Book Review: Moon of Ice

May is 'Third Reich Triumphant' Month at the PorPor Books Blog

Book Review: 'Moon of Ice' by Brad Linaweaver

0 / 5 Stars

 

'Moon of Ice' was issued by Tor Books as a mass-market paperback edition (279 pp.) in April, 1993, and features cover art by Matt Stawicki.

 

The title of the novel derives from the quasi-mystical cosmological theories of the Austrian engineer Hanns Horbiger (1867 - 1931), who claimed that the moon, and the planets of the solar system, all  were composed of a sort of frozen ether that Horbiger called 'ice.' 

'Moon' first appeared as a novella in the March, 1982 issue of Amazing Science Fiction Stories. It was reprinted in the 1986 anthology 'Hitler Victorious: Eleven Stories of the German Victory in World War II.' Lineweaver expanded the novella into his 1988 novel. 

'Moon of Ice' deals with the misadventures of the Joseph Goebbels and his daughter Hilda (b. 1934), in a world where, instead of the Goebbels family committing suicide in May 1945, amidst the defeat of Nazi Germany, Hitler Wins in 1944 (due to developing the atomic bomb and V-3 rockets).

 

After Hitler nukes London and deters Operation Overlord, the war ends with an uneasy truce between the Roosevelt administration and the Fuhrer. The US proceeds to defeat Japan, while Germany assumes control of all of Europe through to the Ural mountains, beyond which is a wildland occupied by Soviet partisans, German deserters, bandits, and other malcontents.

 

The opening chapters of the novel are set in New York City in 1975. Hilda, having emerged as an anti-Nazi agitator, is publishing the diary of her late father Joseph, these diaries promising to expose appalling acts (i..e, the Holocaust) committed by the Hitler regime. Hilda is at ease with discrediting her father and the Reich, having become - in her words - an 'anarchist' hostile to all forms of 'statism.'

 

The narrative largely is taken up with excerpts from the diary of Goebbels, written by him during the mid-1960s, following the death of Hitler of old age in April, 1965. The passing of his friend and commander sparks a ruminative mood in Goebbels; in the diary, he expatiates on how the Third Reich triumphed, and how it is to be maintained for the desired thousand years. Linaweaver provides exhaustive discourses on Goebbels' political and philosophical theories, and these were imposed on the German populace via demagoguery. These chapters of the novel are dull and plodding.

 

Later on in the novel the plot merges with that of the novella, with the merge point introducing some improbable, pulp-style events involving mad scientists, castles and dungeons, conspiracies between competing Nazi factions, super-soldiers, occult phenomena, monsters, and unholy religious ceremonies. I won't disclose spoilers, save to say that as goofy as this stuff was, I found it a welcome respite from the static quality of the initial two-thirds of the novel.

 

The closing chapters of the novel move from the pulpy to the cringe, when, in the alternate world of 'Moon of Ice,' Hilda Goebbels and her publisher attend the 1984 PAXCON science fiction convention in South Africa. In attendance are none other than the dynamic personality and science fiction fan Forry Ackerman, accompanied his wife Mathilda 'Wendayne' Wahrman. 

 

[Ackerman is among the sci-fi authors and editors listed in Linaweaver's Acknowledgements.]

 

This sort of clumsy toadying, when combined with a lackadaisical narrative devoid of any momentum, means that 'Moon of Ice' gets a Zero Star Rating. Stay away from this novel !