Competition No 3795
Set by Bazza, 18 August
We asked for an extract from a fantasy novel in which the Soviet Union won the cold war.
Report by Ms de Meaner
I have been taken to task by Bazza himself for allowing Bill Greenwell to win last week with "Douglas Bader Meinhof", as it broke the rules whereby I disallowed Spencer Tracy Emin, Mother Theresa May and so on, ie, when the shared name was not spelt in the same way. Was this favouritism, he asked. No, just sheer idiocy on my part. In the rush, I checked "Bader Meinhof" on the internet, vaguely thinking they weren't spelt the same, found thousands of examples, and given that it was the great Bill Greenwell, didn't check "Baader Meinhof", which would have produced even more examples, as that is the correct spelling. You'll just have to forgive me. £20 to the winners below; David Silverman also gets the Tesco vouchers.
"Anything interesting in the Brighton Evening Pravda, then?" George asked as he spooned some Earl Grey into the samovar.
Bill shrugged. "The usual. The row's still going on about illegal emigrants. Too many getting out, some say. Also they're still arguing about tenants having the right to buy their own dachas."
George grunted. "Sounds like creeping capitalism to me. Needs rolling back. Anything else?"
"Hmm . . . were there really weapons of mass destruction in New Zealand? Lots of doubts about that."
"Bit late now," George muttered sarcastically. "Anything more cheerful? What about the sports section?"
Bill riffled through the pages. "A preview of the game between Liverpool Spartak and Manchester Dynamo. A needle match, that. And Comrade Beckham's been given the Order of Lenin in the October honours list."
"Very good. Do you think Posh will make the Olympic shot-put squad?"
Just then the door opened and Tom came in, carrying a copy of the New Proletarian.
"There's a nice competition this week," he said cheerfully. "You've got to supply an extract from a futuristic novel in which the west wins the cold war."
George laughed. "What a marvellous idea!" he exclaimed delightedly . . .
Michael Cregan
Jeff stared out at the jam - cars as far as the eye could see. Two hours and not at Brooklyn Bridge yet. The planned economy was working all right - most car-plants had over-met their norms in Clinton's Five-Year Plan. As First Secretary Bush said in his Labor Day address: "We gotta raise the level of the productive forces."
Some people whispered Bush was stupid. But he'd picked up the jargon from Chris Hitchens's Short Course in Dialectical Materialism. And you couldn't just ignore that election result. Sure, it helped being the only candidate, but in Florida he'd got 106 per cent of registered voters. Then he'd backed Field Marshal Putin's invasion of Iraq when the USSR was having trouble in the UN. Now the Socialist World Order seemed unstoppable.
The sun beat down, hotter than yesterday. You couldn't blame Bush. He'd stood up against Putin when the Russian leader wrecked the Kyoto talks, just before announcing his new plan for Siberian vineyards.
Jeff still had doubts. Cautiously - he was risking 20 years in Guantanamo Bay if seen - he pulled a photo from his wallet. Good old Joe McCarthy! If people had listened to him, how different things would be.
Ian Birchall
The train slowed. The man in the overcoat saw, with mounting gloom, row upon row of drab, grey, uniform apartment blocks. He considered the people inside them, all indoctrinated by the same inane, predictable TV programmes, the same news bulletins with government spokesmen telling you what to believe, a cynical mixture of half-truth, exaggeration and propaganda.
"Hey, comrade dreamer, wake up! I think this is your vauxhall." The man awoke with a start and an uneasy sensation that he had stumbled into a terrifying nightmare world that might so very nearly have existed. Dismissing from his mind the chillingly realistic image of a manic, Kermit-like Davina McCall, he alighted into the sunshine of Lenin Prospekt, Cricklewood, with relief.
At home, his three-year-old daughter greeted him with a back-flip and triple backward somersault over the sofa, landing in his arms. He turned on the news. "In Palestine today, the World Commission for Wealth Distribution celebrated 25 successful years, with speeches from the delegates of the People's Democratic Republic of Iraq, the Democratic People's Federation of America and the Soviet Pan-Arabian Republic. There followed a concert featuring the Swiss Marxist-Leninist Republic Red Army Massed Choirs and the All-Ireland Red Ceilidh Band . . ."
David Silverman
No. 3798 Set by John Crick
Lust, greed, etc. Would visitors from another planet really believe that they are our Seven Deadly Sins in the 21st century? We'd like more relevant ones, with explanations and/or examples.
Max four sins in 200 words by 19 September. E-mail: comp@newstatesman.co.uk
