Axis of Time Series

“The action is nonstop, the characters very real—and very different from each other—and, to coin a phrase, it makes you think.”—S. M. Stirling, author of Island in the Sea of Time

In the year 2021, a multinational fleet—experimenting with untested weapons technology—pitched through time, crash-landing in 1942. The world is thrown into chaos as Roosevelt, Hitler, Churchill, Tojo, and Stalin scramble to adapt to new, high-tech killing tools, and twenty-first-century ways of war.

For “uptimers” like Britain’s Prince Harry and the men and women who serve aboard the supercarrier USS Hillary Clinton, war is a constant struggle with their own downtime allies, who are mired in ignorance and bigotry.

As the Allies counter the Nazi assault and set off for the coast of France, Japan begins to buckle, soon every battle will be played out in a lethal dance of might and intelligence, unholy alliances and desperate gambles, and each clash will be fought with the ultimate weapon; knowledge from the future.

Thanks to the historical records, all sides know that two superpowers will emerge while the losers will be pounded into submission. But time has shifted on its axis, so none know who will survive or how peace will take hold in a world turned upside down. These are the questions that John Birmingham brilliantly answers in his critically acclaimed adventure of war and imagination.

It’s World War II and the A-bomb is here to stay. The only question: Who’s going to drop it first?

The Battle of Midway was forever transformed by the devastating appearance of a U.S.-led naval task force from the twenty-first century. Since that day, state-of-the-art warships have prowled the Pacific, armed with the latest instruments of mass destruction, as the warring powers of 1942 scramble to be first to wield the weapons of tomorrow against their enemies. Russia and Germany form a deadly alliance, while Admiral Yamamoto moves to seize Hawaii and invade Australia.

Suddenly it’s a whole new war with unimaginable high-tech tools, and high-stakes inter-national betrayals from Tokyo to Washington to the Kremlin. As the world trembles on the brink of anni-hilation, Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt, Hitler, and Tojo confront extreme choices and a future rife with possi-bilities—all of them apocalyptic.

On the eve of America’s greatest victory in the Pacific, a catastrophic event disrupts the course of World War II, forever changing the rules of combat. . . .

The impossible has spawned the unthinkable. A military experiment in the year 2021 has thrust an American-led multinational armada back to 1942, right into the middle of the U.S. naval task force speeding toward Midway Atoll—and what was to be the most spectacular U.S. triumph of the entire war.

Thousands died in the chaos, but the ripples had only begun. For these veterans of Pearl Harbor—led by Admirals Nimitz, Halsey, and Spruance—have never seen a helicopter, or a satellite link, or a nuclear weapon. And they’ve never encountered an African American colonel or a British naval commander who was a woman and half-Pakistani. While they embrace the armada’s awesome firepower, they may find the twenty-first century sailors themselves far from acceptable.

Initial jubilation at news the Allies would win the war is quickly doused by the chilling realization that the time travelers themselves—by their very presence—have rendered history null and void. Celebration turns to dread when the possibility arises that other elements of the twenty-first century task force may have also made the trip—and might now be aiding Yamamoto and the Japanese.

What happens next is anybody’s guess—and everybody’s nightmare. . . .