I liked the message of "Summit" but it's not much as fiction. Maybe an essay would be better, but I know the author has to earn money by selling it to a market. In any case, I found the science fiction content to be pointless. (Maybe if it had been the near future and the US and USSR leaders were getting together to keep the Arms Race going by planning "incidents" to make sure peace didn't break out . . .)
I thought "The Leader" was too coy by pretending to hide the identity of "the Leader" and "Winston" when it was absolutely clear who we were talking about from the start. (I suppose the author didn't want to write fiction about a living person, but I think Sir Winston would be amused by his depiction as a superman.) I guess this story is supposed to take place in some other reality, since Hitler (controlled by Churchill) agrees to retreat! In any case, this was much too simplistic a view of history, and seemed to completely ignore the fact that the majority of the War in Europe took place between Germany and the USSR. (Was Stalin also a superman?)
(P.S. I meant to say that I was amused by the way "Langart" was careful to use the word "analog" more than once in his story. Nothing like writing to the market!)
Politics
I thought "The Leader" was too coy by pretending to hide the identity of "the Leader" and "Winston" when it was absolutely clear who we were talking about from the start. (I suppose the author didn't want to write fiction about a living person, but I think Sir Winston would be amused by his depiction as a superman.) I guess this story is supposed to take place in some other reality, since Hitler (controlled by Churchill) agrees to retreat! In any case, this was much too simplistic a view of history, and seemed to completely ignore the fact that the majority of the War in Europe took place between Germany and the USSR. (Was Stalin also a superman?)
(P.S. I meant to say that I was amused by the way "Langart" was careful to use the word "analog" more than once in his story. Nothing like writing to the market!)