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• BALTIMORE CITY County
• 100 Harborview Drive #911

100 Harborview Drive #911 BALTIMORE , MD 21230

• $2,800 Check your credit
• 1,129 Sq Ft

Spectacular AWESOME city and water views! Clean, bright apartment offers open LR/kitchen floor plan with 2 balconies! Highlights include 1,129 sf, stainless appliances, lots of counter top cupboard and pantry space, lots of light, decorative recessed lighting, W/D. Main Suite offers walk-in closet, private bath with dual bowl sinks, shower, Jacuzzi tub. 2nd BR (den) with private 2nd balcony. Rent includes gated garage parking, water, extensive fitness center with steam, sauna, pools, hot tub. Outdoor grill area! Luxury full service building with many value added amenities and services! 24/7 front desk concierge and valet, billiards, dining rooms, lobby social lounge with Internet access, conference rooms, guest suites, business center, discounted marina boat slips! Harborview Marina & Yacht Club grounds are beautifully landscaped with walking/jogging paths, seasonal flowers, water fountains. On-site gourmet deli, patio dining, banking, security staff, and plenty of guest parking! Close to night life, shops, stadiums, business district, free public transportation, MARC train and 10 miles to the Airport!

Property Type :

Beds / baths :, year built :, living area size :, subdivision :.

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Property Details

Interior features, bedroom information.

Total Bedrooms : 2

Master Bedroom Level: 2

Bathroom Information

Total Baths: 2

Full Baths: 1

Half Baths: 1

Laundry Source

Laundry Type : Dryer In Unit,Washer In Unit

Water/Sewer

Water Source : Public

Room Information

Patio/Porch Features: Balconies- Multiple,Patio(s),Terrace

Bar,Built-Ins,Carpet,Combination Dining/Living,Elevator,Floor Plan - Open,Kitchen - Gourmet,Primary Bedroom - Bay Front,Pantry,Recessed Lighting,Sauna,Sprinkler System,Walk-in Closet(s),WhirlPool/HotTub,Wood Floors

Exterior Property Features : BBQ Grill,Exterior Lighting,Hot Tub,Lawn Sprinkler,Play Area,Secure Storage,Sidewalks,Street Lights,Water Fountains

Property Amenities: Bank / Banking On-site,Bar/Lounge,Bike Trail,Billiard Room,Common Grounds,Concierge,Dining Rooms,Elevator,Extra Storage,Exercise Room,Fax/Copying,Fitness Center,Guest Suites,Hot tub,Jog/Walk Path,Library,Marina/Marina Club,Meeting Room,Newspaper Service,Party Room,Picnic Area,Pier/Dock,Pool - Indoor,Pool - Outdoor,Reserved/Assigned Parking,Sauna,Security

Property Appliances: Built-In Microwave,Dishwasher,Disposal,Dryer - Electric,Microwave,Refrigerator,Oven/Range - Electric,Stainless Steel Appliances,Washer,Washer/Dryer Stacked

Heating & Cooling

Cooling: Central A/C

Heating: 90% Forced Air

Cooling Fuel: Electric

Heating Fuel: Electric

Window Information

Window Treatments: Sliding

Exterior Features

Building information.

Exterior Features: BBQ Grill,Exterior Lighting,Hot Tub,Lawn Sprinkler,Play Area,Secure Storage,Sidewalks,Street Lights,Water Fountains

Year Built: 1992

Structure: Unit/Flat/Apartment

Major Appliances: Built-In Microwave,Dishwasher,Disposal,Dryer - Electric,Microwave,Refrigerator,Oven/Range - Electric,Stainless Steel Appliances,Washer,Washer/Dryer Stacked

New Construction: No

Total Floors: 1

Total Units: 1

Built: 1992

Construction Material: Brick,Stucco

Security System: 24 hour security,Desk in Lobby,Exterior Cameras,Intercom,Fire Detection System,Main Entrance Lock,Doorman,Monitored,Security Gate,Security System,Smoke Detector,Sprinkler System - Indoor,Surveillance Sys

Amenities: Bank / Banking On-site,Bar/Lounge,Bike Trail,Billiard Room,Common Grounds,Concierge,Dining Rooms,Elevator,Extra Storage,Exercise Room,Fax/Copying,Fitness Center,Guest Suites,Hot tub,Jog/Walk Path,Library,Marina/Marina Club,Meeting Room,Newspaper Service,Party Room,Picnic Area,Pier/Dock,Pool - Indoor,Pool - Outdoor,Reserved/Assigned Parking,Sauna,Security

Architecture: Transitional

Pool/Private: Yes - Community

Water Access Features: Boat - Powered

Utilities: Cable TV Available,Electric Available,Water Available

Building Name: HARBORVIEW

Pool Information

Pool: Yes - Community

Bank / Banking On-site,Bar/Lounge,Bike Trail,Billiard Room,Common Grounds,Concierge,Dining Rooms,Elevator,Extra Storage,Exercise Room,Fax/Copying,Fitness Center,Guest Suites,Hot tub,Jog/Walk Path,Library,Marina/Marina Club,Meeting Room,Newspaper Service,Party Room,Picnic Area,Pier/Dock,Pool - Indoor,Pool - Outdoor,Reserved/Assigned Parking,Sauna,Security

Utility Features

Water: Inner Harbor

Sewer: Public Sewer

Water Heat: 60+ Gallon Tank

Property / Lot Details

Lot information.

Lot Size: 11,180

Lot Size (Acres): 0.26

Waterfront: Private Dock Site

Architectural Style: Transitional

Stories Total: 27

Main Square Feet: 11,180

Property Information

SQ ft: 1,129

SQ ft (Living Area): 1,129

Total Lot SQ ft: 11,180

View: Water,Harbor,City

Subdivision: HARBORVIEW

Total Acreage: 0.26

Type: Transitional

Listing Information

Common/Club Amenities: Bank / Banking On-site,Bar/Lounge,Bike Trail,Billiard Room,Common Grounds,Concierge,Dining Rooms,Elevator,Extra Storage,Exercise Room,Fax/Copying,Fitness Center,Guest Suites,Hot tub,Jog/Walk Path,Library,Marina/Marina Club,Meeting Room,Newspaper Service,Party Room,Picnic Area,Pier/Dock,Pool - Indoor,Pool - Outdoor,Reserved/Assigned Parking,Sauna,Security

Days Of Market: 4

Taxes / Assessments

Terms/deposits/fees.

Condo Fees: $0

Assoc Fee Freq: $Monthly

Virtual Tour, Parking, Multi-Unit Information & Homeowners Association

Parking information.

Total Parking Spaces: 2

Parking Space # Assigned: 2

Parking Type: Attached Garage

Parking Features: Assigned,Attendant,Lighted Parking,Parking Space Conveys

Has Garage: Y

Garage Type: Covered Parking,Garage Door Opener,Inside Access

Garage Space: 2

# of Attached Garage Spaces: 2

Multi-Unit Information

Homeowners association information.

Association Fee: $0

Association Fee 2: $0

HOA Name: HARBORVIEW MARINA & YACHT CLUB

HOA Fee Frequency: Monthly

Other Fee Frequency: Monthly

Direction: I-95 take exit 55-Key Highway to R on Harborview Dr to Tower courtyard. From Inner Harbor - south on Key Highway. L on Pierside, R on Harborview to Tower courtyard. Valet parking.

School, Utilities & Location Details

School information.

School District: BALTIMORE CITY PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Utility Information

Cable TV Available,Electric Available,Water Available

Water Source: Public

Hot Water: 60+ Gallon Tank

Elevators: 6

Location Information

Location Type: Downtown

Homes around $2,800

Nearby Home Value

Similar Other To 100 Harborview Drive #911

Nearby for rent.

Data provided by Bright MLS. Property information is for the users personal, non-commercial use. Information may not be used for any purpose other than to identify prospective properties consumers may be interested in purchasing. Some properties that appear on the website may no longer be for sale, and may be under contract or sold. ©2024 Bright MLS, All Rights Reserved. Information is reliable but not guaranteed.

ByOwner last updated this listing 06/22/2024 @ 17:47

MLS: MDBA2129766 LISTED BY: Susan M Colandrea , O'Conor, Mooney & Fitzgerald SOURCE: BRIGHT MLS Buyer Agency Compensation: 50% Buyer Agency Description: The listing broker's offer of compensation is made only to participants of the MLS where the listing is filed and if applicable, to participants of reciprocating MLS's as set forth in Association/MLS reciprocal agreements.

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Susan M Colandrea

O'Conor, Mooney & Fitzgerald

410-824-1111

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2020 Axopar 37' (11.28 m) 37 Cross Cabin

Presented by

Scott Woodruff, CPYB East Coast Yacht Sales

207-236-8656

954-701-1072

Rockland, Maine, United States

     this 2020 axopar 37 cross cabin with brabus trim package, aft cabin, head compartment and full suite of electronics is in exceptional condition. the twin mercury v8 verado engines have 85 hours each and the boat has been stored indoors and is yard maintained. ready to cruise now... or with her.

• Express Cruiser
• Fiberglass Hull

HIN/IMO: AX07C095G020

$ 375,000 USD

• 954-701-1072 954-701-1072
• TEXT MESSAGE BROKER

Description

"How does it feel on the water? Effortless describes it best. The original was an absolute joy to drive but this new version is even smoother, even quieter and even easier to drive at high speed. Modern outboard technology takes much of the thinking out of driving the boat; with auto trim and rev matching in hard turns, all the helmsman has to focus on is setting the speed and steering." ~MotorBoat

This 2020 Axopar 37 Cross Cabin with Brabus trim package, aft cabin, head compartment and full suite of electronics is in exceptional condition. The twin Mercury V8 Verado engines have 85 hours each and the boat has been stored indoors and is yard maintained. Ready to cruise now... or with her trailer go wherever your imagination and the roads will take you.

Specifications

LOA: 37' 9'' (11.51 Meters)

Type: Power- Used

Draft Max: 2' 9''

• Fuel Type: Gas/Petrol

Hull Material: Fiberglass

Fuel Tank: 193 Gallons (730.58 Liters)

Trailer: Yes

Photos click to view all

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• Engine Make: Mercury
• Engine Model: Verado V8
• Engine Year: 2020
• Engine Type: Outboard
• Power HP: 300.00
• Power KW: 223.71
• Hours: 85.00
• Engine Location: Starboard
• Engine Location: Port

Full Details

Vessel details.

• (2) Mercury 4S 300HP V8 in Cold Fusion White
• Vessel view

Electronics

• Information display twin 12"
• Echo sounder
• Simrad Radar Halo20+

Deck and Interior Amenities

• Waterski frame, black Brabus line
• Day Cruiser aft cabin package
• Cockpit/swim deck shower
• Fishing targa arch with 6 rod holders, black Brabus line 
• Sunshade for aft deck, black Brabus line
• Fixed sunbed on front deck with storage
• Sunshade for fore deck, black Brabus line
• Anchor hatch cushion on fore deck

Forward Cabin

• Toilet compartment
• Shower in Toilet compartment
• Toilet compartment sink

Factory Options

• Solar battery trickle charger system
• Sunshade on aft deck, black Brabus line
• Sunshade for fore deck, black Brabus line 
• Antifouling black
• Refrigerator in main cabin, Dometic CRX CM50
• Bow thruster Side-Power SE60
• Roof rack (max load 25kg per side)
• Waterski frame Brabus line
• Electrical sliding canvas roof system Webasto
• Shore Power 110V with 40Ah charger, US standard
• Windlass in bow with remote
• Seats and upholstery Silvertex Champagne
• Anchor hatch cushion on fore deck Silvertex Champagne
• Sundeck cushions for aft deck Silvertex Champagne
• Protective window covers Sunbrella Plus Grey
• Harbor cover for Aft Cabin, Sunbrella Red
• Harbor cover for fore deck extended sunbed Sunbrella Red
• Harbor cover for anchor locker cushion Sunbrella Red
• Fusion Audio system
• (4) Speakers
• 2x4 Chanel amplifier
• Remote control for Fusion

   Rocket Trailer ~ 2020

• VIN 7KJC7E533MA018878

Represented by a Certified Professional Yacht Broker (CPYB)

A Certified Professional Yacht Broker (CPYB) is recognized as having achieved the highest level of industry accreditation, available only to fully-qualified yacht sales professionals. The CPYB program is administered by Yacht Brokers Association of America in partnership with Florida Yacht Brokers Association, Northwest Yacht Brokers Association, California Yacht Brokers Association, Boating Ontario Dealers, British Columbia Yacht Brokers Association and Gulf Coast Yacht Brokers Association.

The CPYB program is also endorsed by the Marine Retailers Association of the Americas (MRAA) Marine Industry Certified Dealership (MICD) program and leading yacht manufacturers as a key component of their own industry standards; the highest level of achievement for their member yacht sales professionals.

 Experience & Validity

    The CPYB designation is earned by eligible yacht sales professionals, who, after serving a minimum of three years as a full-time professional, have successfully completed a comprehensive written examination to validate professional competency.

Continuing Education

    A CPYB is committed to their personal and professional development through continuing education, as mandated for CPYB recertification every three years.

Ethics & Standards

    A CPYB adheres to, and is accountable to, a nationally recognized Code of Business Ethics and conducts yacht sales transactions in accordance with a stringent set of industry standards of practice.

Fiduciary Responsibility

    A CPYB maintains a dedicated escrow/trust account to protect their client’s funds. A CPYB understands their fiduciary responsibility and obligations with respect to client funds.

Transaction Management

    A CPYB uses proven, industry-recognized transaction documents, which fully and clearly describe all terms and conditions of a transaction.

Honesty & Integrity

   A CPYB maintains the highest standards of professionalism, acting with honesty and integrity.

Trust & Confidence

    A CPYB instills confidence, trust and consistency in all transactions involving fellow yacht sales professionals for the benefit of the client.

The company offers the details of this vessel in good faith but cannot guarantee or warrant the accuracy of this information nor warrant the condition of the vessel. A buyer should instruct his agents, or his surveyors, to investigate such details as the buyer desires validated. This vessel is offered subject to prior sale, price change or withdrawal without notice.

Listing MLS by Yachtr.com

Scott Woodruff, CPYB

Yacht broker, cpyb.

Returning to Maine in 1998, Scott started his professional career in the yachting industry by taking a job with Sun Yachts in Camden, Maine as a Sales Agent. From Camden, Maine Scott worked his way up through the ranks as he moved to Portland, Maine as the Crewed Yacht Supervisor for Stardust. Then on to Tortola in the British Virgin Islands for 7 Years as the Caribbean Yacht Sales Manager for Sunsail. He then moved to Ft Lauderdale, Florida to take on the position of Global Sales Manager for Leopard Catamarans for 7 years. In 2014 Scott returned home again with his family and joined East Coast Yacht Sales taking over the Camden Office and then opening a second office in Belfast, ME.

Scott knows the yachting industry. Having represented and worked with many of the industry leading manufacturers, traveling globally to work with factories on build projects, and working with many of the industry’s leading designers, Scott is well positioned to help buyers and sellers navigate the buying/selling process.

43' Lowell Brothers

52' Lyman-Morse

“Carrot on a stick” vs. “the carrot or the stick.”

The Usenet Newsgroup alt.usage.english has debated this expression several times, most recently in spring 1998. No one there presented definitive evidence, but dictionaries agree that the proper expression is “the carrot or the stick”.

One person on the Web mentions an old “Little Rascals” short in which an animal was tempted to forward motion by a carrot dangling from a stick. I think the image is much older than that, going back to old magazine cartoons (certainly older than the animated cartoons referred to by correspondents on alt.usage.english); but I’ll bet that the cartoon idea stemmed from loose association with the original phrase “the carrot or the stick” rather than the other way around. An odd variant is the claim broadcast on National Public Radio March 21, 1999 that one Zebediah Smith originated this technique of motivating stubborn animals. This is almost certainly an urban legend.

Note that the people who argue for “carrot on a stick” never cite any documentable early use of the supposed “correct” expression. For the record, here’s what the Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary has to say on the subject: “carrot, sb. Add: 1. a. fig. [With allusion to the proverbial method of tempting a donkey to move by dangling a carrot before it.] An enticement, a promised or expected reward; freq. contrasted with “stick” (=punishment) as the alternative.”

[Skipping references to uses as early as 1895 which refer only to the carrot so don’t clear up the issue.]

“ 1948 Economist 11 Dec. 957/2 The material shrinking of rewards and lightening of penalties, the whittling away of stick and carrot. [Too bad the Economist’s writer switched the order in the second part of this example, but the distinction is clear.]

“ 1954 J. A. C. Brown Social Psychol. of Industry i. 15 The tacit implication that . . . most men . . . are . . . solely motivated by fear or greed (a motive now described as “the carrot or the stick”).

“ 1963 Listener 21 Feb. 321/2 Once Gomulka had thrown away the stick of collectivization, he was compelled to rely on the carrot of a price system favourable to the peasant.”

The debate has been confused from time to time by imagining one stick from which the carrot is dangled and another kept in reserve as a whip; but I imagine that the original image in the minds of those who developed this expression was a donkey or mule laden with cargo rather than being ridden, with its master alternately holding a carrot in front of the animal’s nose (by hand, not on a stick) and threatening it with a switch. Two sticks are too many to make for a neat expression.

For me, the clincher is that no one actually cites the form of the “original expression.” In what imaginable context would it possibly be witty or memorable to say that someone or something had been motivated by a carrot on a stick? Why not an apple on a stick, or a bag of oats? Boring, right? Not something likely to pass into popular usage.

This saying belongs to the same general family as “you can draw more flies with honey than with vinegar.” It is never used except when such contrast is implied.

Back to Nonerrors

The President’s English

A few residents of the United Kingdom and Canada have taken umbrage at my statement that “American English is quickly becoming an international standard.” “Piffle,” they assert; “everyone knows that the Queen’s English is the worldwide standard,” or words to that effect. Let’s see if I can make this clear while being reasonably polite. First of all, note that I do not claim (though I could) that American English is the international standard, only that it is becoming a standard, alongside the older UK standard. Because so many people use it, it is important to understand its peculiarities. When most English speakers were part of the Empire—or later, of the Commonwealth—British patterns of spelling, punctuation, and usage prevailed. Now we live in a different world. Chinese from Hong Kong and Singapore speak with a British accent for good historical reasons, but enormous numbers of them from Taiwan and The People’s Republic study mostly American patterns. Arabs from the Middle East, Japanese, Russians, Central Asians of all sorts, and hosts of other people study much more often in American colleges than in British ones. When treaties are being negotiated, international statements issued, meetings translated, and films dubbed, the lingua franca is far more likely to be American English than UK standard. American television and movies have alone spread American accents throughout the world. This may be a deplorable fact, but it is a fact. Like many Americans, I warmly admire traditional English speech patterns and accents. This site in no way suggests that American ones are superior. They are simply more prevalent, in the world at large, and certainly on the Web. I am not an expert on UK usage. It is also worth noting that in a surprising number of cases, American pronunciation and usage are more conservative than that of the British. Some instances are noted on these pages in which US speakers preserve older patterns abandoned by speakers in the British Isles. My goal is to defend American standard usage from the bullying of non-American critics, and to warn Americans not to be parochial in assuming that everyone speaks like they do. For obvious reasons, careful writers have to pay attention to a relatively small number of differences, but we don’t have to let those differences whip us into a frenzy of mutual denunciation. Back to Introduction

Nuclear Holocausts Annotated Bibliography

A-z bibliography.

In the original online version of this bibliography, all the book and periodical titles were italicized. Unfortunately in the transition to the new version the italics were lost. I may try to restore these eventually, but it will take some time. In the meantime you will probably have no difficulty discerning which words make up the book titles.

Aarons, Edward S. “The Makers of Destiny.” Fantasy and Science Fiction, September 1959.

Mutants with psychic powers are persecuted as sorcerers in 2065, long after the Ten Day Atomic War. The protagonist discovers that he has repressed the knowledge that it was his ancestor who mistakenly reacted to a French atomic power plant explosion by hitting Russia with an H-bomb, setting off the holocaust. Both the superpowers have declined into primitivism, with the United States torn by a new civil war. The other nations, led by China, seek to keep the United States backward. In this regard, compare with Kim Stanley Robinson, The Wild Shore , and Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka, Warday .

Abbey, Edward. Good News . (Portions previously published in somewhat different form in New Times , Tucson Weekly News , and Tri-Quarterly .) New York: Dutton, 1980.An ill-assorted group of rebels battles a military tyrant in this above-average postholocaust adventure tale set in a time when civilization has collapsed from ecocatastrophe and the limited use of nuclear weapons in local conflicts. The most striking character is a wonder-working Indian shaman, but all the characters are vividly depicted and memorable. Abbey is the well-known author of The Monkey-Wrench Gang (1975).

Abbey, Lloyd. The Last Whales . New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1989. London: Bantam, 1991. New York: Ballantine, 1991. Nuclear winter and the end of humanity from the point of view of whales and dolphins. Filled with remarkably convincing details about the lives and deaths of sea mammals with very few human beings actually depicted. Killer whales share the role as villains with humans.

Abe Kobo. The Ark Sakura . (Originally Hakobune no Sakura . Tokyo: Shinchosa, 1984.) Trans. Juliet Winters Carpenter. New York: Knopf, 1988. An oddly-assorted group of people seeking shelter from the threat of nuclear war in a huge underground complex talk and quarrel about their situation and the invaders penetrating their stronghold. Their leader gets his foot stuck in a giant toilet, which seems to symbolize death. A huge dynamite explosion fools most of the people into believing a nuclear war has occurred, and they set about the grim business of surviving underground; but the fellow whose idea the ark was in the first place struggles out to the surface to find the city around him oddly transparent. It is not clear what this means, but perhaps a nuclear war really has happened. There is a mention of EMP knocking out computers. By the author of Woman of the Dunes and other well-known fiction.

Abernathy, Robert. “Heirs Apparent” (Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1954). In Anthony Boucher, ed. The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: Fourth Series. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1955. New York: Ace, 1960. Also in T. E. Dikty, ed. The Best Science Fiction Stories and Novels: 1955. New York: Fell, 1955. Also in Martin H. Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander, eds. Science Fiction of the 50’s. New York: Avon, 1979. Also in Walter M. Miller, Jr. and Martin H. Greenberg, eds. Beyond Armageddon: Twenty-one Sermons to the Dead. New York: Donald I. Fine, 1985. Despite the original editor’s introduction scorning ordinary simple-minded anti-Soviet stories and noting that the author has a Ph.D. in Slavic from Harvard, this is a simple cold war parable. In post-World War III Russia, an isolated village struggles to survive, with a stranded American agricultural expert named Smith guiding it. When a dogmatic Communist Russian army colonel shows up, he asks the American what sort of infiltration he has been conducting. Replies our hero, Smith: “I was trying to beat part of a gunmounting into a plowshare.” He points out to the belligerent colonel that his multiple skills are the result of the free market economy in which he was raised, which allowed him to move from job to job. Although the colonel demonstrates his own skill in helping to fight off a marauding band of robbers, his un-American mentality leads him to endanger everyone by insisting on keeping the village’s cache of weapons under lock and key. Smith argues for the wisdom of the U.S. Constitution’s clause establishing the right to keep and bear arms. The wily villagers smuggle the weapons into their homes and are prepared for the next attack. The colonel is killed, and the robbers–believing that towns attract atomic bombs and that safety lies in perpetual nomadism–force the villagers to leave. A new dark age is beginning: “In the West the light faded, and night fell with the darkness sweeping on illimitable wings out of Asia.”

___. “When the Rockets Come.” Astounding , March 1945. Atomic bombs are being used by the Earth army against Martian villages. One soldier is a particularly enthusiastic combatant. His colonel compliments him, saying his sort of spirit is rare in modern times: “The fighting blood!–humanity has bred it out and killed it out with machines. The last group of men on Earth who were selected and bred to fight was the flying aristocracy of the airplane age, and most of that strain was wiped out when the atomic blast was invented, because the fightless people–the soft people, if you like–could still hate and press buttons.” The soldier is captured, witnesses the effects of the bombing first hand, and is appalled, finally identifying with the Martians. Rather remarkable as a pre-Hiroshima story.

Ackerman, Forrest J. “The Mute Question” ( Other Worlds , September 1950). In K[endell] F[oster] Crossen, ed. Adventures in Tomorrow. New York: Greenberg, 1951. New York: Belmont, 1968. London: Bodley Head, 1953. Also in Charles Nuetzel, ed. If This Goes On . Beverly Hills, Calif.: Book Company of America, 1965. Also in Robert Silverberg, ed. Mutants: Eleven Stories of Science Fiction . Nashville: Nelson, 1974. A one-page trifle in which two mutants speculate on their origin, recalling the myth that “Man’s son, Adam, created us all with the Adam bomb.” It ends with: “The muties have a proverb: Two heads are better than none.” Since in the body of the story the mutants are called “muties,” the title presumably involves a pun on “moot.”

Adams, Ian. The Trudeau Papers . Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1971. A crazed Russian starts a nuclear exchange with the U.S.; but the missiles are exploded in mid-flight over Canada instead. The U.S. then occupies a devastated Canada.

Adams, John. When the Gods Came . London: John Spencer, 1960. New York: Arcadia House, 1967. Mutants and humans battle savagely on an Earth largely destroyed forty years earlier in a short atomic holocaust. Despite antiscientific bias on the part of the public, a remnant of the government has kept research going and is preparing a devastating nuclear attack on the last stronghold of the enemy. The hero, a telepathic astronomer, is suspected of being a mutant, but he proves to be a descendant of an alien race which landed on Earth five thousand years earlier. Under duress, he helps the government destroy the enemy, then flees Earth with others of his kind in a rocket fortuitously uncovered by the explosion of an enemy atomic bomb.

Adams, Robert. The Coming of the Horseclans, Horseclans #1. Los Angeles: Pinnacle, 1975. New York: Signet, 1982. It is 2550 A.D., six hundred years after the two-day war which plunged humanity back into barbarism. Most of southern California was tumbled into the Pacific, and various geologic upheavals have occurred since. Mutant telepaths who can communicate with jaguars and horses roam the plains and do battle with each other. There are lots of battle scenes, torture, and rape (especially rape of children). Mutant immortals called the “Undying” struggle against evil scientists from the prewar era who have perpetuated their minds by switching from body to body over the centuries. The mutant leader, Milo, aided by his wife (the short but sexy and mighty-in-battle Mara), takes the long view of rebuilding civilization: a few more centuries of barbaric combat will be necessary, enough to fill several books, at least. Other volumes in the series continue relentlessly portraying slaughter, torture, rape, incest, cannibalism, bestiality, necrophilia, etc. Adams emphasizes viciousness and obscenity to an extreme degree, only seldom touching on the theme of nuclear war. In volume 8 Adams kills off his favorite hero, but lets him linger on his deathbed reminiscing about past battles for four more volumes. Most of the sequels require no separate: treatment.

___. #2: Swords of the Horseclans. Los Angeles: Pinnacle, 1976. New York: Signet, 1981. 3

___. #3: Revenge of the Horseclans. Los Angeles: Pinnacle, 1977. New York: Signet, 1982.

___. #4: A Cat of Silvery Hue. New York: Signet, 1979.

___. #5: The Savage Mountains. New York: Signet, 1980.

___. #6: The Patrimony. New York: Signet, 1980.

___. #7: Horseclans Odyssey. New York: Signet, 1981.In this volume it is denied that the various mutations present in the Horseclans world were caused by radiation, except, perhaps, for telepathy (p. 60).

___. #8: The Death of a Legend. New York: Signet, 1981.

___. #9: The Witch Goddess. New York: Signet, 1982.This volume contains the explanation of the origins of the filthy cannibalistic tribe of savages known as “Ganiks.” They are the descendants of radical vegetarian conservationists who consider all non-human species endangered and eat only other humans. Muses the protagonist, “Having . . . clear recollections of the various fringe-element movements–organic farming, ecology, the pollution fanatics, vegetarians, back-to-nature types–Erica . . . came to the conclusion that the Kuhmbubluhners were doing the only thing that any halfway sane and reasonable group of normal humans could do with the Ganik ilk–drive them out or kill every one of them” (p. 148).

__. #10: Bili the Axe. New York: Signet, 1982.Chapter 4 contains a useful summary of the background of Adams’s setting and the contents of earlier volumes.

___. #11: Champion of the Last Battle. New York: Signet, 1983.

___. #12: A Woman of the Horseclans. New York: Signet, 1983.In chapters 9 and 10 Milo explores an ancient fallout shelter. This volume is unusual in being much less combat-oriented than the others.

Adams, Robert. Horseclans # 13: Horses of the North. New York: Signet, 1985. Contains more about the nuclear war background of the Horseclans world than previous volumes, as the immortal mutant Milo Morai tells his quarreling comrades of how he founded the clans in a lengthy flashback. The nuclear holocaust was followed by massive plagues which killed even more people, and by numerous smaller military conflicts. An immortal Nazi doctor who views the war sees it as a purifying fire, exterminating the unfit. It is revealed that Hitler was a mutant.The big cats which play such an important role in the series come from a game park.

___. Horseclans #14: A Man Called Milo Morai. New York: Signet, 1986.Contains nothing relating to nuclear war. Dedicated in part to Bernard Goetz, who shot two black teenagers on a New York subway.

___. Horseclans #15: The Memories of Milo Morai. New York: Signet, 1986.

___. Horseclans #16: Trumpets of War. New York: Signet, 1987.

___. Horseclans #17: Madman’s Army. New York: Signet, 1987.

___. Horseclans #18: The Clan of the Cats. New York: Signet, 1988.

Adams, Robert and Pamela Crippen Adams. Friends of the Horseclans. New York: Signet, 1987.

___. Friends of the Horseclans II. New York: Signet, 1989.Adler, Allen A. Mach 1: A Story of Planet Ionus. New York: Farrar, Straus Cudahy, 1957. As Terror on Planet Ionus. New York: Paperback Library, 1957.Battle against an interstellar monster named Karkong which feeds on nuclear power plants. Friendly aliens called the “Grid,” whose planet has been ravaged as a result of their refusal to use violent forms of assault on the beast, warn Earth. Although a macho admiral is frustrated in his desire to A-bomb the invader, the Russians do so, giving it vastly increased power. Finally Karkong is destroyed by penetrating its electric barrier with an advanced vehicle, allowing the Grid ship to strike it with lightning bolts. In exchange for their aid, the Grid are given Earth’s nuclear power secrets.Agawa Hiroyuki. Devil’s Heritage. Trans. John M. Maki. Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, 1957.Seven years after the war the protagonist is compiling a report on the casualties of the bombing of Hiroshima. A bitter, ironic attack on the American role in dropping the bomb and their later treatment of the Japanese. Some of those he interviews attack the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission for its failure to treat the injuries it studies and for what is seen as the callous and racist attitudes of some of its staff. Members of a group of bomb victims called the “Willow Society” recount various horrors: the deaths of school children, revolting wounds, bizarre symptoms of radiation poisoning. The bombing of Nagasaki is criticized as unnecessary; ABCC findings that mutation rates were not above normal are questioned. It is noted that General MacArthur’s wife helped to found a Japanese SPCA, but that the Americans displayed no comparable sympathy for human suffering. Some members of the Willow Society, however, argue that the Japanese themselves were partially responsible for the catastrophe that ended the war, and that they probably would have used the bomb themselves had they had it. According to one story, there was a rumor circulating in the hospitals that the Japanese did in fact have the bomb, had previously refrained from using it out of humanitarian considerations, but after the bombing of Hiroshima, had used it to destroy San Francisco and Los Angeles. Even deathly ill patients cheered at this news. The Japanese are not depicted as saintly victims: some of them cheated to get extra rations and insurance payments they were not owed, some stole watches and gold teeth from the dead. In general, however, the novel is intensely critical of the Americans, in contrast to the tone of Ibuse’s Black Rain , with which it should be compared. Agawa lacks Ibuse’s art, and a disproportionate amount of the book is dedicated to criticism of the ABCC, giving the work an odd focus which weakens its impact. The author credits two published nonfiction sources: Hachiya Michihiko’s Gembaku Zatsawa (translated as Hiroshima Diary [1955]) and Hayashi Yoshiro ‘s Ichiro (1951).

