The Atlantropa Articles
By Cody Franklin
Atlantropa was first pitched in 1929 by the German architect Herman Sogel. Mr. Sogel suggested that a series of dams be used to block off and lower the Mediterranean Sea level. This would generate vast amounts of hydroelectric power and bring about large amounts of new lands for colonization and eventually link North Africa and Southern Europe. Mr. Sogel then also suggested that the rivers of Africa be diverted to refill the Chad basin, creating an enormous freshwater sea that could be used to irrigate the Sahara (And create an ecological catastrophe, but we’ll get there). This would open those lands to European settlement (Ah yes. Nothing says ‘colonialism’ like a disastrous attempt to Euroform the African continent!). The idea generated a limited amount of excitement in Northern Europe (Where no one would have to deal with it.), received no real support in the Mediterranean parts of Europe and well, no one in Europe cared what the Africans thought. Although I kinda doubt that the people of Africa would be all that excited about more European colonialism since the last couple batches didn't do anything for them (And indeed put out bounties on the hands of children.). Especially given this was supposed to be on the order of millions of European settlers. The Nazis, however, marginalized this idea; looking Eastwards not South for their living space and we all know what happened next. In The Atlantropa Articles, Mr. Franklin asks, what if the Nazis didn't marginalize the idea but instead rode it all the way to the Straits of Gibraltar? This isn't the only question that Mr. Franklin asks but we'll get there. First, let me introduce you to the setting and the plot.
The novel itself takes place over a thousand years after the 20th century. Our time is a time of myths and tall tales. It is hinted that there’s been at least one nuclear war between us and the time of our characters and much of the details of their history has been lost. Perhaps on purpose as the story unfolds. The Atlantropa project didn't work, or it didn't work as intended. While the Gibraltar dam does provides nearly endless power for Europe. This has created a green, vibrant North Europe free from want according to our main characters. The Mediterranean Basin though did not become a new land of milk and honey but a blasted, salt choked, sand-covered plain of heat and death that they call the Kiln (This is basically accurate. Basically, by draining the Med, you get a giant salt flat with high pressure and high temperatures. Think Death Valley but the size of a small continent. In reality, there would still be some water left - especially from rivers draining in and whatever they allow past the dam for power - and that is salt water that evaporates. This evaporation leaves behind the salt and so at the lowest point in this desert there will be a vast soda lake. So salty almost nothing can live there. Basically bacteria and Flamingoes. Maybe some really hardy lizards that eat the brine flies that can exist near the river/ocean inflows.). Most of southern Europe is little better becoming an abandoned wasteland (This is because southern Europe gets most of its water from the Med.). Only in the small fortress cities called Eagle Nests arrayed in a line across the southern edge of the Basin is there life and greenery. These cities are not just besieged by the heat and sand but by bands of people called Scavengers who roam the sand in tracked ships looking for targets to loot. The Eagle Nests then require resupply of weapons, medicines and sometimes foodstuff, this is provided by giant tracked ships from Europe. The European continent has been united under the rule of the Aryans of Germania, all of them tall, blond and blue-eyed thanks to genetic engineering (... Oh Fuck No! Wait. How in the ever-loving monkey wangles did the Germans build that dam?). The Reich has spread across the continent but the Kiln remains the Southern frontier and not much is known about what lies beyond it. That's largely because no one seems to care. Not even the men manning the giant tracked ships that roam the Kiln providing resupply to the Eagle Nests who are fated to maintain a line of defense against people they know nothing about. It seems almost absurd, given that Germania has gone into space, and can use orbitally dropped weapons on its enemies and characters discuss there being colonies on Mars. If you have the infrastructure to go into space and build an array of weapons so vast that a low ranked guy on what's an armed freighter can call in an orbital strike? You can certainly find out who is living in Africa and what's going on in the rest of your planet. The fact that the Aryans don't and most of them seem militantly incurious makes them seem more alien than human to me. Which I suppose rather fits since despite this being Earth, the world feels incredibly alien.
The novel is a first-person story told from the view of Ansel, captain of the Howling Dark. Ansel used to be a soldier until he lost his arm reclaiming an Eagle's Nest that fell to Scavenger attack. The civilian populace of the Eagle Nests were all killed, including noncombatants and children. Often in horrifying ways. This was Ansel’s first experience with the outside world and it became the defining one of his life. While his physical wounds were treated and his arm replaced, his mental and emotional wounds never were. So despite being born and raised in the still green and lust lands of Germania, he has become entirely a creature of the Kiln. Alienated from the society that raised him and any ideals of forgiveness or peace. Completely comfortable in his environmentally controlled armor, preferring it to normal clothes, reveling in the violence he commits on any Scavenger he finds. He so revels in it that he refuses to use the orbital weapons preferring to kill with cannon, gun, knife, and rope. When he doesn't use his cyborg arm or his boots. Captain Ansel, while being our protagonist, is thoroughly the villain of the story. He preaches a grim belief in a constant race war against the people of the south, decrying them all as blood-soaked savages while declaring his own acts as just and good. This is a man who goes out of his way to take prisoners so he can murder them up close and refuses to use faster, cleaner ways to kill in favor of getting as much of the feeling of the kill as he can. He's also a man living in self-denial claiming that he's doing everything to defend innocent people, and holds that up as a shield against any self-recrimination or doubt. Ansel stands not just for violence but for brutality and a forever degrading cycle of attack and counter-attack without any thought or self-examination. His self-deceit is real, as he berates himself for casualties that his crew suffers when he misjudges an enemy but never once actually admits to himself that every death on his crew is pointless because he could have simply wiped his enemies off the map without any risk to his men in the first place! Honestly, he's a man who would fit in perfectly with the SS Battalions battling their way across the Soviet Union in the 1940s (Well, yes. Yes he would. And he’d die like they did too!). Which is why he is likely frustrated by his brother Ulric.
