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Starmageddon
From "Best selling author Richard Rohmer has done it again. STARMAGEDDON is a chilling "Star Wars" thriller set in the year 2000. The American Strategic Defense System has just been put into operation. But does it work? Meanwhile, the Soviet Union is rapidly creating a new device to render the American system useless. Against this background, the new American vice president - a woman, for the first time in history - sets out on a scheduled flight to South Korea. But it would only take a minor navigational error to send the American plane into sensitive Soviet territory... From these all - too - plausible beginnings, Richard Rohmer constructs an inexorable escalation, leading to a shattering confrontation in which the superpowers defensive systems are put to the test. As the final countdown approaches. Richard Rohmer once again displays his consummate mastery of suspense and intrigue."
Paperback
Published January 1, 1987
14 people want to read
About the author
Richard Rohmer
51 books8 followersMajor-General (Ret'd) Richard Heath Rohmer, OC, CMM, DFC, O.Ont, KStJ, CD, OL, QC, JD, LLD (born in 1924). Canada's most decorated citizen, an aviator, a senior lawyer (aviation law), adviser to business leaders and the Government of Ontario and is a prolific writer. Rohmer was born in Hamilton, Ontario, and spent some of his early youth in Pasadena, California as well as in western Ontario at Windsor and Fort Erie.
The Peterborough Examiner's lead editorial of 14 January 2009 says this: "Rohmer, one of Canada's most colourful figures of the past half-century, was a World War II fighter pilot, later a major-general in the armed forces reserve, a high-profile lawyer and a successful novelist and biographer."
The Peterborough Examiner's lead editorial of 14 January 2009 says this: "Rohmer, one of Canada's most colourful figures of the past half-century, was a World War II fighter pilot, later a major-general in the armed forces reserve, a high-profile lawyer and a successful novelist and biographer."
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 2, 2023
Donald J Trump is in the Oval Office. Be afraid! Be VERY afraid!
Honorary Lieutenant General Richard Rohmer is a Canadian aviator, lawyer, adviser, author, historian and arguably one of the most decorated and revered members of the Canadian armed forces who ever donned the uniform. His extraordinary thriller, STARMAGEDDON, is a geopolitical potboiler guaranteed to curl the toes of every reader and remind us how narrowly we escaped the 20th century with our world intact and how razor sharp the knife edge is on which the world walks even today.
Dateline 2000: The Kremlin in a paranoid Russia has its hackles up and bristling as the USA completes successful testing and puts the finishing touches on Ronald Reagan’s orbital Strategic Defense System (SDS). The South Korean government is offended that the American government has taken them to task for shouldering an insufficient portion of the bill for Asian defense. The president is also about to sign a new bill slashing auto imports from South Korea with a view to reducing a skewed trade deficit. (Gee … does this sound familiar at all?) The VP is delegated to make a personal visit to South Korea to soothe the ruffled feathers. The brown stuff hits the proverbial fan when her flight wanders into a Soviet weapons testing range as a result of a manual error loading incorrect coordinates for the computer’s take-off position into the navigational computer.
The tension in Rohmer’s STARMAGEDDON is palpable and no reader will be able to escape the urgent necessity to turn pages. I frantically needed to see if the protagonists in Rohmer’s imagined confrontation could find the wisdom and courage to stand down or if they would somehow pull the world over the brink into a catastrophically destructive nuclear exchange and all-out World War III. Folks, this is truly gripping stuff and it isn’t mere hyperbole to say that my stomach was in knots as I moved from one event to the next one … each getting closer to that all out nuclear exchange!
It was also interesting to note in passing that a novel written over thirty years ago (1986, to be exact) could be so astonishingly prescient about many of the things that we are seeing today with Trump’s hapless machinations in the embattled Oval Office. For example:
“Editorials in influential American newspapers were increasingly critical of the SDS program – to the delight of the master Soviet propagandists, who were manipulating the American media with invisible strings.”
Or how about this comment to the President from his Chief of Staff:
“One of the things I like about you is that you’re always well prepared, well briefed and always ready to ask for advice. A lot of people at the top don’t do that.”
Sheesh … if only!
