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.