In 2005, Canada’s army hired a Toronto writer to develop a sci-fi’esque novel “to promote discussion of Three Block War concepts”. It appears there’s now a sequel in the works.
The original work, “Crisis in Zefra”, set in Africa, was called by one wag at Army.ca “Three-Block War FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY”. One possible diversion – coming up with different captions for the graphics in the book.
Now, an official with “a small team of soldiers who advise the army about what may come to pass three decades from now” tells the Halifax Chronicle-Herald a sequel is in the works, scheduled for release in January 2010.
An interesting tidbit in the article from author Karl Schroeder:
“I was raised as a pacifist. But the way I reconcile that is I’m a strong believer in a foreign policy philosophy called human security, which is championed by Lloyd Axworthy, which basically states that the state doesn’t deal just with other states. When there’s a crisis, it doesn’t really matter whether it’s a military crisis or a natural disaster or whatever, you intervene to save people. And, actually, Canada has acted on that philosophy for a number of years, and as a way of employing the army, I’m entirely in favour if it.” The year 2040 “is just far enough in the future that nearly everything we say is likely to be wrong,” he said.
How useful Zefra 2 might be remains to be seen, but, in the words of the original Army.ca wag,
How about a book telling us what we’ll look like in 5 years?
Indeed…
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