Critics once dismissed The Things They Carried as "too experimental" for war literature-only for it to become a defining work of the Vietnam era. My Father's Name Is War follows in this tradition, refusing to sanitize conflict or glorify sacrifice.
The Global War on Terror did not take place.
These violent hallucinations reveal what did.
Moral injury. Personal legacy. Protracted conflict.
The Global War on Terror Era fostered a wave of anxieties, behaviors, and distorted social norms that now define the U.S. public's relationships with the military machine, its sustaining culture, and greater Western thought. My Father's Name Is War: Collected Transmissions is one veteran's endeavor to document and communicate the nature of these relationships, their impacts on the individual, and their implications for our future.
A futuristic weapons program employs nostalgia and shame to ensure micromanaged compliance on the battlefield. Virtual reality therapy sessions rekindle a longing for wartime in a lost combat veteran. A South Korean magnate's passion project threatens to upend our ideas of global governance, one interaction at a time. Bauder's debut short story collection invites readers to examine the complexities of war and its consequences, urging a review and a parting of ways with the gross excesses of the security state.
Collected Transmissions features nine works spanning multiple genres, including science fiction, psychological realism, philosophy, poetry, and horror.