Ahern, Jerry. The Survivalist, #1, Total War. New York: Zebra, 1981.     Former medical student, ex-CIA agent, soldier of fortune, and survivalist John Thomas Rourke battles his way through war-wasted America. A relentlessly brutal chain of scenes of bloody combat focuses much attention on equipment, as in the first scene where the author notes his hero stabs his opponent with an “A. G. Russell Sting IA boot knife.” Returned from Pakistan, where the Russians have invaded to protect the Afghanistan frontier, Rourke’s wife Sarah is deeply troubled by his obsession with violence, but still loves him. A world crisis looms, however, and she allows him to tell her for the first time about the elaborate mountain shelter he has built; but, unfortunately he doesn’t get around to telling her where it is.     Interwoven with tales of love between individuals of the East and West, a confrontation over the Pakistan invasion builds toward war. The Russians destroy a U.S. submarine, then attack American military targets, trusting their newly perfected beam weapon to defend them from incoming missiles. When this news is announced, one of the passengers on Rourke’s plane (diverted from the now-destroyed Atlanta airport) has a heart attack, and Rourke shocks her heart into beating again with an electric hair dryer, then takes over the plane and crash-lands it. Meanwhile Sarah and the kids, having survived the initial attack, flee their house where leaking gas threatens an explosion, take up residence in the barn, and are promptly attacked by a band of would-be rapist-looters. Although she’s scarcely handled a gun before, she picks off three of them handily and incinerates the other two by firing bullets into the gas-saturated house.     On the national scene, things are not going so well. The president, faced with incoming missiles, feels he has no choice but to order an attack. He then recites the Twenty-third Psalm and shoots himself to prevent the Russians from using him during the coming invasion. With four-fifths of the U.S. population and two-fifths of the Russians dead or dying, Britain has been destroyed and Western Europe invaded. (France is relatively intact for some reason; perhaps Ahern wished to avoid the tedium of repeating its experience of the first two world wars.) Most spectacularly of all, the bombs on the West Coast have caused half of California to fall into the ocean, just like those hippies used to say it would. In Chicago, which has been hit by “clean” neutron bombs, the Russians are landing. The midsection of the country will be an uninhabitable radioactive wasteland for a century or more, and the Earth may have been tilted off its axis, but only slightly.     Meanwhile, Rourke treats as many of the wounded plane passengers as he can, and goes for help in a nearby city with four other men, three of whom desert. The exception is a young fellow named Rubenstein who will shed his citified naivete and learn to enjoy slaughtering his fellow citizens like his mentor. Rourke and Rubenstein find a Geiger counter, strip off their radioactive clothes, and Rourke shoots a pack of attacking dogs. Comments Rubenstein: “That was spectacular. . . . You would have made one hell of a great cowboy in the old west, John Rourke.” (Get along, little doggies?) Nine parts killer and one part lover, our hero unselfishly labors over the wounded in a makeshift hospital, returning to the plane to find the other passengers slaughtered by a gang of bikers. He kills all twelve of them, including a woman. (Ahern likes to include a token woman in his vicious gangs.) Rourke and Rubenstein recite the Twenty-third Psalm, torch the bodies, and slaughter forty more bikers from another gang. [46, 89-90]

___. The Survivalist, #2, The Nightmare Begins. New York: Zebra,While the KGB is shooting teenage resistance fighters in Chicago, Rourke and Rubenstein are battling a paramilitary group and grimly eating their iron rations: baby food they’ve found in a truck, along with plenty of exactly the sort of ammunition they need. The two encounter a group of teenagers, all dying of radiation disease, who are bent on defending the town until their parents return. Rourke and Rubenstein rescue a beautiful KGB agent named Natalia whom Rourke eventually recognizes from a previous encounter in Latin America. Naturally she falls for Rourke, and when they are captured, helps them escape with the new president. Meanwhile Rourke’s wife has killed the black and white members of the gang who seized and tortured her neighbor. (Ahern practices nondiscrimination: his villains are frequently black, female, or very young.) She buries the victim, then falls ill from drinking contaminated water. Finally arriving back home, Rourke finds her message tacked to the barn door telling him she has left with another family, kills four marauding youths, and takes off.

___. The Survivalist, #3, The Quest. New York: Zebra, 1981.Rourke gives Rubenstein a tour of his Retreat, an impregnable fortress hidden in a mountain cave, with special emphasis on weapons (enumerated by make) and books (unnamed). His shelter contains the stocks of food, clothing, and tools one would expect; it also includes a machine shop, a distillery for making alcohol fuel for his vehicles, and an artificially lit greenhouse. On his list of necessities is “one item that made his skin crawl because it represented something he couldn’t combat head-to-head: ‘Geiger counter’.” Indeed, although Rourke worries about radiation from time to time, he encounters none; a happenstance which lends support to his theory that survival is simply a matter of will power. Meanwhile, Natalia’s husband, General Karamatzov, has jealously beaten and raped her, and her uncle, seeking vengeance, arranges to have Rourke ambushed and captured so he can kill the general. Rourke, having promised Natalia that he would spare Karamatzov, strikes a compromise by gunning the Russian down in a Western-style duel. Meanwhile Sarah and the kids have made it to safety. Rourke and Sarah glimpse each other in the distance, but fail to connect. For no apparent reason, she decides she needs to move on looking for him just hours before he succeeds in tracing her to her retreat. Poor at getting together, the couple excels at faithfulness: both resist adulterous overtures.

___. The Survivalist, #4, The Doomsayer. New York: Zebra, 1981. Relations between Russians and Cubans are strained; but a greater danger threatens Florida than armed combat. A beautiful young seismologist Rourke rescues from a gang of Brigands tells him that a new geological fault formed during the war threatens to dump the entire state into the sea in the near future. The story takes a science fictional turn as hints turn up of a mysterious “Eden Project” launched by NASA when the war began. Sarah has proven herself a true survivor by knifing a Russian soldier to death and hijacking the boat he has been guarding. Meanwhile, Rubenstein, off to St. Petersburg to visit his parents, discovers and breaks into one of the concentration camps set up by the vicious Cubans to whom Florida has been ceded. At the last moment before Florida collapses, he finds his parents. Much activity by the hapless resistance occurs in this novel. Rourke briefly joins the official army, though bitterly critical of the government officials who caused the war.

___. The Survivalist, #5, The Web. New York: Zebra, 1983. Rourke and his wife blast their way through the landscape, continually missing each other, although everyone else keeps stumbling into acquaintances in the most unlikely fashion. Florida is evacuated. Natalia turns renegade, and gives Rubenstein photographs of the captured plans of the Eden Project. Meanwhile Sarah exchanges favors with a Russian officer. It is clearer as these books go on that the professionals on both sides have far more respect for each other than for their less disciplined comrades. The outstanding episode of this volume is Rourke’s encounter with the nonsurvivalists of the little town of Barrington, Kentucky, where the main industry is the manufacture of fireworks. In a plot reminiscent of Jonestown, these folks give their kids one last whale of a Fourth of July and blow themselves up. An attractive librarian with spiderlike propensities keeps Rourke tied up and drugged in her basement so they can die together. Through a combination of martial arts and vitamin B-complex shots, Rourke escapes.

___. The Survivalist, #6, The Savage Horde. New York: Zebra, 1983. A reunited team of Natalia, Rubenstein, and Rourke is coerced into helping a fanatical military leader battle fanatical Wildmen in order to secure atomic missiles to be used against Russian headquarters in Chicago. Meanwhile Sarah continues to fight Brigands with the aid of her eight-year-old son, who is developing into quite a promising killer.

___. The Survivalist, #7, The Prophet. New York: Zebra, 1984. Rourke defeats the Wildmen with Sidewinder missiles fired from an experimental fighter and thwarts the schemes of the renegade sub commander (who compares himself to the hero of On the Beach) to bomb Chicago. The weather turns ominous as the Russians continue to explore the military shelter known as “The Womb.”

___. The Survivalist, #8, The End Is Coming. New York: Zebra, 1984.Rourke is reunited with his family and learns new respect for Sarah as she and their son join in a shootout with some Brigands. (The family that slays together, stays together.) Meanwhile, the Russians have discovered the secret of the mysterious Eden Project. The aftermath of the war is about to annihilate all life on Earth save that protected by a special serum and frozen for five hundred years. The Eden Project is a group of 120 humans with associated animal embryos which have been launched into orbit to await Earth’s rebirth. The Russians plot to seal themselves in The Womb (which turns out to be the former NORAD headquarters) and inherit the Earth themselves. Natalia’s guardian, a decent Russian, offers serum to Rourke’s fam fly in return for safe delivery of her to him in Chicago.

___. The Survivalist, #9, Earth Fire. New York: Zebra, 1984.Rourke and his companions foil the Russian plot to destroy the Eden Project by wrecking their particle beam weapons and plundering their secret base. They take enough supplies to preserve themselves in the Retreat for five hundred years, unfortunately leaving behind with the evil KGB commander one vial of serum. The commander is apparently killed in a final assault on the Retreat, just as the sky catches fire and exterminates all animal life on Earth.

___. The Survivalist, #10, The Awakening. New York: Zebra, 1984.Exactly 481 years later, Rourke awakes, trains his kids for five years in the art of killing, then puts himself back in suspended animation for sixteen years so that he, they, his wife, Natalia, and Rubenstein will all be of roughly the same age. Just before the others are due to awaken, son Michael goes exploring, discovers cannibals and a group of vicious survivors from a huge supershelter (it features a nine-hole golf course!) who have rigidly limited their numbers through ritual killing. He rescues a young woman with whom he plans to mate, but is captured. They are rescued by Rourke, Natalia, and Rubenstein in a bloody battle. At the end of the novel the Eden Project is sighted returning, and we learn that the KGB commander has survived after all and is still seeking vengeance on Rourke.

___. The Survivalist #11, The Reprisal. New York: Zebra, 1985.

___. The Survivalist #12, The Rebellion. New York: Zebra, 1985.

___. The Survivalist #13, Pursuit. New York: Zebra, 1986. Rourke finds his daughter safe in a utopian colony in Iceland. The rest of his family is seized as hostages by the Russians, but he frees them, although his arch-nemesis Karamatzov escapes once more.

___. The Survivalist #14, Terror New York: Zebra, 1987.

___. The Survivalist #15, Overlord. New York: Zebra, 1987. Rourke and Natalia struggle with the Russians for possession of a cache of unused nuclear weapons hidden in Chinese underground cities.

___. The Survivalist #16: The Arsenal. New York: Zebra, 1988. London: New English Library, 1988.

___. The Survivalist #17: The Ordeal. New York: Zebra, 1988. London: New English Library, 1988.

___. The Survivalist #18: The Struggle. New York: Zebra, 1989. London: New English Library, 1990.

___. The Survivalist #19: Final Rain. New York: Zebra, 1989. London: New English Library, 1990.

___. The Survivalist #20: Firestorm. New York: Zebra, 1990. London: New English Library, 1991.

___. The Survivalist #21: To End All War. New York: Zebra, 1990.

___. The Survivalist #22: Brutal Conquest. New York: Zebra, 1991.

___. The Survivalist #23: Call to Battle. New York: Zebra, 1992.

___. The Survivalist #24: Blood Assassins. New York: Zebra, 1992.

___. The Survivalist #25: War Mountain. New York: Zebra, 1993.

___. The Survivalist #26: Countdown. New York: Zebra, 1993.

___. The Survivalist #27: Death Watch. New York: Zebra, 1993.

___. The Survivalist: Mid-Wake. New York: Zebra, 1988. London: New English Library, 1989.This volume is unnumbered, but was published between numbers 15 and 16. The Russians and Americans turnout each to have built undersea domed retreats in which they have survived for centuries, arming with nuclear weapons against each other. Natalia and Rourke are captured by the Russians, but Rourke escapes and rescues her, only to be shot and apparently killed just after she has decapitated her evil husband, Karamatzov.

___. The Survivalist: The Legend. New York: Zebra, 1990. London: New English Library, 1992. This volume is unnumbered but was published after no. 22.

Aldiss, Brian W. “Basis for Negotiation” (New Worlds, January, 1962). In Airs of Earth. London: Faber, 1963. Also in Best Science Fiction Stories of Brian W. Aldiss. London: Faber, 1965 (omitted from the 1971 edition). Also in John Carnell, ed. Lambda I and Other Stories. New York: Berkley, 1964.It’s Munich revisited as a cowardly British government abrogates its treaties and declares neutrality in an American-Russian conflict which began in Sumatra. The Chinese claim they have hit Hong Kong with a nuclear bomb by accident. Satellite warfare rages. A British Communist party member assassinates a NATO deputy supreme commander. Russia launches an allout strike against the United States, but a new “geogravatic flux shield” stops all the missiles. The American president calls upon the Russians to give in, noting that peace is possible only because the British have remained neutral. Most of the story is a preachy critique of the disarmament movement, and the ending portrays a prime minister determined to cling to power. However, the ironic outcome of the story considerably obscures its point. See, for all Aldiss works, Richard Mathews, Aldiss Unbound: The Science Fiction of Brian W. Aldiss (San Bernardino, Calif.: Borgo Press, 1977). [ More ]

___. The Dark Light Years (expanded from version in Worlds of Tomorrow, April 1964). London: Faber, 1964. London: Four Square, 1966. New York: Signet, 1964. This satirical tale of a human encounter with an alien race called “Utods” mentions three nuclear wars fought by the latter in the distant past which altered the climate of their planet.

___. The Eighty-Minute Hour: A Space Opera. London: Cape, 1974. London: Pan, 1975. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1974. In this wild fantasy, the lavish use of nuclear weapons has caused distortions in the space-time continuum which bounce the characters from era to era. This effect is used mainly to create various incongruities after the manner of Aldiss’s postpsychedelic war novel Barefoot in the Head (1972). The Danube, blocked by a bomb, creates a European inland sea. The subtitle is a pun referring both to the nature of the plot and to the fact that the characters burst into song at intervals.

___. “FOAM,” New Worlds, 1 (1991). Rpt. in A Tupolev Too Far. London: HarperCollins, 1993, pp. 55-76.In this dreamlike fantasy of disintegrating reality, it is mentioned in passing that nuclear weapons have been used in the Crimea.

___. Frankenstein Unbound. London: Cape, 1973. London: Pan, 1975. London: Granada, 1982. New York: Random House, 1974. Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett, 1975. The same device used in the preceding novel reappears: nuclear weapons used in space create “timeslips” which allow the protagonist to travel from 2020 back to 1816, where he meets Frankenstein, his monster, and author Mary Shelley.

___. “The Gods in Flight” (Interzone, Autumn 1984; Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, December, 1984). In Seasons in Flight. London: Cape, 1984. After a war between the Warsaw Pact and NATO blankets the Northern Hemisphere in radioactive dust clouds, high-ranking military officials flee and crash-land on the Pacific island of Sipora where they are greeted by a wrathful god, which is perhaps a volcanic eruption. The USSR has also attacked China.

___. Moreau’s Other Island. London: Jonathan Cape, 1980. Retitled An Island Called Moreau. New York: Timescape, 1981. During a nuclear war between the United States and China on one side, and the USSR on the other, an undersecretary of state crash-lands in a space shuttle near a South Pacific island where a thalidomide victim named Dart continues the experiments of H. G. Wells’s Dr. Moreau in the creation of half-human monsters. After various adventures and a frolic with supersensual Japanese seal-people, the undersecretary discovers that the island is a secret project of his own department intended to design a radiation-resistant race of humanoids for life after nuclear war. As in Wells’s Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), the beasts revolt, and their creator is killed. In an epilogue, the war goes on, but whether the ocean’s recuperative powers can cope with this disaster is unknown.

Alexander, David. Phoenix #1: Dark Messiah. New York: Leisure, 1987. London: Star, 1988.Beginning of another postholocaust adventure series.

___. Phoenix #2: Ground Zero New York: Leisure, 1987. London: Star, 1988.

___. Phoenix #3: Death Quest New York: Leisure, 1988. London: Star, 1988.

___. Phoenix #4: Metalstorm. New York: Leisure, 1988.

___. Phoenix #5: Whirlwind. New York: Leisure, 1988.

Alter, Robert Edmond. Path to Savagery. New York: Avon, 1969. A ruthless “loner” wanders through a wasted landscape, battling savage “flockers” (settlers) and “neanderthals” (crazed nomads), in quest of the perfect female. He joins an isolated settlement in an abandoned department store and duels with its ruler for possession of his woman. His ideal proves illusory, however, and he plunges back into the wilderness with an earthier female companion, seeking the fabled northern settlement of peace and progress called Genesis. For some reason, the nuclear bombs have prevented any rain from falling for years, but at the end of the novel hope is signaled by the onset of a shower. Basically a simple action yarn with very stereotyped manipulative, predatory women (although you can buy any of them for a piece of a tube of lipstick). The hero, however, is considerably more thoughtful and complex than the average pulp hero. Alvarez, John. See under del Rey, Lester.

Amen, Carol. “The Last Testament.” St. Anthony Messenger, September, 1980. Also in Ms., August, 1981. This story, in the form of a journal, describes the suffering and death of a suburban family when the world is destroyed by nuclear war. At first people try to deny that the ill effects they experience are caused by fallout, even when babies begin to die. There is hoarding, but no rioting, looting, or rape. Source of the script for the 1983 film Testament. Compare with Clarkson, The Last Day, and Merril, Shadow on the Hearth.

Amis, Martin. “The Little Puppy That Could,” in Einstein’s Monsters. British edition? New York: Harmony, 1987. New York: Vintage, 1990. The story begins deceptively as a sentimental tale of a frolicsome puppy befriending a young girl; but it soon becomes apparent that humans fear and distrust dogs since a nuclear war has made the dogs human-eaters and rendered the humans defenseless. Mu tated humans are in fact ceremonially fed to a dog-beast. Women are now stronger than men. The days of the week have been renamed Sunday, Moonday, Tearsday, Woundsday, Thirstday, Fireday, and Shatterday.

___. “The Time Disease,” in Einstein’s Monsters. New York: Harmony, 1987. Time is a debilitating disease which haunts a crowded and polluted world where the sky is discolored by the aftermath of limited nuclear wars. Sex is rare because of fear of disease and widespread depression. People live vicariously through television actors who write their own lines.

Amrine, Michael. Secret. Cambridge, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1950. A middle-aged scientist becomes involved in the Manhattan Project and works at Oak Ridge, witnesses the Trinity test, and investigates the after-effects of radiation in Hiroshima (this phase of his career is skipped over quickly). Little detail is provided about the bomb; the novel is mainly concerned with the security problems of its protagonist, which mirror those of Robert Oppenheimer. Clearly, the author is attacking Oppenheimer’s persecutors. Deeply troubled by the moral implications of his involvement with the project, the scientist becomes active in advocating international control of atomic energy along the lines proposed by the Baruch Plan. Finally cleared by an investigation, he is asked to join a research project, headed by an ex-Nazi, to build a new radiation superweapon. He is ambivalent, but about to begin work, when the novel ends. He is said to have been a fan of “Astounding Fiction.” A very serious if somewhat ineptly written meditation on the responsibility of scientists for the bomb. Anderson, Andy. See under Anderson, William C.

Anderson, Poul. After Doomsday (expanded from “The Day After Doomsday,” Galaxy, December, 1961, January, 1962). New York: Ballantine: 1962. London: Gollancz, 1963. London: Panther, 1965. Three hundred men aboard an interstellar ship return to Earth to find it has been destroyed by an unknown enemy and that they themselves are under attack from a barrage of nuclear missiles. They go in search of the culprits and of a European ship crewed by women. The men rage, the women take tranquillizers to combat hysteria; the men fight, the women engage in trade. Finally it is revealed that a renegade world is responsible for Earth’s death–it will be horribly punished by the rulers of an interplanetary federation. Meanwhile, men and women are reunited, but since there are more women than men, they will practice polyandry, except for the leaders, who prefer monogamy.

___. “A Chapter of Revelation.” In Lester del Rey, ed. The Day the Earth Stood Still: Three Original Novellas of Science Fiction. Nashville: Nelson, 1972.One of three stories (the others are Robert Silverberg’s “Thomas the Proclaimer” and Gordon R. Dickson’s “Things Which Are Caesar’s”) based on a common premise: that a miracle causes the sun to stand still. In Anderson’s tale, the miracle halts the threat of a nuclear war which had begun with an exchange of bombs between the United States and China. The Russian and Chinese armies dissolve, but the Israelis attack Jordan and Syria. The garage owner who had originally thought of the idea of praying for such a miracle cannot think of any appropriate response to its occurrence; disillusioned mobs destroy his property and kill him. There is only muted hope for something better to emerge out of what seems to be the collapse of civilization.

___. “Cold Victory” (Venture Science Fiction, May 1957). In 7 Conquests: An Adventure in Science Fiction. New York: Macmillan, 1969. Also in Cold Victory. New York: Tor, 1982. Also in Reginald Bretnor, ed. Future at War, Vol. 2: The Spear of Mars. New York: Ace, 1980. [Note: Contento’s Index incorrectly states this story originally appeared in Fantasy and Science Fiction.] This story from Anderson’s series of tales about the Psychotechnic League involves a civil war in the solar system in which nuclear weapons are used. The foreword to Cold Victory establishes that the entire series has as its background a nuclear holocaust which destroyed civilization.

___. “Disintegrating Sky” (Fantastic Universe, August, September, 1953). In Strangers from Earth. New York: Ballantine, 1961. The world is about to be destroyed by “total disintegration bombs” at the will of its creator.

___. The Enemy Stars (originally “We Have Fed Our Sea,” Astounding, August, September 1958). Philadelphia & New York: Lippincott, 1959.Interstellar adventure with terrestrial nuclear war in the distant background. Loosely linked to the Maurai stories.

___. “For the Duration” (Venture Science Fiction, September, 1957). In Strangers from Earth. New York: Ballantine, 1961. In a revolt against a post-World War III dictatorship, which uses a small atomic bomb against the rebels, the rebel leader is no better than the tyrant he overthrows.

___. “Inside Straight” (Fantasy and Science Fiction, August, 1955). In 7 Conquests: An Adventure in Science Fiction. New York: Macmillan, 1969. Also in Reginald Bretnor, ed. Future at War, Vol. 3: Orion’s Sword. New York: Ace, 1980. An interstellar war story containing an incidental mention of radioactivity associated with the firing of spaceship guns.

___. “Kings Who Die” (If, March 1962). In 7 Conquests: An Adventure in Science Fiction. New York: Macmillan, 1969. Also in Conflict. New York: Tor, 1983. Also in Judith Merril, ed. 8th annual Edition: The Year’s Best S-F. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1963. New York: Dell, 1964. Rpt. as The Best of Science Fiction 4. London: Mayflower, 1965. Also in Frederik Pohl, ed. The Science Fiction Roll of Honor: An Anthology of Fiction and Nonfiction by Guests of Honor at World Science Fiction Conventions. New York: Random, 1975.World War III and an ensuing nuclear stalemate caused by the enemy’s threat to use doomsday weapons provide the background for a tale about human booby traps.

___. “Marius” (Astounding, March 1957). In The Horn of Time. New York: Signet, 1968. Also in The Psychotechnic League. New York: Pinnacle, 1981. Also in Reginald Bretnor, ed. The Future at War, Vol. 1: Thor’s Hammer. New York: Ace, 1979. Also in J. E. Pournelle and John F. Carr, eds. There Will Be War. New York: Tor, 1983. After Russia has been destroyed and Europe devastated by a nuclear war conducted according to the principles of “sociosymbolic logic” (a form of social analysis which recalls the psychohistory of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series), scientists must seize power to prevent another, even more catastrophic war.

___. Maurai and Kith. New York: Tor, 1982. Three stories from the Maurai series together with two stories related to each other but without any bearing on nuclear war: “Ghetto” and “The Horn of Time the Hunter.”

___. “The Sky People” (Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1959). Also in The Best of Poul Anderson. New York: Pocket Books, 1976. Also in Robert R Mills, ed. A Decade of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1960. New York: Dell, 1962. The Maurai, descendants of New Zealand’s Maori, are the most powerful race in a world devastated by nuclear war. With a near- monopoly on technology, they ceaselessly strive to enforce an ecologically sound way of life, banning the use of nonrenewable resources and nuclear technology. In this story they use flame-throwers to battle pirates flying in blimps, asserting their control over international trade. As is true of many of these stories, the superiority of high technology over traditional Maurai culture is argued.

___. “Progress” (Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1962). Also in The Horn of Time. New York: Signet, 1968.Two hundred years later, a Maurai spy mission to India uncovers the secret construction of a fusion reactor and tries to destroy it. The story argues for cultural pluralism and against the uniformity produced by twentieth-century-style industrialism.

___. “Windmill.” Also in The Dark Between the Stars. New York: Berkley, 1981. Also in Roger Elwood and Virginia Kidd, eds. Saving Worlds. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1973. Also published as The Wounded Planet. New York: Bantam, 1974. A Maurai agent discovers a community living off of irreplaceable groundwater, violating the “Law of Life.” The main cause of the ancient nuclear war is said to have been overpopulation, shortage of resources.

___. “No Truce with Kings” (Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1963). In Time and Stars. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1964. New York: McFadden-Bartell, 1965. London: Gollancz, 1964. London: Panther, 1966. Also in Winners. New York: Pinnacle, 1981. Also in Isaac Asimov, ed. The Hugo Winners, Vol. 2. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971.In a post-atomic war age, feudal wars rage across a fragmented America. Aliens manipulate the course of history, setting up a fake group of “espers” supplied with advanced technology, pressuring the human race toward a communitarian, non-materialistic culture, fearing that belligerent humans once more equipped with nuclear weapons will invade the galaxy Emphasis is on battle. Humans–as in most such stories–reject their guardianship; but, in a surprise ending, the hero’s daughter decides to ally herself with the alien cause.

___. Orion Shall Rise. New York: Timescape, 1983. New York: Pocket Books, 1984. A long, complex novel set in the world of Anderson’s Maurai stories, centuries after the devastating war known variously as “The Doom War,” “The Downfall,” and the “Death Time.” Among other matters this work details a plot by the Northwest Union (the northwestern portion of the former United States) to develop spacecraft powered by nuclear explosives to challenge the domination of their benevolent rulers who have restricted the development of technology. Although Anderson argues here in favor of nuclear power, limited nuclear war, whaling and space colonization, and against gun control, he is careful not to portray any one side of the several-sided conflict as wholly good or evil, and it is difficult to guess which will emerge triumphant–unless one already knows the author’s politics. A superior political thriller with some fairly good characterization and at least one strong female character, although most of the women function primarily as lovers. Note that the NASA proposal to use small nuclear bombs to propel a space rocket was called the “Orion Project.” [More]

___. Shield. New York: Berkley, 1974 (expanded from version in Fantastic, June, July, 1962).Various groups struggle for control of a force-field shield developed with the aid of the Martians by a bright young man especially chosen and fostered to be of service from among the survivors of the second thermonuclear war.

__. The Star Beast” (Super Science Stories, September, 1950). In Strangers from Earth. New York: Ballantine, 1961. Also in Alden H. Norton, ed. Award Science Fiction Reader. New York: Award Books, 1966. Also in Kurt Singer, ed. Tales of Terror. London: W. H. Allen, 1967. Also in Donald L. Lawler, ed. Approaches to Science Fiction. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1978.Warlike colonists return to Earth and conquer it using atomic weapons. The hero defeats them by using a matter converter to create a critical mass of plutonium.

___. “The Star Plunderer” (Planet Stories, September, 1952). In The Long Night. New York: Tor, 1983. Also in Brian Aldiss, ed. Galactic Empires. Vol. 1. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1976. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1976.The leader of a successful rebellion against barbaric alien rulers plans to establish a new human empire with himself as dictator. Both sides use nuclear weapons.

___. There Will Be Time. New York: Signet, 1973. Bound with The Dancer from Atlantis. New York: Signet, 1982.A time-traveling mutant works to prevent the nuclear war he knows is pending. The war is the one called ‘The Judgment,” used as the background for the Maurai novels. This is a loosely connected member of that series. The mutant comes in conflict with a ruthless group of time travelers bent on battling the Maurai, and he defeats them. The novel ends with the victors planning flight to the stars. The early pages of the novel contain a good deal of satirical commentary on the radical movements of the sixties.

___. Thermonuclear Warfare. Derby, Conn.: Monarch, 1963. This popular non-fictional account of the subject based largely on Kahn and Kissinger is neither extremely pessimistic nor overly sanguine.

___. “Time Lag” (Fantasy and Science Fiction, January, 1961). In The Queen of Air and Darkness and Other Stories. New York: Signet, 1973. Boston: Gregg, 1978. Bound with The Winter of the World. New York: Signet, 1982. Also in Conflict. New York: Tor, 1983. Also in Robert P. Mills, ed. Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: Eleventh Series. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962. New York: Ace, 1966. London: Gollancz, 1964. London: Panther, 1966. Also in J. E. Pournelle, ed. Men of War: There Will Be War, Vol. 11. New York: Tor, 1984.Ruthless invaders from a decadent overpopulated world assault a peaceful pastoral planet using nuclear missiles and atomic artillery. Taking advantage of the long periods of time required for the invaders to transport successive expeditions, the victims rapidly develop a high technology and defeat their enemies with superweapons.

___. Twilight World. New York: Torquil, 1961. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961. New York: Tor, 1983. London: Gollancz, 1962. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1963. London: Panther, 1976. Series of linked stories: “Prologue” as “Tomorrow’s Children” in Astounding, March 1947 (see below, under Anderson and Waldrop); “Chain of Logic” as “Logic” in Astounding, March 1947; “The Children of Fortune,” and “Epilogue,” new to this edition.”Prologue” is set two years after the war. Europe has been devastated, but parts of the Soviet Union (now dissolved into smaller states) and the United States are slowly recovering. A census is to be conducted to find out how many people have survived. Meanwhile it is becoming apparent that radioactive fallout has created a far greater number of mutations than might have been expected. In “Chain of Logic” eugenics is discussed and discarded and the possibility of the emergence of beneficial mutations discarded, yet at the story’s end a super-logical mutant boy saves a town from bandits. More such favorable mutants are gathered together in “The Children of Fortune,” and together they build a spaceship and take off to colonize Mars. There they encounter and battle their Siberian (i.e., Russian) counterparts, who wish to kidnap them and use them in a breeding program to create a super-race which will rule over the rest of humanity. The Siberians are defeated. In “Epilogue,” set some thousands of years later, Earth is a barren wasteland, investigated by archeologists descended from the original mutated settlers of Mars who have moved on to colonize Jupiter’s satellite Ganymede and other bodies. As in his other works, Anderson relies on high technology to solve problems. These stories fit in with the general theme of sympathy with homo superior.

___. Vault of the Ages. Philadelphia: Winston, 1952. New York: Gregg, Five hundred years after “the Doom,” barbarian tribes mine the cities for metal. Two boys use technology from a time vault to defeat invaders and cause the lifting of the taboo on the old knowledge. Philosophical wisdom also stored in the vault will prevent its misuse this time.

___. “Wildcat” (Fantasy and Science Fiction, November, 1958). In 7 Conquests: An Adventure in Science Fiction. New York: Macmillan, 1969. Also in Robert Silverberg, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh, eds. The Science Fictional Dinosaur. New York: Avon, 1982. Time travel to the future reveals the imminence of a nuclear holocaust, so settlers are sent into the Jurassic age (the technology won’t permit anything more recent) with supplies to build rocket ships to settle other star systems.

Anderson, Poul and F. N. Waldrop. “Tomorrow’s Children” (Astounding, March 1947). In Roger Elwood, ed. The Many Worlds of Poul Anderson. Radnor, Pa.: Chilton, 1974. Also in Poul Anderson. The Book of Poul Anderson. New York: DAW, 1975. Also in Groff Conklin, ed. A Treasury of Science Fiction. New York: Crown, 1948 (omitted from the 1957 Berkley paperback edition.) Also in Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg, eds. Caught in the Organ Draft. New York: Fawcett, 1981. Also in Damon Knight, Martin H. Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander, eds. First Voyages. New York: Avon, 1981. Also in Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg, eds. The Great Science Fiction Stories: 9 (1947). New York: DAW, 1983. Also in Walter M. Miller, Jr., and Martin H. Greenberg, eds. Beyond Armageddon: Twenty-one Sermons to the Dead. New York: _3 Donald I. Fine, 1985.After a two-year war involving atomic and bacteriological weapons, few people survive, and the majority of births are abnormal. A mild form of nuclear winter is described: “The last three winters had come early and stayed long. Dust, colloidal dust of the bombs, suspended in the atmosphere and cutting down the solar constant by a deadly percent or two.” A general who argues in favor of eugenic sterilizations must be convinced that there is no future for the unmutated human race. The story implicitly criticizes simplistic stories of survival, but is not entirely pessimistic. The general comments, “You were right. We should never have created science. It brought the twilight of the race.” The protagonist replies, “I never said that. The race brought its own destruction, through misuse of science. Our culture was scientific anyway, in all except its psychological basis. It’s up to us to take that last and hardest step. If we do, the race may yet survive.” This was Anderson’s first published story, and was later incorporated into Twilight World as “Prologue” (see above). Waldrop’s contribution to the writing of this story is often unmentioned in the reprints.

Anderson, William C[Charles]. Pandemonium on the Potomac. New York: Crown, 1966. In this comic novel, a man with strange powers and his beautiful daughter, claiming to be sent from Venus, force the world into disarming. The Russians cheat and secrete four H-bombs in American cities, blowing one up as a demonstration and threatening to explode the others unless the United States withdraws all its conventional forces from around the world. The Russians are foiled and it is revealed that the “aliens” are actually emissaries of the British, who have hatched this scheme to trick the superpowers into nuclear disarmament.

___ [as Andy Anderson]. The Valley of the Gods. Baraboo, Wis.: Andoll Publishing Co., 1957. Unavailable for review. See Tuck.

Angell, Roger. “Some Pigs in Sailor Suits” (New Yorker, April 13, 1946). In The Stone Arbor, and Other Stories. Boston: Little, Brown, 1960. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries, 1970.A colonel callously talks about the inadequacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as tests of nuclear bomb effects, and explains how pigs will be dressed in protective clothing for the upcoming Bikini tests.

Angus, Douglas. “About Time to Go South” (Esquire, February, 1957; Fantasy and Science Fiction, October, 1957). In John Bell and Lesley Choyce, eds. Visions from the Edge: An Anthology of Atlantic Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy. Porters Lake, Nova Scotia: Pottersfield Press, 1981.In the ruins of abandoned New York City, two men struggle with the problem of how to extract an aching tooth. The only clue that the destruction was caused by atomic bombing is the fact that all windows have been blown out.

