Deserts of Fire ─ Speculative Fiction and the Modern War

In 1987, the New York Times published their first front-page review of a science fiction anthology for a collection calledIn the Field of Fire, themed around the war in Vietnam. Vietnam was science fiction,” the reviewer wrote, and writing about it through that lens found meaning in a war few understood.

This idea, that speculative fiction is a vital tool to understanding the inexplicable, is just as relevant nearly thirty years later.Deserts of Fire is a war-inspired anthology for the new millennium, because for many, the recent wars in the deserts of Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Middle East are just as slippery to grasp and difficult to understand as Vietnam was two generations earlier.

Inside Deserts of Fire are stories from a variety of bestselling and award-winning authors that start with the simple and modest ambition of making the reader feel strange about the recent past. Because when there are too many explanations, the truth won’t be found by merely choosing one side or the other. But rather, the truth is in the existence of the confusion itself.

Douglas Lain is the author of two novels, Billy Moon and After the Saucers Landed, an editor, and the publisher of Zero Books, which specializes in philosophy and political theory. He hosts the Zero Squared podcast, interviewing a wide range of fascinating and engaging people with insights for the new millennium. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and children.