The problem that many of us have is that there are no contemporary comparables. Litgal more or less assured me of that when she reported in the historical discussions that there were now many historical novels being published about World War II and suggested there weren't any of any later time.

Of course I haven't finished writing this yet, and there may be some before I am finished, but meanwhile... I know I've summarized Prelude before but perhaps a little different form here will suggest my dilemma. Prelude is set in a stateside Army garrison, Ft.Ord, California near the height of the Vietnam war. The plot is very much about the conflicts between war protesters, war resisters, the institutions of the American Army, and political radicalism.

Assuming I don't find contemporary works, the setting and much of the plot does much to recall, mirror, and transform the elements of James Jones' From Here to Eternity.

My main character lives in a kind of no man's land between the political opponents where there are real and imagined conspiracies that force him to discover "the truth" In that way he has more than a passing resemblance to the travels of John le Carre's George Smiley, perhaps most particularly in Smiley's People.

Neither of these truly great novels are historical. They were written as contemporary fiction and well within the immediate memory of their first audiences. And they are both giants of their own genre's of a stature I have only the most remote hope of attaining or representing. If I use these novels as comp's I must do so with the caveat that only my audience can determine if the comparisons are apt.

There are several novels now about the Vietnam war. I am particularly fond of Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried which in a great many ways took very close to my own combat experience. That said however it is not a comp for the novel I am working on now which is not about combat but garrison duty and the preparations for war rather than war itself.

Please provide me with some of your, thoughts, reflections, or advice. Thank you,

Tom P