For readers out there: I'm thoroughly enjoying a book by Adam Roberts titled Yellow Blue Tibia. It's an engaging and entertaining story of a science fiction author. It begins with our protagonist and some contemporaries being summoned by Josef Stalin to a dacha near Kiev not long after The Great Patriotic War (WW2). Stalin tells them that while communism is perfect we as humans aren't yet and so our implementation is flawed. So, for a while anyway, communism needs some opposition to keep it strong. Since Stalin expects the United States to fall and join the Revolution within 5 or 10 years at the most, they need an enemy. He orders this group of sci-fi authors to craft an enemy from outer space, since it's safe nothing's out there and we can milk this opposition till human communism can stand without it. He also orders them to craft a scenario of how these aliens would begin and progress their invasion/antagonism of Earth and how the Great Soviet Union will triumph over them and bring the whole world into the loving, perfect embrace of communism. A few months of exceedingly prolific work after this meeting with Stalin, the political officer assigned to oversee the project tells them the project is scrapped and they are to forget everything. Including even being "invited." If they ever tell anyone about it or any part of the imagined scenario ever finds it's way into their future work, then the penalty will be their life.
Fast forward 40 years. Two of the group are still alive. Our protagonist works as a translator and couldn't care less about the past or the future. His contemporary, is agitated because he sees their scenario coming true and seeks him out. Shenanigans follow and include a pair of scientologists from the United States and a taxi driver with Asperger's Syndrome. Roberts' writing style is unique, stimulating, and entertaining. I highly recommend this book for teens and up. As always for this type of thing, parents read it first.
