Ministry of Space
Ministry of Space is a three-part alternate history graphic novel written by Warren Ellis, originally published in three issues by Image Comics.
About the book
The story is set in an alternate history where soldiers and operatives of Great Britain reached the German rocket installations at Peenemunde ahead of the U.S. Army and the Soviets, and brought all the key personnel and technology to England, in a mirror of the real world's Operation Paperclip. Thus is created the Ministry of Space, whose mission is to develop British space technology and establish a firm foothold in space for Queen and Empire.
The book's art is by Chris Weston, and it succeeds in believably depicting retro technology in a believably British style.
Elements of social commentary are present throughout the book, as is typical of Ellis' work, while the drama of the story is found in the lives of the first pioneers of space exploration (as in The Right Stuff). This social commentary is disguised in a snippet of dialogue here and a background detail in the art elsewhere, relying upon the readers' own observations to bring it to light.
The series won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History (short form) in 2005.
Plot
The narrative moves back and forth between the last days of World War II, the first few years of the British Space Programme, and the year 2001. The British have captured and relocated to England all the scientists and equipment found in Peenemunde, among them Dr. Werner von Braun and the plans and pieces of the V-2 rocket bomb. All of this is masterminded by a Royal Air Force officer, John Dashwood, survivor of the Battle of Britain, who manages to convince Winston Churchill to establish the Ministry of Space and funding it with a black budget. The following years see British pilots breaking the sound barrier, building a space station, landing on the Moon, and beyond. The story set in 2001 involves the attempt by the Americans to go into space, and the blackmail made on the British as to the source of the black budget.
Chapter One
In an Britain that might have been, in the Summer of 2001...
Amid a climate of optimism and advanced technology, a young black woman lands a fabulous two-person rocket at Lowlands University to deliver a message to Sir John Dashwood, Professor Emeritus. "It's the Americans, Sir John. They're going to launch."
In 1945, in Peenemunde, Germany...
A group of American soldiers arrive to claim the research facility, muttering of the uselessness of their prize. The only optimist among them is their commanding officer, who only dreams of the potential rockets have in warfare. As we watch, the future changes, as all die as the area is bombed-as ordered by one Air Commodore John Dashwood.
Dashwood is called to account by Winston Churchill, who demands to know his plans for the scientists he has captured. While the statesman only thinks of putting the scientists who had garnered their knowledge through human experiments to death, Dashwood replies that they are going to build space technology for Britain. They can defend their country from nuclear attack with satellites. They can claim the Moon, the planets, maybe someday the stars themselves. He has a source of funding-he calls it a black budget. He has the knowledge-Werner Von Braun. All he needs to make their country first among nations is Churchill's signature. The Ministry of Space is born. And it belongs to John Dashwood.
1946, Essex...
The V-3 rocket is launched. In thirteen minutes, the Ministry of Space will have the first videos of the Earth as seen from Space.
Dashwood converses with Von Braun. The German genius has been forced to live as a pariah, and idly mentions that the Americans would have treated him with respect. But, as Dashwood is quick to point out, the American Dream is in a state of disarray. They would not want spaceships and lunar bases-they would want missiles, missiles to wave like flags as they boast to the world that they are bigger and cleverer and more right than their former Russian allies.
But Dashwood has dreams. During the Battle of Britain, he had flown higher than he had believed possible risking certain death should his fighter stall. But he did not care, because he could see the curve of the world, could see how small the Earth was, how huge the universe was. And then four enemy fighters caught up with him, and he was forced back to Earth. He wants that back. He has Von Braun. He has money. He has the best pilots in Britain. He wonders how many will die so he can return to that place, and go beyond.
Back in 2001...
What nearly cost Dashwood his life more than half a century earlier is now as commonplace as a trip across the Atlantic. His dream is a reality. He only has one anxiety left in his life-have the Americans discovered the source of his black budget?
1948...
The VX-5 has succeeded in its mission. The Victory, the first satellite, has been launched. Every radio on Earth is now receiving 'God Save The Queen' in morse code. Dashwood is filled with pride as he commands a protesting Von Braun to build him a spaceplane. He will have his dream come to life at last.
1950...
The Britannia is carried by bomber to 48,500 feet. Dashwood is at the controls. He orders the release.
Half an hour later, John Dashwood is the first man in space.
But as he makes his descent, Von Braun's fears come to pass. The Britannia was not ready. Dashwood loses control. He crash-lands the Britannia in a farm.
Bloody and incoherent, his only words to his rescuers are...
"About... about bloody time.. where the bloody hell are my legs?"
Chapter Two
Churchill Station, Summer, 2001...
