Phil in SF reviewed The Lucky Strike by Kim Stanley Robinson
Politically thoughtful, but I couldn't engage with the story
3 stars
This book has three parts: the story "The Lucky Strike", an essay by Kim Stanley Robinson expounding on the themes of the story, and an interview of the author by Terry Bisson.
The Lucky Strike imagines that the crew of the Enola Gay are not the ones to fly Little Boy to Japan. Instead, the bombardier on The Lucky Strike is very torn about killing 100,000 people and imagines himself saying no, leaping out of the airplane, and worse. I think we should examine our motivations for bombing Hiroshima, but I don't know enough to have a moral opinion whether it was correct in the time. Nevertheless I'm deeply uncomfortable with the choice we did make. Maybe that's why all the second-guessing bombardier Frank January does in the story doesn't resonate; it repeats things I've thought about myself. I can't say "don't read this" because my inability to connect with …
This book has three parts: the story "The Lucky Strike", an essay by Kim Stanley Robinson expounding on the themes of the story, and an interview of the author by Terry Bisson.
The Lucky Strike imagines that the crew of the Enola Gay are not the ones to fly Little Boy to Japan. Instead, the bombardier on The Lucky Strike is very torn about killing 100,000 people and imagines himself saying no, leaping out of the airplane, and worse. I think we should examine our motivations for bombing Hiroshima, but I don't know enough to have a moral opinion whether it was correct in the time. Nevertheless I'm deeply uncomfortable with the choice we did make. Maybe that's why all the second-guessing bombardier Frank January does in the story doesn't resonate; it repeats things I've thought about myself. I can't say "don't read this" because my inability to connect with this probably says more about me than it does the story.
However, Robinson's essay on historical theories, whether they are good to apply to the Hiroshima bombing, and what to make of the alternate possibilities is also not something I connected with. I'm not interested in theories of history like the "great man" theory.
And lastly, I did find some interesting tidbits in Bisson's interview of Robinson, but most of the questions are pedestrian. In some cases, Robinson turns them into something interesting. In other cases, particularly on his writing methods, not so interesting. (Maybe writers will get something from those? 🤷)