History may have played out differently if world leaders had listened to the warnings of an author in 1914. Problems the world would soon face were detailed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, in his short story “Danger!” just 18 months before World War I.
Doyle presented a fictional war where an imaginary country fights and defeats Britain. The tool that makes this possible was the submarine, which at the time was just becoming a practical weapon. Soon after, the German U-boat became one of the most dangerous weapons in World War I and World War II.
Now, a book about a fictional war between the United States, China, and Russia is taking a similar approach. And already, it is receiving a surprising amount of attention from the Pentagon and defense community.
Like Doyle’s warning, “Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War,” by P.W. Singer and August Cole, is not entirely fictional. While it’s set in the 2020s, it takes the weapons, budget cuts, and strategies now emerging in today’s world, and shows where things could very well be heading in five years.