The two-man shuttle arrives. It is an event as commonplace as any landing at any metropolitan airport. Dashwood is immediately confronted with his fear. The Americans know. They know everything.
1951.
Von Braun is smug as he looks at the first man in space. And his lack of legs. Dashwood blames him for his condition, and the rocket designer just smiles as he reminds the knighted cripple that he had been warned. Dashwood is stunned-he's to be knighted?
Von Braun is pleased. Dashwood's arrogance has revealed all of the flaws in the spaceplane. Two more will fly that very year. Three more each for the next two. Eight pilots will be ready for the three-stage test flight in 1954. Dashwood had not been informed. People think he is insane. Von Braun thinks he's a monster. And he's glad he's a cripple.
1952.
Dashwood walks-painfully-from his knighting. He has had prosthetics fitted to what was left of his legs. He got the idea from an airman named Douglas Bader. It hurts like the devil, but he is not going to meet the King in a wheelchair. Like Bader, he is not going to stay seated while others fly. Bader died during the Battle of Britain. His left leg fell fellon a housewife from three thousand feet, killing her instantly, but Dashwood isn't really worried about that possibility. He dropped a spaceship on a farmhouse and got knighted.
The king is dead. Elizabeth will be coronated in 1953, and Dashwood wants to commemorate the coronation with something grand. He wants to prove that the Ministry is the future. Von Braun asks why Dashwood is continuing. He has seen space, has he not? Why go on? Dashwood asks if Braun thinks it's enough. Braun says no.
The three stage rocket seems to be a step backwards from the single-stage Britannia. But the second stage can be left in orbit-the first element of a manned space station.
Churchill Station, 2001.
Dashwood is escorted to a shielded room. He thinks back on the immense expense of the station. But he is confident it had to be done. Britain had to be kept out of the Cold War. They needed to be above it-above everything.
1953.
The Elizabeth 2 is launched. Everything goes perfectly. The construction of first space station has begun.
1956.
After America refused to finance the Aswan Dam because of Egyptian ties with the Soviets, Britain surrendered control of the Suez Canal. Britain does not care about the potential loss of petroleum shipments. England has Churchill Station. Soon they will have Solar Power Satellites. And they have the Victoria. Soon they will have the Moon.
As an astronaut stands beside a Union Jack upon the Lunar surface, he tells the world, "I claim this territory for her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, and for the British Empire. This is not the end of our mission. It's the beginning."
Chapter Three
Churchill Station, 2001...
Dashwood arrives at the meeting. The Americans have an ion drive. Initially, it matches the speed of English commercial shuttles. After two weeks of thrust, it matches the speed of the best ships the Ministry of Space possesses. They are going around the moon-British territory. But if the Ministry refuses to allow American spaceflight, they will reveal to the world the source of the black budget.
1960.
Von Braun is dead. An interview made in 1958 notes that although England honored him as the mind behind the Ministry of Space, they never let him forget he was not English himself. When he married a member of the translation team in her hometown, Lymm, in Cheshire, her neighbors threw stones at them. "She was marrying a kraut, you see." He says.
Dashwood is annoyed. Without Von Braun, he has no way to make sure the nuclear motor he designed will work as planned. "I just don't trust the magic without my familiar.", he says. His second in command believes that's a disgusting way to talk about a brilliant man. Dashwood doesn't remember asking for his opinion.
On Earth, English cars no longer have wheels. Railways no longer touch the ground. The Ministry's ships fill the sky, playfully sharing them with helipack-flying teenagers.
And on the Moon, water has been discovered.
Woomera, 1962.
Dashwood refuses to witness the launch of the Ariane, for its method of operation, a single stage from Earth to the Moon, seems like something Von Braun would not have done had he been alive. This decision saves his life. The nuclear motors fail. Woomera is blown to oblivion.
1969.
Dashwood, upon seeing an annual television program about the Woomera incident, remarks that Parliament needs to 'do something' about the BBC-or they might just turn into America. Captain Langton, a black officer in the Ministry of Space (by implication, the first black officer), is having problems with his final vetting. He's a new father, and Dashwood's subordinates are worried about the consequences should he die in the upcoming mission. Dashwood grins and signs the papers. All he asks is that Langton try very hard not to die.
The mission is the colonization of Mars. Seven nuclear-powered ships with a crew of a hundred each. As the fleet enters the orbit of Mars, giant bays on each ship open to reveal four smaller landers. As the landers land, we finally witness the scale of the operation. Each lander is over twelve stories high.
"For Queen and Country, and the Royal Space Force. Mars is ours. Move out."
England now owns the planet Mars.
2001.
