Talk:The Third World War (Hackett novels)

Polish Up 25th October 2013
Hi, I'm an avid reader of WWIII genre and technothrillers in general, this is one of my favorite books and I felt this article did not give it a fair overview so I expanded and refined it a little.

The new edit gives a more clear overview of the structure of the book and provides a better summary of the broad outlines without spoiling too much of the detail. I spent 2 hours on it.

It should give a person interested in this genre a much better overview of the book when deciding if they want to get it and read it. User:Jericho.Trinity.Omega 12:02, 25th October 1984 [GMT] —Preceding undated comment added 14:53, 25 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Many thanks for your time, J.T.O. With my bold edit just posted, I carefully went through the article and (I think) cleaned up some of the writing. My intention was to make the page more readable, NOT to change any of the facts presented herein. Humblest apologies if any of my numerous minor edits bother you - nuke 'em  or let's discuss here. Big Lew 23:36, 3 June 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lew Sheen (talk • contribs)

The two books
There should be a separate article created on the first Third World War novel. This article at one point suggested that "The Untold Story" is simply a revised version of the first book, but I have both and that doesn't seem to be the case. I might do so myself but I have a few other things on my plate at the moment. 23skidoo 17:23, 2 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I thought they were rather different - looking forward to the article. :: Kevinalewis  :  (Talk Page) / (Desk)  11:24, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Wrong Date
World War I actually broke out between Russia and Germany on August 1st, not the 4th. The book is incorrect. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 63.165.234.2 (talk) 15:35, 5 April 2007 (UTC).
 * The book is incorrect in a LOT of ways.

-G

What ways would those be? That NATO wins, or perhaps that the war happens at all?

Alternative ending
I have the Macmillan edition; I found no such chapter in it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.207.214.148 (talk) 06:52, 1 May 2007 (UTC).

Image of book cover
I'll never understand the notion of copyrights on images, and the absurd lenghts people will go to in order to pretend it's a serious thing. Nobody really cares. An image is a snapshot of time, theres not much creativity or art gone into it so theres no real argument IMO that it needs the absurd protections that constantly get harped on about images here and elsewhere.

I decided to solve this problem by scanning in my own cover from my own copy to end this nonsense.

Jericho.Trinity.Omega 31st October 2013.

Image of book cover
I've written to the publishers and authors (where applicable) of the WWIII books listed on the SEE ALSO part of this article and the one on Arc Light and Trinity's Child, in order to confirm what peoples common sense should already have told them: NO AUTHOR CARES IF THE COVER IF THEIR BOOK IS ON AN ENCYCLOPEDIA PAGE.

Those disclaimers inside book jackets where they reserve all rights in every form were meant for the era in which these books were published, the 1980s, which is a totally diffrent universe to the one were in now.

When I get their permission I will be putting my own images back up.

I would urge the knee-jerk administrators on here to actually read the upload information this time before hysterically pulling the images.

Try going with the spirit of the law not it's letter, putting the book jacket on wikipedia is promotion of the book not copyright theft, the wikipedia policy in this area is even more insane and dated than the actual laws. At the very least they should wait until they have a complaint before pulling images, but what author in their right mind would have a problem with it? None.

Jericho.Trinity.Omega 1st November 2013. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jericho.Trinity.Omega (talk • contribs) 13:55, 1 November 2013 (UTC)


 * You are absolutely wrong. The cover art almost always belongs to the publisher, not the author.  In fact, it's rare, except in self-published books, for the author to have even veto rights on the cover.  That being said, it's usually the case that the cover (of one edition) of the book meets our non-free-image guidelines in an article about the book.  As for waiting for a complaint before removal, the Foundation decided that was inappropriate, although it left it to the individual projects to determine the appropriate process.  — Arthur Rubin  (talk) 15:21, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Articles on both books? Or one about both?
So it strikes me as odd that we don't have any coverage of "The Third World War: August 1985" except as a sort of marginal entry in this article. To my mind it would make most sense to rename this to something like "The Third World War (Hackett novels)" and then include summaries of both books equally. Or we could have a separate article on The Third World War: August 1985, which would be more conventional (though the contents of the two articles would be pretty similar apart from the list of differences with each other). The Land (talk) 08:54, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree. I think your first suggestion would be best. These books are not really notable enough to have two articles about them, IMO, and the second one really just fills in some gaps in the first one. At a guess it was cobbled together from the author's notes after the first book was a commercial success. --Shimbo (talk) 13:34, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
 * These are actually quite different books. The first one was presented as a history, while the second was intended to be more "personal" and contain more solider-oriented narratives. And to claim they're not notable totally ignores the stir the first one created when it was published. If anything it's more notable than the second book. Typical Wikipedia recentism. Intothatdarkness 02:06, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
 * My point was not that the books aren't notable. It was that it's weird that there is an article about the second book but not the first - which as you say caused a stir at the time. This is like having an article about Jaws 2, but not having an article about Jaws.
 * The article should be renamed to something like "The Third World War (Hackett novels)" and cover both novels. Shimbo (talk) 10:28, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I'd just say the second book isn't really designed to fill in gaps. The first was intended to read like an actual history, while the second one was more of a battlefield narrative style. I'd actually say the first one made a much bigger splash than the second one did. My suspicion is whoever started the article had read the second book but maybe not the first one and misunderstood the whole thing. Intothatdarkness 19:50, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Okay. The point though is that the article needs to be renamed to "The Third World War (Hackett novels)" and edited (although much of the article seems to apply to both novels already).
 * I'll make the change when I get chance. Shimbo (talk) 07:41, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Retrofuturism
I've edited to change this novel from alternative history to retrofuturism. Alternative history is an author looking back and making changes to history. Retrofuturism is an author looking forward and trying to predict the future, but that imagined future has now been overtaken by reality. Clearly General Hacket was looking forward, not back, and so, IMO, his novels should be described as retrofuturism.--Shimbo (talk) 13:41, 22 December 2021 (UTC)