Requirements: .ePUB reader, 1.8MB
Overview: Poul William Anderson (1926 – 2001)] was an American science fiction author who began his career in the 1940s and continued to write into the 21st century. Anderson authored several works of fantasy, historical novels, and short stories. His awards include seven Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards.
While horrified by the prospect of the Soviets winning complete rule over the Earth, Anderson was not enthusiastic about having Americans in that role either. Several stories and books describing the aftermath of a total US victory in another world war, such as "Sam Hall" and its loose sequel "Three Worlds to Conquer" as well as "Shield", are scarcely less bleak than the above-mentioned depictions of a Soviet victory.
Genre: Fiction > Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Sam Hall
The story is set in a 21st-century in which the United States has descended into totalitarianism (while retaining the outward forms of republican government) in the aftermath of two additional world wars. Conventional wisdom maintains that the US loss in World War III had forced the nation to become a "garrison state" in order to prevail in World War IV, but it is not specified who the combatants in either of these conflicts had been.
The story's World War IV may be identical with a conflict ten years prior to the events of "Sam Hall," in which China had carried out "abortive" nuclear attacks on several American cities; the viewpoint character comes to suspect this may have been a false flag conducted by the US regime itself. At some point prior to that, the US had also fought and won a war against Brazil.
At the point when the story takes place, the US regime appears to exercise some form of security hegemony over the entire rest of the Earth, with the Anglosphere nations enjoying some form of autonomy. The US also has exclusive control over human settlement of the Solar System; the most important of these is a pre-Mariner habitable Venus, which hosts thorium mines operated by conscript labor under inhuman conditions, though there are colonies on Mars, the Moon, and the Jovian satellites as well.

Three Worlds to Conquer
A dozen years had passed since Mark Fraser and his family had fled to Ganymede, hoping to find the peace and freedom which had eluded them on Earth. Now violence and terror had pursued them to their new-found home: Captain Swayne and his battleship Vega had made landfall on Ganymede and were using its resources to build missiles with which to hold Planet Earth to ransom. For the second time, Mark Fraser was a marked man, running for his life. His only chance of escape was to a third planet: Jupiter. But as Fraser knew only too well, Jupiter itself was the scene of conflict and carnage. And so far no human being had ever breathed its atmosphere and lived to tell the tale!