It is May 1965. Over forty months have passed since the Cuban Missiles Crisis went horribly wrong in a world in which the ‘swinging sixties’ never happened.
In America the White House is mired in domestic scandals and committed to an unwinnable proxy war with both China and Russia in Korea; and in England the first post-war elected Government finds itself inexorably drawn into still more unwanted ‘foreign imbroglios’ when it desperately wants to focus on matters closer to home.
1965 ought to be the year the reconstruction begins in earnest, the year when finally, peace ought to be breaking out but it as if everything is on hold. The worst is over...or is it?
Russia and China are closed books to what remains of the West and the old bulwark between the Communist and Capitalist worlds – Europe – now lies devastated and de-populated leaving Britain and its Commonwealth allies holding the ring everywhere except in the Far East.
Just below the surface dangerous tensions lurk wherever one looks. In America the canker of the Kingdom of the End of Days is a haven for violent religious zealotry in the heart of the Midwest. Refugees from the chaos in France pour across the English Channel. The Mediterranean remains a cauldron of past and present religious and ethnic rivalries, and the Middle East a patchwork of unlikely war-driven alliances. India and Pakistan are again at war over Kashmir. And all the while the United States and Britain tiptoe around each other, unreconciled, mistrustful each fearful that they might be only one or two missteps away from another disastrous misunderstanding.
Everybody wants to believe that 1965 will be the year the foundations of the new era will be laid but tacitly, they know that they will have to wait and hope for 1966 & all that...
In the meantime, what new disasters will afflict the survivors?
Author’s note to readers: since the publication of ‘Operation Anadyr’ in October 2014, the Timeline 10/27/62 series has branched into and explored a number of additional narrative arcs and themes, and in several standalone stories.
For my readers who prefer to read the Timeline 10/27/62 books in the chronological order of the overall narrative arc 1966 & ALL THAT = 21.
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