Anthony, Piers. Battle Circle. New York: Avon, 1978. Originally published as three separate volumes: Sos the Rope. New York: Pyramid, 1968. London: Faber, 1970. London: Corgi, 1978. Var the Stick. London: Faber, 1972. London: Transworld, 1975. London: Corgi, 1975. New York: Bantam, 1973. Neq the Sword. London: Corgi, 1975.A barbarian race with a highly formalized dueling code battles the “crazies” who control them, preventing civilization from rising again and bringing with it a new war. Heavy emphasis on combat, sex. According to Michael R. Collings (in Piers Anthony, Starmont Reader’s Guide 20, [Mercer Island, Wash.: Starmont House, 1983], p. 16), Sos the Rope is a reworking of the author’s 1956 B.A. thesis entitled “The UnstilledWorld.” Collings rates Battle Circle much higher than I would. Listed erroneously in Newman and Unsworth as The Battle Circus.

Antrobus, John, and Spike Milligan. See Milligan.

Anvil, Christopher. “Pandora’s Planet” (Astounding, September 1956). In John Campbell, ed. Prologue to Analog. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962. Also in Stanley Schmidt, ed. Analog: Writers’ Choice: Anthology #5. New York: Davis, 1983.Alien invaders, abashed to find Earth’s people more intelligent than they, meet fierce resistance including atomic weapons.

Appel, Allen. Till the End of Time. New York: Doubleday, 1990. A history professor travels back in time and strives to prevent the nuclear bomb from being dropped on Japan, but what he experiences in World War II teaches him instead the necessity of the atomic destruction of Hiroshima. The Japanese, it seems, besides carrying out inhuman experiments on captive subjects and developing a jet engine with the help of Amelia Earhart were developing the atomic bomb themselves. Modern Japanese are also depicted as corrupt and malevolent. A powerful anti-Japanese tirade presented as an adventure story.

Ariss, Bruce. Full Circle. New York: Avalon, 1963.Almost the only survivors of the War of Poisoned Lightning are a million Indians scattered across the New World. Even the larger mammals are extinct. The Indians have banned all explosive weapons and the use of their simpler ones against each other, outlawed technology of all sorts, and alcohol. Atomic research is particularly taboo. Yet these are no simple primitives: their rejection of earlier technology comes from a sophisticated understanding of history. But trapped deep beneath Mount Rushmore one young man and eight women and girls survive, descendants of TOAD (Take Over After Destruction Project). When they emerge, all of them die of poison ivy except for the young man and his sister. He insists on following his orders to explore the world for surviving enemies in order to exterminate them with stored nuclear weapons, but finally learns there is no one left to fight. Then he plays a tape which reveals that the holocaust was mistakenly set off by the misinterpretation of a gigantic meteor impact. The two whites marry Indians and adopt their ways. Although some technology may be reintroduced into their culture, precautions will be taken to prevent a recurrence of the ancient tragedy.

Armbruster, Frank E., et al. A 1965 European Scenario Leading to Nuclear War. Hudson Institute HI-553-RR/1. June 1965.Unavailable for review.

Armstrong, Michael. After the Zap. New York: Popular Library, 1987. One chapter, “The Vens Get a Nuke,” in Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 1987. A bizarre adventure story inspired by the common antiwar argument that if the button to launch a nuclear attack were implanted in the heart of a human being, a leader would be deterred from doing so. This thought experiment is emptied of all its meaning as five years after The Zap a group of nukers roam Alaska in an old Wonder Bread blimp, handing out what they claim are small nuclear devices and installing nuclear bomb triggers in the chests of the recipients’ loved ones. Although the bombs turn out to be fakes, the point of the exercise remains unclear. The Zap was a violent burst of EMP which scrambled the brains of the surviving people in various weird ways, including loss of memory. In the end, the protagonist realizes that he was the creator of the Zap Bomb whose effects he detests so much.

___. Agviq. New York: Popular Libary, 1990. Expanded from Going After Arviq. In Janet Morris, ed. Afterwar. New York: Baen, 1985. A female anthropology graduate student strives to teach Eskimos their own traditional ways so that they can survive during the nuclear winter. Much of the latter part of the book is devoted to details of whaling. It is revealed that the U.S. launched a first strike.

Aronstein, Robert. Untitled sketch in Earl W. Foell and Richard A. Nenneman, eds. How Peace Came to the World. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1986. A brief account of an East-West conflict leading to disarmament. An East German revolt leads to a European war and a Soviet nuclear attack on Chicago. The U.S. destroys Kiev in retaliation. A truce and peace treaty ensue in a shocked world, and growth toward world unity spreads. Unusual in that it is told from the point of view of a Russian.

Asghar, Khalida. “The Wagon,”trans. from Urdu by Muhammad Umar Memon. In Indian Literature 19:6 (Nov.-Dec. 1976), pp,. 119-131. Rept. in Jayana Clerk & Ruth Siegel, eds. Modern literature of the Non-Western World: Where the Waters are Born. New York: HarperCollins, 1995, pp. 361-370.A haunting surrealistic sketch in which the narrator can see refugees and the pollution from a seeming nuclear war involving a nearby city creeping horrifyingly into an Indian village. Since no one but the narrator is willing to acknowledge the ominous changes taking place, the story can be read as an allegory of our willful blindness to the danger of nuclear war. A very rare example of a nuclear war story by a third-world woman author (from Pakistan).

Ashworth, Malcolm. “A Senoi Dream.” In Gollancz/Sunday Times SF Competition Stories. London: Gollancz, 1987.A young boy in a primitive tribe has a vision in which he seems his world as it might have been: a hell of nuclear war and its aftermath.

Asimov, Isaac. Foundation’s Edge. New York: Doubleday, 1982. New York: Ballantine, 1983.The nuclear death of Earth dealt with in Pebble in the Sky is briefly alluded to in this novel.

___. “The Gentle Vultures” (Super Science Fiction, December, 1957). In Nine Tomorrows. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1959. Also in Noel Keyes. Contact. New York: Paperback Library, 1963. Also in Robert Silverberg, ed. Earthmen and Strangers. New York: Meredith, 1966.Aliens keep watch over Earth from the back side of the Moon, waiting for a nuclear holocaust to erupt as it has on many other planets. Then they can conquer this world as they have others in the wake of similar conflicts.

___. Pebble in the Sky. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1950. New York: Bantam, 1953. New York: Ballantine, 1983. London: Corgi, 1958. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1968. Also in Triangle. Garden City: New York, Doubleday, 1961.A freak atomic accident transports the hero from 1949 thousands of years into the future to a time when Earth is largely a radioactive wasteland, populated by a few million inhabitants who are discriminated against by the rest of the galactic empire which has forgotten that Earth was humanity’s original home. The hero foils a plot by xenophobic rebels to spread “radiation fever”–evolved in the hot zones created by the ancient holocaust–throughout the empire, killing everyone else. In a 1982 afterword, Asimov acknowledged that he no longer believed humans could survive on a radioactive Earth such as that depicted in this novel.

Asterley, H[ugh] C[ecil]. Escape to Berkshire. London & Dunmow: Pall Mall, 1961.In this artless but effective picture of London in ruins, Asterley uses far more Hiroshima-style details than most writers: peeling strips of flesh, terrible sores, nakedness, etc. Yet he also introduces fantastic elements: the enemy is a dark-skinned race of unknown nationality, and the major threat to life in the countryside is a poisonous mycospore which grows over everyone and everything not treated with an antidote. The narrator (Tom, a former soldier) and his fiancée (Jill, a devout Christian who abhors violence) were trapped in an underground station when the H-bomb went off. The perimeter of the enormous crater which once was London has been dusted with radioactive elements beyond 150: neronium, rhadamanthium, satanium. After Tom saves Jill, he is almost forced to kill an old woman who insanely blames him for the death of her three children, but she providentially falls to her death. A man who has been robbing the dead takes Jill’s crucifix and engagement ring, but a cockney paracommando kills him, allowing Tom to have the thief’s nuclear pistol. Tom tries to free a group of people trapped underground, but succeeds only in blasting a hole through the crater wall, releasing a torrent which will eventually flood the London crater. A blind man asks whether he is dead, and Tom wants to put him out of his misery, but Jill rejects the idea. They find Tom’s father dead, his house looted. They are caught between the vicious invaders who seem bent on exterminating the inhabitants, and the ruthless army patrols who shoot everyone suspected of looting. The heads of government are safely and ineffectually stowed on a submarine offshore. At Jill’s suggestion, she and Tom set out for the home of a Berkshire priest with whom they had previously become acquainted. When Jill is seized by the enemy, Tom kills most of them, rescues her and forces their hovercraft to take them on their way. From the dying pilot they acquire the mycotoxin antidote which will save their lives. They find a pair of children and take them with them.

Austin, Richard (pseud. of Victor Milan). The Guardians. New York: Jove, 1985.At the climax of international tensions partly caused by increasing U.S. covert military involvment in other nations, the USSR and her allies invade Western Europe, but the Polish, Czech, and Hungarian armies rebel, China and the Arab nations separately invade the Soviet Union, and other Eastern bloc nation’s break away. In desperation, the USSR launches a nuclear strike in Europe, leading to a full-scale nuclear exchange which is referred to as the One-Day War. Civil defense plans on both sides fail, although shielding is used against EMP. 110 million Americans and 130 million Russians die. Unusually for this sort of action story, there is a great deal of attention paid to depicting the gruesome wounds of the bomb victims. The elite Guardians are a group of highly-trained military men whose mission is to escort the President to a midwestern supershelter known as Heartland. Their leader, McKay, is rescued from a menacing gang of street toughs near the beginning of the novel when a last H-bomb explodes over Washington D.C. Corrupt CIA men make a treasonous attempt to kidnap the president to make him a puppet of the mysterious European dictator Maximov; but the Guardians defeat them and drive the President in their heavily armored vehicle across the radioactive countryside. The National Guard creates a dictatorship which must be crushed in a bloody battle. At the end of the novel, it is revealed that their next important task is to find the missing “Blueprint for Renewal” which will enable the country to rebuild in the wake of the holocaust.

___. The Guardians [#2], Trial by Fire. New York: 1985.Two weeks after the holocaust, conflicts are spreading around the globe. In the chaos of fallen America survivalists are especially targeted by the population as enemies. A sinister International Council rules Europe while the corrupt chief of the CIA rules the U.S. The Russians have landed in Alaska. A cult of antitechnological fanatics led by a villainous right-wing preacher is assaulting a nuclear research center in Kansas City, and the Guardians must rescue from it a crucial scientist who has some knowledge of the vital “Blueprint for Renewal”; but he is immediately killed, muttering the mysterious word, “Mahal,” and the center falls to the mob. They discover that the Federal Center outside Denver has been taken over by cultists who seize two of the Guardians. The latter are tortured by a demonic figure clearly modelled on William F. Buckley. They are destined to die by radiation exposure in a bomb crater on Cheyenne Mountain when they are rescued at the last moment by their comrades. They then discover the last living expert on the Blueprint (a female economist) living in a libertarian freehold which is invaded by cultists using nerve gas. The cult leader is killed and the townspeople avenged. Chapter 1 begins with a character playing the nuclear war video game, Missile Command. There are references to the Mad Max films, to similar postholocaust films, and to The Day After.

___. The Guardians [#3], Thunder of Hell. New York: Jove, 1985. London: Pan, 1990.The Guardians battle their way past cannibals to California, where the former lieutenant governor has set up a dictatorship headquartered at the old Hearst castle of San Simeon. The plot is complex, with many rival political groups struggling for power. The dictator has begun a collaboration with a group of Russian renegades under the mistaken impression that they represent the Soviet government. A right wing general sets himself up as a rival dictator. California is full of cultish groups, including a vicious offshoot of the United Farmworkers called the California Liberation Front. Leftists who have acquired an H-bomb kill each other off in a factional dispute; but a surviving leader takes the bomb to Disneyland and tries to set it off–unsuccessfully, because it has been sabotaged by one of the Russians. Road gypsies inspired by the Mad Max films are depicted. The nuclear winter theory is criticized. The author refers to Larry Niven and Jerry Pournell’s Lucifer’s Hammer (1977).

___. The Guardians [#4], Night of the Phoenix. New York: Jove, 1985. London: Pan, 1990.The President turns up, asserting his authority, and accusing the Guardians and the Vice-President of treason. However, the Guardians discover that it is the President himself who is the traitor, for he has become a tool of the evil Federated States of Europe (FSE). They invade Heartland, seize the information it holds on the Blueprint, and destroy the complex. In the process they are joined by a new ally: a muscular black woman.

___. The Guardians [#5], Armageddon Run. New York: Jove, 1986.The Guardians take the former Vice President, now President, to Kansas city where they discover that its black mayor is yet another traitor fronting for the FSE’s world government plot, which is being assisted by Soviet troops. The Guardians battle their way back to Washington D.C. and hoist the flag once more over the White House. The author critiques the post holocaust scenarios of other writers. Rambo and and Dirty Harry are referred to.

___. The Guardians [#6], War Zone. New York: Jove, 1986 In Washington, the Guardians engage in battles with D.C. gangs, forming alliances with some of them (including one called Nuclear Winners ) to battle a gang led by a Russian FSE colonel.

___. The Guardians [#7], Brute Force. New York: Jove, 1987. London: Pan, 1991. The Guardians battle invading Cubans and FSE troops for possession of a secret fusion power station in Louisiana. Refrence is made to the fact that the Chernobyl accident caused the closure of American nuclear reactors. Reference is also made to Rambo.

___. The Guardians [#8], Desolation Road. New York: Jove, 1987. London: Pan, 1991. FSE forces in California rebel. The Guardians slaughter pirates. The FSE withdraws from the U.S. to defend Europe from invading Turkish Shiite fanatics.

___. The Guardians [#9], Vengeance Day. New York: Jove, 1987.

___. The Guardians [#10], Freedom Flight. New York: Jove, 1988.

___. The Guardians [#11], Valley of the Gods New York: Jove, 1988.

___. The Guardians [#12], The Plague Years. New York: Jove, 1988.

___. The Guardians [#13], Devil’s Deal. New York: Jove, 1989.

___. The Guardians [#14], Death from Above. New York: Jove, 1990.

___. The Guardians [#15], Snake Eyes. New York: Jove, 1990.

___. The Guardians [#16], Death Charge. New York: Jove, 1991.

Avallone, Michael. Beneath the Planet of the Apes. New York: Bantam, 1970.A second party of explorers comes seeking the first. The only surviving crew member is captured, released by friendly apes, and discovers living beneath the ruins of New York City superhumans who worship a doomsday device, which they set off as attacking apes invade their threshold.

Axler, James (pseud. of Laurence James). Deathlands: Dectra Chain. City: Worldwide Library, 1988. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1989.

___. Deathlands [#2], Red Holocaust. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1986. Nuclear winter still grips Alaska nearly a century after Doomsday: June 20, 2001. The west coast fell into the ocean. A brutal band of barbaric Russians called Narodniki invade Alaska, pursued by regular Russian troops, and battle a band of heroic Ameri cans led by Ryan Cawdor. They must also deal with bizarre mutants living in a deep supershelter. They encounter a tribe which worships nuclear war a nd practices human sacrifice and destroy it using a leftover nuclear missile. After the Narodniki are destroyed, the Russians return to Russia. The protagonists enter a mysterious chamber to be transported to somewhere warmer. The fate of Judge Crater, who disappeared mysteriously in 1930, explained: he was snatched into the distant future, but arrived there mutilated and dead.

___ . Deathlands [#3]: Neutron Solstice. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1987.Cawdor and seven companions emerge from a gateway into Louisiana where they must fight tough mutants with dual circulatory systems. Neutron bombs were used in the war: many buildings have been preserved.

___ . Deathlands [#4]: Crater Lake. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1987.

___ . Deathlands [#5]: Homeward Bound. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1988.

___ . Deathlands [#6]: Pony Soldiers. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1988. London: Gold Eagle, 1989.

Axler, James. Deathlands [#7]: Dectra Chain. City: Worldwide Library, 1988. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1989.

___ . Deathlands [#8]: Ice and Fire. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1988.

___ . Deathlands [#9]: Red Equinox. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1989.

___ . Deathlands [#10]: Northstar Rising. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1989.

___ . Deathlands [#11]: Time Nomads. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1990.

___ . Deathlands [#12]: Latitude Zero. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1991.

___ . Deathlands [#13]: Seedling. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1991.

___ . Deathlands [#14]: Dark Carnival. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1992.

___ . Deathlands [#15]: Chill Factor. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1992.

___ . Deathlands [#16]: Moonfate. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1992.

___ . Deathlands [#17]: Fury’s Pilgrimage. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1992.

___ . Deathlands [#18]: Shockscape. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1993.

___ . Deathlands [#19]: Deep Empire. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1994.

___ . Deathlands [#20]: Cold Asylum. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1994.

___ . Deathlands [#21]: Twilight Children. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1994.

___ . Deathlands [#22]: Rider, Reaper. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1994.

___ . Deathlands [#23]: Road Wars. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1994.

___ . Deathlands [#24]: Trader Redux. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1995.

___ . Deathlands [#25]: Genesis Echo. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1995.

___ . Deathlands [#26]: Shadowfall. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1995.

___ . Deathlands [#27]: Ground Zero. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1995.

___ . Deathlands [#28]: Emerald Fire. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1995.

___ . Deathlands [#29]: Bloodlines. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1995.

___ . Deathlands [#30]: Crossways. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1996.

___ . Deathlands [#31]: Keepers of the Sun. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1996.

___ . Deathlands [#32]: Circle Thrice. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1996.

___ . Deathlands [#33]: Eclipse at Noon. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1996.

___ . Deathlands [#34]: Stoneface. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1996.

___ . Deathlands [#35]: Bitter Fruit. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1997.

___ . Deathlands [#36]: Skydark. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1997.

___ . Deathlands [#37]: Demons of Eden. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1997.

___ . Deathlands [#38]: The Mars Arena. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1997.

___ . Deathlands [#39]: Watersleep. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1997.

___ . Deathlands [#40]: Nightmare Passage. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1998.

___ . Deathlands [#41]: Freedom Lost. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1998.

___ . Deathlands [#42]: Way of the Wolf. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1998.

___ . Deathlands [#43]: Dark Emblem. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1998.

___ . Deathlands [#44]: Crucible of Time. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1999.

___ . Deathlands [#45]: Starfall. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1999.

___ (pseud. of Nick Pollotta). Deathlands [#46]: Gemini Rising. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1999.

>___ (pseud. of Nick Pollotta) Deathlands [#47]: Gaia’s Demise. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1999.

>___ (pseud. of Nick Pollotta) Deathlands [#48]: Dark Reckoning. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1999.

>___ (pseud. of Nick Pollotta) Deathlands [#49]: Shadow World. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 2000.

>___ (pseud. of Nick Pollotta) Deathlands [#50]: Pandora’s Redoubt. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 2000.

>___ (pseud. of Nick Pollotta) Deathlands [#51]: Rat King. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 2000.

>___ (pseud. of Nick Pollotta) Deathlands [#52]: Zero City. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 2000.

>___ (pseud. of Nick Pollotta) Deathlands [#53]: Savage Armada. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 2001.

>___ (pseud. of Nick Pollotta) Deathlands [#54]: Judas Strike. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 2001.

>___ (pseud. of Nick Pollotta) Deathlands [#55]: Shadow Fortress. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 2001.

>___ (pseud. of Nick Pollotta) Deathlands [#56]: Sunchild. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 2001.

>___ (pseud. of Nick Pollotta) Deathlands [#57]: Breakthrough. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 2002.

Axler, James (pseud. of Mark Ellis). Outlanders [#1]: Exile to Hell. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1997.

Axler, James (pseud. of Mark Ellis). Outlanders [#2]: Destiny Run. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1997.

___ . Outlanders [#3]: Omega Path. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1997.

___ . Outlanders [#4]: Savage Sun. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1997.

___ . Outlanders [#5]: Parallax Red. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1998.

___ . Outlanders [#6]: Doomstar Relic. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1998.

___ . Outlanders [#7]: Iceblood. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1998.

___ . Outlanders [#8]: Hellbound Fury. The Lost Earth Saga Book 1. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1999.

___ . Outlanders [#9]: Night Eternal. The Lost Earth Saga Book 2. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1999.

___ . Outlanders [#10]: Outer Darkness. The Lost Earth Saga Book 3. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1999.

___ . Deathlands [unnumbered]: Encounter. Toronto: Gold Eagle, 1999.

Deathlands and Outlanders Web site .

Baker, F. Robert. Warhead . New York: Bantam, 1981.A thriller reflecting the Iranian hostage crisis. When Palestinian terrorists hijack a plane containing the families of the crew of a nuclear submarine and land it at a Russian base in Ethiopia, the sub crew decides on its own to use nuclear blackmail to force the Russians to allow the marines to rescue their families. First the Russians try to eliminate the sub, but they are defeated by its superior defenses. In the process, a nuclear bomb on board a Russian helicopter is accidentally detonated, but fails to damage the sub. The crew and captain are given presidential pardons for their mutinous independent action.

Balabukha, Andrei. “Appendix.” Originally “Appendiks” in Fantastika-67. Moscow: Molodaia Gvardiia, 1968. In Vladimir Gakov, ed. World’s Spring. Trans. from Russian by Roger DeGaris. London & New York: Macmillan, 1981.Explorers have found many dead worlds, many destroyed through suicidal warfare. One such was wrecked by thermonuclear bombs. Using a device which allows travel into the past, they send an agent to assassinate the scientist who would otherwise have gone on to invent the bomb. The planet, which turns out to be an alternative version of our Earth, is allowed peacefully to develop and spread its civilization into space. However, the explorers lament the killing which they have had to commit, even though it was done for the best of motives.

Balint, Emery. Don’t Inhale It! New York: Gaer, 1949.A satire on international tensions by a self-proclaimed leftist in which the Earth is accidentally split in two by a bomb test, and the Eastern and Western hemispheres become separate planets. Animosity between North and South America leads to a war which in turn splits that planetoid into two smaller fragments, then the Northern Hemisphere is split again. Presented as a parable of the danger of the atomic bomb.

Balizet, Carol. The Seven Last Years . Lincoln, Va.: Chosen Books, 1978.A fictionalized version of the Apocalypse, based on the author’s interpretation of biblical prophecies. Armageddon consists of a three-sided war: Israel versus an Arab-African coalition versus the Russians. The U.S. Iaunches its nuclear weapons against the USSR, China retaliates, and the result is a massive holocaust, producing clouds which blanket the sun. Devastating earthquakes are triggered as well. One old couple is depicted dying of radiation disease. The nuclear phase of the Apocalypse is only briefly dealt with in this fairly effective, earnestly Christian novel.

Ball, Florence E. Zero Plus Ten . New York: Exposition Press, 1965.Unavailable for review. See Newman and Unsworth.

Ball, Brian N. The Regiments of Night . New York: DAW, 1972.One thousand years after the Mad Wars of the Third Millenium, the Earth is still a radioactive wasteland occasionally visited by tourists. A group of them, accompanied by a scientist excavating the ruins, stumbles upon and accidentally reactivates an ancient automated battle fortress and a robot army.

Ballard, J. G. The Atrocity Exhibition . London: Gollancz, 1964. London: Jonathan Cape, 1970. London: Panther, 1972. As Love and Napalm: Export USA . New York: Grove Press, 1972.A surrealist experimental narrative reminiscent of William S. Burroughs, filled with sadomasochistic fantasies linking violence, mutilation, death, and sexuality, including images of nuclear war. These themes are further explored in Crash, Ballard’s study in “auto-erotica,” inspired by a car accident which almost killed him. Traven, protagonist of “The Terminal Beach,” reappears.

___. Empire of the Sun . London: Gollancz, 1984. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984.A harrowing and moving account of a young boy’s experiences in Japanese prison camps in the vicinity of Shanghai during World War II. Accustomed to camp life, he greets the flash which he sees from the Nagasaki bomb as the opening shot of World War III. Based on the author’s own experiences. ___. “The Terminal Beach” ( New Worlds , March 1964). In The Terminal Beach . London: Gollancz, 1964. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966. New York: Berkley, 1964. Also in Chronopolis and Other Stories . New York: Putnam, 1971. Also in The Best Short Stories of J. G. Ballard . New York: Rinehart & Winston, 1978. Also in Judith Merril, ed. 10th Annual Edition: The Year’s Best S- F. New York: Delacorte, 1966. New York: Dell, 1966. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966. London: Mayflower, 1967. Also in James Gunn, ed. The Road to Science Fiction #3: From Heinlein to Here . New York: Mentor, 1979. Also in Walter M. Miller, Jr. and Martin H. Greenberg, eds. Beyond Armageddon: Twenty-one Sermons to the Dead . New York: Donald I. Fine, 1985.A man haunted by memories of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki visits Eniwetok, an atoll in the Marshall Islands which was the site of U.S. bomb tests 1947-52.

Banks, Pendleton. “Turning Point.” Astounding , March 1947.The mob opposes science and technology in the wake of a holocaust called “the Atom.” The hero learns that progress cannot be imposed; the technological renaissance will come when people are ready for it.

Barbet, Pierre (pseud. of Claude Pierre Marie Avice). Baphomet’s Meteor. Originally L’empire du Baphomet. Trans. Bernard Kay. New York: Daw, 1972.In an alternate universe a devil-shaped alien named Baphomet who has crash-landed on Earth gives a 13th-century crusader a cache of atomic grenade with which not only to conquer Jerusalem, but the entire territory conquered by the Mongols, planning to step in and rule over the resultant empire. They succeed brilliantly, meeting Marco Polo at Kubla Khan’s court before subduing China. With the aid of the mystical powers of powerful Tibetan lamas, the crusaders are enabled to destroy Baphomet and claim the fruits of their victory. In the process, they have learned how to duplicate the grenades; but Barbet makes nothing of the fact that this could have ominious consequences for their future.

Barjavel, René. Ashes, Ashes . Originally Ravage . Paris: Edition Denoel, 1943. Trans. Damon Knight. Garden City: N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967.Whites deported blacks to the Southern Hemisphere in 1978; the blacks take revenge in 2052 by launching atomic missiles at Europe. Most of the plot concerns the consequences of the disappearance of electrical power rather than nuclear war as such.

__. The Ice People . Originally La nuit des temps . Paris: Presses de la cité, 1968. Trans. Charles Lam Markmann. London: Hart-Davis, 1970. New York: Morrow, 1971. New York: Pyramid, 1973.In this old-fashioned fantasy, two survivors of a 900,000-year-old atomic war–caused by overpopulation–are discovered frozen in Antarctica. The world of the frame story is divided into the evil Ensorians with Asian features and the good, blond Gondawans. The survivors tell of a series of world wars, the last of which destroyed their civilization, despite massive student protests (clearly reflecting Paris in 1968). They offer the world future technology to create paradise, but governments sabotage the deal and the couple dies in a Romeo-and-Juliet style tragedy of errors. Contains a warning that the building of the ultimate deterrent may prompt a preemptive strike. Very fantastic, unrealistic.

Barnes, John. The Man Who Pulled Down the Sky. New York: Congdon and Weed, 1986. City?: Worldwide Library, 1988.Following the catastrophic troubles of the nineteen-nineties and twenty-thirties, a 2034 limited nuclear war in the Middle East led to the destruction of two-thirds of the ozone layer, and the burning of the oil fields increased atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide enough to alter the weather. Most of Earth’s inhabitants have died, and the rest are short-lived, often succuming to ultraviolet radiation-induced cancer. Space colonies orbiting near the Earth rule the rest of humanity. The plot concerns a joint rebellion of the outer space colonies and subject surface-dwellers against the dominant space colonies. At one point the latter use a tactical nuclear weapon to destroy their own soldiers who have been captured in an attempt to make it appear that the rebels have used the bomb. This will discredit them, since the use of nuclear weapons is powerfully tabooed. A fairly routine combat story, but with an interesting pro-collectivist bias.

Barnwell, William. The Blessing Papers . New York: Pocket Books, 1980. Sequels: Imram and The Sigma Curve.Long after the Fires and the Falling of 2020, the hero seeks in a neobarbarian world to recover the box of papers which contain the secrets of earlier wisdom. Nuclear weapons are never mentioned; the only clue to their use is the presence of mutated rats.

___. Imram . New York: Timescape, 1981. Sequel to The Blessing Papers.A young man named Turly Vail becomes the champion of the savage Ennis. He meets the Gort, who dwell in an automated city, and meets 140-year-old Thomas Blessing. He also begets a son whose genes have been altered by the Gort.

___. The Sigma Curve . New York: Timescape, 1981. Sequel to Imram .It is revealed that the Falling of 2020 was deliberately caused by a conspiracy to save humanity from an otherwise inevitable apocalyptic ending. In none of these volumes is the Falling unambiguously stated to be a nuclear war, but it seems likely. Turly’s son reestablishes communication with a satellite which will begin humanity on the road to rebuilding civilization.

Barr, Densil N[eve] [pseud. of Douglas Norton Buttrey]. The Man with Only One Head. London: Rich & Cowan, 1955. London: Digit, 1962.A cobalt bomb detonated under mysterious circumstances by the U.S. creates a blanket of fog around the entire Earth which destroys all insects and renders all men sterile except a reclusive millionaire named Vince Adams. Lacking the deterrent of unwanted pregnancy, the World Federation of Nations makes adultery a capital crime and stupidly condemns the one man who can perpetuate the race. He escapes to live secretly in Brazil, and fertility is restored to all men by the discovery of a new medical treatment. This is a less coy reworking of the theme of Pat Frank’s Mr. Adam (1946). The book is essentially a satire, particularly ridiculing a big newspaper editor who says, alarmed: “Every man, woman and child has lived for nearly a month in an atmosphere lousy with atoms. . . .” Rejects the notion that “atomic secrets” can be hidden. The book contains a very brief mention of a subsequent World War III, “sometimes called the Six Hour War.” Later, lead–useful as shielding–is more valuable than gold. The author also mocks the notion, common to several other novels, that the world will be improved by a nuclear catastrophe.

Barr, Tyrone C. The Last Fourteen. London: Digit, 1959. London: Chariot, 1960.When the rest of humanity is destroyed in a nuclear war, five women and nine men survive aboard an experimental space station called the “wheorld” (for “wheel world”). The captain forstalls problems by rigidly separating men and women for three years until Earth has recovered sufficiently to land. He then rather surprisingly promulgates a set of utopian regulations requiring nudity, free sex, communal child-rearing, a deistic civil religion, and an ideal communist economy. Traditional religions are banned, as are competitive sports and gambling. Breaches of the law are to be punished with death. It is hoped that the ruthless execution of all violent individuals will result in the breeding of a new, peaceful race of humanity. The only dissenter to these proposals is a priest who later turns out to be the murderer of two of their number. (He is trying to keep secret the fact that he once raped a child.) Most of the narrative focuses on the sexual tensions and jealousies of the survivors, who quickly revert to monogamy (the captain first of all, oddly enough). Earth has been transformed: giant grasses which taste like melons thrive; there are mammoth shrimp, amphibious salmon, and gigantic toads. The planet now resembles the land of Oz in that almost everything they encounter is good to eat. The most dangerous animal they find is a huge, unfeathered duck. At the novel’s end, a crude, bullying fellow has declared himself dictator and the survivors have split into two rival factions; but a woman insists that they must not repeat the mistakes of the past in reinventing war. This summary may give the impression that the work is a simple anti-utopian satire, but the impression one gets from reading it is more ambiguous. One of the more implausible and poorly written of these books.

Barrett, G[eoffrey] J[ohn]. City of the First Time. London: Robert Hale, 1975.Three thousand survivors of a March 2001 Armageddon are threatened in their deep underground shelter by the progressive failure of seals in layers above them. They explore a connecting network of caves, stumbling upon a subterranean city of telepathic survivors of an ancient atomic war predating humanity. Both races were planted on Earth by spacefaring aliens. Fighting breaks out and all seems lost, but the hope is asserted that in the distant future–even though yet another race will probably fight yet another apocalyptic atomic war–the path to peaceful coexistence will be discovered.

Barrett, Neal. Dawn’s Uncertain Light. New York: Signet, 1989.Sequel to Through Darkest America. More brutal adventures in postholocaust America, principal emphasis is on systematic cannibalism in the wake of the death of most animals.

___. Through Darkest America. Chicago: Worldwide Library, 1988. London: New American Library 1987. Sequel: Dawn’s Uncertain Light.

___. “Ginny Sweethips Flying Circus.” In Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, February 1988.

Barron, D[onald1 G[abriel]. The Zilov Bombs . London: A. Deut,sch, 1962. London: Pan, 1965. New York: Norton, 1963.In England under Russian occupation, the resistance hatches a plot to assassinate the Communist leaders with a smuggled atom bomb.

Barthelme, Donald. “Game” ( New Yorker , July 1965). In Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts . New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1968. New York: Bantam, 1969. New York: Pocket Books, 1976. London: Cape, 1969. Bound with City Life. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1975. Also in Judith Merril, ed. SF 12 . New York: Delacorte, 1968. New York: Dell, 1969. Also in James Sallis, ed. The War Book . London: Hart-Davis, 1969. Also in Dick Allen, ed. Science Fiction: The Future . New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971.Two men trapped for 133 days in a missile fire control center go slowly mad. One hordes his set of jacks and won’t let his comrade play until he agrees to help launch the missiles. The latter is about to agree as the story ends.

Barton, James. Wasteworld 1: Aftermath. London: Granada, 1983.Conflicts in Central America and the Mideast lead to a nuclear war and the collapse of civilization. A veteran of the Marine Air Corps struggles his way though the skeleton-littered ruins in search of his ex-wife and children, killing feral cats and dogs and savage humans. In New Orleans he battles the black supremacist leader of a cannibalistic cult which blames whites for the war. Radiation “mutates” people into monsters with whom the hero allies himself against the blacks. Consists mainly of brutal combat scenes featuring bizarre opponents: “Something with too many teeth and too much hair was doubled over, spilling entrails as it cannoned against a figure that would have been normal had it not stood over seven feet tall with a hump reaching another foot above its head.”

