Author Interview with Eric Swedin, author of When the Angels Wept: A What-If History of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
1. Eric, you’re a
prolific author and documentarian, especially regarding the nuclear age and the
potential consequences around the Cuban Missile Crisis, but not very many
outside of academic circles may know your work.
Please tell us who you are and what you’re about as a person.
First and foremost, I am a person who is easily bored. That
is my main driver intellectually. I know that it sounds almost trite, but it is
quite true. That is why my eleven published books are all over the board in
content, six are non-fiction, five are novels. I consider When Angels Wept:
A What-If History of the Cuban Missile Crisis to be a novel even though it
was published by a military history press. It reads like a history book, but it
is fiction because it contains statements that are not true. The first half of
the book that sets up the story is mostly accurate history, while the second
half is completely untrue. It is a history book from an alternate timeline and
I would argue that the narrative was the more probable outcome to the Cuban
Missile Crisis than what actually happened.
2. What motivated
you to write When Angels Wept?
Was there a particular event that gave you inspiration, or was it a
gradual realization as you became more and more familiar with the era?
I have always been fascinated and horrified by nuclear war.
As I teenager, I bought the government report on The Effects of Nuclear
Weapons (1962) at a library book sale, which included a circular calculator
made of a bottom piece of plastic with answers on it and a top piece of plastic
that rotated to show the effects of different sized bombs and how much
infrastructure would be destroyed and so forth.
These numbers had been acquired during actual nuclear bomb tests in
Nevada. I have also been fascinated by the Cuban Missile Crisis since I was a
teen, though I was born afterwards.
Some years ago, I started to read World War Z and
wanted to write a similar book, where a journalist is traveling the world
during an alternate history version of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The project
quickly morphed into a fake history book, which was much easier for me to
write, even though I had a lot of experience in writing fiction as well as
non-fiction. Oddly enough, I did not finish reading World War Z; I
greatly admired it, but it was too bloody for me, an odd reaction considering
that I then turned to writing a story just as horrific in body count and even
more alarming because it really could have happened.
3. Just how
dangerous was The Cuban Missile Crisis?
Had Nixon won in 1960 instead of JFK, how differently do you think the
events would’ve unfolded? Was there
another potential President that would have been able to guide the US through
it without blowing up the world, or would someone else have been able to avoid
it altogether through a different approach to foreign policy?
Wars often start by accident. By this I mean that the
people who make a deliberate decision to go to war have often miscalculated how
other nations will react and the possible course of the war. Rarely does a
nation start a war that it expects to lose. The Cuban Missile Crisis should
have spiraled out of control as mistakes occurred as hostile military and naval
forces rubbed against each other in efforts to intimidate their enemies. I think that JFK was the ideal president for
the Cuban Missile Crisis. He had enough
self-confidence and military experience to reject the advice of his military
service chiefs, most of whom wanted to escalate the crisis. That would have been a disaster.
Jeff Greenfield, a prominent journalist who turned his hand
to alternate history, described in Then Everything Changed: Stunning
Alternate Histories of American Politics JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan
(2011) how JFK was almost assassinated by a car bomb after his election but
before his inauguration. This would have
led to LBJ serving as president during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Greenfield and I were in a documentary
together and had a conversation afterwards and we agreed that LBJ would have
been a disaster during the Cuban Missile Crisis. LBJ did not have the self-confidence or
aptitude to stand up to the military and take a more moderate approach. The evidence for this failing is how he
stumbled into greater participation in Vietnam in 1965 without thinking through
the possible consequences. I am not
trying to criticize the American military, their advice to the president during
the Cuban Missile Crisis is a matter of public record. One of the problems with military officers is
that they are trained professionals who know how to use a hammer and assume
that the hammer is an appropriate tool in all circumstances.
As for Nixon, that is an interesting question, I suspect
that he was a different enough president that we may never have had a Cuban
Missile Crisis and I suspect that he would have handled such a crisis
well. For all his criminal acts before
and during Watergate, Nixon was self-confident, a sure hand, and an innovative
thinker when it came to foreign policy.
4. I’ve enjoyed your
novel When Angels Wept, but I also know you’ve gotten involved in a
couple of documentaries about the events, such as What if…? Armageddon 1962 with The Military
Channel. What’s the experience of
putting together a documentary like, especially for an alternate history event?
