War as a Series of Collisions

"War as a Series of Collisions" is a review of Bomber by Len Deighton, published in the book review section of Life Magazine on October 2, 1970.

Summary

Bomber, 1st edition

Collisions have always been a popular entertainment, and the Second World War was the largest collision in history. Len Deighton has now written a long, humorless, grotesquely detailed work about a single fictitious air raid by the British over Germany. Carefully researched and coldly unflinching in its portrayal of death, the clunky prose almost made Vonnegut throw the book away until he realized that what Deighton was pointing out is that human beings in the age of technological warfare have "no poetical theatrical possibilities". War stories that bring on laughter or tears are fakes, since war is now about mechanical engineering. The collision of human beings is now boring and the machines are the stars.