Ulric is a scholar and civilized man who believes in peace and law. In a bizarre twist, he's also a Knight of the SS, the organization has reinvented itself as the paramilitary guardians of peace, culture, history, and law in Germania. I can really sympathize with readers who find that statement a sick joke by the way, but keep in mind this a thousand years later, things change. Ulric is an example of just how much the Aryan ideal has changed since Hitler first preached his message of hate and genocide. Ulric believes that Germania was founded on peace and forgiveness, that Hitler (who is depicted as a giant blond demigod by the people of Germania) was a visionary who ended wars in Europe by preaching forgiveness and peace between all Europeans. He even believes that the Aryans might want to try to live in peace with the Scavengers (as long as they stay on their side of the line, of course, he's not about to try living with them). Now granted, Ulric isn't a pacifist, he's perfectly willing to kill raiders as they do pose a danger to his fellow Aryans but he doesn't glory in it. He’d much rather just call in an orbital drop and be on his way, with the threat neutralized, no protracted blood sports needed. As events continue and Ulric trips over information that leads him to suspect that history might not be everything he was told it was, their conflict intensives (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA). This conflict is interesting because both men believe the other to be playing with fire and want to save their brother from the self-destructive path they're on. Ulric is standing up for what he believes is the truth and right way of doing things, while Ansel believes that his way is the only way for people to survive the realities of the world. While Ulric's unpleasant character traits are sometimes played up (Ansel thinks of his brother as whining when he calls for Ansel to let him drop the damn space rock... When Ansel's ship is on fire!) I honestly found him more sympathetic than Ansel. It's an interesting spin to tell the story from the viewpoint of someone who would traditionally be the villain of the piece, however Ansel doesn't engage in the conflict here, whether or not the history he's been taught or not is a lie. He simply doesn't care.
The biggest question in Atlantropia is, what will you do if you find out your world is built on a lie? Because the longer Ulric stays in the Kiln, the more clues he finds that the history he was taught is not the history that actually happened. Worse, from Ansel's point of view, the more Ulric becomes interested in what the Scavengers viewpoint of all this is. Ulric's questions become more dangerous, like why is it against the law to remove any artifacts from the Kiln, especially artifacts that date to the foundation of the Reich? Why are we not allowed to even talk to the Scavengers? What does lie south of us and what did happen all those centuries ago? With evidence mounting that their history is, in fact, a bald-faced lie and nothing about the far past they believe in actually happened, the rift gets worse. As Ulric becomes increasingly determined to find out just what the truth of the matter is, Ansel grows more determined to stop him. To the point, that victory might only be achieved if one of them dies and no matter who wins, the other will have to live with the fact that he killed his brother. Because while Ansel might be a savage in power armor, he still cares about his brother and Ulric might view his brother has fallen to a debased state but he still believes that the brother he loved is in there somewhere and he can bring him back. Ansel for his own part needs Ulric to admit that there’s nothing wrong with his actions or he’ll have to question himself and he can’t bring himself to do that.
Before the grade, let me break down what works and doesn’t work for me here. The novel does a great job getting us inside the head of Ansel and showing his view of the conflict between him and Ulric. Mr. Franklin also does a wonderful job of detailing the environment of the Kiln and showing us the effect it has on Ansel and why Ansel has devoted his life to it. The action is well written as well. The book overall is an episode of Mad Max meets the Man in the High Castle. If that sounds appealing to you, I encourage you to try the book. Now, what doesn’t work? The Atlantropia Articles is a book that raises a fair number of questions but then refuses to answer any of them. Some of the unanswered questions like ‘What the hell actually happened in this version of the 20th century’ I could maybe live. Other questions like “What do you do if you find out everything you know is a bald-faced lie?’ or ‘How do you reconcile the potential of the present with the sins of the past?’? These are simply left hanging. Part of this is because Ansel just can’t carry a story with these questions and the conflict between brothers just isn't enough to replace that for me. I suppose some people will tell me that was Mr. Franklin’s point but it falls short for me. Additionally, since we only get to see things from Ansel’s side and Ansel is militantly opposed to doing any digging, we don’t get a full exploration of the conflict or the myriad questions driving it. Simply put Ansel isn’t enough to support this weight and as a result, the story is rather lopsided. Now it’s possible that further books will happen that will address these questions but I have to look at what’s in front of me. That’s a book that left me frustrated and feeling a lack of any real confrontation between the two opposing ideas. Because of that, I don’t feel the book really hits a climax so much as stops. Which considering how well it was doing right up to that point is really frustrating for me. Others are going to disagree with me but I’m giving The Antlantropia Articles by Cody Franklin a C+. What the book does well, it does really well but by leaving all the questions hanging and lack of a strong climax in the sense of addressing the questions, I can’t give it a higher grade.
Next week join us for a shorter review as I tackle Conan the Barbarian Omnibus volume II: City of Thieves, which was selected by my patrons. If you would to vote on upcoming reviews, or themes (we have a poll up, on whether or not make November Military Science Fiction Month) you can join us for as little as a dollar a month at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads. Until next Friday, Keep Reading!
Comments in red text are your editor, Dr. Ben Allen
Comments in black text are your reviewer Garvin Anders
Comments in red text are your editor, Dr. Ben Allen
Comments in black text are your reviewer Garvin Anders
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