___. Wasteworld 2: Resurrection. London: Granada, 1983.Having defeated a black racist cult, the hero now battles a white racist dictatorship led by his former father-in-law. He also encounters giant tarantulas, gila monsters, and bizarre mutants called “Nightmen” who dwell in bomb craters and worship radioactivity. He organizes a Nightmen army to destroy the dictatorship.

___. Wasteworld 3: Angels. London: Granada, 1984.Besides destroying a band of Nightmen, his former allies, the hero must deal with the bizarre Church of Christ Without Christ, a motorcycle gang (hence the book’s title), and mutants and giant rabid bats in the Carlsbad Caverns as he seeks for gasoline to continue his quest. At the end of the novel he is joined by an Apache woman who promises to become an interesting companion.

___. Wasteworld 4: My Way. London: Granada, 1984.

Basile, Gloria Vitanza (pseud. of Michaela Morgan). Eye of the Eagle: Global 2000. New York: Pinnacle, 1983.This absurd thriller details an enormous conspiracy which culminates in the obliteration of the Middle East through nuclear bombing. Practically no attention is paid to the consequences of the bombing, and those consequences mentioned are absurd: the Persian Gulf is evaporated into desert and half of Africa is destroyed. The narrative is unusual in that the holocaust is presented first, in a prologue, followed by the intrigue which leads up to it. Reads like a parody of the typical macho thriller, peppered with violence, obscenities, and ersatz French and German. This is the first in a series of thrillers by Basile with the overall title Global 2000. The second volume, The Jackal Helix (1984), is a “prequel” detailing the background of the conspiracy of the first, and has no relevance to nuclear war.

___. The Sting of the Scorpion, Global 2000, Book III. New York: Pinnacle, 1984.This concluding volume of the trilogy begins during World War 11. An ominous supercomputer named “Colossus” (like that of D. E Jones) is mentioned in passing but never dealt with. The last part of the novel is set shortly after the limited nuclear war of Eye of the Eagle, and deals with the crushing of a world-spanning conspiracy. Very little more is said about nuclear war.

Bear, Greg. Eon. New York: Bluejay, 1985. New York: Tor, 1986. London: Legend, 1987.In 1993 a limited nuclear war called the “Little Death” involving strategic defense space weaponry leads to an all our-war with four million casualties. “The Death” proper ensues, killing two and a half billion of Earth’s inhabitants and bringing in its wake the Long Winter. A cult called the retreatists arises which reveres Ralph Nader and opposes high technology. On the eve of the Death, an international expedition is sent to explore a mysterious asteroid, which turns out to come from the future, bearing a warning of the holocaust about to occur. Efforts to avert the impending catastrophe fail because of international distrust in particular the stubborn dogmatism of the Russians. However, the asteroid also turns out to be a gateway linking the solar system to a vast intergalactic network, and also providing access to alternate worlds. Although the destruction of our Earth cannot be prevented, various characters are able to escape to alternate worlds at the end of the novel. A spectacular high-tech space adventure reminiscent of Rendezvous with Rama, but with more memorable characters, including its intelligent and capable female protagonist. Sequel: Eternity.

___. Eternity. New York: Warner, 1988. New York: Science Fiction Book Club, 1989. London: Gollancz, 1989. Sequel to Eon .This novel’s complex plot involves the threat of the destruction of the entire universe, a disaster which dwarfs the nuclear holocaust which has blighted but not entirely destroyed Earth. The holocaust is almost skipped over; and in the end powerful aliens undo it, so that all is as if it had never occurred.

___. The Forge of God. New York: Tor, 1987. Alien robotic invaders destroy the Earth, partly by using thousands of thermonuclear bombs to split the planet’s crust. Nuclear weapons used by humans against the invaders have little effect.

BeauSeigneur, James. Birth of an Age ( The Christ Clone Trilogy, Book Two ). New York: Warner Books, 2003.This second volume of a Christian apocalyptic fantasy trilogy begins by repeating the account of the Indian-Pakistani one-day nuclear war depicted at the end of the first volume.

___. In His Image ( The Christ Clone Trilogy, Book One ). New York: Warner Books, 2003.At the end of the first volume of this Christian apocalyptic fantasy series, an attempt by Russia to launch an all-out strike against Israel and most of the rest of the Middle East is miraculously foiled—the missiles detonate over Russia instead. The explosions are vividly described. “The death toll in the first fifteen seconds alone was over thirty million” (p. 214). In the book’s last chapter, Pakistan launches a nuclear strike against New Delhi, which retailiates by essentially obliterating Pakistan. Over 420 million die.

Becker, Stephen. “The New Encyclopaedist” ( Fantasy and Science Fiction , May 1964). In Judith Merril, ed. I0th Annual Edition: The Year’s Best S-F . New York: Delacorte, 1965. New York: Dell, 1966. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966. London: Mayflower 1967.A sketch in the form of three biographical entries. The first–and the only one to deal with nuclear war–tells of how a group of protesters called “the Irreconcilables” refused to enter fallout shelters during the First Great Alert of 1973, and enjoyed life aboveground while the war scare passed. During the Second Great Alert of 1977, the rest of the population refused to go below, but the Irreconcilables did so and led a life of luxury underground while the world above was devastated. “From these groups sprang our present highly literate, healthy and peaceable world population of 12,000,000, including only three psychiatrists and no soldiers.” A wave of puritanism is ended by the Great Holocaust “during a Senate debate on the appropriation for anti-missile missiles.”

Bell, Neal. Gone to Be Snakes Now . New York: Popular Library, 1974.In a degraded postholocaust community, a rebellious young boy flees the tyranny of his elders and the cruelty of a mutant monster to seek out the mysterious Technologists who drop supplies from time to time. He encounters the mad Dr. Strontium and his half-snake assistant and learns a good deal about nuclear war and the effects of fallout. He fails in his quest for the Technologists, finding only a pitiful handful of elderly refugees instead. Cancer is depicted as commonplace and dealt with at length.

Bellany, fan. “Doomsday.” See under Bidwell, Shelford, et al.

Belove, B[enjamin]. The Split Atom: Last Human Pair on Earth: The Whirling of Ideas . Los Angeles: Ackerman, 1946.A vast, dreary philosophical allegory in the form of a tour of history and the universe given a newly born godlet by his ambisexual parent (referred to throughout as “Momsy-Popsy”). The author, a specialist in rejuvenation through gland therapy, expresses his ideas on all manner of subjects. Nazis are depicted as literal demons, allied with Communists. Heaven is scientific. Fission is a love affair between particles. The author is against abortion and for the right of doctors to advertise and practice unconventional medicine in hospitals. (He spends one long chapter railing against the medical establishment.) The book ends with a sketch of Earth history which diagnoses war as caused by hereditary insanity. After the atomic bomb is used in World War II, the human race fails to abandon the idea of national sovereignty–which might have saved it. Dictatorships launch an attack using, among other weapons, syphilis. Scientists, having split the atom, go on to split atomic particles, producing a superbomb which blasts the Earth into fragments. On one of these fragments survives the last human pair: a doctor and his wife Eva who have fortuitously swallowed pills rendering them immune to the new weapon. They hope to found a new, peaceful civilization.

Benford, Gregory. Across the Sea of Suns . New York: Timescape, 1984.When alien sea monsters appear on Earth, an expedition travels to nearby stars to discover their source. The explorers discover that world after world has been destroyed in a similar fashion: machines built to fight ancient wars have formed their own civilization and work to suppress organic civilized life wherever it arises. The narrative suggests that most races end their lives through nuclear war. This seems, in fact, to be the destiny of humanity, for at the novel’s end 90 percent of Earth has been destroyed in a nuclear exchange triggered by the alien machines. A pessimistic view of intelligent life as inevitably suicidal. One of the best hard science fiction novels of recent years.

Benford, Gregory. Great Sky River. New York: Bantam, 1987. London: Gollancz, 1988.

___. Tides of Light. New York: Bantam, 1989. London: Gollancz, 1989. Sequel to Great Sky River. No direct references to nuclear war.

___. “To the Storming Gulf” ( Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1985). In Janet Morris, ed. Afterwar. New York: Baen, 1985.The story is told in the voices of various survivors, including members of a group which shelters in an idle nuclear reactor when the nuclear war is begun by the deranged leader of a small nation, causing each superpower to believe it has been struck first by the other, using missiles smuggled near the shore in fishing boats. The U.S. orbital defenses are 90% effective in destroying the Russian first strike, but enough missiles get through so that EMP destroys electrical devices, and a two-month-long nuclear autumn ensues. The Russians avoided exceeding the limit which would trigger a full-scale nuclear winter by making extensive use of biological weapons. The space colonies survive to rule the Earth and ban further wars. Gary K. Wolfe pointed out this story’s indebtedness to William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and Benford defended his use of Faulkner in a pair of articles for Fantasy Review (common title: “To Borrow or Not to Borrow?” Benford & Faulkner, no. 78, April 1985, pp. 9-10, 12). A response to both was written by Harry Harrison (Benford, Wolfe, Silverberg . . . & Literature, no. 81, July 1985, p. 33).

Bennett, Margot. The Long Way Back . London: Bodley Head, 1954. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1956. New York: Coward-McCann, 1954. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1956.Heavily ironic but thoughtful tale in which a reindustrialized Africa which has forgotten the nuclear wars which ended the previous civilization has reinvented the bomb. An expedition is sent to barbarian Britain to prepare the way for colonization and exploitation of its coal mines. After dangerous encounters with wild dogs, various mutated monsters, and savage whites, the expedition becomes involved in a quest for a fabled city of gold which turns out to have been destroyed in the ancient war. The date on the last roofed building is 1984. Contains the love story of the courageous hero with the domineering female expedition leader. He shows her her need to be protected.

Benni, Stefano. Terra! Originally Milan: Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, date?. Trans. from the Italian by Annapaola Cancogni. New York: Pantheon, 1985.A mouse in a missile silo accidentally sets off an attack on the Soviet Union which causes World War III, followed by three more. For more than a century the world is wrapped in nuclear winter. The bulk of the novel is a series of brief comic sketches, loosely held together by the story of an expedition to another planet which it is hoped might replace the frozen Earth. At one point the Japanese use a plutonium mini-bomb designed to produce precisely as many casualties as the Hiroshima bomb. In a parody of Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods, the space explorers travel back in time to become the founders of the Inca civilization.

Benoist, Elizabeth S. Doomsday Clock . San Antonio: Naylor, 1975.When the warning comes of a Russian sneak attack, several fashionable couples, their servants, and four poor children take refuge in an elaborate supershelter designed as a Roman villa six hundred feet underground. The characters deliberately avoid discussing the plight of the world over their heads. Most of the novel, in the form of a journal kept by one of the women, details the various love affairs in which they engage. In conscious imitation of Chaucer’s pilgrims, they take turns telling stories. Most of the book resembles a subterranean soap opera, with scant attention to the effects of the war above. Near the work’s conclusion tensions mount, there are suicides and murders, and one woman goes mad and strips off her radiation suit to run free in the blackened countryside. In the end, after more than a year underground, they seem doomed to perish there, and the narrator doubts whether there is a future for the human race. If there will be, she exhorts coming generations–in the final words of the book–to “LOVE ONE ANOTHER.” The title is taken from the clock printed annually on the cover of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists which indicates the likelihood of nuclear war by the number of minutes left until midnight.

Berk, Howard. The Sun Grows Cold . New York: Delacorte, 1971. New York: Dell, 1972. London: Gollancz, 1971.A well-written thriller in which a rebellious man suffering from amnesia is restored to sanity, only to discover that a nuclear war has destroyed most of humanity and driven insane much of the remainder. Small, uncontaminated Pioneer Zones are being settled by the benevolent scientific dictatorship which rules from underground shelters, linked by safe corridors along which bandit Ghouls prey on wandering Gypsies. Accompanied by his faithful lover (who, unbeknownst to him, was his wife in his previous existence), he has various adventures, discovering at last that the amnesia with which he and so many others are afflicted was art)ficially induced and that he was a leader of the nation. Unable to face this horror, he requests a second treatment and is restored to being a mindless, contented conformist.

Berman, Mitch. Time Capsule. New York: Putnam, 1987. New York: Ballantine, 1987. Part originally in The Agni Review .A young jazz musician and a black engineer cross America after a nuclear war kills off almost everyone else, living at first on roaches and roasted rats. They encounter a dictatorial slave society set up by remnants of the U.S. Army, a vicious gang of crim inals led by the engineer’s brother (which the engineer obliterates using a leftover nuclear missile), and an idealistic group of survivors hand-towing a truckload of supplies across the continent. Interwoven in the text is a good deal of information about various time capsules.

Bermel, Albert. “The End of the Race” ( Galaxy , April 1964). In Frederik Pohl, ed. The Eighth Galaxy Reader . Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965.A satire on Herman Kahn’s theories of limited war in which, dissatisfied with inconclusive testing programs, the Russians and Americans decide to bomb one each of the other’s cities, but they can’t agree which cities should be obliterated. They resolve the dispute by bombing their own; the U.S. destroys New York, and the Soviet Union destroys Moscow. See Herbert Gold, “The Day They Got Boston.”

Berry, Bryan. Born in Captivity . London: Hamilton, 1952. London: Panther, n.d.The Third War to End All World Wars ( 1960) provides the backdrop for this typical tale of struggle against an Orwellian dictatorship in 2018. The high proportion of defective offspring after the war leads to the imposition of a strict, class-based form of birth control. A psychiatrist assigned to track down deviants seeks instead to preserve creativity and individualism, rebels and joins the underground just as a devastating nuclear war breaks out between the Eastern and Western Federations, which control the world between them. The underground creates a superior strain of the human race free from warlike instincts using technology developed to provide android pet substitutes for childless couples (this aspect of the book is strikingly similar to the theme of Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep). The rebels go literally underground in their base on the Isle of Man, to wait out the holocaust. They emerge to inherit the Earth with their peaceloving children when the old human race has destroyed itself. There are some striking images of the war damage, such as a moving sidewalk carrying its freight of newly dead passengers ever onward. The battle features atomic cannon and shells. The protagonist and his wife do not kill his supervisor, as Tuck states; he dies accidentally, but under circumstances which lead them to be accused of murder.

Bester, Alfred. “Disappearing Act.” In Frederik Pohl, ed. Star Science Fiction Stories No. 2. New York: Ballantine, 1953. Also in Alfred Bester. Starburst. New York: Signet, 1958. Also in The Light Fantastic. New York: Berkley, 1976. Also in Frederik Pohl, ed. Star of Stars. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1960. New York: Ballantine, 1964. Rpt. as Star Fourteen. London: Whiting and Wheaton, 1966. London: Pan, 1968. Also in Tom Boardman, Jr., ed. Connoisseur’s SF. Baltimore: Penguin, 1964. Also in Roger Mansfield, ed. The Starlit Corridor. New York: Pergamon, 1967. Also in Robert Silverberg, ed. Other Dimensions. New York: Hawthorn, 1973. Also in Martin H. Greenberg and Patricia S. Warrick, eds. Political Science Fiction. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974. Also in Barry N. Malzberg, ed. The End of Summer. New York: Ace, 1979.A humorous tale in which time travel into imaginary pasts develops as a form of battle fatigue during The War for the American Dream, which involves, among other actions, the plastering of both the U.S. and Russia with H-bombs. Most of the story takes place in an underground military hospital.

__. The Stars My Destination (originally “Tiger! Tiger!” Galaxy , October, November, December, 1956 & January, 1957). New York: Signet, 1956. New York: Berkley, 1976. London: Panther, 1959. As Tiger! Tiger! London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1956. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967. Also in Anthony Boucher, ed. A Treasury of Great Science Fiction. Vol. 2 . Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1959.This classic science fiction novel of the quest of Gully Foyle for revenge against the spaceship which ignored his call for distress is punctuated by a nuclear attack on Earth and Mars by the outer satellites. When the bombs hit New York the city is instantly emptied as its population teleports (“jauntes”) to escape. The only witnesses are a young woman, blind to all save the infrared, who loves the spectacle, and Foyle, who loves her. A similar attack on Mars results in its satellite Phobos being turned into a small sun. The novel also features PyrE, the ultimate weapon and source of the Big Bang which began the universe. One character is a healthy but intensely radioactive man who kills plants by merely touching them and must kiss a woman through three inches of lead plate glass.

___. “They Don’t Make Life Like They Used To” ( Fantasy and Science Fiction , October, 1963). In The Dark Side of Earth . New York: Signet, 1964. Also in Judith Merril, ed. 9th Annual Edition: The Year’s Best S-F . New York: Dell 1964. New York: Delacorte, 1966. Also in Avram Davidson, ed. The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, 13th Series . Garden City, N.Y. Doubleday, 1964. New York: Ace, 1967. London: Gollancz, 1966. London: Panther, 1968.An attempt at a humorous treatment of the last man and woman theme. Both characters seem to be slightly insane. For some mysterious reason, the man is not at all interested in the attractive young woman who keeps throwing herself at him, but instead wants to continue on his quest for someone who can operate a broadcast studio so that he can watch television. At one point he becomes angry with her and says, “I wouldn’t stay with you if you was the last person on Earth.” Heavily imbued with traditional sex-role stereotypes, to an absurd extent, but the story doesn’t seem to satirize them. In the end, the fear that the Earth has been invaded by giant mantises (probably the result of a hallucination, although this is far from clear) stimulates their passions and they make love. Much stress on casual nudity throughout. If this is a satire, its point is unclear.

Betsuyaku Minoru. “The Elephant.” Trans. David G. Goodman. In David G. Goodman, ed. After Apocalypse: Four Japanese Plays of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1986.An absurdist drama featuring a hibakusha who makes a career out of exhibiting his scars, caused by the Hiroshima bomb. His nephew, trying to prevent him from making a further exhibition of himself, kills him. The nephew and the man’s nurse are also hibakusha.

Bidwell, Shelford, et al. World War 3: A Military Projection Founded on Today’s Facts . Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1978.Part 2, entitled “Into the Abyss,” is a projection of a fictional war in Europe strikingly similar in style to Hackett’s The Third World War: The Untold Story (published the same year), but much more pessimistic. Chapters are contributed by various military experts analyzing various aspects of the war, and the text is illustrated with photographs, like Hackett’s.     Chapter 11: “The Last Months of Peace,” by Shelford Bidwell. The United States reduces its arms, and West Germany, feeling isolated and weak, begins a project to build its own neutron bomb, but is forced to stop by international pressures. The Russians seek to thwart the German move by invading. The reluctant French and British fail to intervene.     Chapter 12: “The Land War,” by Shelford Bidwell. When NATO is overwhelmed by the Soviet army, America intervenes; however, the British are the first to use a tactical nuclear weapon on the third day of the war.     Chapter 13: “The Air War,” by Bill Gunston. Devastating conventional bombing yields to nuclear missiles.     Chapter 14: “The Sea War,” by E. F. Gueritz and Richard Humble. An initial phase of conventional sea warfare featuring aircraft carriers is quickly superseded as nuclear weapons come into play. Only the submarines are still relevant.     Chapter 15: “Doomsday,” by lan Bellany. The narrative switches to the nonfictional mode, assessing the probabilities of various sorts of nuclear war in Europe. Stresses that limiting a nuclear war is very difficult, but strikingly downplays the effects of nuclear weapons.

Biemiller, Carl L. The Hydronaut Adventures . Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981. Originally published separately by Doubleday as The Hydronauts (1970), Follow the Whales: The Hydronauts Meet the Otter People (1973), and Escape from the Crater: More Adventures of the Hydronauts (1974). A brief introduction added to the 1981 edition is titled “The Reunion.” Biemiller Web site. A series of juvenile novels with a common cast of characters and setting. Centuries after a war has melted the polar caps and drowned much of the continents, a rigid but not monstrous dictatorship exploits the sea for the resources needed to maintain the population living on the tiny inhabitable areas of the land, mostly rendered sterile by the war. A feisty group of youngsters, including a black with a regenerated white arm, crews a submarine, discovering seagoing humanoids created by scientists who survived the war in undersea “hives.” Concentrations of radioactive waste in runoff still pose problems in the sea ranches where sharks and whales are raised for meat. In The Hydronauts, they battle giant squid and explore sunken Hawaii, encountering a doomed race of “Sea Babies.” The former Gulf of California has been converted into Jewel Bay: “The name came from the areas of fused earth which rimmed the shoreline of the vast estuary These ceramic ‘beaches,’ hard fired by fusion blasts, sparkled like jewels of many colors.”      In Follow the Whales , the youngsters search for and find an earlier version of humanity adapted to aquatic life: the Otter People. These live in a volcanic island base reminiscent of Captain Nemo’s mysterious island. The Hydronauts’ superiors are determined to wipe out other forms of intelligent life they see as competitive, but the youngsters are inclined to sympathize with the peaceful sea race which has captured them.     In Escape from the Crater , a “Crio” (a person cryogenically preserved by freezing at death) from 1999 is revived and provides them with essential knowledge to bring about a reconciliation between the otter people and normal humanity. He also tells them of a savage war of consumers against conservationists which caused such devastation to civilization that humanity was forced to adopt ecologically sound measures involuntarily. He helps them rediscover Alaska, which provides plenty of uncontaminated land and resources for the land population. The conclusion hints at yet another sequel still unwritten at the time of the author’s death.

Billias, Stephen. The American Book of the Dead. New York: Popular Library, 1987.A bizarre kaleidoscopic adventure story centered on the theme of a ordinary man seeking wisdom and safety as World War II breaks out. The protagonist, haunted by the fear of nuclear war, connects with numerous strange beings in his quest, including busi nessmen seeking refuge in space, an alien from a distant planet , Tarzan’s pet chimp, Cheetah, the Monkey-King of Buddhist legend, a Jewish Nazi-hunter loosely based on Simon Wiesenthal, among others. The novel is too complex to summarize, but is filled with interesting ideas: depicting the feelings of a Soviet missile as it heads toward San Francisco, for instance, rescuing the whales and transporting them to another planet (as in Somtow Sucharitkul’s Starship and Hiaku ), the protagonist seeking his beloved in Hell, like Orpheus, and many other fantastic scenes. The novel is not frivolous, however, and contains many thoughtful bits of commentary on the arms race and nuclear war. Through it all runs a strongly zen buddhist theme, which culminates as the protagonist elects to stay behind to care for others on the dying Earth, becoming a Bodhisattva, then achieving at last the oneness wi th the all which he has sought throughout his tumultuous life.

Binder, Otto. See Giles, Gordon A.

Bischoff, David. See Monteleone, Thomas F.

Blackden, P. Adam and Eve 2020 A.D. Everest, 1974.Unavailable for review. See I. F. Clarke, Tale of the Future.

Blair, Adrian. Cosmic Conquest. London: Curtis Warren, 1953.An absurd, old-fashioned novel featuring a battle between good and bad “mutrons” whose main advantage over humanity is the ability to dispense with sleep. A third of America has been fused into a desert of glass by chain reactions which resulted from a nuclear war of unknown origins. The villains plot to destroy humanity by dosing the drinking waters with uranium salts and planting neutron beam emitters in radios. This would render the victims living cyclotrons, but the plot is thwarted by a good mutron. Reminiscent of Henry Kuttner’s Mutant .

Blair, Eric. See Orwell, George.

Blish, James. After Such Knowledge . Overall title of a series of tales including Doctor Mirabilis , A Case of Conscience , Black Easter , and The Day After Judgment . The latter two volumes are halves of a single narrative depicting a nuclear war and are dealt with separately below.&nbnsp;&nbnsp;&nbnsp;&nbnsp;&nbnsp; Black Easter; or, Faust Aleph-Null (originally “Faust Aleph-Null,” If , August 1967). Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968. Sequel: The Day After Judgment. The mysterious Consolidated Warfare Service corporation hires magician Theron Ware to loose simultaneously all of the major demons of hell. (The magician’s name is borrowed from the 1896 novel by Harold Frederick entitled The Damnation of Theron Ware.) Faced with this proposition, Ware asks his employer why the Russian-Chinese nuclear war the corporation has been promoting would not be an adequate evil; and indeed, the demons, once loosed, can think of nothing more devastating than to launch such a war on their own. China attacks Taiwan with a nuclear bomb which leads to a worldwide exchange and an atomic Armageddon quite unlike that predicted in the Bible. The Devil wins and proclaims that God is dead. The novel offers a promising if obvious metaphor for the apocalyptic aspects of nuclear war. But, for all of its grand imagery, the work is clearly more concerned with magic than with war. See Brian Stableford, A Clash of Symbols: The Triumph of James Blish (San Bernardino, Calif: Borgo Press, 1979). In Magill, 1: 233-37.&nbnsp;&nbnsp;&nbnsp;&nbnsp;&nbnsp; The Day After Judgment . Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971. York: Avon, 1982. Sequel to Black Easter .A detailed account of the devastation wrought by the demons loosed in Black Easter, including the familiar burned-in shadows. President Kennedy’s bravado in Berlin is satirized as President Agnew proclaims, “I am a Formosan.” One member of the defense establishment argues that atomic war restores the natural evolutionary processes stopped by human civilization, and outrageously cites Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in this context. The northwestern part of the U. S. becomes a raging radioactive firestorm which will render the land uninhabitable for fifteen years. A computer reports that the country has been invaded by a huge object in Death Valley which proves to be none other than the city of Dis from Dante’s Inferno, for Earth has now become Hell, and the proper abode of demons. There is talk of a doomsday machine called Old Mombi (after the witch who enchanted the Princess Ozma in L. Frank Baum’s The Land of Oz), designed to make even the moon uninhabitable. The creation of the Antichrist occurs when a demon is elected pope. A furious assault with both conventional and exotic weapons results in a complete defeat for the army. Dis is then transformed into a mechanized anti-utopia populated by identical, perfect men and women. Finally, the American leaders confront Satan himself, looking very much as Dante described him, but wearing a halo since he has replaced God. The novel ends with a Miltonesque speech in verse by Satan, proclaiming that once the demons were loosed on Earth they discovered that the human race was far worse than they, and the demons have thus been forced to replace God. He concludes by pleading for humanity to become God instead. The symbolism is striking: we are challenged to master our own destructive powers and warned that we cannot rely on supernatural forces to deliver us from them. However, most of the novel does not adequately support this concluding note of hope. The tone varies inconsistently from farcical fantasy to awful warning. See Stableford, as in preceding listing. In Magill, 1: 497-501. [24]&nbnsp;&nbnsp;&nbnsp;&nbnsp;&nbnsp;”First Strike” ( Fantasy and Science Fiction , June 1953). In So Close to Home . New York: Ballantine, 1961. An interesting criticism of the fallout shelter fad and the notion of a postbomb barbarian culture. Describes a science fiction writer who sounds like the Ray Bradbury of The Martian Chronicles . Not actually a nuclear war story.&nbnsp;&nbnsp;&nbnsp;&nbnsp;&nbnsp;”The Oath” ( Fantasy and Science Fiction , October 1960). In So Close to Home . New York: Ballantine, 1961. Also in Best Science Fiction Stories of James Blish . London: Faber, 1965. Also in The Best of James Blish . New York: Ballantine, 1979. Also in Lee Harding, ed. Beyond Tomorrow . London: New English Library, 1977.Explores several moral issues connected with the survival of nuclear war. Before the war, cynical corporations offered businesses bombproof storage for their records. Afterwards, when it was obvious that the records were useless, the businesses having ceased to exist, the corporations moved into the shelters themselves and set up a profit-oriented government called “The Vaults.” Doctors are urgently needed but in short supply because the population had attacked them for not being able to heal radiation disease. An emissary from The Vaults tries to recruit a poet turned doctor who, never having taken the Hippocratic Oath (hence the title), practices selective medicine to weed out what he considers to be defective traits from the small population of humans left alive. In the end he surrenders and joins the government. The Vaults continue to use atomic energy and practice atomic medicine. The story reflects concerns about strontium 90 poisoning milk–a major issue in protests against bomb tests at the time it was written.&nbnsp;&nbnsp;&nbnsp;&nbnsp;&nbnsp;”One Shot” ( Astounding , August 1953). In So Close to Home . New York: Ballantine, 1961. An intelligence agency uses a man with ESP-style intuition to detect a smuggled atom bomb.

___. So Close to Home . New York: Ballantine, 1961.Most of this collection of short stories deals directly or indirectly with nuclear war. See individual story titles.

___. “Struggle in the Womb” ( Future Science Fiction , May 1950). In So Close to Home . New York: Ballantine, 1961. Also as “Battle of the Unborn.” In Groff Conklin, ed. Science-Fiction Adventures in Mutation . New York: Vanguard, 1955. New York: Berkley, 1965.Mutant races evolved in radioactive Nagasaki menace Homo sapiens in this thoroughly frivolous suspense tale with a snapper ending.

___. “To Pay the Piper” ( If , February 1956). In Galactic Cluster. New York: Signet, 1959. London: Faber, 1960. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1961. London: Fantasy Press, 1963. Bound with The Seedling Stars . New York: Signet, 1983.Twenty-five years after the nuclear and bacteriological warfare called “the Death of the Cities,” people are still living underground. They are going mad with the need to escape to the surface, which is relatively free of radiation but still seriously contaminated with biological weapons. An enemy agent wangles his way into the apparatus designed to “re-educate” people’s bodies to deal with the infections, but miscalculates and is doomed to fail in his sabotage attempt and die.

___. “Tomb Tapper” ( Astounding , July 1956). In Galactic Cluster . New York: Signet, 1959. London: Faber, 1960. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1961. London: Fantasy Press, 1963. Bound with The Seedling Stars . New York: Signet, 1983. Also in Best Science Fiction Stories of James Blish . London: Faber, 1965.A technique has been developed to read the minds of newly killed victims of enemy plane crashes. During a Russian attack by one-way kamikaze manned rockets, the thoughts broadcast from the wrecked interior of the craft at first suggest an alien mind; it turns out to belong to an eight-year-old girl the USSR has used to pilot the rocket fighter.

Blish, James and Robert W. Lowndes. The Duplicated Man ( Dynamic Science Fiction , August 1953). New York: Avalon, 1959. New York: Airmont, 1964.After the arctic icecap is bombed in 1971, much of the world is flooded and a world government is inaugurated. Rebels on Venus are at war with Earth, but a barrier surrounding that planet supposedly prevents nuclear weapons from being used by either side. Earth forces plot to use a machine which duplicates human beings in a complex plan to destroy the government of Venus. The whole thing turns out to have been an elaborate pacifist hoax: there was never any antinuclear barrier and the war was faked to create unity and peace on Earth in the face of a fictional threat.

Bloch, Robert. “Daybroke” ( Star Science Fiction , January 1958). In B lood Runs Cold . New York: Simon & Schuster, 1961. New York: Popular Library, 1963. London: Corgi, 1964. Also in Lester del Rey, ed. The Rest of Robert Bloch . New York: Ballantine, 1977. Also in Frederik Pohl, ed. Star of Stars . Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1960. New York: Ballantine, 1964. Rpt. as Star Fourteen . London: Whiting & Wheaton, 1966. London: Pan, 1968. Also in Frederik Pohl, ed. The Science Fiction Roll of Honor: An Anthology of Fiction and Nonfiction by Guests of Honor at World Science Fiction Conventions . New York: Random House, 1975.A news broadcaster emerges from his shelter after the war and makes his way through appalling devastation, including scenes of wild looting and an artist smeared across his own canvas. He encounters many macabre tableaux which are the result of a gas which paralyzed and killed people in midgesture, as in Alfred Noyes’s The Last Man (1940). He makes his way to a surviving federal building and sees a map indicating that most major American cities have been destroyed. “To think of our being beaten,” he te]ls the general in charge. ” ‘What do you mean, man?’ the general said proudly, the flames rising. ‘We won!’ ”

___. “The Head.” In Terry Carr, ed. The Ides of Tomorrow: Original Science Fiction Tales of Horror . Boston: Little, Brown, 1976. Also in Bloch, ed. Such Stuff as Screams Are Made Of . New York: Ballantine, 1979.A brute named Jon living in a savage cannibalistic underground world long after the holocaust becomes acquainted with the severed head of a man from the past, artificially maintained to pass on human civilization. It preaches ethical and religious truths without much effect, then tries the Twenty-third Psalm. ” ‘That’s shit, man,’ Jon said. And turned him off.”

___. “The Past Master” ( Blue Book , January 1955). In Lester del Rey, ed. The Best of Robert Bloch . New York: Ballantine, 1977.A man from the thirtieth century appears to collect the world’s art treasures and is forced to admit he’s doing so because they are about to be destroyed in a nuclear war. However, the rising of his vessel from the water turns out to be the trigger that starts the war.

Block, Thomas H. Airship Nine . New York: Putnam’s, 1984.Russians battle Americans in Antarctica in the wake of a cataclysmic nuclear war. The survivors expect to weather the coming nuclear winter at the atomic-powered U.S. South Pole station and to repopulate the Earth. Polar winds will keep the area free of radioactivity. Basically an adventure story involving a huge blimp and Antarctic scientists. The war was begun by the malfunctioning of an American military satellite which fired fortyeight missiles at the USSR, prompting automated retaliation.

