The Hard Truth of Credentials: Why Nobody Wants Conflict Fiction About Ukraine
I have written an anthology of three novellas on the warriors of Ukraine called “Glory to the Heros”. Since I am trying to get this anthology traditionally published, I won’t say much about the process, but I am not afraid to tell people it has failed to go on submission for a year. This is due to the status of the publishing industry and a hands-off approach to politics unless the author has political credentials – which I do not.
Credentials are a funny animal. I could be Neil Degrasse Tyson talking about my specific career field in physics, and there would be people who consider me a fraud. This is especially true if I tell a climate change denier about climate change, or perhaps a flat-earther why the earth isn’t flat. I am an expert. I am part of a huge scientific community of experts. But I am not trusted because tribalism has taught people not to trust me. And yet, negative publicity is still publicity, and Neil Degrasse Tyson has no shortage of listeners to his podcast or buying his books.
Tyson inherited the legacy of Carl Sagan, in a way and I doubt I will have the same mentorship path. And yet, I want to discover the secret to writing about timely events in my own style.
Education (usually a PhD) can bring you some credentials, but to cross the line into someone who can tell stories like I want to tell, it will take something much more. There would be no negative publicity. There would just be people ignoring a book about the important haze of legend uplifting both the horror and the heroism of Ukrainian warriors.
We call the genre “modern conflict fiction”. It uses the model of historical wartime fiction, but for something more recent. How recent can something be conflict fiction rather than historical? This distinction might provide an answer as to why publishing during a conflict might be so difficult. I found a few titles closest to each American War.
World War Two:
There were many propaganda related films during World War Two. And there were many that used the war as a backdrop. Many of them were spy thrillers. Some of them were about lovers on ships struck by U-boats. Many of the films were based on books of the same name, so the mod during world war two – a very unifying positive war after December 7th 1941 – was to tell lots of stories. Some of them were more nonfiction than fiction, but fiction always had its role.
1942 – Pearl harbor was a day that lived in infamy, but most of the American Public did not know a small island in the pacific with American soldiers was also attacked. “Wake Island” is a fictional dramatization of those real events. Propaganda? For sure. Conflict Fiction? Absolutely.
1943 – Guadalcanal Diary – The real first battle took place in August 1942 and war correspondent catalogued the events in a book. By November 1943 Hollywood had made a film dramatizing the diary. Films like this made an attempt to be almost totally nonfiction.
1943 – As a Texas Aggie, I must mention “We’ve Never Been Licked”. This film is famous (or perhaps notorious to Texas Aggies) because it uses Texas A&M University as a setting and features our famous Bonfire as the school is infiltrated by Japanese spies. It is hard to talk about how this type of film contributed to Japanese internment camps.
1945 - “A Walk in the Sun” is a 1945 fictional film based on the real history by the 1944 novel of the same name. The novel was serialized in liberty magazine.
Korean War (1950-1953)
The Korean War is often called the “Forgotten War” – but it was not forgotten by authors and Hollywood at the time. Some examples include:
“Retreat, Hell!” – A fictional 1952 film based on real war events of 1950.
“Korea Patrol” – a 1951 Film depicting a group of American and South Korean soldiers attempting to blow up a bridge. My brief research suggests even the events were fictional.
“Combat Squad” – a 1953 film depicting Korean War Combat.
Unlike WW2 – it does not appear as many films were based on books. This changes in the ten years that follow, in which many first hand accounts were turned into books and then into films. One example of this is the 1957 film “Battle Hymn”. One of the major sad themes about Korean War films is how many of these guys had survived World War 2 just to go fight in another war.
Vietnam War
I do get the impression this war is where things got sticky for the publishing and film industry.
1963 – “A Yank in Vietnam” with the war still new, and US involvement escalated to a full scale operation, a film about a downed pilot being rescued by a female South Vietnam Guerilla and falling in love is released. This shows a still Romanticized version of the war.
1966 – “To the Shores of Hell” – Now the attitude shifts toward rescuing the American POW, a theme which would carry well into the early 1980s. When we think of the trauma of the POW, none is as tragic for America as the many who never came home from this conflict.
1968 – “The Green Berets” is based (very loosely) on a book of the same name written is the same year as the Tet Offensive against the largest cities in South Vietnam (Also 1968). John Wayne was so concerned by the anti-war sentiment in the United States, he wanted to make this film to present the pro-military position. He requested and obtained full military cooperation and materiel from 36th President Lyndon B. Johnson and the United States Department of Defense. How about that for credibility? And then they made a mostly fictional film.
When we reach the modern era of warfare, fictional stories created during the actual war disappear. The first Gulf War is too short to do anything but documentary, and so is the second one. But they do get great fiction like Jarhead and the Hurt Locker. It almost seems like after Vietnam, it was not until about ten years after the conflict that stories and films were published.
My conclusion can only be that Vietnam made the industry afraid to tell fiction during the conflict. But it doesn’t seem to be because of bad sales or lack of available credibility.
And I think its wrong. Sometimes the best time to tell a fictional story is while it is happening, so you further protect the identities of real people involved. Perhaps we are too afraid of not getting the details right or showing bias. However, I can say the Russians are not afraid to tell complete fiction to get what they want, and people believe it. But that is a discussion for another time, and so is the way we give the story telling industry courage to take a stand.
Instead, I would like to focus on primary source books telling the truth. Incidentally, Ukraine did a film about a heroic last stand at an airfield during a cease fire in the same civil war. So, they don’t have a Vietnam to make them nervous about story telling, and they are familiar with near-time dramatization. I will blog about “The Cyborgs” soon. Here is a list of modern Ukrainian authors who need their experiences read. So be sure to check some of them out.
