''Commander-1'' is a 1965 novel by

Welsh Welsh may refer to: Related to Wales * Welsh, referring or related to Wales * Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales * Welsh people People * Welsh (surname) * Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peop ...

author Peter Bryan George and deals with the aftermath of a nuclear war between the United States, the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

and the

People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. It was George's last published work, with the author committing suicide in 1966.

Plot

An up-and-coming Chinese Communist apparatchik named Li (who is, in fact, a suave

Fu Manchu Dr. Fu Manchu () is a supervillain who was introduced in a series of novels by the English author Sax Rohmer beginning shortly before World War I and continuing for another forty years. The character featured in cinema, television, radio, com ...

type philosopher steeped in ancient Chinese learning and having only a thin veneer of Communism or

Marxism Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialectical ...

) devises a plan with the aid of a prominent nuclear scientist and a People's Liberation Army general to produce a

nuclear weapon A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions ( thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bom ...

, which they will plant outside US bases of strategic importance and detonate so that it appears that the

has committed to the first strike of a nuclear war. The United States and the Soviet Union both deploy their nuclear arsenals, wiping each other out and destroying the Pentagon and killing the

US President The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States ...

. Meanwhile, the only submarine left in the US fleet, which has been on an expedition conducting an experiment on social isolation under the polar icecap, comes back to port after receiving news of the

nuclear holocaust A nuclear holocaust, also known as a nuclear apocalypse, nuclear Armageddon, or atomic holocaust, is a theoretical scenario where the mass detonation of nuclear weapons causes globally widespread destruction and radioactive fallout. Such a scenar ...

. The commander drops the survivors off at a deserted Pacific island that will be passed over by the

fallout Nuclear fallout is the residual radioactive material propelled into the upper atmosphere following a nuclear blast, so called because it "falls out" of the sky after the explosion and the shock wave has passed. It commonly refers to the radioac ...

. The survivors soon discover that the island is really a massive bunker for just such an eventuality. Two of the survivors kill themselves after they conceive a child, which they believe to be mutated because of the presence of the mutated baby produced by one of the island's local apes. The submarine then heads to a surviving US naval base, where they find the military holding out against civilian survivors led by an ex-congressman. The submarine commander, James Geragty, turns the civilians into mindless drones, using drugs from the medical supplies at the base, and takes them on board his submarine to the Pacific island, the only place in the world not affected by fallout. There Geragty sets himself up as the new US President, Commander One, and sets his slaves to work building his new paradise, which the original experiment subjects reject as totalitarian. After he declares that he will attempt to destroy any Soviet survivors that he may eventually find, he sets the original experiment candidates loose on a rubber dinghy, claiming that he will let them go to another island. As they float away in the ocean, Geragty has them machine-gunned in the water, destroying all dissent in his new society. In an interlude set in China, it is disclosed how badly Comrade Li's miscalculated in his nefarious plan. While the Americans and Soviets did destroy each other, that did not leave China free to claim the world; rather, both Americans and Soviets reserved some of their missiles for China, enough to completely destroy it. Comrade Li meets a suitable gruesome and ignominious end at the vengeful hands of a band of surviving Chinese soldiers.

References

* http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/g/peter-george/commander1.htm * https://web.archive.org/web/20081011083635/http://homepage.ntlworld.com/elizabeth.ercocklly/peter.htm 1965 British novels 1965 science fiction novels Novels set during World War III Novels set during the Cold War Heinemann (publisher) books {{ColdWar-novel-stub