The Autumn of Empire

October 1961

By: James Philip

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Welcome to the Timeline 10/27/62 prequel series COUNTDOWN TO WAR starting in October 1961 and concluding when the world goes mad during the last weekend in October 1962.

The COUNTDOWN TO WAR Series is:

1: The Autumn of Empire – October 1961
2: Enterprise – November 1961
3: Fallout Shelter – December 1961
4: The Lion Sleeps Tonight – January 1962
5: Doomsday Blues – February 1962
6: The Great Storm – March 1962
7: West Side Story – April 1962
8: The Wall – May 1962
9: Test Ban Treaty – June 1962
10: The Night of the Long Knives – July 1962
11: Marilyn – August 1962
12: A Hard Rain – September 1962
13: Gathered on the Beach – October 1962

In The Autumn of Empire were encounter familiar, and new characters living in a world in the shadow of the nuclear arms race.


The COUNTDOWN TO WAR series paints a picture of the world in the troubled year before the war to end all wars killed and blighted the lives of hundreds of million people.

If you like: This is how we got to where we find ourselves in the first (red cover) Main Series books OPERATION ANADYR.

In THE AUTUMN OF EMPIRE there is a charismatic young President in the White House, Britain is struggling to come to terms with its declining influence and the Soviet Union is about to test its 50 megaton Tsar Bomb.

The United Kingdom, in the Second World War the unsinkable airfield from which the reconquest of Europe was mounted, is now the base of US and RAF bombers, and the launch pad for 64 Thor ballistic missiles aimed at the USSR.

But life goes on…as normal.

The retreat from empire goes on, even in sleepy, sun-drenched Malta.

A so begins the stories of so many of the characters who will populate the Timeline 10/27/62 universe and how it was that a year after we first visit a day in late October 1961, everything suddenly, catastrophically went wrong just twelve months later…

For my readers who prefer to read the Timeline 10/27/62 books in the chronological order of the overall narrative arc THE AUTUMN OF EMPIRE = 1.