I worked on two documentaries that were partially based on
my book. In both cases, the
documentaries were funded and created by other people and I was contacted after
each project was started. I gave advice,
responded to research questions, and acted as one of the talking heads in each
of the documentaries. It was an interesting experience and I learned a lot; I
believe that both are good documentaries.
I also did a short piece for C-SPAN.
Documentaries work so differently than prose does.
5. Moving beyond The
Cuban Missile Crisis, you’ve written several other novels, including a few in science
fiction. Tell us about them. I know authors are supposed to say they love
all their babies equally, but do you have a favorite?
I like my other novels, each of them for different
reasons. My favorite work is probably Fragments
of Me, where a person is able to fragment their mind and put copies in
other people’s minds, allowing those fragmentals to just observe or even
control their hosts. The story includes
numerous flashbacks in history as the reader learns more about this unique
individual. Seeking Valhalla is
my homage to the novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs and is set in a fantastical
version of World War II. Anasazi
Exile is a contemporary science fiction thriller. The Killing of Greybird is a murder
mystery set during a Mormon-Indian war in 1865 Utah. Survive the Bomb: The Radioactive
Citizen's Guide to Nuclear Survival is a fun little book that includes
excerpts from government documents of the 1950s and 1960s on how to build
fallout shelters and survive a nuclear war.
6. You’re a history
professor at Weber State University in Utah.
What drew you to history, and what drew you to Utah? What’s the academic environment like
nowadays?
I grew up Utah and always enjoyed reading history books,
perhaps because both of my parents were interested in history and my father had
even taught history at a high school. My
first career was in the computer field, including ten years as a faculty member
in the field, but I always loved history and science fiction. I have been fortunate enough to become a
history professor, a second career for me, and gain some success as a
novelist. I enjoy teaching history, find
researching and writing history books rewarding, and like writing science
fiction novels.
I am fortunate to do all the things I am drawn like and
make a living at them. Making a living
as a science fiction novelist is very hard (you really need to write
bestsellers in order to make enough money) and getting a job as a history
professor is also very hard (many people have history doctorates and are unable
to get full-time teaching jobs). I have
found that my fellow faculty think me odd to write fiction on the side, but I
have never been criticized or discouraged from doing so. Part of the reason for that is that I have
been productive enough in my other research to service the publish-or-perish
problem.
7. In my first
novel, Akeldama, the Mormon Church is a major player. You’ve written a book called Healing
Souls: Psychotherapy in the Latter-day
Saints Community. What has your
experience in the community been like?
I was born Mormon and remain an active member. My PhD dissertation was a history of
psychotherapy in the modern Latter-day Saint community, which later became the
book Healing Souls. My experience
as a church member has been positive, though I recognize that the friction
between religious beliefs and contemporary attitudes can irritate other people
and cause problems.
8. What other genres
and writers do you enjoy? Do you seek
out new books from a variety of authors, or do you find yourself returning to
those you’re already familiar with?
I enjoy science fiction, mysteries, historical novels, and
thrillers. Some of my favorite authors
include David Brin, Robert Harris, James S. A. Corey, Ted Chiang, and Walter
John Williams. I am always trying out
new writers, though I still enjoy the tried and true familiar writers. Other novelists that I have appreciated
include H.G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, C. S. Forester, Bernard Cornwell, and
Larry Niven. I also quite enjoyed the
entire Fables graphic novel series as well as much of the work of Neil
Gaiman.
9. How do you
balance your time between writing and teaching?
When it comes to writing, are you more of a planner/outliner, or more of
a by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of guy?
Teaching always takes priority because it is an
in-the-moment requirement. I usually don’t teach with notes and often will let
the discussion and lecture go where my students what it to go, which means that
teaching is quite a creative process for me.
I am probably more of a planner in my writing, though I don’t create
detailed outlines; I do need to know where a novel is going in order to make
progress on it. Like many writers, I
have a stack of unfinished novels and short stories, and even a stack
unfinished history books.
10. Finally, is
there anything you’re working on currently?
Do you think you’ll be writing until the end?
I am usually working on several projects
simultaneously. A current project is a
history book called 1054: Year of the Guest Star. In that year a supernova appeared and was
visible during the daylight hours; the book will describe the astronomy of the
event and how that event was interpreted around the world. I want the book to be a slice of history,
describing our world during that year.
I hope to be writing to the end. My biggest regret on my demise will be the
stories that I didn’t finish telling.
