Electromagnetic Assault

by Bruce Landay

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What do you do when you’re busy inserting a SEAL team on a rescue mission and your octocopter gunship is suddenly zizzed to bits by an advanced directed energy weapon, leaving you a disassembled person mingled with a pile of twisted metal? 

If you’re Navy Lieutenant Jazmin Hassani, you get a batch of bionic body parts and a two-step promotion to emerge as Commander Hassani, an aircraft accident investigator. Your arms, legs, and eyeballs can now do amazing new things, but the price you pay is constantly living on a razor edge of post-traumatic anxiety. 

Don’t worry, Dear Reader, I haven’t spoiled a thing. All this comes within the first ten pages; it’s just setup. Electromagnetic Assault offers 339 more pages of nonstop action and military conflict, broken only by quick explanations of next year’s technology, and punctuated by every whiz-bang in the newly-invented arsenal of directed energy weapons.

Yes, there is a human story behind Commander Jazmin Hassani. She has a mother, a father, a raffish love interest, and other close connections. But it’s the astounding hardware, software, and kinetic battle scenes that provide sizzle for this elegant military techno-thriller. 

Bruce Landay, the author, is a retired Air Force officer and writes a fascinating “Future Trends and Science Fiction” newsletter on Substack. I’m happy to say Bruce is a friend of mine. He was, in fact, the first writer I met at the 2016 UW Writers’ Institute when we were both neophytes in the novel-writing business—I in historical fiction and he in science fiction. 

We walked down State Street to find a place for dinner, and Bruce regaled me with his work-in-progress, a tale in which the hero was busy solving problems in two different time streams, to the best of my recollection. Somewhere in the intervening years, the time travel was lost, and Bruce’s debut novel became one of the best-written techno-thrillers you’re likely to read. 

In case you don’t know the genre, a techno-thriller is a form of speculative fiction with a thriller-style plot structure, a near-future setting, and a strong focus on technical details, which often have to do with espionage, geo-politics, and military systems. 

If you like techno-thrillers, this will be right up your alley. If you’re new to techno-thrillers, read this one: you may get hooked. 

By the end of Bruce’s book, you will have explored a world of the not-so-distant future in which global power relationships are radically altered and frightening new weapons systems decide the fate of nations and individuals. 

It’s a bit spooky, Gentle Reader—but it’s worth thinking about. 

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

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