German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop brushed a piece of lint from his sleeve as he waited for Joseph Stalin to admit him to the Soviet Politburo, to argue the case for a cease-fire and a new alliance with the Axis against the liberal democracies.
About the Author:
John Birmingham: (born 1964) is an Australian author. Birmingham was born in Liverpool UK and migrated to Australia with his parents in 1970. He grew up in Ipswich, Queensland. He attended the Ipswich Grammar School. Birmingham is most notable for the novel He Died With A Felafel In His Hand (1994), which has since been turned into a play, film and a graphic novel. The sequel is The Tasmanian Babes Fiasco (Duffy and Snellgrove, 1997). The play was written and produced by thirty-six unemployed actors. It went on to become the longest running stage play in Australian history.
Birmingham is also a foreign affairs expert, and has written an essay about Australia's relations with Indonesia, “Appeasing Jakarta,” which was published in the Quarterly Essay. Other works by him include the How To Be A Man, a semi-humorous guide to contemporary Australian masculinity and Off One's Tits, a collection of essays and articles previously published elsewhere. He also spent four years researching the history of Sydney for Leviathan: the unauthorised biography of Sydney (Random House, 1999, ISBN 0091842034). It won Australia's National Prize For Non-Fiction in 2002.
In 2004 he published Weapons of Choice, the first in the Axis of Time trilogy, a series of Tom Clancy-like techno-thrillers; simultaneously a satire of the technothriller and alternate history genres. Many writers from those genres appear as minor characters. It was published by Del Rey Books in the US and by Pan Macmillan in Australia.
In August 2005, the second book, Designated Targets was published in Australia. US publication followed in October.
He maintains a blog at http://birmo.journalspace.com
[from Wikipedia]
Weapons of Choice — Axis Of Time Book I Page 57
