BobMumby

Dendar A'nosstrian had never left his homeworld. There had never been any need. He had been born on the same luxurious estate he had lived in all his life, the same estate his progenitors had been born in for generations. His life had been a lengthy string of lazy sun dappled afternoons in the mico-orchards, winter retreats to a mountainous fastness where he could enjoy the thin air, trips to hive to attend functions and debutante balls. All the while the business of, well, business had been carried out by the enormous computer banks buried beneath his manse's foundations. The computer managed his family's numerous investments, carrying out acquisitions, negotiating with competitors and partners, even ensuring his refigerators never emptied, all without needing to seek Dendar's approval or even his curiosity. Dendar had only a dim idea of exactly what the extent of the A'nosstrian business empire was, and he didn't really care to know much more than that. And then, his serene

In 1980, America was on the brink of what looked like a Second Civil War. By 1988, the bloody work of the American Underground would seem like a distant memory. The few extremist cells that continued detonating bombs would achieve far less impressive results, receive far less column inches than their predecessors and enjoy little solidarity from their former comrades in the Underground. Instead they would receive condemnation or at best hesitant criticism from virtually all quarters. How did things change so rapidly in just eight short years? The nation that John V. Lindsay inherited was one that looked not dissimilar to the City of New York (and then State of the same name) that he had governed for over a decade. He had learned hard lessons battling the heavy edge of the Black Panthers, and the underground wing of SDS. He had seen historic brownstones levelled by dynamite, and cops slain on the streets. And slowly but surely he had put things in order. In 1980, New York was an oddly

William Westmoreland brought a very specific expertise to the government of America. This was the man who had, at least temporarily, broken the back of the Viet Cong insurgency. He promised to do the same for the insurgents in the United States' own household who declared themselves the co-belligerents of Ho Chi Minh. What the majority of Americans failed to take notice of - which was hardly their fault given the Benson Administration's restriction of media coverage of the war in Vietnam - was precisely what tactics Westmoreland had used and what this might mean for America. The Tet Offensive had nearly destroyed Westmoreland's career in the far off year of 1968. But he had the support of President Smathers, and once Romney was inaugurated, of the military establishment. The Paris Peace Accords gave the South some breathing room, allowing Westmoreland to implement his plans that would see the Vietnam War dragged out across the 1970s. The Westmoreland strategy built upon age old

Ezra Taft Benson (or ETB as he would become known to the young) had had an unlikely course to the Presidency - but he did not intend to be any mere placeholder. He had what his predecessor never had; a Congressional majority albeit one formed from a coalition of Republican and Democratic conservatives. And he would waste no time putting it to use. For Benson, even the tentative steps that the US had already made toward African-American civil rights had been too far. It was clear to him that the demands of the civil rights movement were but the tool of international Communism - if black people wanted to be treated equally, in his view, they had to wait until they understood the responsibility. The antics of Malcolm X, Huey Newton and Stokely Carmichael proved that such understanding was not forthcoming. The Voting Rights Act of 1974 did not, on paper, roll back the progress made so far. Instead, it updated Jim Crow for the circumstances of the 1970s, through a great deal of convoluted

The year of 1968 had not been an auspicious one. It had begun with the Tet Offensive which had brutally displayed the shortcomings of the American involvement in Vietnam, and no month after that had provided much respite. In this, the United States was not alone. Protests spread across the world, nations teetered on the brink of revolution or fell into it wholesale. Harold Macmillan's ailing government in the United Kingdom finally crumbled, while Charles de Gaulle in France toyed at the edges of military government. This was not limited to the West either, the Eastern Bloc was torn by civil strife and attempts to repeat the experiments of the 1950s in light of the post-Stalinist leadership in Moscow. The results of the 1968 presidential election did not quite reflect this revolutionary ferment. In a purely geographic sense, it was an eerie parallel of 1924. The Democrats had swept the Solid South, but the Republicans had won easily by taking almost the entire North and West, with only

It is a small mercy perhaps, that the Smathers Presidency was brief. Having come to office shortly after the 1967 State of the Union, the newly inaugurated George Smathers had a little under two years to enjoy the office of President of the United States before he faced the prospect of re-election. The unfortunate fact was that as John F. Kennedy had physically declined in the preceding years, Smathers had taken up an increasing burden of the executive office's responsibilities. His accession did not represent any kind of break in policy and there were very few people in the country who anticipated a shift of any great significance. And it was in the time prior to his accession that Smathers made the decisions that made the greatest impact upon his short Presidency - and upon the emergence of the American Underground. Most immediately was the issue of African-American Civil Rights - a Civil Rights Act had been passed in 1965 but it was rightly seen as little more than an attempt to

When tracing the beginning of the American Underground, and the war they wage, you could find yourself beginning the story with the American Civil War or the War of Independence, or even the very first English colonies in North America. But if we look at the modern organisations which form the American Underground, their formative moments were not in the 1860s, 1770s or 16th century, though the events of those times did weight upon them. Instead, the critical moment for them was in the 1960s as the post-WW2 years of contentment came to a close and a young generation looked at the American Dream and found it wanting. America began the 1960s full of optimism. John F. Kennedy had just been elected President, and the photogenic man with his young family seemed to project the very ideals the United States hoped to embody in the new decade. The debate with his Republican counterpart, Richard Nixon, during the campaign was seen as a milestone, the point at which television surpassed radio in

It was early morning when I tried to leave New York. Wet sleet fell, the last half-snow of the spring, and my taxi's window wipers smeared the slush ineffectually over the glass. My cabbie was smoking and I coughed as the fumes caught in the back of my throat. He didn't take the hint. I have to admit that I was happy at the thought of leaving America behind me. It was nothing personal. New York is a beautiful city, a far cry from the bad years of the 1960s and early 1970s. Successive combative mayors had made their mark, working hand in fist with the NYPD to drag the city kicking and screaming into civilisation. I was particularly looking forward to seeing the glittering grandeur of LaGuardia airport, newly refurbished last year. But I had not enjoyed my time in America up to that point. Ostensibly, I was here to cover the presidential primaries for the BBC, but I knew that sobre analysis of President Cruz's chances of re-election or the prospects of those vying for the Democratic