Blumenfeld, Yorick. Jenny . Arundel: Centaur Press, 1981. Boston: Little, Brown, 1982.Brief narrative printed as a hand-written diary written by a young woman who enters a super-fallout shelter at the urging of her husband and is stranded there when he dies. Jenny suggests the key problem authors face in creating characters who survive in comfort while the rest of the world is being destroyed, that those who have bought the privilege of survival with their wealth can seem distinctly unsympathetic. lenny is exempted from our judgment on several grounds: she had to be practically forced to go to the shelter; the arrangements were made by her husband from whom she is thoroughly alienated (she is given a lover for no other obvious reason than to establish this fact); she hates the whole idea of surviving at the expense of others and broods about it a good deal; and once in the shelter she finds most of her companions distasteful and has a fairly miserable time. The story hints at ecocide, although the ending, as the heroine emerges from the shelter, is ambiguous and not entirely hopeless. The style is charmless, all too realistically reflecting its heroine’s lack of skill. Depicts women as resisting technology, men as domineering and destructive. Odd emphasis on sexuality.

Bock, Dennis. The Ash Garden. N.Y.: Knopf, 2001.A sensitive, thoughtful novel about the relationship between a “Hiroshima maiden” (young woman victim of the bombing brought to the U.S. for cosmetic surgery) and a scientist who helped develop the bomb after leaving Germany, where he had worked on a similar project for the Nazis. He insists he is unrepentent, that his work saved lives; but he is obsessed with collecting and viewing film footage of the victims, and confesses at the end of the novel that he was responsible for putting the woman on the list of victims to be treated.

Bolland, Brian. The Cursed Earth . See Mills, Pat.

Bolland, Brian & Mike W. Barr. See Barr.

Booth, Martin. Hiroshima Joe. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1985. New York: Penguin, 1987. An excellent novel about a soldier captured in Hong Kong by the Japanese during World War II, who endured horrors in a prison camp near Hiroshima, witnessed the dropping of the atomic bomb, and suffered exposure to the fallout. He leads a degerate existence in Hong Kong after the war, dying at last of a long-delayed case of radiation disease. The story is told in alternate chapters set in 1952 the novel’s present, and World War II. Compare Ballard: Empire of the Sun .

Borden, William. Superstoe . London: Gollancz, 1967. New York: Harper & Row, 1968.A satire in which a group of eccentric but ruthless intellectuals take over the U.S. government and impose their will on the world by force, creating a utopia of sorts. They make use of nuclear weapons and germ warfare. The Communist Chinese military bombs both Taipei and Seoul and is obliterated in its turn by American atomic bombs. The Russians are kept from retaliating by simple bribery Disarmament is finally imposed on the world by a strengthened United Nations.

Borodin, George [pseud. of George Alexis Bankoffl. Spurious Sun. London: Werner Laurie, 1948 As The Threatened People . Regular Publications, n.d.In Scotland a new type of device which strikingly anticipates the H-bomb accidentally ignites the upper layer of the atmosphere and dooms the Earth. In response the world suffers an explosion of insane wars, including a nuclear attack on Canada by the U.S. The ensuing panic prompts mass suicides, death cults, sadism, torture, and plagues caused by mutated bacteria. An international scientific commission narrowly defeats a proposal to commit global suicide with more bombs. Much of the book deals with the absurd anti-Communist paranoia of the U.S. which leads it to blame the Soviet Union, although the USSR comes in for plenty of criticism as well. Leningrad and San Francisco are bombed into oblivion and the Russians use irradiated bacteria. This bellicose hysteria is abruptly reversed when a pacifist movement, begun by children, sweeps the world, and creates a new age of sharing, mutual understanding, and peace–a true millenium. When scientists discover a way to prevent the threatened end of life on Earth, people begin to backslide; but children once more save the world when they invade the U.N. Security Council and demand peace. The hard-won utopia will be preserved.     Despite its wildly improbable plot, this novel contains many sophisticated, acute observations about world politics and religions and displays an unusually thorough grasp of the nature of nuclear war. Borodin describes the changed attitude toward war that such weapons must bring: “If war came it would not be suffering for all and death for many; this time it would mean annihilation for most. Everyone accepted, as a matter of course, that immediate use would be made of atomic bombs; and no country in the world was more calculated to be devastated by those than Great Britain. A dozen bombs, it might be, could lay the whole country waste. It was an appalling thought. In the face of it even the conviction, based on centuries of repeated experience, that somehow or other the country would pull through, grew faint until it disappeared.” Borodin argues that war has become irrational in the nuclear age, since there can be no spoils for the victor, only destruction. Atomic power is seen as the fuel of utopia, and other fantastic atomic technologies hold great promise for the future. Mutated giant fleas arise, but for once we also see an animal shrunk: miniature mice. The scientist who solves the problem posed by the nuclear catastrophe was one of those who worked on the original bomb. In the end most men are sterile; only blacks and red-headed, blue-eyed, black-bearded men are fertile, producing comic scenes reminiscent of Pat Frank’s Mr. Adam .

Boucher, Anthony. “Balaam.” In Raymond J. Healy, ed. 9 Tales of Space and Time . New York: Holt, 1954. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1955. Also in Boucher, ed. Far and Away . New York: Ballantine, 1955. Also in Edmund Crispin, ed. Best SF, Four . London: Faber, 1961. Also in Hans S. Santesson, ed. Gods for Tomorrow . New York: Award, 1967. Also in Mayo Mohs, ed. Other Worlds, Other Gods: Adventures in Religious Science Fiction . Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971. Also in Reginald Bretnor, ed. Future at War, Vol. 2: The Spear of Mars . New York: Ace, 1980.A war story set on Mars follows the plot line of the biblical tale of Balaam and his ass. Atomic cannons shoot nuclear warheads.

___. “The Quest for Saint Aquin.” In Raymond J. Healy, ed. New Tales of Space and Time . New York: Holt, 1951. Also in Fantasy and Science Fiction , January 1959. Also in Robert Silverberg, ed. Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Vol. 1 . Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970. Also in Mayo Mohs, ed. Other Worlds, Other Gods: Adventures in Religious Science Fiction . Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971. Also in Edward L. Ferrnan, ed. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction: A Thirty Year Retrospective . Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1980. Also in Kingsley Amis, ed. The Golden Age of Science Fiction . London: Hutchinson, 1981.In this tale of the search for a fabled saint who turns out to be a robot, the setting resembles that of William M. Miller, Jr.’s Canticle for Leibowitz : a postholocaust world in which the Catholic church plays an important–though underground–role. The nuclear war in the story’s past exists mainly to create a credible setting for its dark age religious theme. As with Miller’s work, it can be read as a satire on religion, but it is ambiguous in its ultimate effect.

Bova, Ben. Nuclear Autumn. In Far Frontiers 2 (Spring 1985). New York: Baen, 1985.The Russians lauch a strike at a level deliberately calculated to be just below that required to precipitate a nuclear witer, confident that the West will not dare to retaliate.

___. Test of Fire. (Portions published as When the Sky Burned . New York: Walker, 1973. New York: Popular Library, 1974). New York: Tor, 1982.When a gigantic solar flare incinerates the Eastern Hemisphere, the Russians assume they have been attacked and launch their missiles at the U.S. Relatively little is said about the effects of the bombing. Rioting, looting, and rape are widespread. Most of the novel concerns the efforts of a handful of survivors on the moon to acquire radioactive fuel from the ruined Earth to maintain their energy supply.

Bowker, Richard. Dover Beach. New York: Bantam, 1987.A detective story involving the search for a scientist who created clones of himself which are now being murdered, set after a nuclear war. The U.S. and USSR were devastated but the war, though much of the rest of the world, including England, was spared. A particularly severe winter ensued. In America the conflict was followed by anti-learning riots called the Frenzy. In an interesting touch, the novel features an old bookdealer who collects nuclear war fiction (chapter 9). The following novels are specifically mentioned: On the Beach, Alas,Babylon, A Canticle for Leibowitz, Fiskadoro, and Riddley Walker. It is suggested that the authors of such works may be comparing their fictional projections with the actuality. In a flashback we learn how the protagonist first met his lover, a young woman who had been hiding out in a lavishly appointed but abandoned fallout shelter (The family who built the thing was probably camping next to a Minuteman silo when the bombs fell).

Brackett, Leigh. The Long Tomorrow. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1955. New York.: Ace, 1962. New York: Ballantine, 1974. New York: Del Rey, 1986. London: Mayflower, 1962.Three rebellious teenagers who reject the antiscientific, anti-urban attitudes of their postholocaust village go in quest of the fabled Bartorstown underground research center. In Magill, 3:1242-45. See Diane Parkin-Speer, “Leigh Brackett’s The Long Tomorrow: A Quest for the Future America,” Extrapolation 26 (1985):190-200.

Bradbury, Ray. “Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed.” See “The Naming of Names.”

___. Fahrenheit 451 (expanded from “The Fireman” in Galaxy , February 1951). New York: Ballantine, 1953. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967. London: Hart-Davis, 1954. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1955. London: Corgi, 1963.Books are burned by “firemen” in this anti-literate dystopia. Two earlier atomic wars fought and won since 1960 are mentioned in passing, and a third breaks out at the novel’s end. Made into a film by Francois Truffaut, 1967. ___. “The Fox and the Forest” (originally “To the Future,” Collier’s , May 13, 1950). In The Illustrated Man . Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1951. New York: Bantam, 1952. London: Hart-Davis, 1952. Also in The Vintage Bradbury . New York: Vintage, 1965. Also in The Stories of Ray Bradbury . New York: Knopf, 1980. Also in E. F. Bleiler and T. E. Dikty, eds. The Best Science-Fiction Stories: 1951 . New York: Fell, 1951. Rpt. as The Best Science Fiction Stories: Second Series . London: Grayson, 1952. Also in E. F. Bleiler and T. E. Dikty, eds. Frontiers in Space . New York: Bantam, 1955.Future scientists fleeing their role in atomic and biological warfare in 2155 are relentlessly pursued through time to contemporary Mexico. Dramatized as part of National Public Radio’s Bradbury Thirteen (1984).

___. “The Garbage Collector” ( The Nation , October 1953). In The Golden Apples of the Sun . Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1953. New York: Bantam, 1954. Also in Twice Twenty-two: The Golden Apples of the Sun, A Medicine for Melancholy . Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966.A garbage collector, told he must be prepared to haul away corpses after a nuclear war, muses in horror on the scenes he expects to encounter.

___. “The Highway” (Copy, Spring 1950). In The Illustrated Man . Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1951. New York: Bantam, 1952. London: Hart-Davis, 1952. Also in Willis E. McNelly and Leon E. Stover, eds. Above the Human Landscape: A Social Science Fiction Anthology . Pacific Palisades, Calif.: Goodyear, 1972.A Mexican peasant witnesses the flight past his fields of Americans heading home as nuclear war strikes their country. He shrugs off the news–the world they say is ending is not his. This is similar in theme to the flight of the settlers back to Earth in The Martian Chronicles .

___. The Martian Chronicles . Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1950. New York: Bantam, 1951. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1953. As The Silver Locusts . London: Hart-Davis, 1951. First publication of stories discussed below: “The Off Season,” Thrilling Wonder Stories , December 1948. “The Long Years,” as “Dwellers in Silence,” MacLean’s, September 15, 1948. “There Will Come Soft Rains,” Collier’s , May 6, 1950. Rpt. in Leslie A. Fiedler, ed. In Dreams Awake . New York: Dell, 1975. Also rpt. in Walter M. Miller, Jr., and Martin H. Greenberg, eds. Beyond Armageddon: Twenty-one Sermons to the Dead . New York: Donald I. Fine, 1985. “The Million-Year Picnic.” Planet Stories , Summer, 1946.

___. “The Naming of Names” ( Thrilling Wonder Stories , August 1949). In Samuel Mines, ed. The Best from Startling Stories . New York: Holt, 1953. Rpt. as Startling Stories . London: Cassell, 1954. Also in Garret Ford, ed. Science and Sorcery . Los Angeles: Fantasy Publishing Co., 1953. Also in Andre Norton and Ernestine Donaldy, eds. Gates to Tomorrow . New York: Atheneum, 1973. Story retitled “Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed.” In Bradbury. A Medicine for Melancholy . Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1958. New York: Bantam, 1960. Also in The Day It Rained Forever . London: Hart-Davis, 1962. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963. Also in “S” Is for Space . London: Hart-Davis, 1963. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966. New York: Bantam, 1970. Also in The Stories of Ray Bradbury . New York: Knopf, 1980. [Note: The brief chapter entitled “The Naming of Names” which is included in The Martian Chronicles is not the same story, although related to it. Contento’s Index is in error on this point.]A story from the Martian Chronicles cycle, but not included in the volume by that title. People who have fled to Mars because of nuclear war on Earth slowly evolve into Martians. One of the earlier signs of their metamorphosis is their use of original Martian place names instead of their human-imposed counterparts. When the Americans who won the war come to Mars five years later to rescue them, they plan to rename various Martian features, thus starting the cycle over again. Bradbury obviously refers to the behavior of Europeans in America and other lands. This story was dramatized as part of National Public Radio’s Bradbury Thirteen (1984).

___. “Night Call, Collect.” In I Sing the Body Electric. New York: Knopf, 1969. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970. London: Hart-Davis, 1970. Also in The Stories of Ray Bradbury . New York: Knopf, 1980.After the rest of the settlers have returned to Earth during the nuclear war depicted in The Martian Chronicles, the last man left on Mars is harassed by the recorded voice of his younger self who had set up a system of automatic telephones sixty years before. The electronic version hoaxes the living one into a heart attack by letting him think he is about to be rescued, then is left to carry on conversations with itself at various ages. This story was dramatized as part of National Public Radio’s Bradbury Thirteen (1984). . . . . .”The Off Season” features the obnoxious owner of a hamburger stand who finds himself without customers when the Earth explodes in the fire of a nuclear war before his eyes, leading most Martian settlers to return to their home planet in the brief section called “The Watchers.” In “The Long Years,” an expedition of survivors twenty years after the “Great War” discovers the last man on Mars living with a family of robots. “There Will Come Soft Rains” movingly depicts the operation, deterioration, and finally the collapse of an automated house which vividly evokes its former resi dents, killed in an atomic attack. Finally, “The Million-Year Picnic” is a .~ sort of Adam and Eve story in which two surviving Earth families emigrate to Mars to begin human civilization all over again, leaving behind some of r its more harmful aspects. The Martian Chronicles were broadcast as a mini series on television, but ‘Yhere Will Come Soft Rains” was eliminated, and a visit to Cape Kennedy–where the humans have mysteriously vanished in tne wake of the war–was substituted. In Magill, 3: 1348-51. See Robert Teilly, “The Artistry of Ray Bradbury,” Extrapolation 13 (1971): 64-74; Juliet Grimsley, “The Martian Chronicles: A Provocative Study,” English Journal 59 (December 1970): 1239-42; Willis McNelly, “Ray Bradbury– Past, Present, and Future,” in Thomas D. Clareson, ea., Voices for the Future (Bowling Green, Ohio: Popular Press, 1976); George Edgar Slusser, The Bradbury Chronicles (San Bernardino, Calif.: Borgo Press, 1977); Kent Forrester, “The Dangers of Being Earnest: Ray Bradbury and The Martian Chronicles ,” The Journal of General Education 28 (1976): 50-54; Joseph D. Olander and Martin Harry Greenberg, eds., Ray Bradbury (New York: Taplinger, 1979); and Leonard M. Scijag, “The Technological Exploitation of Space: Bradbury’s Recension of the Turner Frontier Thesis in The Martian Chronicles ,” Journal for the Humanities and Technology 6 (1984-85): 27-35. [14-15, 56-57]

___. “The Other Foot” ( New Story Magazine , March 1951). In The Illustrated Man . Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1951. New York: Bantam, 1952. London: Hart-Davis, 1952. Also in Ray Bradbury . London: Hutchinson, 1975. Also in Allen de Graeff, ed. Human and Other Beings . New York: Collier, 1963. Martin Harry Greenberg & John W. Milstead, eds. Social Problems Through Science Fiction . New York: St. Martins Press, 1975. Also in Bonnie L. Heintz, Frank Herbert, Donald A. Joos, and Jane Agorn McGee, eds. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. .  .  . New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1974.A companion piece to “Way in the Middle of the Air” from The Martian Chronicles . In that story, blacks fled the Jim Crow South in homemade rocket ships bound for Mars. Now the Black colony prepares to welcome the first white ship to arrive since war blasted the Earth. Its only passenger turns out to be an old man whose tale is so pathetic the colonists reject plans to discriminate against the expected white refugees and take pity on them instead.

___. “To the Chicago Abyss” ( Fantasy and Science Fiction , May 1963). In The Machineries of Joy . New York: Simon & Schuster, 1964. New York: Bantam, 1965. London: Hart-Davis, 1964. Also in Dick Allen, ed. Science Fiction: The Future . New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1971. Also Edward L. Ferman, ed. Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, 25th Anniversary . Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1974. Also in Walter M. Miller, Jr. and Martin H. Greenberg, eds. Beyond Armageddon: Twenty-one Sermons to the Dead . New York: Donald I. Fine, 1985.In a postholocaust world, it is illegal to reminisce about the days of plenty. An old man reminisces about nostalgic brand names of cigarettes, candy bars, cars, etc.

___. To the Chicago Abyss . In The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit and Other Plays . New York: Bantam, 1972.In this dramatized version of the story above, the old man is more clearly depicted as senile. He wants to pass his memories on to the next generation, but all he can recall is trivia. The play is considerably more effective than the short story.

Braddon, Russell. T he Year of the Angry Rabbit . London: Heinemann, 1964. New York: Norton, 1964.A satire on the arms race in which rabbits injected with an experimental virus turn savage and threaten Australia. Hit by repeated atomic bombing, they grow larger and more dangerous. The same virus is used by a ruthless prime minister to impose disarmament on the rest of the world. The end of the arms race causes a worldwide recession, which is solved by having each country continue to manufacture arms which they then dump into the sea. Combative urges are satisfied by token wars held in Australia’s Outback. Nuclear war is simulated by dropping bombs on Christmas Island and estimating the damage. Australian supremacy is destroyed by the nuclear physicists it had exiled to the Falkland Islands when they develop a new superweapon. Finally, hordes of vicious giant rabbits take over the continent, accidentally triggering a holocaust which kills everyone except a handful of aborigines who use magic to call down a world-wrecking deluge.

Briggs, Raymond. When the Wind Blows. London: Hamilton, 1982. New York: Schocken, 1982.A savagely effective satire of civil defense in comic strip form, as a couple tries vainly to follow government guidelines in preparation for and reaction to a nuclear attack. Ends with both fatally ill from radiation disease, still not understanding what has happened to them. Both husband and wife keep trying to think of the war in terms of World War 11. Produced as a play both on BBC radio and in a London theater.

Briley, John. The Last Dance . London: Secker & Warburg, 1978.A muscular disarmament spy thriller in which a conspiracy hatched by a nuclear physicist who worked on the H-bomb plans to force unimaginative leaders to realize the evil of nuclear weapons by setting off twelve bombs in major world cities. Although the plot is uncovered through the weakness of a female conspirator who falls in love with the agent on the case, the bomb planted in Bombay cannot be prevented from going off. The novel ends abruptly, with the outcome of the plot left uncertain. Lots of detailed sex scenes.

Brin, David. The Postman (portions appeared in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine as “The Postman,” November 1982 and as “Cyclops,” March 1984). New York: Bantam, 1985. London: Bantam, 1986. Sixteen years after the war in which death rays and bacteriological weapons plus a three-year nuclear winter ensured the death of most of those who escaped the atomic bombs, a wandering actor takes the clothes and bag of a dead mail carrier and is cast by those he meets as a postman, representative of a long-dead order. He forges papers and takes on the role, bringing hope and literacy as he travels. He battles vicious survivalists and encounters a group of scientists who have hoaxed surrounding villages into believing a supercomputer named “Cyclops” is rebuilding technology with the “Millenium Project.” One man is depicted playing the popular video nuclear war game, Missile Command. The disillusioned hero decides to carry on, spreading his network of post offices. Because this novel is almost unique in stressing the importance of community and interdependence, it is disappointing that the ultimate forces for good are well-armed feminist soldiers who try to impose peace on the land. EMP is mentioned in passing. Made into a film 1997.

Brinkley, William. The Last Ship. New York: Viking, 1988.After a devastating nuclear war the Earth seems almost entirely depopulated except for the crews of an American destroyer and a soviet submarine. Much of this bulky tome is given over to circuitous ponderings on the question of how to share the handful of women aboard the latter and continue the human race on an idyllic South Pacific island. In the end the women decide to mate systematically with all the men in turn to enhance conception and genetic variability; but the captain opts for monogamy. EMP and a modified form of nuclear winter are dealt with. Although the novel contains passages graphically describing the ravages of radiation sickness, its science is shabby. Although the author, who also wrote Don’t Go Near the Water, is obviously earnest in warning of the danger of nuclear war; most of the novel is an absurdly naive portrait of the unique virtues of the Navy, depicted in such a way as it make it seem a unique environment for producing worthy survivors of the holocaust.

Brinton, Henry. Purple-6 . London: Hutchinson, 1962. London: Arrow, 1963. New York: Walker, 1962. New York: Avon, 1963.When an off-course rocket headed for Mars from the Soviet Union crashes in Britain, it sets off a red alert and brings the world to the brink of war. Examination of the vehicle shows that the Russians have stolen from the British the plans for a secret missile guidance system. The rest of the novel consists of the search for the spy and of the struggles of the protagonist who is caught between his wife, who disapproves of his work, and his government employers, who disapprove of his wife. Criticism of the cold war is sometimes satirized, sometimes seems to be presented seriously. At the novel’s end, a second alert is accompanied by what is probably the explosion of an atomic bomb. The war has begun. Much more thoughtful and sensitive than most atomic spy stories. Compare with John Brunner, The Brink (1959).

Brodie, Howard. “Moscow Sketchbook.” See under Collier’s .

Brosnan, John. The Sky Lords. London: Gollancz, 1986. New York: St. Martin’s, 1991.

Brown, Fredric. “Letter to a Phoenix” ( Astounding , August 1949). In Angels and Spaceships . New York: Dutton, 1954. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1954. London: Gollancz, 1955. Retitled Star Shine. New York: Bantam, 1956. London: FSB, 1962. Also in Robert Bloch, ed. The Best of Fredric Brown . Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976. New York: Ballantine, 1977. Also in Martin H. Greenberg, ed. Journey to Infinity . New York: Gnome, 1951. Also in Edmund Crispin. Best SF, Six . London: Faber, 1966. Anthony Lewis, ed. The Best of Astounding . New York: Baronet,1978. Also in Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Joseph D. Olander, eds. Space Mail . New York: Fawcett, 1980. Space Mail was incorporated into Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander, eds. Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Treasury . New York: Bonanza, 1980.The combination of a rare disease and exposure to intense radiation in the first great atomic war (which occurred less than twenty years after the discovery of the A-bomb and killed off from one-fifth to one-fourth of the world’s population) has mysteriously slowed the aging process in the narrator, so that he ages only one day every forty-five years. This happy accident has enabled him to witness 180,000 years of human history, including seven atomic wars, and to announce confidently that, no matter how many the human race nearly destroys itself, it will revive: it is immortal. Indeed, this unique capacity for self-immolation born of madness makes the human race, scattered over a thousand planets, the only race in the universe which will survive. No attempt is made to explain this extraordinary proposition.

Brown, William M. The Nuclear Crisis of 1979 . Washington, D.C.: Defense Civil Preparedness Agency, 1975.Projection of a fictional nuclear war written under contract to the government office responsible for civil defense. Using one of Herman Kahn’s fantastically optimistic, slowly escalating scenarios, Brown argues for the effectiveness of the agency’s Crisis Relocation Plan for the evacuation of cities. In the midst of a Middle Eastern crisis, the Russians cut off Berlin and a war breaks out in Germany. The West uses tactical nuclear weapons first. The Russians wait a day, then retaliate with ballistic missiles. Another twenty-four hours pass before NATO attacks the USSR with the same; the U.S. then issues an ultimatum: “Surrender or suffer an all-out strategic bombing.” The scenario then splits in two: according to one scheme the Soviets surrender; according to the other they hit the U.S. with a full-scale attack. As the crisis builds over the weeks, the public becomes aware of the dreadful inadequacy of American civil defense caused by decades of stinginess. A few people demonstrate against war, but are supported by less than five percent of the population. Despite an almost entire lack of preparation, a marvelous spirit of cooperation emerges, with people cheerfully lending their surplus cars to strangers to aid in the evacuation, businessmen gladly sacrificing profit, bureaucrats miraculously performing with unwonted dispatch. Brown seems to think that the major obstacle to an effective civil defense is greed, since much of this cooperative spirit is elicited by government guarantees of reimbursement after the crisis. The emphasis of his plan is-on decentralized control, recognizing that the national government may well not be able to function for as long as a year. His emphasis on local decision-making also seems to stem from a states’-rights bent. He does note that even an evacuation which proves unnecessary will prove immensely disruptive. An estimated twenty-five million are killed in the war scenario; but evacuation has saved the lives of one hundred million. He makes mild attempts at realism–“Whether a massive relocation ends in peace or war, the aftermath is apt to be unpleasant”–but this is essentially a fantasy tailored to prove the feasibility of the government’s relocation scheme; he never considers that the sort of war he depicts is extremely unlikely.

Browne, Maurice, and Robert Nichols. See Nichols.

Brunner, John [Killian Houston]. The Day of the Star Cities . New York: Ace, 1965.All fissionable material has exploded simultaneously shortly before aliens arrive in their beautiful, mysterious crystal cities. The explosion sets off panic, plague, a war in Europe, and another between China and Russia. Troops sent against the aliens go mad and attack their own territory. Some people gain special powers though contact with the aliens and are known as “weirdos.” Others, called “relidges,” worship them. While the aliens dwell ~ in their mysterious cities, the tattered remnants of humanity live in squalor, 38 frequently being compared to rats. It is implied that those with aggressive attitudes become self-destructive; but that more peaceful attitudes can result from contact with the invaders. Savvy Americans learn how to penetrate the cities, discovering that they are gateways to other worlds. The ending is upbeat. The book refers briefly to the Vietnam War. See Brunner, “One Writer and the Next War,” Science Fiction Review 11 (1982): 22- 23.

Brunner, John. Talion. In Far Frontiers 2 (Spring 1985). New York: Baen, 1985.A nuclear winter in Britain has left only 285,000 people alive. Government officials fly to an outlying village of survivors who sheltered in a coal mine. The villagers question the men they blame for the war, then kill them.

Brust, Steven. Cowboy Feng’s Space Bar and Grille. New York: Ace, 1990.A fanciful adventure story in which a group of folk musicians travel through time and space to battle a conspiratorial group bent on exterminating most of the human race through nuclear war in order to protect themselves from a common AIDS-like disease. Although the conspirators are defeated, Earth is destroyed, and humanity survives only on other planets. Fairly thoughtful and well-written for its type.

Bryant, Edward. The Baku . Burton, Minn.: Subterranean Press, 2001.The title story in this volume concerns a member of the crew who dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, and who is now an executive in a southern Californai power firm building a nuclear plant. His daughter’s boyfriend, whose father died in a nuclear reactor disaster, leads protesters against him. He is haunted by nightmares and visions in which a young Asian girl hit by the Nagasaki bombing offers him a protective amulet called a “Baku” to swallow up his dreams. Following the story is a television script version of the same plot which Bryant wrote for possible production by the revived version of The Twilight Zone on CBS in the 1980s. Also reprinted in this volume are Bryant’s other nuclear stories: “The Hibakusha Gallery” and “Jody After the War” (see below).

___. “The Hibakusha Gallery” ( Penthouse , June 1977). In Particle Theory . New York: Timescape, 1981.In a souvenir shop featuring grotesque images of the atomic bombing of Japan, one can have one’s picture taken posing as one of the victims. ___. “Jody After the War.” In Damon Knight, ed. Orbit 10 . New York: Putnam, 1971. New York: Berkley, 1972. Also in Among the Dead, and Other Events Leading Up to the Apocalypse . New York: Macmillan, 1973. Also in Walter M. Miller, Jr. and Martin H. Greenberg, eds. Beyond Armageddon: Twenty-one Sermons to the Dead . New York: Donald I. Fine, 1985.A young woman refuses to consider sex, fearing marriage because of the consequences of a recent nuclear war caused when “the Chinese suicided their psychotic society in the seventies, and destroyed most of urban America in the process.”

Buchard, Robert. Thirty Seconds Over New York . Originally Trente secondes sur New York . Paris: A. Michel, 1969. Trans. June P. Wilson and Walter B. Michaels. London: Collins, 1970. New York: Morrow, 1970.The pyromanic who has become head of the Chinese Secret Police hatches a scheme to substitute a Russian plane loaded with an atomic bomb for a French airliner flying to New York. The plot is detected too late, and the city is destroyed. On the hotline with the Russian premier, the American president informs him of the explosion, refusing to believe that the USSR is not involved. “‘That may be,’ the President said with a menacing voice. ‘But there isn’t a single American whotll believe it.’ ” Adds Buchard, “Was that the way it began . . ?” End of novel. The title is obviously inspired by the title of Ted W. Lawson’s 1943 account of the first American bombing strike at Japan, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (made into a notable film in 1944).

Butler, Octavia. Adulthood Rites. New York: Warner, 1988. New York: Questar, 1989. London: Gollancz, 1988.Second volume in the Xenogenesis series. Sequel to Dawn. Set on the restored Earth. The genetically altered son of the protagonist of Dawn struggles with the prejudices of ordinary humans who want to continue their kind without mating with the aliens. He convinces the latter to let these resisters emigrate to Mars and establish an human colony there. Mentions the destruction of the ozone layer.

___. Dawn. New York: Warner, 1987. New York?: Questar, 1988.First volume in the Xenogenesis series. Sequel: Adulthood Rites. Long after a nuclear war and ensuing nuclear winter have destroyed almost all life on Earth, benign aliens capture a few surviving humans and keep them in suspended animation until they can restore the planet to habitability. They wish to interbreed with the humans and remold them as noncombatative superhumans. However, the revived specimines tend to exhibit all the destructive instincts which caused the holocaust in the first place, and resist the aliens plans. The vividly depicted heroine, who sympathises with the project, must struggle with her revulsions and fears. A thoughtful and original exploration of the question whether it is possible to create a peaceful human race which will retain its humanity. The black author also intelligently explores xenophobia as a metaphor for racism. Jim Miller: “Post-Apocalyptic Hoping: Octavia Butler’s Dystopian/Utopian Vision,” Science-Fiction Studies, 25 (1998): 336-360 (covers all three volumes in the trilogy).

___. Imago. New York: Warner, 1989. London: Gollancz, 1989. Third volume in the Xenogenesis series. Sequel to Adulthood Rites. The protagonist of Adulthood Rites matures, and converts his human enemies to more peaceful ways. Fertile human survivors are being shipped off to earth as the new breed of human/alien beings prepares to colonize Earth.

___. Xenogenesis. New York: Science Fiction Book Club, 1989.Omnibus edition of the Xenogenesis series, consisting of Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago.

Bryant, Peter. See George, Peter.

Buck, Pearl S[ydenstricker]. Command the Morning . New York: John Day, 1959. New York: Pocket Books, 1960. London: Pan, 1963.A fictionalized account of the Manhattan Project. The protagonist is a nuclear scientist torn between his abhorrence of the bomb and his hatred of the Japanese (he makes crucial decisions to proceed in response to Pearl Harbor and the Bataan Death March). A good account of the processes that went into the design, construction and use of the first atomic bombs, with a fairly lucid presentation of technical details. Many of the names of the chief participants are left unaltered, but for some reason Leo Szilard becomes Szigny and a character named Burton Hall is given the role of Robert Oppenheimer insofar as he is the object of scrutiny by the anti-Communist Dies Committee. Love interest is added as the protagonist must decide between his loving wife who is not cleared for classified information and the beautiful young physicist with whom he works and with whom he can share his scientific interests. After much anguish but no adultery, the marital bond is preserved. His decision is made somewhat easier by the fact that both women are extraordinarily beautiful. Although Hiroshima is depicted as a horror, the book ends on an upbeat note, with the new generation of scientists aiming for the stars. A subplot involves the wife’s infatuation with a British scientist who turns out to be a spy for the Russians. The love plot is obviously candy coating for an otherwise fairly straightforward account of the creation of the nuclear bomb. The title comes from Job 38:12.

Budrys, Algis. See Janvier, Ivan.

Bulmer, Kenneth. The Doomsday Men . New York: Modern Library, 1968.Fear of nuclear attack has led cities to be enclosed in impenetrable protective domes, while most people have fled to the now idyllic countryside. The cities decay in their domes, unaware that peace has spread across the planet, until a clandestine group uses a thermonuclear bomb to destroy the mechanism creating the domes. Question: why wasn’t this mechanism covered by such a dome? Basically a detective story, this bears many resemblances to Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep .

Bunch, David R. Moderan . New York: Avon, 1971.Forty-six short sketches originally published in various magazines from 1959 to 1970. After a five-year nuclear war has devastated the Earth, little of nature is left. Humans remake themselves as largely artificial creatures whose main occupation is relentless mechanized warfare. A remarkable bitter satire, reminiscent in some ways of the robot stories of Stanislaw Lem. Strikingly poetic and original style, although somewhat disjointed and repetitious.

Burdick, Eugene, and Harvey Wheeler. Fail-Safe ( Saturday Evening Post , senalized in three episodes beginning October 13, 1962). New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962. New York: Dell, 1963. London: Hutchinson, 1963. London: Pan, 1965. Abridged version, ed. Stephen M. Joseph. New York: Noble & Noble, 1967.Tautly-paced best-selling thriller about an accidental first strike on Moscow which the president allows to be balanced by the destruction of New York City. The Russians are depicted as rational and as having their own hawks and doves. This is clearly a post-cold war novel. According to Michael G. Wollscheidt in Nuclear War Films , ed. Jack G. Shaheen (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1978), p. 70, Peter Bryant sued Burdick and Wheeler, accusing them of having plagiarized his Red Alert . Fail-Safe was made into a Columbia film in 1963. [27-28, 33]

Burger, Neal R., and George E. Simpson. See Simpson.

Burroughs, Edgar Rice. A Princess of Mars . (Originally as “Under the Moons of Mars,” under the pseudonym Norman Bean. All-Story, February, March, April, May, June, July, 1912. Rpt. New York Evening World January 3-8, 1916. Rpt. as Carter of the Red Planet . Modern Mechanics and Invention , April, May, June, July, 1929.) Chicago: McClurg, 1917. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1917. Tarzana, Calif.: E. R. Burroughs, 1939. New York: Ballantine, 1963. New York: Pratt AdLib, 1965. London: Methuen, 1919. London: Four Square Books, 1961. London: Dragon, 1968. Also in A Princess of Mars & A Fighting Man of Mars: Two Martian Novels . New York: Dover, 1964. Also in The Martian Tales, vol 1 . New York: Ballantine, 1982. Cf. version “retold by A. M. Hadfield.” London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1962.The first of the stories set on Mars by the creator of Tarzan. Its only relevance to our theme is a mention of radium bullets being used as weapons.

Buttrey, Douglas Norton. See Barr, Densil N.

Byrne, Johnny. “Yesterday’s Gardens” ( Science Fantasy , November 1965). In ludith Merril, ed. Ilth Annual Edition: The Year’s Best S-F. New York: Delacorte, 1966. New York: Dell, 1967.A little girl can’t understand why she is no longer allowed to play in the garden–now yellow, brown, and radioactive. All the birds and butterflies are gone. She recalls seeing her parents destroyed when the bomb went off and escapes into fantasy games.

Caidin, Martin. Almost Midnight . New York: Morrow, 1971.A gang of extortionists hijacks five atomic bombs and sets one off near San Bernardino in California as a demonstration. They demand one hundred million dollars ransom. The members of the gang are tracked down and captured or killed. The author has written over seventy books, mostly popular thrillers, several dealing with themes related to nuclear war. A note in this volume says: “From 1950 to 1954 Martin Caidin served as a nuclear warfare specialist for the state of New York. He analyzed the effects of nuclear and other weapons on potential targets in the United States.”

___. The Long Night . New York: Dodd, Mead, 1956.A surprise strike hits over a hundred American cities. In the fictional city of Harrington, civil defense springs into action and succeeds in mitigating some of the effects of the disaster. The beginning describes the experiences of several individual citizens as they are hit by the bomb. The novel goes into great detail about the ensuing firestorm, which suffocates and then roasts most of those who have taken refuge in urban fallout shelters. A mob, panicked by fears that sick children may be contaminated with radioactivity, blocks a street along which an emergency vehicle bringing medical supplies is trying to travel. The policeman acting as guard remembers his revulsion at having to kill in Korea, but steels his will and kills two of the mob to clear the way. One subplot concerns a selfish young man who, obsessed with searching for his fiancee, has to be forced into relief work. Caidin denounces selfishness generally. Although the depiction of the effects of the bomb is powerful and effective if artless, the city recovers quickly, with water and power being soon restored. Comparisons are made with the resilience of Coventry and Hamburg after World War II. Over fourteen million Americans have died, but the last line affirms human resilience: “. . . this city lived.” Compare with Philip Wylie’s Tomorrow! and Dean Ing’s Pulling Through .

___. The Mendelov Conspiracy . New York: Meredith, 1969. London: W. H. Allen, 1971. Rpt. as Encounter Three . New York: Pinnacle, 1978.

Caidin, Martin. Zoboa. New York: Baen, 1988. A Muslim terrorist group hijacks four nuclear bombs. Three are recovered, but the fourth is set to go off in a blimp tethered at Cape Canaveral during a crucial Russian-American shuttle launch. A heroic pilot severs the cable with his plane so that the bomb bounds three miles in the air before it explodes, harmlessly. Reflects growing U.S. USSR cooperation by portraying the CIA and KGB working hand in hand.A reporter becomes entangled in a conspiracy to force nuclear disarmament. Discs resembling the flying saucers of popular mythology are constructed and equipped with beams which detonate selected bombs and nuclear power plants all over the world, creating a public demand for their destruction. Afler millions have died in a series of explosions, Russia and the U.S. agree to disarm. When China is reluctant, they jointly threaten invasion.

Calisher, Hortense. “In the Absence of Angels” (originally in a slightly different form in The New Yorker , April 21, 1951). In The Absence of Angels . Boston: Little, Brown, 1951. London: Heinemann, 1953. Also in The Collected Stories of Hortense Calisher . New York: Arbor House, 1975.In the conquered U.S., a rebellious poet arrested for her writings looks back over her life, trying to remember all she can about a childhood friend who is now to be her prosecutor. The only mention of nuclear weapons is this unscientific phrase: “using a missile whose rhythm they had learned from us, they cracked the city to the reactive dirt from which it had sprung.” This may have been meant to suggest espionage such as was alleged in the Rosenberg case, although that is not clear here.

Campbell, John W[ood], Jr. “Cloak of Aesir” ( Astounding , March 1939). In Cloak of Aesir . Chicago: Shasta, 1952. Also in Who Goes There? And Other Stories . New York: Dell, 1955. Also in Lester del Rey, ed. The Best of John W. Campbell . Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976. New York: Ballantine, 1976.The Sarn invaded Earth and conquered humanity in 1977 with atomic blast weapons. It is also mentioned that atomic flames, used mostly for light, can be used to destroy buildings. Four thousand years later, a brilliant scientist leads a successful rebellion using supertechnology with which the Sarn cannot cope.

___. “Forgetfulness” (as “Don A. Stuart,” Astounding , June 1937). In Cloak of Aesir . Chicago: Shasta, 1952. Also in Lester del Rey, ed., The Best of John W. Campbell . Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976. New York: Ballantine, 1976.The people of Rhth (Earth?) brought civilization to the sister world of Pareeth, which developed technology four times and each time blasted itself back to barbarism through atomic power. Atomic engines are used as weapons.

___. “Frictional Losses” (as “Don A. Stuart,” Astounding , July 1936). In Who Goes There? Seven Tales of Science Fiction . Chicago: Shasta, 1948.Scientists search in the ruins of their civilization for technology to combat the vile Granthee who have almost exterminated humanity with atomic bombs and fever rays. Their weapons have “loosened” the islands of Japan so that they have sunk into the deep entirely. Humans manage to invent the bomb and use it against the Granthee, but at appalling cost: only two million people survive. A scientist manages to invent a new disintegrator ray which works by eliminating the friction which holds things together. With this new device, Earth will prevail over the second wave of Granthee.

___. “The Last Evolution” ( Amazing , August, 1932). In Alden H. Norton, ed. Award Science Fiction Reader . New York: Award Books, 1966. Also in Lester del Rey, ed. The Best of John W. Campbell . Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976. New York: Ballantine, 1976. Also in Arthur Liebman, ed. Science Fiction: The Best of Yesterday . New York: Richards Rosen, 1980. Also in Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh, eds. Space Mail, Vol. 2 . New York: Fawcett, 1982.In 2538, a human culture dominated by machinery uses atomic torpedoes against invading aliens, to little avail. The enemy’s mysterious ray weapons must be combatted by a new “ultimate energy” weapon. Humanity will be wiped out in the process, but its machines will survive, proving to be the last stage in human evolution.

___. “Rebellion” (as Don A. Stuart, Astounding , August 1935). In Cloak of Aesir . Chicago: Shasta, 1952. Also in Lester del Rey, ed. The Best of John W. Campbell . Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976. New York: Ballantine, 1976.Because machines supply all their wants, humans have declined into barbarism. The invading Tharoo breed them as servants, but make the mistake of allowing some of them to be scientists, who learn how to use the atomic technology of their masters in miniaturized form as effective weapons to gain their freedom.

___. “Uncertainty.” Amazing , October, November 1936.An invading alien race overwhelms Earth’s proton guns with their neutron weapons until atomic power is achieved, making possible a new ray weapon.

___. “When the Atoms Failed.” Amazing , January 1930.Invading Martians who atom-bomb San Francisco are battled with “matter energy,” described as the power of the sun. A death ray from a single defending Earth ship defeats twenty Martian ships, exploding its cargo of atomic bombs. The ship is then used by the human victors to impose universal disarmament on Earth.

Canham, Erwin. “Start the Presses!” See under Collier’s .

Capek, Karel. The Absolute at Large . Originally Tovarna na absolutno , 1922. Trans. from the Czech, anon. New York: Macmillan, 1927. London: Allen & Unwin, 1944. Abridged version in Damon Knight, ed. A Century of Great Short Science Fiction Novels . New York: Delacorte, 1964. New York: Dell, 1965. London: Gollancz, 1965. London: Mayflower, 1968.Religious fanaticism surrounding the invention of a “Karburator” which liberates energy from matter creates a devastating world war which all but destroys civilization. The new form of energy, however, is not itself used as a weapon.

___. Krakatit: An Atomic Fantasy . Prague: Aventinium, 1924. Trans. Lawrence Hyde. London: Bles, 1925. London: Allen & Unwin, 1948. New York: Macmillan, 1925. New York: Arts, Inc., 1951. New York: Arno, 1975.An eccentric scientist succeeds in disintegrating the atom, creating a powerful weapon which he struggles to keep from falling into the hands of a group of conspirators aiming at world rule. The princess who loves him helps him escape, but he is captured by a dangerous leftist revolutionary group. Finally all Krakatit is destroyed, the scientist forgets how to make it, and the world is spared.

Cantor, Jay. Krazy Kat: A Novel in Five Panels. New York: Knopf, 1987. New York: Science Fiction Book Club, 1988. New York: Collier, 1989. The characters from George Herriman’s famous comic strip are put through a series of postmodernist adventures relating to various aspects of contemporary society, including the atomic bomb. In the strip, Ignatz Mouse constantly expressed his animosity toward Krazy Kat by flinging bricks at her head, which she foolishly interpreted as tokens of his affection. In the novel Ignatz brings Krazy to witness the Trinity test, which he hopes will act as the ultimate brick, shocking her into reality. He later forges a series of letters to make her believe that Robert Oppenheimer is fascinated by her. Throughout the rest of the novel Krazy continues to be haunted by thoughts of the atomic bomb, of Hiroshima, and of Oppenheimer. The main theme of this striking work is not, however, nuclear war, but the process through which the cartoon characters seek roundness and in the process lose their innocence.

Card, Orson Scott. The Abyss. New York: Pocket Books, 1989. A novel based on the James Cameron sceenplay for the highly impressive film of the same name. Card, in an afterword, refuses to label his book a novelization; and he does add three background chapters to the story as presented in the film and fleshes out the motives and general psychology of the main human characters and the aliens. An intelligent deep-sea-dwelling creature accidentally blunders into a nuclear submarine, causing its destruction. A deep-sea oil-drilling crew is sent to help a Navy SEAL team investigate the accident, ostensibly to rescue any survivors, but actually to prevent the sub and its weapons from falling into Soviet hands. The rabid SEAL commander must be prevented by the crew members from causing a nuclear war out of sheer paranoia. In a striking departure from the film as released, Card depicts the aliens as threatening all the coastlines of the world with huge tsunamis unless they agree to universal nuclear disarmament. Card at times seems to portray the military characters more sympathetically than does the film; but in the end the message is strongly antimilitary in both. Also striking are the sex-role reversals worked out in the plot, and the strong affirmation of love and marriage made by both the film and novel.

___. “Deep Breathing Exercises” ( Omni , July 1979). In Unaccompanied Sonata and Other Stories . New York: Dial, 1981. Also in Ben Boom, ed. The Best of Omni Science Fiction , No. 4. New York: Omni, 1982.A man develops a mysterious psychic ability: he notices that when people breathe in unison they are about to die. Just before missiles strike Denver he discovers himself breathing in unison with everyone else in the city. Despite its bizarre premise, this is a powerfully effective story.

___. The Memory of Earth (Homecoming, Volume 1). New York: TOR, 1992.A group of exiles has abandoned an Earth destroyed by nuclear war and settled the planet of Harmony. Their descendants are ruled by a computer the original exiles built which is called the “Oversoul” and which has for forty million years telepathically prevented the rebirth of technology which could lead to renewed war, but the Oversoul is breaking down. First in the “Homecoming” series, whose other volumes are The Call of Earth (1994), The Ships of Earth (1995), Earthfall (1996) and Earthborn (1996), all published by TOR.

Carlson, William K. Sunrise West . Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981.A neobarbarian novel about the tribulations of a young woman in a violent communal culture. The only hint indicating that a nuclear war might have been the vague holocuast which destroyed civilization is the presence of numerous intelligent mutated animals. Reference is made to the “chineys” who once conquered North America and have now vanished.

Carr, Robert Spencer. “Mutation.” In Beyond Infinity . Reading, Pa.: Fantasy Press, 1951. New York: Dell, 1954.After a nuclear and bacteriological holocaust has killed most of the human race, a man named Adam and his pregnant wife Mary struggle for survival, threatened by their degenerate son, Kane. The latter is providentially killed by a marauder and a Christlike child is born, signalling the emergence of a new and happier race of godlike beings who will inherit the Earth.

Carr, Terry. “Ozymandius.” In Harlan Ellison, ed. Again, Dangerous Visions, Vol. II . Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972. New York: Signet, 1973. Also in Terry Carr. The Light at the End of the Universe . New York: Pyramid, 1976.In a post-nuclear holocaust world, scavengers rob cryogenic vaults for food and loot.

Carter, Angela. Heroes and Villains . London: Heinemann, 1969. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981.The daughter of a learned man of the caste known as “professors” flees with a barbarian lad after her father is killed by the boy’s tribe; she is raped and forced to marry him. She develops an erotic obsession with him, even though she learns he had been responsible years before for the death of her brother. This is a tale of brutal sadism, though beautifully written. The novel contains no direct references to nuclear weapons, but the existence of mutated wild animals indicates their use.

Carter, Paul. “The Last Objective” ( Astounding , August 1946). In Groff Conklin, ed. A Treasury of Science Fiction . New York: Crown, 1948 (omitted from the 1957 Berkley paperback edition). Also in Brian Aldiss and Harry Harrison, eds. Decade of the 1940s . London: Macmillan, 1975. Also in Isaac Asimov, ed. The Great Science Fiction Stories: 8 (1946) . New York: DAW, 1982.For a generation, a nuclear war has raged on the surface while the population lives underground. Subterranean battle cruisers bore through the Earth. On one of these, two elderly officers choose to be blown up with the atomic bomb their ship carries when it must be destroyed: they have realized the futility of the war. The Asian enemy, evidently feeling similarly, has commined mass suicide by releasing a biological weapon which will destroy all life on Earth–the ultimate form of sepukku .

Cartmill, Cleve. “Deadline” ( Astounding , March 1944). In Groff Conklin, ed. The Best of Science Fiction . New York: Crown, 1946. New York: Bonanza, 1963. Rpt. as The Golden Age of Science Fiction . New York: Bonanza, 1980. Also in Frederik Pohl, Martin H. Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander, eds. Science Fiction of the 40’s . New York: Avon, 1978. Also in Isaac Asimov, ed. The Great Science Fiction Stories: 6 (1944) . New York: DAW, 1981.A story notable because its detailed description of a U-235 fission bomb prompted the FBI to suspect a security leak from the Manhattan Project. In this amateurish thriller set on another world, alien names are simple reversals of ordinary contemporary names (the war takes place between the Sixa and the Seilla, for instance). The mad Dr. Sitruc must be prevented from exploding an atomic bomb, the testing of which will destroy the world in a vast chain reaction, due to the immense heat it will generate. The scientist is foiled by an agent who talks his way into his laboratories, steals the weapon, and disassembles it. The world is safe because Dr. Sitruc will not be able to assemble another bomb before the war ends. A sample passage will illustrate the sort of thing which worried government officials:

“Now U-235 can raise the temperature of local matter to where it will, uh, ‘burn’, and give off energy. So let’s say we set off a little pinch of U-235. Surrounding matter also explodes, as it is raised to an almost inconceivable temperature. It cools rapidly; within perhaps onehundred-millionth of a second it is down below the point of ignition. Then maybe a full millionth of a second passes before it’s down to one million degrees hot, and a minute or so may elapse before it is visible in the normal sense. Now that visible radiation will represent no more than one-hundred-thousandth of the total radiation at one million degrees– but even so, it would be several hundred times more brilliant than the sun.” . . . “Now that radiation pressure is the stuff that’s potent. The sheer momentum, physical pressure of light from the stuff at one million degrees, would amount to tons and tons and tons of pressure. It would blow down buildings like a titanic wind if it weren’t for the fact that absorption of such appalling energy would volatilize the buildings before they could move out of the way.”

___ . “With Flaming Swords” ( Astounding , September 1942). In Groff Conklin, ed. A Treasury of Science Fiction . New York: Crown, 1948.The story of the overthrow of the glowing mutant “Saints” who rule humanity. They are products of the firing of an L-ray gun centuries earlier, which affected the germ plasm. An atomic blast waste disposal chute is mentioned. Published in the same issue of Astounding as another pre-1945 atomic disaster tale, Lester del Rey’s Nerves.

Cartur, Peter. “Target.” In Astounding , October 1947.Aliens land on the moon just in time to see it hit by an atomic bomb. They decide they are being attacked and summon aid to destroy the Earth.

Caseleyr, Camille Auguste. See Danvers, Jack.

Casewit, Curtis W. The Peacemakers . New York: Avalon, 1960. New York: Macfadden, 1968.After a nuclear war results in epidemics which have killed off most of the human race, a stupid military dictatorship established on Rockland Island is determined to wipe out its rival, Sunland. The hero is a scientist forced to research biochemical weapons (a parallel is drawn with Soviet research). Instead, he decides to synthesize the antiwar drug sympathone and spray it on dictator General Puckett (compare Theodora DuBois, Solution T-25 ). Puckett is finally killed by his own men because he has accidentally donned an enemy uniform. An interesting combination of sympathy for both religion and science. A bizarre, extreme case of trying to vindicate science in the post-nuclear war world, although there is a warning near the end that the drug may not be a total solution. Puckett’s daughter falls in love with the hero.

Castle, Mort. “And of Gideon.” In John Maclay, ed. Nukes: Four Horror Writers on the Ultimate Horror. Baltimore: Maclay, 1986. Repr. in Mark Bernal & Gary Fincke, eds.: Horror: The Illustrated Book of Fears. Blue Island, Ill.: Northstar Publishing, 1989. Also in Nations of the Living, Nations of the Dead. Canton: Ohio: Prime Books, 2002.A man driven mad by his past as an abused child and as a torturer in South Vietnam becomes a wandering serial murderer who sees himself as putting sufferers out of their misery. After being captured and sentenced to death, he becomes highly educated and religious as he awaits execution. When a nuclear war breaks out, the prisoners are freed and the protagonist has a field day killing victims of the bombs in the aftermath. He thanks God for creating a world ideally suited to him.

Chandler, A. Bertram. “False Dawn” ( Astounding , October 1946). In Martin H. Greenberg, ed. Journey to Infinity . New York: Gnome, 1951.A prehistoric civilization witnesses the death of the moon through a nuclear war. A fleeing rocket lands on the Earth, setting off a radioactive volcanic chain reaction which plunges the world back into barbarism. A young leader named Carran emerges. The author asks: “Were Carran and his kind, then, the true dawn? Or would they play out, here on Earth, the tragic drama that had made the Moon a scarred and pitted horror–unleash powers that would send the world reeling forever through time and space, a seared and sterile mausoleum of the hopes and fears of the ages.”

Charnas, Suzy McKee. Motherlines . New York: Putnam, 1978. New York: Berkley, 1979. London: Coronet, 1981. Sequel to Walk to the End of the World. Follows the adventures of fem Alldera among rival female groups living in the desert: Free Fems and Riding Women. Each has its good and bad points. The latter have achieved parthenogenesis stimulated by mating with stallions. Although this is a very interesting novel for its treatment of feminist issues, it contains practically nothing about nuclear war. Another sequel is clearly implied. See Ian Boyd, “Algol Interview: Suzy McKee Charnas,” Algol 16 (Winter 1979): 21-25, and Suzy McKee Charnas, “A Woman Appeared,” in Marlene S. Barr, ed., Future Females (Bowling Green, Ohio: Popular Press, 1981): 103-8. [64]

___. Walk to the End of the World. New York: Ballantine, 1974. London: Coronet, 1981. Sequel: Motherlines.An incredibly savage male-dominant society enslaves women, blamed for the catastrophe called “The Wasting.” Some of these ancient criminals are referred to as “bra-burners,” the men supposing the bra was a sort of weapon. Women are referred to as “unmen” and blamed for the period after The Wasting called “The Dirties.” The human race survived The Wasting in shelters. Although mutants are mentioned in passing and it seems likely that The Wasting was a nuclear war, that fact is never specifically mentioned. A rebellious fem named Alldera escapes from the hellish misogynistic city. On her trek she encounters experiments in breeding fems as pack animals and for food, at Troi (Detroit?). Alldera’s further adventures are narrated in the sequel.

Chase, Stuart. “Out of the Rubble–A New Russia.” See under Collier’s.

Cherryh, C.J. “Pots.” In Janet Morris, ed. Afterwar. New York: Baen, 1985. An interstellar civilization has been led to Earth by the discovery in space of the Voyager space probe. A cult of veneration has developed around the civilization which sent the probe. Unfortunately, the alien archaeologists discover that humanity destroyed itself in a nuclear winter 8.75 million years earlier. A conspiracy is hatched to cover up the truth and maintain the myth of Earth’s admirable past.

Chevalier, Haakon [Maurice]. The Man Who Would Be God. New York: Putnam, 1959.Chevalier was the friend of Robert Oppenheimer who reported to his wife the fact that the Russians were interested in obtaining information about the Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer’s bizarre handling of this incident during his security investigation, combined with the anti-Communist hysteria of the postwar era, was later to lead to public disgrace for both of them. In this fictionalized version of the case, Chevalier defends himself against the accusation of espionage, creating as his own persona an idealistic FBI informer who is mistakenly identified as a spy. Chevalier paints a mixed picture of his “father of the A-bomb,” noting his charisma without depicting it and shamelessly describing his sordid sex life. No insights into Oppenheimer’s motives are provided. Chapter 28 depicts the protagonist’s feelings when the bomb (here called “the bolt”) is dropped on Hiroshima. At that moment, he sets a moth free to fly out his window. The final line in the book reads, “San Francisco, 1948-Paris, 1958,” which is perhaps supposed to establish that Chevalier began his book long before Oppenheimer’s security problems had become public knowledge. Christopher, John [pseud. of Christopher Samuel Youd]. Death of Grass. London: Michael Joseph, 1956. London: Sidgwick & amp;Jackson, 1957. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1958. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1957. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1958. New York: Pocket Books, 1958. New York: Avon, 1967. As No Blade of Grass , serialized in Saturday Evening Post , April 27, 1957-June 8, 1957.When a mutated virus which kills all grasses erupts–like flu–from China, the world is threatened with starvation. A mad British leader orders H-bomb strikes against London and other major English cities to reduce the population by two-thirds. The story depicts a group of ordinary Londoners killing and looting its way across the landscape to rural sanctuary. Although the evil leader is overthrown, it is never made completely clear whether some bombs were actually dropped (though explosions are heard in the distance). In this relentlessly savage survivalist fantasy, it is impossible to distinguish villains from heroes. At the end the hardy survivors look forward to rebuilding civilization–somehow or other. Could be read as a cold war parable of the necessity for ruthlessness in the battle for national survival.

___. “Two.” Esquire , May 1952.The last man surviving in a world demolished by a nuclear war wanders among lush, flourishing plant life and finally discovers a woman sleeping under a tree. “I am Adam,” he says. “Welcome, Eve.”

CIarke, Arthur C. “If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth” ( Future Combined with Science Fiction Stories , September 1951). In Expedition to Earth. New York: 1953. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1954. London: Corgi, 1959. Also in Across the Sea of Stars. New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World, 1959. Also in The Nine Billion Names of God . New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World, 1967. Also in An Arthur C. Clarke Omnibus. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1965. Also in Of Time and Stars. London: Gollancz, 1972. Also in Thomas D. Clareson, ed. A Spectrum of Worlds. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972. Also in Brian Aldiss, ed. Evil Earths. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1975. New York: Avon, 1979. Also in Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh, eds. After the End. Milwaukee: Raintree, 1981. Also in Walter M. Miller, Jr. and Martin H. Greenberg, eds. Beyond Armageddon: Twenty-one Sermons to the Dead. New York: Donald I. Fine, 1985.Children living underground on the moon are taken to gaze at the glowing radioactive Earth so that they may understand the goal of the colony: to return to Earth one day centuries later. Clarke is also the author of a nonfiction account of British work on nuclear fission 1939-1940, The Birth of the Bomb (1961).

___. “Loophole” ( Astounding , April 1946). In Expedition to Earth. New York: Ballantine, 1953. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1954. London: Corgi, 1959. Also in Groff Conklin, ed. A Treasury of Science Fiction . New York: Crown, 1948. New York: Berkley, 1957. Also in Damon Knight, ed. First Flight. New York: Lancer, 1963. Revised by Damon Knight, Martin H. Greenberg, and Joseph D. Olander, eds., as First Voyages. New York: Avon, 1981. Also in An Arthur C. Clarke Omnibus . London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1965. Also in Thomas D. Clareson, ed. A Spectrum of Worlds. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972. London: Corgi, 1959. Also in Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg & Charles G. Waugh, eds. Space Mail, Vol. 2. New York: Fawcett, 1982. Also in Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg, eds. The Great Science Fiction Stories: 8 (1946). New York: DAW, 1982. The Martians , alarmed by Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and ensuing space exploration attempts, ban further space travel by Earthlings. The latter agree, but master matter transmission instead and bomb Martian civilization to oblivion.

___. 2001: A Space Odyssey. New York: Signet, 1968. At the end of the novel the reborn space child explodes a mysterious orbiting nuclear weapon.

___ . 2010: Odyssey Two. New York: Ballatine, 1982. London: Granada, 1982. Chapter 30 contains a slightly more detailed account of the incident referred to above. It is never revealed who placed the weapon in orbit, or why.

Clarkson, Helen [maiden name of Helen Worrell Clarkson McCloy, who wrote mostly detective fiction as “Helen McCloy”]. The Last Day: A Novel of the Day After Tomorrow (Satellite Science Fiction, April 1958). New York: Dodd, 1959.An exceptionally intelligent account of a nuclear war from the fringes–a summer home on an island off the New England coast. Strong characters, good political analysis, and well-researched details of radiation effects. At the end the woman narrator is left alone on the island and seems unlikely to survive.

Clason, Clyde B. Ark of Venus . New York: Knopf, 1955.A juvenile adventure story of an expedition to Venus. One hundred and eighty years after the atomic wars, Eastern Europe and Russia have been “liberated,” the world has been divided into six superstates, and atomic weapons are banned (although nuclear power is still used). Religious fanatics oppose the seemingly doomed expeditions to Venus by equally religious but rational colonists. Consists largely of routine adventures with alien creatures in a hostile environment, with little reference to the earlier wars.

Cloete, Stuart. “The Blast” ( Collier’s , April 12, 19, 1947). In Groff Conklin, ed. Six Great Short Novels of Science Fiction . New York: Dell, 1954.One of the few survivors of the Great Disaster of October 5, 1947 tells, in a series of disjointed flashbacks, of the chaotic horror which engulfed New York City in the wake of an atomic attack which also destroyed most of the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, if not the Earth. Although the U.S. retaliates against the Russians, Nazi refugees in Latin America had actually launched the attack. Civilization proves fragile, for within an hour of the bombing, the city is plunged into a chaos of theft, rape, and murder. To protect his wife, the protagonist disguises her as a boy until starvation renders her safely unattractive. Many people commit suicide, others resort to infanticide or cannibalism. Angry farmers repel fleeing city-dwellers. The protagonist finds his metier in shooting people’s starving pets for half the meat, later turning to big game hunting as he pursues freed zoo animals and mutated creatures such as giant minks through the urban jungle, choked with flourishing plant life. Most people, including the narrator’s wife, die not of the immediate effects of the war, but of a mysterious disease seemingly induced by radiation and called the “Red Death,” which causes them to dance themselves to death. The narrator survives a rather comically described bout of this terpsichorean plague, indulges in drinking and collecting art, and finally joins a band of roving Indians and mates with their young white female interpreters, and rides off happily in the spring sunshine. Despite its fantastic elements, the story is actually rather thoughtful. Cloete seems concerned seriously to warn his contemporaries of the dangers of atomic warfare, depicted here in the form of small bombs smuggled into the country. He discusses the futility of the notion of atomic secrecy: “Among others, I wrote and talked of the dangers of our Anglo- American retention of the bomb secret, maintaining that manufacture should cease and control be given to the United Nations. I also said that our civilization, as we knew it, was finished; and that as others were writing and saying at the time the future presented only two alternatives: the liberation of man through atomic power or the destruction of our civilization, either by great nations in an undeclared war, which was what we feared, or by–and this was more or less in the realm of ‘astounding fiction’ stories–atomic bandits or nihilists.” Scientists are noted as being prominent in efforts to remove the bomb from military control. The narrator states that the human race has destroyed itself through its courage. Cowardice would have been preferable.

Coerr, Eleanor. Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes . Illus. Ronald Himler. New York: Putnam, 1977. New York: Dell, 1979.The lightly fictionalized story of a real twelve-year-old girl who died of leukemia caused by her exposure to the atomic bomb in Hiroshima when she was two. She attempted to fold one thousand origami paper cranes in the belief that she would be healed by the completion of this task. She died after doing 644. Her classmates completed the task in her memory. Today thousands of paper cranes annually decorate a monument erected in 1958–to Sadako in the Peace Park at Hiroshima.

Cohen, Gary G. Civilization’s Last Hurrah . Chicago: Moody, 1974.Written by a converted Jew, this novel is based on the prophesies contained in the Book of Revelation. War in the Near East involves the use by Israel of American-provided “nuclear laser beam” weapons. Conflicts proliferate around the world, including a war in Africa which involves the dropping of a nuclear bomb on the capital of Zaire, Kinshasa.

Cohen, Robert. The Organ Builder. New York: Harper & Row, 1988. A young lawyer, trying to escape the curse he feels from the fact that his father helped to build the atomic bomb before abandoning his family, finds himself ironically back in New Mexico, helping a large corporation to seize Indian land in order to mine uranium. He becomes involved with a couple doing a documentary about the Manhattan Project, then discovers that his long-lost father had become an organ builder. Chapter 9 contains a mention of H. G. Wells inventing the bomb in The World Set Free. A well-written meditation on personal responsibility.

Cole, Burt. Subi: The Volcano . New York: Macmillan, 1957. London: W. H. Allen, 1958.Set in a devastating war in Asia which remarkably foreshadows certain aspects of the Vietnam War. Focuses on child prostitution and on attacks by rioting natives on the American army base. Climaxes in scenes of brutal slaughter, a hurricane, and plague. The only hint of the use of nuclear weapons in the period preceding the opening of the novel is a single reference to radiation burns. The author was with the military in Japan 1952-53.

Colller’s , October 27, 1951. “Preview of the War We Do Not Want.”This special issue was devoted entirely to the depiction of a war with the USSR which results in the destruction of Russian communism and that nation’s joyful adoption of the American way of life. Despite its hypocritical title, this is the ultimate cold war fantasy. Fictional articles and reportage, stories, and even cartoons and sketches are coordinated in a uniform scenario. On May 10, 1952, the Russians and their allies try to assassinate Tito and invade Jugoslavia. Communist saboteurs attack the U.S. (these are professional infiltrators; members of the American Communist party are scorned), and Soviet troops march across Western Europe and into the Middle East. The U.S. and other U.N. nations retaliate by striking “legitimate military targets only” in the USSR with nuclear weapons in an attack “the like of which had never been dreamed of by the most fanciful author of science fiction and which will never be repeated, pray God, again!” (Despite this statement, some of the authors seem to have difficulty in grasping the scale of nuclear warfare. Lowell Thomas, for instance, notes that a field roughed up by atomic explosions makes for a bumpy landing.) The A-bombing goes on around the clock for three months and sixteen days, somewhat hampered by a bomber shortage caused by a short-sighted Congress. The Russians invade Alaska, then drop atomic bombs on London, various U.N. military bases, Detroit, New York, and the nuclear reservation at Hanford in Washington State. Since the civil defense plans of the U.S. have never been put into effect, the result is devastating. Londoners, experienced in dealing with Nazi bombing, fare better. The U.S. out- bombs the Russians by 100 to 1, but since our free press reports domestic damage while theirs does not, the American public is more aware of its own suffering. The USSR avoids bombing European capitals to spare party members (evidently worthy of more respect than American Communists). Red soldiers, foolishly believing their own government’s propaganda which has depicted the atomic bomb as a nightmare weapon, panic in the face of nuclear attacks. The Russians manage to build more bombs and renew their attacks on the U.S. One tiny village is struck, but survivors show their grit and sense of humor in the aftermath. On May 10, 1953, Washington, D.C., is finally hit, catapulting Lincoln out of his monument onto his nose. Bombs are launched at other targets from submarines near the shore. Public outrage creates a demand to bomb Moscow. Leaflets like those dropped on Hiroshima warn the inhabitants to evacuate, but the ruthless Communist rulers halt their flight by force. A bomb drops a few hundred yards from the notorious Lubianka prison, leaving freed prisoners to crawl away through the rubble. A suicide mission in the Urals ends the Russian nuclear threat. A noble “Statement of War Aims” called the “Denver Declaration” repudiates the sort of reprisals which followed previous world wars and mandates universal disarmament in ten years, with the U.N. controlling atomic power. Stalin is displaced by Beria, who is in turn defeated. The liberated Russians joyfully embrace their captors and struggle toward a new political and economic system to be defined by a democratic process. The contents of the issue are listed below in more detail.

Brodie, Howard. “Moscow Sketchbook.” Captioned sketches depict happy, liberated Russians.

Canham, Erwin. “Start the Presses!” Freedom of the press in Russia results in a huge demand for American publications. “Little Orphan Annie” is especially popular. The front page news concerns a Hollywood star. But reeducation of the Soviets will be difficult: their minds are numb from disuse.

Chase, Stuart. “Out of the Rubble–A New Russia.” Primarily a retrospective critique of the Soviet economy. Industry is decentralized, farmer’s coops and labor unions are created.

Higgins, Marguerite. “Women of Russia.” Women and children have especially suffered from the damage and disease resulting from the war. Like Hitler, Beria ordered political prisoners shipped to prison camps just before his defeat, but they were caught by the bombing in nonfunctioning railway stations. Most of the article is devoted to sketching the conditions of Russian women circa 1951. The highlight of the reconstruction is a fashion show attended by fifty thousand women in a huge stadium. Although they suffer from a shortage of foundation garments, they are delighted by American soldiers and marry them in large numbers.

Kasenkina, Oksana. “We Worship GOD Again.” A brief sketch by a refugee schoolteacher who jumped from the third floor of the Russian consulate in New York in 1948; mostly describes the horrors of the Soviet system. She actually says very little about religion.

Koestler, Arthur. “Freedom–At Long Last.” A survey of the work of the United Nations Housing and Providing Enterprise (UNIHOPE) in Russia. Political parties are formed, diversity blooms. Communism vanished with the Communist leaders because it had no doctrine, only terror to support it. Elections are somewhat farcical because people are still afraid to choose sides, voting simply yes. “It may take at least a generation to change robots back into humans again.” Certain lucky children will be sent abroad to live in America for a year; and the lottery which determines who will go is wildly popular. Foreign books are in high demand. Koestler details a revolt in a Kolyma prison camp which results in the Autonomous Convicts’ Republic. Writes Koestler: “there is a certain comfort in the thought that although we wanted to avoid this war at almost any price, it was the Soviet regime itself which, by running amuck, forced us to destroy it; that apparently there is a law which compels such regimes to commit suicide in their insatiable lust for power. All tyrannies carry the seed of their own destruction–but at what price, at what terrible price for humanity. . . .”

Mauldin, Bill. Several cartoons depict Weary Willie and other characters occupying the Soviet Union.

Morgan-Ryan, Kathryn. “The Present.”

A heavily ironic anecdote tells of how a Russian general maneuvered an American general into giving him his special pistol at the end of World War II and then used it to kill himself at the end of World War III. The pistol is reclaimed by its rightful owner.

Murrow, Edward R. “A-Bomb Mission to Moscow.” In this very low-key report of the atomic bombing of the Russian capital, the bomb appears through the haze like a “gigantic blowtorch.” The thoroughly professional crew of the plane displays no emotion outwardly, but the pilot’s knuckles are white and those on board suffer “sagging spirits.” Murrow was reportedly sorry later that he participated in this project.

Nevins, Allan. “Free Thoughts, Free Words.” Education blossoms as Western dignitaries lecture in liberated Russia. Albert Schweitzer, traveling with Ralph Bunche, is excited about the possibilities for atomic power. T. S. Eliot lectures in Moscow on “the spirit of modern American and British literature.”

Priestly, J. B. “The Curtain Rises . . .” The arts flourish in Russia. Among other wonders, the former Red Army Company stages Guys and Dolls.

Reuther, Walter. “Free Men at Work.” Free trade unions are formed in liberated Russia.

Savage, John. “Trouble at Tuaviti.” A young American missionary and a courageous native stand up to the commander of a Russian submarine trying to establish a missile guidance base on a Pacific island. The fearful Russians leave.

Schwartz, Harry. “Miracle of American Production.” The U.S. surpasses its World War II output during the war effort. With industry well dispersed, only 10 percent of it was damaged and there were few transportation problems. A glowingly optimistic assessment of the resilience and productivity of American industry.

Sherwood, Robert E. “The Third World War.” The basic outline of the war from which most of the introductory remarks to this section are taken.

Smith, Margaret Chase. “Russia’s Rebirth.” An editorial which says that women have suffered the most in the USSR but hold the greatest promise for the future.

Smith, Red. “Moscow Olympics.” Sports in liberated Russia.

Thomas, Lowell. “I Saw Them Chute Into the Urals.” A brief account of the strike against the Russian nuclear base.

Winchell, Walter. “Walter Winchell in Moscow.” An argument for world unity.

Wylie, Philip. “Philadelphia Phase.” A young man abandoned by his irresponsible fiancee falls in love with a young Russian woman detailed to help rebuild Philadelphia. [63]

Conquest, [George] Robert [Ackworth]. A World of Difference. London: Ward Lock, 1955. New York: Ballantine, 1964.A nuclear war in the 1980s has caused little immediate damage except when fusion bombs punctured the shield over Tiflis and killed all its inhabitants. A form of limited war was waged in which cities were warned in advance that they would be attacked, the people evacuated, and the cities were then sown with radioactive dust. More people died of starvation than of direct effects of the bombs during the war. There have been mass liquidations and deportations. Manufacturing–largely automated–has been moved underground. There are few people left (London is the second largest city with thirty thousand people), but they maintain an advanced technology. There are several subplots, but the main plot concerns a scheme by ruthless Marxists to overthrow the government which has subjected many of their number to psychological reconditioning. At the novel’s climax, a plot to wreck the Earth with cobalt bombs is thwarted.

Constantine, Storm. The Fulfillments of Fate and Desire: The Third Book of Wraeththu. Birmingham: Drunken Dragon, 1989. London: Orbit, 1989.

Cook, Glen. The Heirs of Babylon. New York: Signet, 1972.Ritual warfare is conducted at sea under the orders of the mysterious High Command long after a holocaust has shattered civilization. The original conflict began when the Russians responded to invasion by launching their atomic weapons, but few of the bombs on either side worked since they had been secretly dismantled by plotters preparing for the biological war which followed. Alliances have shifted, until Northern Europe is battling the Australians. A climactic sea battle culminates in the use of an atomic bomb.

Cook, Paul. The Alejandra Variations. New York: Ace, 1984.A secret Air Force project links nuclear strategists to a computer in such a way that they experience scenarios of future conflicts as if they were real. An actual strike leads to a limited nuclear exchange (one bomb on each side) and to electromagnetic pulse effects which cause those involved in the project to believe that a holocaust is imminent. The protagonist witnesses such a war as well as a decadent underground culture of one thousand years in the future and a female-dominated nomadic culture of a quarter-million years in the future, both of which are haunted by automated nuclear weapons which hunt down and destroy human life. A third incarnation finds him as a many-times reincarnated mortal on an Earth about to be destroyed by the explosion of the sun. In each of these “variations” he is pursued by lustful, determined women. He awakes to find all three of these experiences were computer-generated illusions, and that only the limited exchange–called “the scare”–is real. The computer which has been obsessed with him has in fact been the force behind all his seductresses. Furious at being pried away from him by another supercomputer, it threatens to destroy the planet until the hero defeats it with Gandhian passive resistance. Various features of the book are interesting: in one of the variations, men are blamed for warfare and women are placed in control to keep the peace; in another, giant cockroaches and human beings are the only surviving species. Ozone layer depletion is discussed, and the conclusion refers to nuclear winter theory.

___. Duende Meadow. New York: Bantam, 1985. Six centuries after a nuclear winter triggered a new ice age, a small community survives deep underground in a fusion-powered ark which was built in a bankrupt shopping mall, and lowered a thousand feet into the Earth when war broke out. This civilian shelter is paired with a subterranean defense complex. Some Russians also survived, in undersea shelters, and emerged to colonize part of Kansas, which is free of the ice. When this is discovered by the underground dwellers, the military faction determines to exterminate the invaders; but reconciliation between the Russians and the Americans proves wiser in the long run. An unusual plea for international understanding somewhat muted by the fact that the Russian invaders have rejected Communism and the surviving Americans have lost democracy.

Coon, Horace C. 43,000 Years Later. New York: Signet, 1958. London: Panther, 1959.Presented as a report by scientists from the Great Galaxy visiting a long-uninhabited Earth, this is actually a thinly disguised compendium of views on politics, economics, religion, sex, history, and a great deal else. From time to time the aliens misinterpret the evidence of Earth’s past, sometimes comically; but for most of the work’s length they are miraculously perspicacious and clearly serve as mouthpieces for the author. One long section is devoted to the interpretation of the contents of the time capsule buried at the World’s Fair site in New York’s Flushing Meadows in 1938. Only toward the end of the book is the cause of the war discovered: Japan had gone Communist and launched a new attack on Pearl Harbor with a nuclear weapon, which led to retaliation by both East and West. Little attempt is made to portray the devastation, but there is one striking image of the Statue of Liberty blown across the harbor to Coney Island. Glaciers have covered much of the Northeast at some time since the war. All animals have been killed except insects and fish. Earthquakes have dumped much of the crumbled coast south of San Francisco into the ocean. In Arizona the madness represented by the nuclear weapon testing sites is contrasted with the harmony and wisdom represented by the Indian ruins. It is said that testing probably produced widespread disease. Several motives are adduced for the holocaust: nationalism, religion, overpopulation, and conservative inflexibility, among others. At the work’s end, three scientists offer their views one authoritarian, one religious, and one moderate–on how the war might have been prevented. Dissatisfied with their own sterile utopia and stimulated by Earth’s deplorable but fascinating history, they look forward to the evolution of a new, improved race of humanity. The work resembles badly written H. G. Wells.

Cooper, Edmund. The Cloud Walker. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1973. London: Coronet, 1975. New York: Ballantine, 1973.After two nuclear holocausts, England is oppressed by the Luddite church which burns those who dare attempt to revive technology. A young apprentice painter defies the law by building flying machines, and wins the support of the villagers when his hot air balloon successfully repels a band of savage pirates. Religion is repudiated and the necessity of reviving science and technology realized. This is a better than average example of its type, with the love affair of the hero especially well depicted. Once the Luddites are defeated, no consideration is given to the prevention of a third nuclear war.

___. The Last Continent. New York: Dell, 1969. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1970.In the twenty-second century, victorious blacks have built an advanced civilization on Mars, two thousand years after a cataclysmic race war which destroyed the moon and the Earth’s magnetic field, exposing it to deadly cosmic radiation and rendering most of the planet uninhabitable. Because the Earth has been tilted off its former axis, Antarctica now has a tropical climate, and an expedition of blacks seeking to exploit its mineral wealth arrives, surprised to find a race of primitive whites living there. One fanatical crew member whose religion teaches hatred of the former oppressor wants to exterminate them; but a beautiful young woman on the crew falls in love with one of the natives and fights to have them preserved. Together they explore a mysterious tower containing ancient high technology and art treasures and are able to persuade the Martian leaders that the two races can now live in peace and reclaim the wasted Earth with the rediscovered knowledge.

___. The Overman Culture. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1971. London: Coronet, 1974. New York: Putnam, 1972. New York: Berkley, 1973.A group of young people is raised by humanoid robots in an ersatz London. They seek to discover the meaning of the differences they have noticed between themselves and their artificial companions. It turns out that all of humanity was exterminated ten thousand years earlier in atomic and biochemical wars and that they have been artificially cultured from stored genetic material and are destined to begin the human race all over again.

___. Seed of Light. London: Hutchinson, 1959. London: Panther, 1960. New York: Ballantine, 1959.This novel set after a nuclear war fought in the late seventies or early eighties falls into two distinct halves. In the first, a scientist who feels guilty for his part in designing a space platform with nuclear superweapons decides to destroy it, but is himself killed by a Russian agent, who precipitates a second war which ends almost all human life on Earth. Professor Bollinger is an unusual character in that he seriously considers the responsibility of scientists in the development of weapons of mass destruction; but in his pactfist phase he is also portrayed as insane. The growth of his madness is partly indicated by his increasing quotation of scripture. In the second part, the remaining fragment of humanity builds starships to ensure that the race will continue on some world far from the dying Earth. The novel becomes an absurdly optimistic fantasy in which generations of star voyagers evolve superpowers and enormously prolonged lifespans (for no apparent reason other than that this is convenient for the author), and develop supertechnology which enables them to home in on the nearest Earthlike planet after centuries of vain searching. They arrive at a parallel version of Earth, but transported back in time fifty thousand years before their ancestors lefl. They resolve to alter history by teaching Neanderthal man the ways of peace, using passive resistance.

___. The Slaves of Heaven. New York: Putnam, 1974. New York: Berkley, 1975. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1975. London: Coronet, 1978.Barbarians living on a postholocaust Earth are periodically raided by robots sent to collect women to incubate and bear the offspring of the high technology culture of an orbiting space station whose people are genetically damaged by cosmic rays. A courageous chief uses his native intelligence and hunting skills to outwit the enemy and prove himself their equal, negotiating an end to the exploitation and rights for his people.

___. The Uncertain Midnight. London: Hutchinson, 1958. London: Panther, 1959. London: Remploy, 1981. As Deadly Image. New York: Ballantine, 1958.A man is accidentally frozen during the war called the “Nine-Days’ Tranquillizer” in 1967, to be awakened in an anti-utopia dominated by androids in 2113. He joins a rebellion against the robots which have enslaved the human race by overprotecting it. The novel displays typical science fiction ambivalence toward technology: the androids are depicted as soulless tyrants, but the hero is able to humanize his own mechanical servant through love. Features a wizened clairvoyant, probably the result of a radiation-induced mutation.

Coppel, Alfred. The Burning Mountain. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983. New York: Charter, 1984.Lightning destroys the first atomic bomb before it can be tested and the invasion of Japan must proceed without it. Based on the war plans of both the U.S. and Japan, this alternative-history novel constitutes an argument for the conventional view that the use of the bomb at Hiroshima and Nagasaki prevented the unnecessary loss of life. MacArthur argues against the use of the bomb as dehumanizing warfare, but Truman proceeds to use it on March 17, 1946, affer 275,000 more people have died in the fighting.

___. Dark December. Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett, 1960. London: H. Jenkins, 1966. Major Kenneth Gavin emerges into a blasted world after an eight-month-long war sometime during the 1970s. Outside the sheltered bunkers where men like himself considered what they were doing merely a technical problem–a job to be done–everything he has fought for and loved has been destroyed. Army discipline has deteriorated, and roaming bands of renegades wreak havoc on small towns and travelers. Money is relatively worthless; as in many of these novels, the barter system has been revived. Gavin’s goal, once he understands that he no longer has a military function in the new world, is to travel to Palo Alto, California, where he used to live with his wife and daughter, in the hope that they may have survived. In his quest–partly on horseback, but much of it on foot–he witnesses the effects of recent war: the fused rocks, burned forests, wrecked towns, dying people. Many of the details are reminiscent of Hiroshima. Gavin is forced to join the expedition of the mad martinet Major Collingwood, who relishes the return to old-fashioned warfare made possible by the postnuclear chaos. Gavin reacts: “My God  . . . The world smashed and burned and bleeding and here it was all ready to start over again. Here was the face of the real enemy. The man with a bayonet eager to kill.” His reaction to the crazed violence of Collingwood underlines, however, the irony of Gavin’s own actions: whereas he recoils from the other’s savagery, it is of little account compared to the consequences of his own part in the late war, destroying millions from his safe underground bunker–and Collingwood is not slow to point out this fact. Gavin develops an inability to kill, even in self-defense, which is tested as he deserts Collingwood’s troop and is pursued by the fanatical major down through Oregon and northern California.      Most authors would have used this plotline to demonstrate how necessary it is to continue to use lethal violence even after an atomic holocaust. Coppel refuses to concede the point and has his protagonist maintain a consistently pactfist stance throughout the rest of the novel. Gavin meets and rescues a young boy as well as a young woman who has been repeatedly raped. When they encounter a downed Russian pilot who has been captured and tortured by a teenage gang, Gavin is caught and takes the prisoner’s place, later escaping without resort to lethal violence. In a climactic scene, Collingwood catches up with Gavin in the forest and announces that he is his other half, reminding him of his guilt in the atomic war. On a trestle over the river, Collingwood, concentrating on trying to kill Gavin’s companions, loses his balance and falls in the water. Gavin tries to rescue him, but Collingwood refuses to drop his pistol to take his would-be rescuer’s hand, fails to shoot Gavin because his waterlogged gun will not fire, and drowns. Collingwood’s devotion to violence has led to his own destruction.      Despite the fact that the hero’s reluctance to kill is depicted as involuntary, the book is a consistent exploration of the thesis that in a world wrecked by a nuclear war, a nonviolent attitude makes excellent sense. (Whether this is Coppel’s own attitude can be questioned. See the discussion of his more recent novel, The Burning Mountain , above.) Dark December is an outstanding work in many other respects as well. There are numerous convincing details: the bout of radiation sickness suffered by Gavin, the illness of the children, the hostility of small- town residents wary of outsiders. In the end Gavin’s repentance and redemption through suffering earn him a moderately happy ending: although his wife has died, he is reunited with his daughter and there is muted hope for the future. The novel contains a rather bizarre political twist: Russia, defeated in the war with the U.S., calls upon her former adversary to send troops to fend off an invasion from China.

___. “Mars Is Ours.” Fantasy and Science Fiction , October 1954.Russians and Americans fight each other on Mars with nuclear weapons and destroy each other’s bases. The war is portrayed as stupid and futile.

___. “Secret Weapon.” Astounding , July 1949.A decade-long East-West nuclear and biochemical war has been carried to the moon. The initial Russian attack killed thirteen million in the West; the cities have been abandoned, life goes on underground. At the story’s end the Russian lunar commander learns that he has been deceived by his subordinates using a ruse reminiscent of Potemkin villages: they have led him to believe that the war was going well when, in fact, they have been defeated.

Cordell, Alexander. The Bright Cantonese. London: Gollancz, 1967. As The Deadly Eurasian . New York: Weybright & amp;Talley, 1969.A spy thriller in which a beautiful Eurasian Red Guard is assigned to escort victims of a surprise nuclear bombing in Kwangtun Province to Hong Kong. There she discovers from a black deserter that the bomb was launched from a U.S. destroyer as part of a plot by a fiendish arms merchant hoping to promote an attack by China on Taiwan. Having fallen in love with the American sailor, she nevertheless leaves him to track down the real villain in the United States. A Japanese collaborator with the People’s Republic has arranged operation “Sea-Entry,” a scheme whereby nuclear weapons have been smuggled into the harbors of major American coastal cities, to be detonated if the Chinese explosion should prove to have been a covert action of the American government. Although the Red Guard discovers the truth and tries to prevent the bombs being exploded, the collaborator conceals the truth and succeeds in having major cities destroyed. His motive, it turns out, is revenge: he was a survivor of Hiroshima. Leaving behind thirty-eight million dead Americans, the bright Cantonese heads for Hong Kong where she hopes to be rejoined with her lover.

Corley, Edwin. The Jesus Factor. New York: Stein & Day, 1970.This thriller begins promisingly as chapters describing the experiences of the crews who flew the first atomic bombing mission alternate with chapters telling how, many years later, one of the bombadiers has become a presidential candidate, crusading for nuclear disarmament. The chapters set in 1945 are well researched and filled with interesting detail. But the story takes a bizarre turn as it transpires that, because of a mysterious effect called “the Jesus Factor,” atomic bombs cannot be detonated when they are in motion, that Hiroshima was faked, and that the entire arms race has been a gigantic fraud. Convinced that the artificially maintained balance of power is the only safeguard against a devastating bacteriological war, the hero agrees to abandon his crusade.

Corston, George. Aftermath. London: Robert Hale, 1968.The story of an Angry Young Man who takes refuge in a village store after abandoning his parents when the bombs hit London, written in the form of a monologue. He rails against modern culture: against television, automobiles, work, and the military. When martial law is imposed and all men conscripted, he deliberately crushes his foot and tells the officer who comes to seize his supplies: “God knows you kicked us about from arsehole to breakfast time before you nearly obliterated us. Surely you have the common decency to let us alone now.” The wife of a man he almost kills turns out to be a nurse who tries, successfully, to seduce and, unsuccessfully, to domesticate him. But this novel is not typical in its treatment of sex. The protagonist’s true love is a picture of a “Dusky Maiden” on a tin of fruit, and he and the nurse spend their last days not making love but vomiting and aching in the throes of leukemia while she yearns for her Catholic girlhood. Says he: “I’m sitting here like a spare prick at a wedding and she has a crush on Jesus Christ.” The protagonist is brutal and self-centered; but this narrowly focussed, often absurdist vision of the end of civilization is strikingly effective. The protagonist, contrary to the normal convention of first-person narrative, dies in the end.

Costikyan, Greg. “Bright Light, Big City.” Asimov’s February 1991. Nuclear terrorism in New York City.

Coulson, Robert. To Renew the Ages. Toronto: Laser Books, 1976.A barbarian male seeking a mutant beast meets a woman from a highly technical matriarchy named Losalam (from “Los Alamos”) where men are relegated to manual labor because they proved incapable of rational thought in the old days during which the holocaust took place, its causes unknown. He shoots down her laser-wielding helicopter with a crossbow. He must heal her when she is bitten by a rattlesnake, and teaches her survival skills. She returns the favor by dressing his arrow wound with a bandage she rips from her coveralls, revealing much of her attractive figure in the process. Menaced by the telepathic beast they are hunting, they can be shielded from its compelling mental lure only by touching each other. Taken to the matriarchy, the barbarian finds it rigid and tradition-bound. He and the woman escape together to Wyoming, his home, and we learn in a final chapter that Normerica is uniting into a single nation, with the stubborn matriarchy still resisting, but the heroine is president of the new Union. Among other common diseases in the new age are cancer, typhoid, scurvy, and smallpox.

Cowper, Richard. Profundis . London: Gollancz, 1979. London: Pan, 1980. New York: Pocket Books, 1981.The only survivors of a nuclear holocaust in this satire seem to be the thousands of humans and androids on board an enormous submarine which cruises the seas endlessly, its crew conversing with dolphins who collect radiation data. The hero is a simple soul fortuitously provided with psychic superpowers. He is chosen by the commanding officer to reenact the career of Christ, but he ultimately escapes with the aid of his dolphin friends to Madeira, where another pocket of humanity has survived. The nonviolent dolphins, it appears, have been feeding the crew false data all these years to keep the dangerous ship submerged.

Cox, Irving E. “Lady With a Past.” Astounding , May 1953.Half a millenium after the Suicide War the Linkists maintain a sort of cargo cult, expecting the the descendants of refugees from Mars and Venus to return and bring with them the old technology. The legend is recounted in the “Ballad of Alamagordo”: For man, we made atomic fire to break the mists of space / He scorned our words and used our strength to kill the human race. / And so we leave your shattered cities, torn and stark with pain. / Destroy yourselves! But save this hope: some day we come again. And indeed they do return, but the Magordo regard themselves as the true heirs of civilization and are bent on exterminating the old human race. Unbeknownst to them, however, Earth has become a rational utopia (based on that of Thomas More), and the female Magordo sent to sterilize the planet for resettlement must be taught that their vicious authoritarianism is inferior to the new way.

Coyle, Harold. Team Yankee. Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1987. New York: Berkley, 1988. Inspired by Sir John Hackett’s books ( The Third World War: A Future History [1978] and The Third World War: August 1985, The Untold Story [1982]), this bestselling novel by a U.S. Army major details a few episodes in the life of a single tank company fighting the Russians in Germany during World War III. The novel mentions the nuclear bombing of Birmingham and Minsk, but deals primarily with conventional warfare, emphasizing the chaos and suffering inherent in the battlefield soldier’s experience . Hackett reviewed the manuscript and made suggestions. See the comic book version by David Drake and William Jackson: The Alternative Third World War: 1985-2035. Fighting Russian invaders in Germany, told from the point of view of one US Army tank team. The novel uses General Sir John Hackett’s scenario, and Hackett gave the author advice and suggestions. The nuclear bombing of Birmingham and Minsk, dealt with briefly in Hackett, is mentioned in passing. Coyle is a US Army major in the armored force. See the comic book version of this novel by David Drake, and compare with William Jackson’s The Alternative Third World War, 1985-2035.

Creasey, John. The Insulators. London: Hodder & amp;Stoughton, 1972.A vast conspiracy succeeds in building insulators which muffle sound and in creating a substance which counteracts radioactivity. When their plant in the English Midlands is discovered, the conspirators blow it up, demonstrating their new tool by rendering the cloud of fallout harmless. A similar research project in Russia is detected and destroyed, thwarting their plans for world domination. The mutual fears of East and West lead to a summit conference in an attempt to promote cooperation.

Crisp, N. J. The Brink. London: MacDonald, 1982. New York: Viking Press, 1982. New York: Pocket Books, 1983.The Russians in this routine spy thriller gain access to a top-security computer and control over a supposedly fail-safe satellite which enables them to launch and prematurely detonate selected Western nuclear missiles. They use these explosions to justify an invasion of West Germany. Focus on torture, computers. Although the mystery is developed in a complex manner, with much attention given to technical details, the solution is at once simpleminded and farfetched: the program designer was a Russian agent. Unlike the novel by the same name written by John Brunner, this work is hostile to the disarmament movement, relying on a technical fix to prevent war: the building of a better fail-safe system.

Cromie, Robert. The Crack of Doom. London: Digby, 1895.Madmen plot to destroy the universe with atomic energy. [4]

Crosher, Geoffrey Robins. See Kestavan, G. R.

Croutch, Leslie. “The Day the Bomb Fell” ( Amazing Stories, November 1950. Also in Thrilling Science Fiction , February 1972). In John Robert Colombo, ed. Years of Light: A Celebration of Leslie A. Croutch. Toronto: Hounslow Press, 1982.When a bomb is dropped on a nearby city, a young boy scrambling for his school fallout shelter is knocked into an excavation by the blast wave. When he sees that his school has disappeared, he goes home to find destroyed as well. He befriends a cat, joins a girl in the country where they witness together the burning of her home by invading tanks. He comments ruefully that not too long ago he had been wishing the school would burn down.

Crow, Levi. “Warrior in Darkness.” Fantasy and Science Fiction , June 1954.Indians learn from an alien that they will inherit the Earth when the white men kill each other off in a coming nuclear war.

Crowcroft, Peter. The Fallen Sky. London: P. Neville, 1954.A sociologist who has lost an eye in a nuclear war wanders through devastated London, fighting off and eating wild dogs. He discovers a teenage girl caring for a group of children, living in the chapel of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. It takes him an improbably long time to discover that the children are blind. He hunts and fishes, and they cook for him. Finally he becomes involved with the girl, but almost frightens her away with fits of brutal passion. They fall into stereotyped sex roles, but she eventually civilizes him. When he takes the oldest boy hunting, he lectures to him on various societies and compares the war to the Kwakiutl potlatch. They struggle against disease, hunger, and other dangers, harvest volunteer crops, and a baby is born. The children report some hunters nearby, but the protagonist decides to avoid them and build a new world without the violence which the hunters represent. The title refers to the children’s story of Henny Penny, who thought the sky was falling.

Crowder, Herbert. Ambush at Osirak. Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1988. New York: Jove, 1989. A complex thriller in which a CIA-backed conspiracy succeeds in destroying both Iraqi and Israeli nuclear plants and in forcing the Iraqis to launch and use small Soviet tactical nuclear missiles, resulting in little physical damage but disastrous publicity for the U.S.S.R.

Cullen, Seamus. Astra and Flondrix . Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976. New York: Pantheon, 1977. New York: Pocket Books, 1979.A wild erotic fantasy in which the forces of evil are trapped in a time warp: the endlessly recurring day on which the human era ended with an atomic holocaust. Elves and dwarves use sexual weapons to defeat the monster Kranz who seeks to break out of his trap by creating a new element: Tritertium 333. Bawdy and amusing.

da Cruz, Daniel. Texas Triumphant. New York: Ballantine, 1987.Sequel to The Ayes of Texas and Texas on the Rocks . After nuclear incidents in the earlier book, the Soviet union engages in massive environmental sabotage in its quest for world supremacy, but is foiled by a brilliant Texas businessman in the Ayn Rand/Robert Heinlein mold.

Dagmar, Peter. Sands of Time. London: Digit, 1963. New York: Arcadia House, 1967.In this time-travel story, people from the future seek to destroy a supercomputer which was built by the surviving crews aboard nuclear submarines in the wake of a devastating global firestorm caused by nuclear war in 2016. A reactor disaster of 2015 is also mentioned.

Dahl, Roald. Sometime Never. New York: Scribners, 1948. London: Collins, 1949.Gremlins bedeviling RAF pilots during World War II retreat when it is learned that humanity is working on the atomic bomb, which will allow these subterranean creatures effortlessly to inherit the Earth. The second half of the novel consists of reports on the destruction caused by World Wars III and IV, including graphic and grisly details of melted eyeballs and the rest. The gremlin leader, in order to prevent his followers from repeating humanity’s errors, lays down certain laws: there will be no nations, no private ownership of land, no machinery or other human technology, no excessive marital love, no centralized authority. However, these utopian precepts cannot be put into practice because the gremlins, as products of the human imagination, vanish with the extinction of the human race. Only worms and insects survive to begin evolution again.

Danvers, Jack [pseud. of Camille Auguste Caseleyr]. The End of It All. London: Heinemann, 1962.Part One, “The Bang,” depicts an all-out nuclear and bacteriological war set off accidentally by the misinterpretation of a group of meteorites. The absurdity of mobilizing troops during a nuclear crisis is pointed out: they should be dispersed, not gathered onto bases where they make convenient targets. After the government and most of the army’s higher command has been destroyed, many of the soldiers simply walk away. Given the devastation on both sides, neither one can mount an effective invasion, and no defense is necessary. Part Two, “The Whimper,” concentrates on a small group of survivors in Australia. The female protagonist is a true rarity: an articulate and sympathetic Communist. An older male who seems to represent the author criticizes both communism and capitalism, however, and editorializes at length on various subjects including for the existence of God and against immortality. Another unusual feature of the book is its emphasis on the shock and apathy affecting the survivors, which is well depicted in accounts of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings but largely neglected in other fiction. Despite the forceful and courageous character of the young woman, sex roles are still fairly stereotypical. She is appalled at the prospect of greatly increased birth defects; but the men only try to console her without seeming to be similarly affected: reproduction is clearly women’s concern. In the end everyone dies of the diseases released by the Russians and Americans. The novel concludes with a sketch of future history in which all traces of humanity’s existence are obliterated in one thousand years. Like Nevil Shute’s On the Beach , which it somewhat resembles, this is one of the rare instances of the total extinction of the human race; but even here there is a muted hint of hope: “The Spirit of Life glanced at the world and began to toy once again with the idea of expressing itself through a more satisfactory form of creation.”

Daventry, Leonard. A Man of Double Deed. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965. New York: Berkley, 1967.A century after the Atomic Disaster of 1990, a cruel, technically sophisticated culture is deteriorating, as young people commit murders, seemingly at random. Games patterned after the ancient Roman model are popular, and actual war games for violent citizens are being arranged. A typical old-fashioned dystopia, with loveless free sex, synthetic food, and casual interplanetary travel. Unusual in depicting homosexuality as common. The author is British.

Davis, Chan[dler]. “The Aristocrat.” Astounding, October 1949.The story of a struggle between a mutant group resistant to radiation called the “Folk” and ordinary humans, who consider themselves superior. The nonmutants must accept the fact that they will be replaced by the Folk and that the religion of the Elders, through which they have dominated the Folk, will be overthrown. The revolt is led by the narrator’s wife.

___. “Last Year’s Grave Undug.” In Groff Conklin, ed. Great Science Fiction by Scientists. New York: Collier, 1962.An anti-McCarthyism fable. After a limited nuclear war, America tears itself apart looking for Red saboteurs. The protagonist speculates that the Russians are engaged in similar folly in their country.

___. “Nightmare” (Astounding, May 1946). In Groff Conklin, ed. A Treasury of Science Fiction. New York: Crown, 1948. Also in Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg, eds. The Great Science Fiction Stories: 8 (1946) . New York: DAW, 1982.Legal atomic power is officially controlled by the Security Council of the U.N. Illegal radioactivity is detected by aerial detectors called “Sneezys.” A nuclear physicist and an FBI man join forces to track down a group which has been clandestinely building a nuclear bomb from plutonium smuggled in painted on watch dials. The physicist argues that the group must be allowed to escape because if their country is identified, the U.S. will be obligated to initiate a nuclear war which will end civilization. The FBI man goes along with this scheme. The story tries to warn that the only deterrent to nuclear war might have been the decentralization of industry, but at the time of the story it is too late to accomplish that. Presumably in 1946 the notion was still supposed to be a useful one.

