I want to compile a list of novels about the invasion of the United States by foreign powers. Please give me the titles and authors of novels on this theme of which you may be aware. If convenient, please give me comments about your opinions concerning their quality as popular fiction, their availability (in print, out of print but easily available through used book stores, etc.) and so forth.
In short, any information you can give me about novels of this genre is welcome. Novels on this theme published in the nineteenth century or very early twentieth century would be of particular interest. I would also be interested in fiction about invasions of other Western countries (but not fiction about actual invasions, only those about purely fictional invasions, e.g. German invasions of Britain in the 1940’s, etc.)
I offer my gratitude in advance to everyone who replies.
You should definitely check out The Tale of the Next Great War 1871-1914 (edited by I.F. Clarke). It’s a collection of stories about future wars written in the decades before WWI. A number of them concern invasions of Britain or the United States.
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick and The Divide by William Overgard are both set in a world where the Germans and Japanese win WWII and occupied the US.
C.M. Kornbluth and Robert Heinlein both wrote novels about a Soviet occupied America but I can’t recall the titles. There was also a “novelization” of the TV miniseries Amerika on the same theme.
Harry Turtledove wrote a novella Must and Shall where there was no reconstruction following the Civil War and the southern states were still under Federal military occupation in the 1940’s. A stretch of the OP but thought I’d mention it.
Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein. Shouldn’t be too hard to find. You might consider Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters in which some incredibly nasty beings from Titan invade the United States as the first part of their campaign to conquer the world.
Operation Chaos by Poul Anderson. A heretical Muslim caliphate invades the U.S. in the first part of the book.
Not This August by C.M. Kornbluth. A very good book
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick. Won the 1963 Hugo Award. This actually deals with an alternative realty where the U.S. loses WW2.
Sinister Barrier by Eric Frank Russell. This novel actually concerns humanity’s efforts to free itself from a race of powerful, invisible beings called Vitons, said Vitons using us as the equivalent of cattle. During the last third of the book, the Vitons trick Asian powers into invading both the United States and Europe. This came out in 1939, and, IMO, is still one helluva book.
In one of their anthologies, Alden Norton/Sam Moskowitz reprint a story by an author and mention that he wrote an invasion novel very early in the 20th century. I think the anthology’s title is Forgotten Masterpieces of Horror, but I could be mistaken.
The Mouse That Roared – I forget the author’s name.
Eric L Harry’s recent “Invasion”, where China invades the US (successfully, if I recall)
Those awful '80s post-WWIII series novels – “The Survivalist”, “Wingman” and so on. Authors such as Jerry Ahern and Mack Mahoney were responsible for those monstrosities.
There was a fantastically ludicrous novel a few years back in which Libyan troops invade the Republic of Ireland, forcing the British to send troops to war through Northern Ireland. Very silly, but took itself very seriously. Buggered if I can find any more details on who wrote it, unfortunately.
The War in the Air is one of the lesser-known but very inventive science fiction novels by H.G. Wells. It involves an aireal invasion of the U.S. by German and Japanese forces (written almost 50 years before WWII!) using zeppelins and ornithopters.
It’s next to impossible to find but if you want a really fun adventurous fantasy, I highly reccomend it.
The Mouse That Roared (aka The Wrath of Grapes) was written by Leonard Wibberly (aka Leonard Holton). He followed it with three sequels; The Mouse on the Moon, The Mouse on Wall Street, and The Mouse That Saved the World.
I also thought of a couple of other books on a Nazi invasion of Britain; SS-GB by Len Deighton and S-Day (forgot the author’s name).
Robert Silverberg wrote a novel about an alien invasion of Earth called Alien Years. He also wrote a chilling story with the same theme called Passengers.
C.M. Kornbluth, in addition to writing Not This August (thanks for the title Peyote), also wrote Two Dooms, a novella about a future America conquered by the Axis in WWII.
