In 1971, Glen Cook, an author known for his gritty fantasy novels, wrote the short story, "Song from a Forgotten Hill." Recently included in a short story collect, Winter's Dreams, "Song" is not your normal science fiction, though it is a dystopian view of a broken American landscape where the country has been through three "fires." The first is from Russian nuclear strikes on major American cities. The second is "when (black) militants burned remnants of Whiteys' cities." The third occurs when the US military's return from the war (presumably with Russia) leads to a civil contest "between whites and blacks."
In the anarchy following nuclear holocaust, Cook depicts the worst of humanity as sides are formed on American soil. Black militants strike at governmental infrastructure and then white rednecks turn back the hands of time to revisit the atrocity of slavery. In the midst of the aftermath, we find a a black protagonist, a veteran of the Vietnam war, attempting to keep his remaining family, "Four kids, the oldest fifteen, and no wife," safe and free in the wilderness: "The war killed most of the good folks. They lived where the bombs fell. The rednecks and the militants seem to be the only survivors. And now the rednecks, who had waited so long for their chance, are 'putting 'em back in their place.' There are very few of us out here in the hills. We're hunted, and running, but free."