As I read this book in 2019, the most frightening thing about it is the fact that the described sequence of events is all too possible even today BUT the tragedy of the outcome with Trump in the president’s seat is a foregone conclusion.
Paul Weiss
Honorary Lieutenant General Richard Rohmer is a Canadian aviator, lawyer, adviser, author, historian and arguably one of the most decorated and revered members of the Canadian armed forces who ever donned the uniform. His extraordinary thriller, STARMAGEDDON, is a geopolitical potboiler guaranteed to curl the toes of every reader and remind us how narrowly we escaped the 20th century with our world intact and how razor sharp the knife edge is on which the world walks even today.
Dateline 2000: The Kremlin in a paranoid Russia has its hackles up and bristling as the USA completes successful testing and puts the finishing touches on Ronald Reagan’s orbital Strategic Defense System (SDS). The South Korean government is offended that the American government has taken them to task for shouldering an insufficient portion of the bill for Asian defense. The president is also about to sign a new bill slashing auto imports from South Korea with a view to reducing a skewed trade deficit. (Gee … does this sound familiar at all?) The VP is delegated to make a personal visit to South Korea to soothe the ruffled feathers. The brown stuff hits the proverbial fan when her flight wanders into a Soviet weapons testing range as a result of a manual error loading incorrect coordinates for the computer’s take-off position into the navigational computer.
The tension in Rohmer’s STARMAGEDDON is palpable and no reader will be able to escape the urgent necessity to turn pages. I frantically needed to see if the protagonists in Rohmer’s imagined confrontation could find the wisdom and courage to stand down or if they would somehow pull the world over the brink into a catastrophically destructive nuclear exchange and all-out World War III. Folks, this is truly gripping stuff and it isn’t mere hyperbole to say that my stomach was in knots as I moved from one event to the next one … each getting closer to that all out nuclear exchange!
It was also interesting to note in passing that a novel written over thirty years ago (1986, to be exact) could be so astonishingly prescient about many of the things that we are seeing today with Trump’s hapless machinations in the embattled Oval Office. For example:
“Editorials in influential American newspapers were increasingly critical of the SDS program – to the delight of the master Soviet propagandists, who were manipulating the American media with invisible strings.”
Or how about this comment to the President from his Chief of Staff:
“One of the things I like about you is that you’re always well prepared, well briefed and always ready to ask for advice. A lot of people at the top don’t do that.”
Sheesh … if only!
As I read this book in 2019, the most frightening thing about it is the fact that the described sequence of events is all too possible even today BUT the tragedy of the outcome with Trump in the president’s seat is a foregone conclusion.
Paul Weiss
Want to read
April 5, 2011This book cost me $0.50 at a local library sale.
February 12, 2025
2.5. Abt what I expected, I really just couldn't resist the cover. Some rampant sexism in this political thriller turning into ww3 and missing a third act, character development....
Proto-Clancy in need of a serious dose of polish.
Proto-Clancy in need of a serious dose of polish.
February 4, 2015
In the future, the superpowers coexist in an uneasy state of stardétente. One night, on the Bering Sea, the captain of an American spy ship catches a man in his cabin, strangles him and tosses him overboard. This never comes up again. Later, in an unrelated incident, Russians board the ship looking for stuff but don’t find any. The man who sends spy planes to overfly the incident turns out to be an old friend. This never comes up again. Meanwhile at the White House, the Japanese are mad as hell about a new tariff on auto imports that never comes up again. The Vice President has to get to Korea in a hurry, but America is out of Air Force Oneses – a multi-book preoccupation of Richard Rohmer’s – so she flies commercial. The 747 drifts into Soviet airspace and is destroyed. The President – devastated by the death of the Vice President, and the loss of her frequent flyer miles – activates America’s star wars missile shield and nukes the hub of Russia’s star wars missile shield. The Russians attempt to nuke America and fail because, hey, star wars missile shield. The Russians issue an ULTIMATUM to West Germany: Surrender. The President issues an ULTIMATUM to Russia: Don’t invade West Germany. Who will blink first?
More: Starmageddon discussed at the Reading Richard Rohmer blog.
More: Starmageddon discussed at the Reading Richard Rohmer blog.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews