The Audacity of Hope (1983: Doomsday)

The Audacity of Hope: A Soviet Soldier In a World Without Doomsday is a 2010 alternate history novel written by Jon Gosselin of Reading, Pennsylvania. It is a story about a Soviet officer who prevents Doomsday from happening and subsequently lives in a world where nuclear war had not happened. It was praised by critics for its account of a world without Doomsday and exploring the possibilities of such a world.

PlotEdit
On September 26, 1983, Yan Goselinov, a young Soviet lieutenant in a missile detection installation somewhere outside Moscow, detects five incoming missiles on his scope. After the initial panic, he tells his subordinates not to report the incident, believing it to be a false alarm. This is later proven to be true by a mechanic, and Goselinov faints at the revelation. He wakes up in his home being tended to by his wife Katya. He tells her the events in the installation and makes her promise not to tell anybody.

Fast forward to 1984: Yuri Andropov, General Secretary of the CPSU, is dead. As Yan and Katya stand in line to view Andropov's coffin, an announcement is made stating that Konstantin Afanasyev has been nominated General Secretary. Yan and Katya react to the news with some surprise. Just a year later, Afanasyev himself is dead, and a man from the new generation of Soviet politicians, Demyan Rogotov, becomes the new leader. At the same time, Goselinov is deployed to Afghanistan, where the Soviet Union is fighting an Islamist insurgency fighting to wrest the country away from its secular communist puppets. Yan leaves his wife and twin daughters behind and travels to Kabul, where he is assigned to a Signal Corps regiment. His first few weeks on duty were quiet for the standards of the place, and he was able to maintain a correspondence with his wife.

While deploying a new command center in an abandoned town in the outskirts of Kabul, Yan's unit comes under attack from the mujahideen. Although their communications equipment was destroyed, the unit beat back the muj and managed to return to their base in one piece, which was not always the case in Afghanistan.

After a few more uneventful weeks, Yan, now promoted to senior lieutenant, concludes his tour of duty and returns home.