable, or merely reduces us to its level.

Surely if there is one war that could be considered a triumph of good versus evil, it is World War II and the fight against Nazism. Yet, the fact is that the Allied bombing of Germany and its occupied territories specifically targeted non-strategic cities and civilians. The most famous example is Dresden (which led one famous American POW to write the anti-war satire Slaughterhouse-5), not to mention the atomic bombings of Japan. (For a fascinating discussion of this subject, see War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination by H. Bruce Franklin.) All of which was justified, in part, as the logical response to precisely what the Germans were doing in the aerial bombing of England and Europe.

Priest isn't presenting one-dimensional moralist platitudes here. He recognizes the considerable room for ambiguity. On a temporary assignment in bombed out London, Jack is at once angered by the senseless damage inflicted by the enemy upon his country even as he reflects that he is doing the very same thing in his bombing raids against targets he knows have little significant military value. At the same time, in a different reality in several senses, his brother Joe wrestles with staying true to his personal beliefs even as he experiences the "rush" of battle, albeit as a non-combatant, even as he is appalled by the Nazis and wants them defeated.

The very structure of the novel hints that there is no easy answer to the questions and dilemmas of war, no simple right or wrong as our leaders would have us believe. There is just the reality of circumstances. Yet, who is ever sure what that reality really is? Priest implies this through the novel's structure. If you attempt to segregate the alternate worlds Priest portrays in overlapping narratives, you'll find that it doesn't quite align. Certain characters couldn't logically be present in both worlds, even though they appear to be so.

If The Separation depicts subtle mirroring images, Richard Morgan not only shoves the mirror in our face, but props our eyelids open with toothpicks. Broken Angels is the first person narrative of Takeshi Kovacs (with the "c" pronounced as a soft Slavic "ch"), who previously appeared in Morgan's widely praised debut Altered Carbon (which Del Rey has just recently released in the U.S.). This time the cynical, ex-elite U.N. Envoy in the 26th Century is a mercenary contracted to put down a rebellion on the planet Sanction IV. He is weary of the killing, and when a chance acquaintance during a medical evac suggests a way out, Kovacs jumps at it. But, as in the Priest novel, the situation is note quite what it appears. Neither, for that matter, is Kovacs.

There are several things going on here. One is the noir adventure in which our lone, seemingly corrupted but still noble at the core, hero overcomes agents of deceit and corruption, all the while smoking cigarettes and beating seemingly impossible odds. Another is military SF featuring exotic weapons of mass destruction and battle engagements that are the wet dreams of the Joint Chiefs. However, that's a bit deceptive. For all the hardware porn here, the purpose is not to glorify warfare, quite the opposite. It displays the futility of the myth of the ultimate weapon, that some technological advance that will eventually force peace because of its superiority, when it only serves to wreak greater havoc. (Again, Franklin's War Stars provides an excellent history of this phenomenon, from the Gatling gun to the atom bomb to space missile defense.)

While certain, shall we say, less mature readers may find the story the next best thing to a movie in terms of spectacular shoot-outs and special effects, Broken Angels is more in the tradition of Joe Haldeman's The Forever War in satirizing the stupidity of the very genre it mimics. Morgan vividly and graphically depicts the results of combat, which, after all, is to kill or maim the enemy before they do it to you. Suffice it to say, there is much killing and maiming. It is not a pretty picture. (There are also some nice sex scenes, for the purpose of a contrasting, though at times complementary, notion to violence.) Moreover, Morgan is equally adept at depicting the politics of war -- the intersection of commercial and political interests pursuing very different interests than those they call upon to fight in their behalf. This is a novel that can be easily underestimated precisely because it is such a great work of genre; its world view goes much beyond just telling a rousing good tale. Though Kovacs might only smile at the suggestion, there's something much more profound here to think about, including the idea that sometimes the only justification for war can be to just save your own ass.

Somewhere between the subtleties of the conflicting Dickian realities of Priest and the in-your-face Bogartedy of Morgan lies China Miéville. I'd call his novella, The Tain, literary fabulism, and not just because the story is an extrapolation from Jorge Luis Borges's The Book of Imaginary Beings, specifically that there may be a mirror reality literally contained in our mirrors. But because it is a deeply engaging morality tale.

"Tain" is the coating put on the glass of mirrors, and it is in the Tain where creatures have been forced to mimic our images, trapped in situations and behaviors not of their own making. When these "imagos" emerge from the Tain, they seek revenge on those who've enslaved them.

The story is told, not surprisingly, by mirroring viewpoints, one the human Sholl who seems to be immune to the attacks of the invading imagos, the other one of the escaped beings who relates the torment that has been inflicted upon him and his fellows. Neither turns out to be exactly as he seems, since all reflections contain certain distortions. Miéville shows that even while two opposing -- mirroring -- sides may be justified in their warring actions, there may be a way for them to reconcile seemingly opposing viewpoints.

Unfortunately, as much as this story succeeds from a literary viewpoint, I'm afraid as a practical matter it still remains a work of fantasy.

A Slight Digression
The March 2003 Asimov's provides two excellent supplemental readings on warfare themes. In "The Great Game," Stephen Baxter expounds on what he most recently explored in Riding the Rock (a limited edition by PS Publishing which also published The Tain), the political double talk that is used to promote and justify war. This latest story shows how even when ulterior and somewhat less admirable motivations for war are revealed, the rank and file who fight prefer to remain convinced of the justness of their cause. Which, of course, allows the juggernaut of destruction to roll on.

Finally, it's time to hear from an American writer, and Lucius Shepherd's "Only Partly Here" is one of the better mediations I've seen on post 9/11 America. The story concerns a Ground Zero clean-up volunteer who feels compelled to collects bits of personal debris, relics of someone's existence such as a shoe or an indecipherable piece of hard rubber he uncovers in the rubble of the Twin Towers disaster. This might seem to be a form of grave robbing, but once again, nothing is what it seems. After work, the narrator befriends a strange woman he meets regularly at a local bar. In lesser hands, this could have turned into a Twilight Zone episode in which we are "surprised" to learn the mysterious identity of the woman. Shepherd, however, provides us with a poignant metaphor of one way we might perhaps tower over the violence done to us.

David Soyka is a former journalist and college teacher who writes the occasional short story and freelance article. He makes a living writing corporate marketing communications, which is a kind of fiction without the art.