PREFACE
Sean Patrick Hazlett
When Alfred Werner asked Albert Einstein in a 1949 interview what weapons he thought nations would use in World War III, Einstein replied, “I don’t know. But I can tell you what they’ll use in the Fourth—rocks!”
Einstein’s response assumed World War III would usher in an atomic Armageddon. Yet there are many plausible futures in which the Third World War’s combatants might limit or avoid using nuclear weapons long enough to fight a Fourth World War. This volume explores Einstein’s nightmare of the war beyond the next war of atomic annihilation as well as less apocalyptic, but sometimes even more disturbing, World War IV futures.
More interestingly, the exploration of these narratives not only reveals the horrifying visions of the war beyond the next one, but also the anxieties and tensions associated with our own unique place in history. The cultural products of an age often bear the hallmarks of that time period, whether conscious, subconscious, or unconscious. One of the most fascinating things about putting together this anthology was how often its stories had more to say about the current social milieu than the worlds each writer had created.
Composed in the wake of the great pandemic year, many of these tales highlight several common themes. Whether a particular story leans to the political right or left, more often than not, it expresses distrust of public institutions and modes of economic governance. On the right, this is often manifest as suspicion of governmental institutions and the establishment media, frustration with bureaucracy, complaints about cancel culture, opposition to identity politics, and alarm at the aggressive behavior of a rising and increasingly assertive China. On the left, this wariness is most often associated with critiques of modern capitalism, resistance against nativist ideologies like Trumpism, and support for pro-indigenous movements. But at its core, all sources of grievance tend to be in opposition to, rather than in support of, current political or economic trends—a focus on what divides versus what unites us.
All the artists in this book ran through the great gauntlet of 2020—a year in which intense political polarization and civil unrest peaked at the same time a lethal pathogen rampaged throughout the globe, killing over three million souls as of April 2021. It was a moment in history when nearly all institutions failed to live up to expectations.
Federal, state, and local governments either overreacted with liberty-restricting lockdowns that destroyed many small businesses or minimized the virus’s contagion and lethality to save these operations, accelerating the coronavirus’s spread. In March 2020, some public health officials downplayed the importance of wearing masks then reversed their stance once manufacturers were able to supply enough of them for medical professionals and other first responders. The Chinese leadership suppressed information about the coronavirus and hoarded medical supplies early in the outbreak, exposing just how vulnerable global supply chains were to the whims of the Chinese government.
It is not surprising that trust in public institutions greatly eroded in 2020—governments displayed staggering incompetence, the media sensationalized and distorted information, small businesses failed, and people suffered. The Chinese government’s actions put the fragility and vulnerability of the global supply chain into stark relief. It is therefore not surprising that many people, Americans in particular, exited 2020 with a profound mistrust in their public institutions—a mistrust showcased in many of the stories in this anthology.
And yet this extreme level of polarization was eminently predictable. It is endemic to a sort of cultural PTSD following fifteen years of self-sorting and information filtering on the Internet. In fact, as far back as 2012, Eli Pariser’s The Filter Bubble warned that the United States would only become more polarized over time. The advent of social media coupled with personalized search algorithms have had over fifteen years to hive off individual Americans into increasingly distant and politicized silos to the point that those on the political right and left often no longer consume the same news or speak the same political language. All the coronavirus did was put the cumulative effect of a decade-and-a-half process of self-selection and confirmation bias in stark relief.
And yet amid the madness of the 2020 pandemic, there was a glimmer of hope. Before most Americans even knew what the coronavirus was, it took Moderna just two days in January 2020 to design a vaccine and roughly a year for people to begin getting vaccinated. This was a tremendous testament to the efficiency and effectiveness of the partnership between private and public entities. The lockdowns demonstrated to employers and millions of workers that mind-numbing commutes wasting hours of workers’ time and negatively impacting their productivity and mental health were no longer necessary as many jobs could easily be done remotely. As in any crisis, humanity adapted and overcame many of these challenges.
While the story of the 2020 pandemic is yet to be written, the myriad histories of World War IV are now in your hands. How will the survivors emerging from World War III’s radioactive slagheaps fight the next war? Will they wage it with sticks and stones. . . and sorcery? Or will they use more refined weapons, elevating lawfare to an art and unleashing bureaucratic nightmares worse than death? Will they struggle against themselves, interdimensional invaders, or the Great Old Ones themselves? What horrors from the desolate darkness might slither into the light? Wipe away the ashes of civilization and peer into a pit of atomic glass to witness the haunting visions of World War IV from today’s greatest minds in science fiction, fantasy, and horror.