Finally, after more than half a century, Dashwood is forced to reveal the source of the black budget. "Holocaust gold," he says. Gold stolen from concentration camp victims. Everything they had, right down to the fillings of their teeth. Perhaps two billion pounds in modern money.
England had been on the verge of bankruptcy. The gold could save the country, but only if it was used discreetly. And it was. And it has. England prevails, stronger than ever, ruling the solar system supreme.
Dashwood admits he is a monster, but then so are those who judge him, his associates in the Ministry of Space. They say that he made them monsters. Dashwood angrily replies, "I. MADE. YOU. GREAT!"
The Ministry, in all of its glory and splendor, is built on ransacked corpses. But Dashwood did not do the ransacking. He robbed from the Nazis and gave to a battered England. In doing so, he gave them Space. And now they will lose it to the horror of the black budget. But all peace is based on the horrors of war-England's peace spans two centuries.
Dashwood admits he had American soldiers killed to protect the technology. The Americans only suspect Peenemunde. They don't know about Bergen-Belsen. And Auschwitz. But Churchill knew. He feared Russia. He wanted Churchill station, armed with missiles, to defend the Empire.
As he leaves, Dashwood says, "Let the Yanks tell the world what I did. See if England cares. If I am a monster, then England is too. See if England cares, with her free electricity and cheap food and her glorious, unchanging aspect."
An English vessel is passing Saturn. The Ministry of Space has cities on Mars. At night, the Moon is awash with the lights of a city that puts New York to shame. The asteroid belt is being mined. Churchill Station is but one of dozens, maybe hundreds.
And the charming young black woman who flew Dashwood to Churchill Station prepares to fly him home. She leaves a lounge clearly marked, "NON-WHITE WOMEN STAFF ONLY".
Afterword
Ellis speaks of how the Ministry of Space came to be. While converting his attic into a library, he found a lost, forgotten copy of DAN DARE: THE MAN FROM NOWHERE. In the fifties, this was science fiction. Now, it has the feel of alternate history.
Back then, space didn't seem all that far off. We all expected to spend our golden years on the Moon, or even far, far beyond that. But America got caught up in the political morass of the Cold War. Russia lacked the ingenuity to make space colonization a realty. Britain had theorists like Arthur C. Clarke, but they had no money, and they had no engineers.
The Ministry of Space is Ellis' musings on what might have been accomplished-and what might have been lost. There is no rational human on Earth who believes that losing Space was worth winning elections. But what might the cost to go to Space have been? Freezing Britain's social evolution? Killing allies? Grave robbing?
The pulp novels of half a century ago predicted the glory and bounty that the future held-but Jane Jetson was still a housewife. In the matte paintings of AMAZING STORIES, all the astronauts were male-and white. We don't have the space stations or flying cars or jet packs that we dreamed of fifty years ago, but we are more aware that, as J. Michael Straczynki says, "we are all aliens to each other", that we are all human desipte our differences and have to treat each other with dignity and fairness. Many would consider that even more precious.
In the end, the question Ellis asks is, "What is the price of a dream?" For Von Braun, it was to live and die, forever considered inferior to his peers. For Dashwood it was to become the most hated man in history. What price would does the dream have now?
Delays
First intended for publication in 2001 the last issue finally saw print in 2004, three years late. Ellis blamed the delays first on difficulties artist Chris Wesson had with meeting the deadlines due to other commitments, but later retracted this after some online comic news sites such as Newsarama quoted Wesson's confusion at Ellis' remarks. Ellis then took the blame upon himself, but cited differing reasons with each query until he finally settled on his father's passing as the reason. He then became rather obstinate with regards to queries regarding the final issue's lateness, and was reported to respond to e-mail requests for information with rude and sometimes obscene responses along the lines of "just fucking wait for it." Most notable of these were directed towards regular contributors of the usenet newsgroups sci.space.history and sci.space.policy, who were naturally curious as to how Ellis had conceived the post-WWII British Government's ability to fund projects such as the Von Braun Express; Ellis' book came out shortly after both newsgroups were sharing a rather lengthy thread discussing how Wernher Von Braun's Collier's magazine concepts could have been carried out, and whether another nation besides either the United States or the Soviet Union - specifically, one like Great Britain - could have undertaken a recovery mission like Operation Paperclip and succeeded. Many, including regulars such as Henry Spencer, Pat Flannery, B0b "OM" Mosely, David Sander and John Beaderstadt, all expressed the theory that the only way the British could have even attempted such programs would if they had stolen the money from an unexpected source - the hidden Swiss Bank accounts of the Nazis, many of which held funds stolen from Jewish concentration camp victims.