War World: Road Warriors

by John Carr, Doug McElwain, William Webb

War Road Warriors is a new War World collection of stories featuring the survivors of the CoDominium, the USSR/US world government which has kept the peace on Earth and throughout human-occupied space for the past century. Earth has been badly wounded in the nuclear holocaust, which has made large portions of the planet uninhabitable.

Now the survivors, most of them residing in far-flung colony worlds, will have to forge their own course. Warfare breaks out on New Washington when one of the last CD Naval flotillas, sponsored by Bronson allies, arrives to end the Falkenberg Protectorate and place Colonel John Falkenberg under arrest. Marginal worlds like Haven descend into complete barbarism as food factories—without off-world deliveries of petroleum—fail and mass starvation ensues. Haven has never been self-sufficient, and now without outside help—the Four Horsemen rule the roadways. The most populated areas, like the Shangri-La Valley, suffer the most, and bands of starving marauders and runaway militias head for the Northern Steppes, where the herdsmen keep their horses, cattle and muskylope.

Kindle Edition

Published January 3, 2023

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author with this name in the Goodreads database.

John Carr has enjoyed a career as a journalist, correspondent and broadcaster (The Times, Wall Street Journal Europe, Vatican Radio), mainly in the Mediterranean and particularly Greece, where he now resides. He is the author of On Spartan Wings: The Royal Hellenic Air Force in World War II; Spartas Kings; The Defence and Fall of Greece 1940-41; RHNS Averof and Fighting Emperors of Byzantium, all published by Pen & Sword.

See also:
John Carr, English barrister and travel author
John Carr, schoolmaster
John Carr, reverend
John Carr, travel author
John Carr, pioneer
John Carr, Newton's principia
John Carr, theology professor
John Carr, veterinarian

Reviews

[D J Rout · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this out of loyalty to Doug McElwain, author of War World: Andromeda Flight, so I read his story, 'Be Careful What You Wish For', first. Then I thought it was a bit unfair to read just that story and not do some jusitce to the book as a whole by reading the other stories, and here we are.

This book is definitely for fans of Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium universe, as it is set in that universe, with precise and detailed observance of the future history sDr Pournelle set up in King David's Spaceship, Prince of Sparta et al. The universe itself is a blend of Pournelle's politics and what we now call 'military SF', so if you're after aliens and superficially profound statements about the human condition based on them, forget it. I mean, The Mote in God's Eye is set in this universe, but you won't find any Moties in this book.

The stories range from the pretty pedestrian, such as 'Slam Dunk' by John F Carr, through McElwain's story, to Gene Stewart's 'Low Note' which starts off great but ends so unbelievably I think Dr Pournelle would cringe, and then ends with the very good 'Treason on Sparta' by Larry King (I'm unable to say which one) which is a history infodump wrapped in a pretty good spy story.

All the stories are good object lessons in how to write these kinds of stories. That is, you can point to each one and say 'See, this does such and such' and then say 'Oh, but it also does this, which lets the story down'. This is what you'd need to know if you intend to write a story for Mr. Carr, the editor, set in this universe. I'm reliably informed that there's a CoDominium concordance coming out which will give you the necessary background to actually do that.

[Andrew P. Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pleasantly surprised

All of the stories were solid. A couple left me thinking "where is this going", but even those left me wondering "what happens next"
None of the stories had a "that's not right" moment like Andromeda did with the Sauron virus