The Salvation War

January 23, 2025 1:41 PM

Stuart Slade's "The Salvation War," humanity-fuck-yeah fiction in which the human race devastates Hell and fires a thermonuclear warhead at Jesus. In two parts, Armageddon and Pantheocide

A voice from Heaven announces that the gates are closed and that everyone needs to just lie down and die, kthxbye. Humans instead decide to fight back.

This is VERY not for everyone. It's very "Lt. Smith increased the gain on her AN/RQ-42069 glorblesnopper, targeting the demon, and she fired an AIM-270 BVRAAM at the offending hellbeast" kind of milsf. LOOOOOOOOTS of graphic things-getting-asploded and some only-just-offstage sexual violence.

It's also at once very conservative, and pokes fun at notional liberals like Obama... but part of how it's conservative is that it makes Dubya almost prochoice, and it's very supportive of its trans characters? Weird. Reminds me of Elizabeth Moon, if she took a big pile of meth and hallucinogens.

I dunno. I thought maybe some of y'all might want to read about Satan getting blowed up, or nuking Heaven, etc, in a cathartic maybe vaguely Luigic kinda way. It has big "Fuck you, Fuckball" energy.

posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace (18 comments total)

the devil's greatest trick was to convince you that nuclear weapons were possible.

to god, your weapon will be like a pop rock in space.

interesting though, kinda of reminds me of the TV series Dominion.

"A-10s Sir? What about the B-2s?"

"Screw them, they're out of service for weeks. Our boys fighting down in Hell need the Warthogs"

probably the scariest piece of machinery I ever heard go over my head was an A-10.

the songbirds of hell.
posted by clavdivs at 2:05 PM on January 23 [6 favorites]

I am reminded of a vague memory of reading something on USENET in, like, talk.bizarre, maybe, that included 'grace-seeking missiles' when mankind fights god.
posted by rmd1023 at 2:42 PM on January 23 [5 favorites]

The His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman would be a more serious work having a similar theme.
posted by jeffburdges at 3:02 PM on January 23 [5 favorites]

You know there’s, like, 17 light novels of Spider Isekai or whatever we’re up to, and if you drop the Abrahamic faith aspect this basically describes the last 3~5 of them.

Which is to say: I have read a *lot* of this kind of story and I’m not sure dropping hivemind magical girl spider-centaur goddesses in favor of Jehovah is an improvement.
posted by Ryvar at 3:14 PM on January 23 [3 favorites]

For those who want the Cliff Notes version, there's a surprisingly in-depth page at TVTropes:

Armageddon and Pantheocide can be found in this forum [...] Copies of both books are also available on The Sietch. These are first-draft raw copy.

Allegedly due to the creation and spread of a torrent of the stories, The Salvation War is now radioactive as far as publishers are concerned. Without this incentive, it appeared as though the third part of the series, The Lords of War, was not going to be written [...] By late 2019, he appears to have changed his mind, with the third story being published one part at a time on an uncertain schedule. As of July 2020, the first four parts of The Lords of War have been published thus far to the same forum, with the latest entry in March.

The author passed away in December 2020, ending any hope of seeing the series finished.

posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 3:41 PM on January 23

In a similar vein, but more Sam Spade-ish and very fun is Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim series
posted by CplCarrot at 3:45 PM on January 23 [5 favorites]

to god, your weapon will be like a pop rock in space.

I cannot find the meme but there is a delightful image of someone asking "But how do you know if a God is real?" and it cutting to the Stargate SG4 captain replying, "C4, usually"
posted by Slackermagee at 4:26 PM on January 23 [5 favorites]

Boosting CplCarrot, the Sandman Slim books are damn good fun. Or perhaps damned good fun.
posted by chromecow at 5:31 PM on January 23 [2 favorites]

Be honest, how much of this post was just to have an ironic username attached?

(Ironic in the Morrissette sense, I suppose, but my cold addled brain can't think of the right word)
posted by Hactar at 1:49 AM on January 24

This puts me in mind of "Black Easter" and "The Day after Judgement" by James Blish.

- What is the role of Satan if God is dead?

Mindblowing stuff for a teenager in the early 1970s.
posted by GetHappy at 5:49 AM on January 24

I made it to the part where they bring in James Randi as a consultant before I realized I was laughing too hard to read any further.
posted by Mayor West at 7:00 AM on January 24

This kind of reminds me of gate, an anime where a portal to a magical fantasy realm opens in Tokyo and a world of sorcery, dragons, and knights on horseback faces the destructive power of a modern army with tanks and attack helicopters.
posted by selenized at 8:56 AM on January 24

Ahem. Could rmd1023 be remembering the phrase "glory-seeking missile" instead? If so, I believe that is a reference to the first line of "Megiddo," a short story that I wrote and posted to, yes, the Usenet newsgroup talk.bizarre back in September 1996. It does involve an exasperated humanity objecting strongly (with explosives) to both sides of the war between Heaven and Hell. (The phrase "sulfur-sniffer" also shows up, a few lines later.)

If this is the story you remember, please know that I am enormously flattered at your retention! I won't self-link the story itself, but it is findable on my (totally not-for-profit) old-school green-on-black web page, even today. Thanks!
posted by cynical biped at 12:20 AM on January 25 [3 favorites]

cynical biped, I do believe you are correct. Glad to flatter you in this!
posted by rmd1023 at 7:42 AM on January 25 [1 favorite]

This puts me in mind of "Black Easter"

You startled me for a moment, because the "Black Easter" I'm familiar with is a really-bad low-budget sci-fi from 2021 (a/k/a Assassin 33 A.D) about a team of atheist scientists who invent time travel, but it's then seized by "extremists" who send a squad of soldiers back in time to assassinate Jesus before he can be crucified, and so the scientists must go back in time and make sure he dies properly.

Please understand I am not making any of this up.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 3:30 PM on January 25

I made it to the part where they bring in James Randi as a consultant before I realized I was laughing too hard to read any further.

You maybe shoulda hung around for Julius Caesar
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 4:50 PM on January 25

I won't self-link the story itself,

I'll link it. That was pretty good.

PS self links are allowed in comments if concerns of community norms were why you refraining.
posted by Mitheral at 1:40 PM on January 26 [2 favorites]

Thanks, Mitheral! Yeah, I may have erred on the side of caution, but Metafilter's been one of my favorite corners of the web for more than twenty years, largely because of the culture that's nurtured here, and the last thing I wanted was for my very first comment on the Blue to be too pushy. Thanks again!
posted by cynical biped at 10:24 PM on January 26