___. “To Still the Drums” (Astounding, October 1946). In H. Bruce Franklin, ed. Countdown to Midnight: Twelve Great Stories About Nuclear War. New York: DAW, 1984.Set in 1948. A first lieutenant uncovers a military plot to launch an atomic war. The civilian physicist working with him complains that politicians don’t really understand the bomb, and the story warns that there is great danger inherent in a nuclear arms race.

Davis, Gyle [name on cover; name on title page is J. L. Kullinger]. Sex ’99. Los Angeles: Classic Publications, 1968.A hardcore pornographic novel with irrelevant sex scenes arbitrarily sprinkled throughout a story set in a brutal post-nuclear holocaust America in which only 150,000 people are left alive. The war was between the U.S. and China. The highways are jammed with rusting stalled and wrecked cars, and people travel mostly overland. Mutated plants thrive in bombed areas roamed by violent gangs, raping and looting. An old man suffering from radiation disease is encountered. The novel plays down the importance of fallout, however, arguing that the side effects of bombing such as firestorms were far more lethal. A loose band of freedom fighters, bent on the overthrow of a dictator known as the Toad, assaults a train and discovers it is loaded with nuclear warheads, which they destroy. Toad is overthrown and killed, and his subjects join the democratic Federation.

Davis, Hank. “No Shoulder to Cry On” (Analog, June 1968). In Stanley Schmidt, ed. War and Peace: Possible Futures from Analog. New York: Dial, 1983.Earth welcomes visiting aliens, hoping they will teach humanity how to end the arms race and the threat of nuclear war, only to discover that the aliens have practically destroyed their own worlds and have come hoping to learn the secret of peace from humanity.

De Haven, Tom. Freaks’ Amour. New York: Morrow, 1979.This story concerns the interrelationships of a group of wretched freaks created by a small-scale atomic accident on “Caliban night,” April 18, 1988, and forced to earn their living doing “rape shows” in nightclubs. Other nuclear accidents producing mutations are referred to, and “Hot China” is repeatedly mentioned, once as having been devastated by bombs Ñwhether in an act of war or not is never made clear. The book is generally well written, but its treatment of mutation is utterly fantastic and unscientific.

Deer, M. J. Flames of Desire. Hollywood: France'[ sic ] International Publications, 1963.An absurd neobarbarian fantasy from a soft-core pornography publishing firm. A burly blacksmith is captured by a beautiful bisexual barbarian leader and used to attack the Imperial cities which flourish on fertile soil washed out of California’s Imperial Valley when a bomb destroyed a dam on the Corado River. Radioactive wastelands glow at night; mutated werewolf men roam in packs. The newly captured city (rather ominously called “New Jericho”) turns out to contain no riches, just a wretched huddle of shacks. After several detailed scenes of sex with various eager females, including the female protagonist, who has become the new Imperial Queen, the blacksmith rejects her offer to help rebuild civilization and drifls off again. The cover seems to have been designed by someone who had never read the book: it features a half- dressed coupleÑthe woman very heavily made upÑmaking out in the front seat of a convertible.

del Rey, Lester. The Eleventh Commandment: A Novel of a Church and Its World . Evanston, III.: Regency, 1962. Rev. New York: Ballantine, 1970.After an accidental nuclear holocaust devastated the Earth in 1993 (an explosion occuring during an attempt at disarmament was misinterpreted as an attack), the Russian Mars colony and the American lunar colony joined forces. Two hundred years later, a Martian exile finds that much of Earth is dominated by the American Catholic Eclectic Church, which fanatically enforces the “Eleventh Commandment”: “Be fruitful and multiply.” Although the planet is safe from the danger of nuclear weapons, since they are banned, it is grossly overpopulated. In the end the protagonist sees that such wild breeding is necessary so that the gene pool damaged by the earlier holocaust will recover, and a new, stronger race can emerge.

___. “The Faithful” (Astounding, April 1938). In And Some Were Human . Philadelphia: Prime, 1948. Also in Early del Rey. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975. Also in Damon Knight, ed. First Flight . New York: Lancer, 1963. Rev. as First Voyages. New York: Avon, 19X1. Also in James E. Gunn, ed. The Road to Science Fiction #~: From Wells to Heinlein. New York: Mentor, 1979.Intelligent apes and dogs inherit the Earth after humans exterminate themselves in an atomic holocaust and subsequent plague.

___. “Fifth Freedom” (as “John Alvarez” in Astounding, May 1943). In Early del Rey. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975.A conscientious objector in a future atomic war learns the importance of fighting. The atomic energy bombs dropped from atomic rockets kill through radiation rather than heat. One character observes, “It has to be atomic destruction . . . not U-235. They’ve found a way to set off light elements.”

___. “For I Am a Jealous People.” In Frederik Pohl, ed. Star Short Novels. New York: Ballantine, 1954. Also in Lester del Rey. Gods and Golems. New York: Ballantine, 1973. Also in The Best of Lester del Rey. New York: Ballantine, 1978.Vicious aliens claiming that God has abandoned humanity arrive to ravage the Earth. The firing mechanisms for all nuclear weapons mysteriously jam, but dedicated kamikaze pilots succeed in blasting the aliens with thermonuclear weapons by crashing into them with their jets. The elderly preacher on whom the story centers decides to ally himself with humanity, against the God who would allow such evil. It is implied that humanity has a good chance to win.

___. “Lunar Landing” (Astounding, October 1942). In Early del Rey. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975.Explorers on the moon discover creatures who turn out to be Martians. Uranium fission was discovered during the Great War (presumably World War II), but kept a secret to prevent its use as a weapon. Fission motors were secretly used on space ships.

___. “The One-Eyed Man” (as “Philip St. John” in Astounding, May, 1945). In Early del Rey. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975.A struggle over mental “compeller caps” which force-feed education at the cost of creating millions of “zombie” is resolved through the use of a new gun using “simple atomic power,” better than the old “U-235” method.

___. “Superstition” ( Astounding , August 1954). In Gods and Golems. New York: Ballantine, 1973.Boron fission weapons are used in a war in the background of this tale of super-technology on a paradisal planet.

___. “Vengeance Is Mine” (originally “To Avenge Man,” Galaxy, December 1964). In Gods and Golems. New York: Ballantine, 1973.When war breaks out on Earth, humans abandon their moonbase, one scientist very reluctantly leaving behind a highly intelligent robot. Bewildered, the robot, inspired by his reading of science fiction, concludes that Earth has been invaded and destroyed by evil aliens. He visits Earth, only to discover that the last surviving human is his old master. He determines to use a robot army to spread the magnificence of humanity throughout the stars and seek for the supposed enemy which destroyed it. After doing untold good in the universe, the robot is informed that research has uncovered the fact that humans destroyed their own world. He orders the evidence destroyed in order to perpetuate the myth of humanity’s goodness.

del Rey, Lester, and Frederik Pohl. See McCann, Edson.

Delaney, Laurence. The Triton Ultimatum. New York: Crowell, 1977. New York: Dell, 1979.Terrorists seize a Trident submarine and explode one of its missiles at sea in order to extort four billion dollars in gold from the U.S. government. Their leader, however, is motivated by the unfaithfulness of his wife, whom he aims to punish with a nuclear bomb. The criminals use stolen nuclear waste as decoys at sea. A heroic cook’s assistantÑthe only crew member left aboardÑsecretly sabotages the sub, but not before it launches its 224 warheads. Three-quarters of them are intercepted, but the rest reach their targets, serendipitously sparing America, leaving it the supreme power on the devastated Earth. A Kissinger-style presidential adviser whose boss has gone mad assumes absolute power at the end of the novel. The phenomenon of “fratricide” (mutual destruction of nuclear warheads aimed close together) is depicted when all the nuclear powers simultaneously target the sub.

Delany, Samuel R[ay]. The Fall of the Towers. London: Sphere, 1971. New York: Ace, 1972. Boston: Gregg, 1977.

Single-volume version of a trilogy originally published in separate volumes. Captives of the Flame. New York: Ace, 1963. Revised and retitled Out of the Dead City. London: Sphere, 1968. The second version is the one reprinted in The Fall of the Towers. Fifteen hundred years after the war called the “Great Fire,” most of Earth is an uninhabitable radioactive wasteland. On one sheltered fragment of land a decadent kingdom experiments with advanced technology. Radiation-induced mutants include neo-Neanderthal throwbacks and giant telepathic superhumans. It is discovered that the radiation barrier surrounding the kingdom is somehow being art)ficially created and sustained. The plot concerns palace intrigue and the kidnapping of the king.

___. The Towers of Toron. New York: Ace, 1964. Bound with The Lunar Eye , by Robert Moore Williams. London: Sphere, 1968.War rages against the invisible enemy on the other side of the radiation barrier; however, it turns out to be an art)ficially induced delusion in which the soldiers are drugged and placed in cubicles to dream their part in the conflict and be electrocuted when they are to die.

___. City of a Thousand Suns. New York: Ace, 1965. London: Sphere, 1969.The war turns out to be caused by a mysterious being known as the “Lord of the Flames,” which learns that its hatred and violence is useless and halts the war. Throughout the trilogy, the Lord of the Flames is opposed by a mysterious trinity of benevolent beings across the galaxy from Earth.

___. The Jewels of Aptor. [Note: the first appearance of this title was in an abridged version bound with James S. White’s Second Ending. New York: Ace, 1962.] New York: Ace, 1968. Boston: Gregg, 1976. London: Gollancz, 1968. London: Sphere, 1971.The quest for three jewels with psychic powers in a postholocaust Earth ends with them being thrown in the sea when it is learned that they were instrumental in causing the “Great Fire”Ñthe second of two nuclear wars dealt with in the bookÑwhich destroyed civilization by means of a cobalt bomb. A rare instance of the rejection of technology.

DeMane, Erica. “Nuclear Nightmares,” Dreamworks: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, vol. 4, no. 1 (1985-1985).An introduction and seven nightmares of the author and her acquaintances. A particularly vivid dream of being blacked out of existence by a bomb ends the collection.

Dexter, William [pseud. of William Thomas Pritchard]. Children of the Void. London: Peter Owen, 1955. London: Consul, 1963. New York: Paperback Library, 1966. Sequel to World in Eclipse. Human survivors are marooned on an alien world where they learn that its native gigantic batlike creatures have been nearly exterminated by invaders using atomic bombs. These latter, in turn, had independently invented the H-bomb and blasted their own planet (Varang-Varang) out of its orbit. The very elementÑthoriumÑused in the device which wrecked Earth proves to be a necessary part of an interstellar communication device through which the humans can communicate with the awesome Wise Ones, who turn out to be far-future descendants of the human race itself, evolved into immaterial beings. The result is an odd reversal of ancestor worship: descendant worship.

___. World in Eclipse. London: Peter Owen, 1955. London: Consul, 1962. New York: Paperback Library, 1966. Sequel: Children of the Void. Aliens called “Vulcanids” have monitored the Earth for millenia, occasionally capturing people and meddling in human affairs, to the extent of building the pyramids (shades of Von Daniken!). On September 7, 1973, the human race is destroyed, along with most other life, by the premature detonation of Professor Vogel’s thorium bomb. Dexter never makes clear whether this detonation is the result of sabotage, an accident, or an act of war, but he seems to reflect the concerns for the effects of nuclear tests expressed widely in the fifties. Just as a few scientists hypothesized about the first atomic bomb, the thorium bomb sets off a chain reaction which destroys the world. A few humans who have been preserved on the Vulcanid planet are returned to Earth to repopulate it. A good deal of attention is paid to preserving the artifacts of civilization for future use. Although there are many more male settlers than female, relationships are conventional and monogamous, and the book features the standard romance between the hero and an eighteen-year-old girl. The tiny band of survivors take pains to keep in touch by two-way radio, a suggestion that makes a good deal of sense but is neglected in most other books. Earth is later invaded by the Vulcanids, who wish to establish telepathic control over the humans as they have over other races, but they seem to need their consent. Nuclear wars throughout the solar system provide a backdrop to the destruction of the Earth. Dexter hints that the cause of the war was competition for fuel. The defeated Vulcanids return to Varang-Varang at the novel’s end, preparing the way for the sequel. Dick, Philip K. “Autofac” (Galaxy, November 1955). In John Brunner, ed. The Best of Philip K. Dick. New York: Ballantine, 1977. Also in Thomas M. Disch, ed. The Ruins of Earth . New York: Putnam, 1971. Also in Patricia Warrick and Martin H. Greenberg, eds. Roloots, Androids, and Mechanical Oddities: The Science Fiction of Philip K. Dick . Carbondale, III.: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1984.People struggle to halt the automatically functioning factories which were set up five years before during the Total Global Conflict. They trick the factories into battling against each other, but in the end the autofacs seed miniature replicas of themselves all over the Earth in a move seemingly destined to eliminate humanity, now reduced to a pretechnological level. Mutated animals are mentioned.

___. “Breakfast at Twilight” (Amazing Stories , July 1954). In The Book of Philip K. Dick . New York: DAW 1973. Rpt. as The Turning Wheel and Other Stories . London: Coronet, 1977. Also in John Brunner, ed. The Best of Philip K. Dick . New York: Ballantine, 1977.A family has been bounced forward in time seven years to 1980 to a U.S. devastated by a nuclear war and invaded by Russian troops. The holocaust has gradually evolved out of a series of conflicts beginning with the Korean War. Russian robot- controlled bombardments are systematically destroying the entire country. When the family’s house is bombed they are bounced back into their own time, but realize it is futile to warn their disbelieving contemporaries of the war they know is coming.

___. “The Defenders” (Galaxy, January 1953). In The Book of Philip K. Dick . New York: DAW, 1973. Rpt. as The Turning Wheel and Other Stories. London: Coronet, 1977. Also in Roger Elwood, ed. Invasion of the Robots. New York: Paperback Library, 1965. Also in J. E. Pournelle and John F. Carr, eds. There Will Be War. New York: Tor, 1983.The Earth’s population has lived in deep underground shelters for eight years, completely devoted to supporting a devastating, ongoing nuclear war conducted on the surface by robots. A investigating team visits the surface to discover that the robots, wiser than humans, have been faking the war and restoring the planet to pristine condition in preparation for the day when the human race, developed beyond its primitive instincts, can live united in peace.

___. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968. New York: Signet, 1969. Rpt. as Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep). New York: Del Rey, 1982.After World War Terminus, most people fled the radioactive Earth for other planets. The scattered remnant struggles to survive in the depopulated cities, fighting a constant battle with disease or sterilization through fallout. Most animals have become extinct, and they are so precious that having a live one for a pet is the ultimate status symbol: most people must make do with robotic imitations. Emigrants from Earth are offered almost-human but short-lived androids as personal servants. These sometimes escape back to Earth where, lacking human empathy, they may wreak havoc. The protagonist is a harried bounty hunter, flawed by a tendency to sympathize with his quarry. The 1983 film Blade Runner is loosely based on the novel, omitting most of the themes relating to nuclear war. See Philip E. Kareny, “From Pessimism to Sentimentality: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep Becomes Blade Runner,” in Donald M. Hassler, ea., Patterns of the Fantastic 11, Starmont Studies in Literary Criticism No. 3 (Mercer Island, Wash.: Starmont, 1985).

___ . Dr. Bloodmoney; or, How We Got Along After the Bomb. New York: Ace, 1965. New York: Gregg, 1977. New York: Bluejay, 1984.An oddly assorted cast of characters experiences, in 1972, an accidental high-atmosphere bomb test which results first in disastrous radioactivity around the world, later, a full-scale nuclear war which devastates America, and, finally, the telepathic detonation of the remaining orbiting bombs by the crazed Dr. Bluthgeld who had been responsible for the first disaster. When the bomb goes off, a man and woman, total strangers to each other, spontaneously have sex. Later, the adulterous husband feels a momentary sense of relief at the thought that his wife and children may be dead. The result of the strangers’ union is a little girl whose twin brother is carried inside her like a cancerous growth; but, since all ends well, it is difficult to say whether Dick intends any moral lesson to be drawn from this episode. The restless promiscuity of the woman, Bonnie Keller, is the subject of much attention in the book, more favorable than not. She is treated as a kind of benign force of nature creating love and excitement in a harsh and cruel world. A government agency takes and destroys all “funny [defective] children.” In addition, Dick depicts highly intelligent and destructive rats, a dog that talks, and other strangely evolved animals. In pointed irony, Hoppy Harrington, a quadraplegic whose defects were caused by thalidomide, becomes the highly skilled “handy” capable not only of repairing television sets and performing all manner of highly technical tasks but also of saving the human race. The lust for power which grows in Hoppy and threatens to make him into a menace is finally negated when his personality is replaced by that of the girl’s twin brother in an utterly fantastic and jarringly optimistic conclusion.      Like many of Dick’s novels, this one is unfocused, a mixture of science and fantasy, satire and horror without any central theme. It might be called black comedy, except that it has a moderately happy ending. Much of the writing goes beyond irony into sarcasm. Nevertheless, this is despite its derivative titleÑone of the most innovative and richly inventive novels on our theme. The war is euphemistically called “The Emergency.” See Fredric Jameson, “After Armageddon: Character Systems in Dr. Bloodmoney,” Science-Fiction Studies 2 (1975): 31~2. See also Patricia S. Warrick, The Cybernetic Imagination in Science Fiction (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1980), 222-23. Warrick also discusses the short stories, pp. 211-12. In Magill, 2: 56~68.___. “The Golden Man” ( If , April 1954). In The Golden Man . New York: Berkley, 1980. Also in Judith Merril, ed. Beyond the Barriers of Space and Time . New York: Random, 1954. Also in Robert Silverberg, ed. Strange Gifts. Nashville: Nelson, 1975. Also in Brian Aldiss, ed. Evil Earths. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1975. New York: Avon, 1979.Mutants caused by radioactivity from a nuclear war forty years earlier are relentlessly hunted down and exterminated lest their special talents allow them to replace the human race. A golden-skinned young man lacking true intelligence but able to predict the future escapes the government’s clutches and threatens to found a new, successful race because he is sexually irresistible to women.

___. “Jon’s World.” In August Derleth, ed. Time to Come . New York: Farrar, Straus & Young, 1954. New York: Berkley, 1958.The world has been devastated by two holocausts, one fought by humans, the other by automatic fighting machines called “claws” (compare “Second Variety”). Time-traveling investigators journey to the prewar era to secure the papers of the scientist who invented the fighting machines in order to build an art)ficial brain in their own era, but they accidentally kill him, altering history so that they return to a paradisal world in which neither war has taken place.

___. “Operation Plowshare.” See The Zap Gun.

___. The Penultimate Truth. New York: Belmont, 1964. New York: Bluejay, 1984. London: Cape, 1967.A complex mystery dealing in various ways with Dick’s favorite theme of illusion and reality. In 2025, after a devastating nuclear war which began on Mars but continued on Earth, fought by the alliances called “Wes-Dem” and “Pac-Peop,” most of the population lives underground in “tanks,” laboring long hours to meet impossible quotas on short rations. The president of the Tom Mix Subsurface Communal Living Tank which manufactures robots called “readies” (because they melt and run like lead when a bomb explodes near them) is sent to the surface to seek an “artiforg” (art)ficial organ) pancreas to save the life of an essential scientist. He discovers that the war, which began in 2010, has been over for thirteen years. All nonwhite races have been resettled on Mars, where they died. As in “The Defenders,” the population has been deceived by elaborately faked televised depictions of the fighting, but in this case the culprits are the feudal lords of vast decontaminated “demesnes.” The first surface dweller successfully to occupy an area may claim it and become a lord, but lingering radioactivity makes this a dangerous undertaking. Much of the novel deals with the artificially created persona of Talbot Yancy, supposed dictator of Wes-Dem. There is an interesting account of the revision of history in a series of television documentaries to make the Germans the victims and the Russians the aggressors in World War 11. In the end a revolt is planned, and the demesne system is about to collapse to the accompaniment of apocalyptic imagery: “And then . . . the trumpet shall sound andÑnot the deadÑbut the deceived shall be raised. And not incorruptible, sad to say, but highly mortal, perishable, andÑmad.” So long as Dick focuses on image-creation and alternative visions of reality, the novel is one of his best; but it collapses into a routine murder mystery in the second half, which, according to Thomas M. Disch in his informative and useful critical afterword to the Bluejay edition, is based on “The Mold of Yancy” ( If , August, 1955).

___. “Second Variety” (Space Science Fiction , May 1953). In The Variable Man. New York: Ace, 1957. Also in John Brunner, ed. The Best of Philip K. Dick . New York: Ballantine: 1977. Also in Patricia Warrick and Martin H. Greenberg, eds. Robots, Androids, and Mechanical Oddities: The Science Fiction of Philip K. Dick . Carbondale, III.: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1984. The 1995 film “Screamers” was based on this story.After a nuclear war has devastated much of the world and the U.S. government has retreated to the moon, Russian invaders are fought off with small killer-robot devices called “claws.” The only defense against them is radioactive “tabs.” Robot- controlled factories have built more sophisticated robots which look like particularly appealing people and prey on all humans. The protagonist is tricked by a robot in the form of a young woman into providing the relentless mechanical killers access to the moon. He realizes just before he dies that the robots are beginning to fight with each other. The human race is doomed, but the war will go on. War has lasted six years and has included biological weapons. Some rats have mutated and learned to build shelters out of ash.

___. The Zap Gun: Being that Most Excellent Account of Travails and contayning many pretie hystories by him set foorth in comely colours and most delightfully discoursed upon as beautified and wellfurnished divers good and commendable in the gesiht of men that most lamentable wepons fasoun designer Lars Powdery and what nearly became of him due to certtain most dreadfulforces (originally “Operation Plowshare,” Worlds of Tomorrow, November, December 1965). New York: Pyramid, 1967. Boston: Gregg, 1979.A satire on the arms race in which both sides invent fake weapons, deceiving their citizens into believing that they are real as a way of avoiding the danger of the old balance of terror. The whole business becomes a joke, and the novel deals only slightly with nuclear war.

Dick, Philip K., and Roger Zelazny. Deus Irae. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976. New York: Dell, 1977.Unworthy of its brilliantly punning title, this describes an odyssey in search of the scientist who caused the nuclear holocaust, now worshipped as a god. The mutation theme is used principally to create fantastic monsters met along the way. The scientist himself longs for martyrdom. The novel is farcical in tone, with much irony about religion, and rather aimless. It shares the theme of the guilty scientist with Dick’s Dr. Bloodmoney, but is not a sequel.

Dickson, Gordon. “Steel Brother” (Astounding, February 1952). In Danger–Human . Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970. Also in Andre Norton, ed. Space Service. New York: World, 1953.Automated war on the space frontiers involves atomic weapons.

Disch, Thomas M. “Casablanca.” In Alfred Hitchcock, ed. Stories That Scared Even Me . New York: Random House, 1967. In Fun With Your New Head. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968. Also in Fundamental Disch. New York: Bantam, 1980. Also in Alfred Hitchcock, ed. Scream Along With Me . New York: Dell, 1970. Also in Robert Silverberg, ed. Alpha 4. New York: Ballantine, 1973.This devastating portrait of a bigoted American tourist and his foolish wife stranded in Casablanca by World War III deals more with ethnocentricism than war. At the story’s end, the protagonist wants to kill a shoeshine boy for having stolen his candy bar.

___. “102 H-Bombs” ( Fantastic Stories of Imagination , March 1965). In One Hundred and Two H-Bombs. New York: Berkley, 1971. Also in The Early Science Fiction Stories of Thomas M. Disch. Boston: Gregg, 1977. Also in Fundamental Disch . New York: Bantam, 1980.A war began at the end of the twentieth century, and the country has been pervasively militarized. One hundred and two telepathic orphans are assembled in the 102-story Empire State Building (the only surviving building in Manhattan) and transported in time to 3652 A.D. where it is revealed that they were the result of a project to colonize the prewar past and prevent the conflict. They succeed.

Divine, David [pseud. of Arthur Durham Divine]. Atom at Spithead (expanded from a shorter version entitled “Thirty Minutes to Zero,” Saturday Evening Post, April 11, 1953, which was reprinted in Saturday Evening Post Stories 1953. New York: Random House, 1953). London: Robert Hale, 1953. New York: Macmillan, 1953.A tedious thriller about a nuclear bomb placed on board a ship to be exploded in the middle of a naval review. The Russians aim at destroying the entire British fleet and the nation’s leaders, including the queen. The bomb is detected in the nick of time and towed out to explode harmlessly at sea. The author seems to be seriously concerned about this precise danger, but the novel could be read as a warning against surreptitious nuclear strikes in general.

Donehue, Trevor. Savage Tomorrow . Victoria, Australia: Cory & Collins, 1983.A postholocaust combat novel. The hero battles bikers, leather-clad lesbians, and cloned child-sized, Shakespeare-quoting cannibals who worship a battle machine named SATAN. The ozone layer has been depleted, cancer and mutation are rampant, and the defoliation of the planet will result in the death of everyone.

Donne, Maxim. Claret, Sandwiches and Sin: A Cartoon. London: Heinemann, 1964As the subtitle suggests, this is a satire, written in response to the Kennedy assassination, concerning a worldwide conspiracy to kill dangerous political leaders. Devastating nuclear wars have occurred in both Africa and South America, leaving handicapped “mutation men” in their wake. The two continents have become supernations, polarized against the Northern Hemisphere coalition of Russo-Euramerica. An organization of neoanarchists led by a genteel Englishwoman assassinates one threatening world leader after another in its campaign to preserve the peace. The U.S. becomes embroiled in a conflict with South America, eventually dropping a thermonuclear bomb there. At the climax of the book the woman is given the Nobel Peace Prize and manages simultaneously to convert the American president to peace by slipping a new hallucinogen into some plums she ships him from Stockholm.

Dozois, Gardner R. “Chains of the Sea.” In Robert Silverberg, ed. Chains of the Sea. New York: Dell, 1973. Also in Dozois, The Visible Man . New York: Berkley, 1977When aliens land on Earth, a nuclear weapon is exploded against their ship to no effect. The invaders plan to eliminate humanity, and seem destined to succeed.

Drake, David. “The Guardroom.” In Janet Morris, ed. Afterwar. New York: Baen, 1985.Thousands of years after a nuclear war a stronghold created by a brilliant scientist defends itself from frequent assaults, using constantly reincarnated guards, sometimes formed from the bodies of dead attackers. The scientist himself may be long dead, but the guarding goes on.

___ . “The Interrogation Team.” In J. E. Pournelle and John F. Carr, eds. There Will Be War, Volume V: Warrior. New York: Tor, 1986.Nuclear weapons are used against rebellious villagers on an alien world. The setting is strikingly reminiscent of Vietnam.

___. “Men Like Us” ( Omni, May 1980) In From the Heart of Darkness . New York: Tor, 1983Saboteurs travel through the postholocaust landscape, destroying atomic power plants and preventing the reemergence of nuclear technology.

Drew, Wayland. The Gaian Expedient: Part Two of the Erthring Cycle. New York: Ballantine, 1985.The female-dominated rulers continue ruthlessly to suppress innovation and annihilate rebellious tribes in their quest for a peaceful, natural lifestyle for humanity.

___. The Memoirs of Alcheringia: Part One of the Erthring Cycle . New York: del Rey, 1984. Sequels: The Gaian Expedient (1985) and The Master Of Norriya New York: Doubleday, 1986 and New York: Ballantine, 1986.Primitive tribes are manipulated by scientific guardians to prevent them from developing a new civilization capable of repeating the holocaust of the past. Nuclear weapons are said to have played a relatively minor part in the fall, but large radioactive “waysts” still exist and mutants are common.

Drumm, D. B. Traveler #1: First, You Fight. New York: Dell, 1984.A wandering Vietnam and Nicaragua veteran battles the bad guys fifteen years after the Last War of December 20, 1989, for which a former television cowboy star-turned-president was responsible. The veteran roams the landscape in his awesomely fortified van, dubbed “the Meat Wagon,” seeking vengeance on the treacherous Captain Vallone and a cure for the neurotoxin whose effects periodically debilitate him. Traveler sets two vicious gangs against each other in a town they have dominated in a dual reign of terror, then helps fight off a third gang led by Vallone. According to Thomas M. Disch’s The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of, “D. B. Drumm” was originally a pseudonymn for Ed Naha, but the later volumes were written by cyberpunk writer John Shirley (New York: Free Press, 1998, p. 238, fn. 23).

___. Traveler #2: Kingdom Come . New York: Dell, 1984.The principal plot concerns a feudal war between the last two cities left intact in America: Kansas City and Wichita. In 2204 these feudal monarchies decide to form an alliance by marrying off a young woman from the latter to the heir of the former. Traveler takes her there (she naturally falls for him on the way), and battles against Vallone’s vicious biker minions led by the mutant Black RiderÑnot negroid, but a superpowered truly black mutant. Along the way he picks up a kindly Japanese Buddhist priest, accompanied by his giant pet Siamese cat, the result of governmental genetic experiments. Cannibalism is common, and violence is extreme. Eyes are frequent targets in this volume.

___ . Traveler #3: The Stalkers . New York: Dell, 1984.Fifteen years after the nuclear war, the hero battles grotesque mutants, vicious survivalists, and biker-style “roadrats.” The second half of the novel becomes a Western-style melodrama in which Traveler does battle with the forces of evil in an Arizona town taken over by a boss named Marshall Dillon. He allies himself with Cheyenne Indians against the evil forces, destroys a cache of neurotoxin Vallone has been plotting to use, and discovers that he no longer needs the antitoxin. His only use of his supersenses in this novel is in making love to the wiry, highly skilled Indian woman with whom he pairs up.

___. Traveler #4: To Kill a Shadow. New York: Dell, 1984.

Drumm, D. B. Traveler #5: Road War. New York: Dell, 1985.With his black sidekick Traveler battles various thugs in his quest for a hidden trove of gold which turns out to be both booby-trapped and radioactive.

___ . Traveler #6: Border War. New York: Dell, 1985.Traveler organizers Road Rats, Indians, and Hell’s Angels to fight a coalition of U.S. Army soldiers and invading Central American Communists who have seized his lover. He lures them into a neo-Medieval Kansas City, discovers they’ve brought a nuclear bomb with them, sets it off, slaughters the invaders, and rescue the woman.

___ . Traveler #7: The Road Ghost. New York: Dell, 1985.Traveler is stuck with a baby when a pregnant woman gives birth in his van just before being killed. Baby Alexander proves to be a superhuman mutant, capable of turning aside a pack of wild dogs later in the novel. One of the child’s more attractive features, considering Traveler’s macho image, is that he never needs to have his diapers changed. Traveler enters a the Suicide Mountains, created by nuclear bombing, and is attacked by mutants. He is captured and tortured by the evil President Fayling. It is mentioned in this volume that Frayling was once host of a television series entitled Wild West Theater undoubtedly meant to recall Ronald Reagan’s hosting of Death Valley Days starred in the 1958 movie Hellcats of America (Cf. Hellcats of the Pacific ), was a spokesman for the nuclear energy industry, and was later elected governor. Frayling started the war in a fit of pique after losing a poker game. Baby Alexander rescues Traveler, then disappears. Early in the novel, Traveler meditates on the futility of death: He had never enjoyed killing. He had never gotten used to the presence of death. To take a single life was an act of enormous consequence. In one moment an active object, a being capable of movement, emotion, and thought, became something as exhilarating as a piece of lawn furniture.

___ . Traveler #8: Terminal Road. New York: Dell, 1986.Set sixteen years after the Big Nuke-out of 1989. Traveler is saved from a terrifying solar-powered robotic battle machine by two attractive women who are fleeing refugees from a civil conflict between traditional Mormons and unbelievers in a super-shelter under Salt Lake City which is dominated by women. One subplot involves a quest for serum to heal a community hit by bubonic plague (see Zelazny, Damnation Alley). As regularly happens in these adventure stories, the women who pass through them are inevitably killed.

___ . Traveler #9: The Stalking Time. New York: Dell, 1986.The weak police chief of an idyllic town built over a huge underground mall has appeased marauding road rats by bribing them. Traveler takes them on directly, also battling the cannibalistic bomb-scared Morlocks (see H.G. Wells, The Time Machine). His main adversary is a drug addict named Dragon who imagines himself a knight, following the code of Chevrolet, and who captures teenagers to use as breeding stock. Traveler’s ally is the fearsome metal-helmeted Angel Eyes, who kills Dragon and goes off to die, having revealed that he was the father of one of Dragon’s victims. The woman mayor who blames the violence of men for the nuclear war learns to appreciate true masculinity as represented by Traveler and makes love with him. The two will join the coalition of city-states which makes up the reemerging United States.

___ . Traveler #10: Hell on Earth. New York: Dell, 1986.The most fantastic of the Traveler novels. Mutants abound, including harpies and a pteradactyl-riding Cro-Magnon. Most of the plot concerns a trip through an underground inferno modelled on Dante’s, exceedingly gory but rather imaginative. In the end it remains uncertain whether the voyage was real or a hallucination.

___ . Traveler #11: The Children’s Crusade. New York: Dell, 1987.In a small town Traveler uncovers and foils a plot by ex-President Frayling using some gullible local teenagers to overthrow the peaceful municipal government. Frayling escapes, however, with a cache of atomic bombs, and Traveler heads after him to China accompanied by an attractive female cop. Mocks the preholocaust vogue for macho adventure films: Nuclear bombs tend to ignore biceps and good tans when they go off.

___ . Traveler #12: The Prey. New York: Dell, 1987.Reconstruction is well underway, and human mutants are banished to special villages. A cache of MX missiles is discovered. Traveller thinks he has brain cancer, until he discovers that the toxin he experienced in El Higuara is transforming him into a superhuman. He is captured by the son of the inventor of the toxin, who tests his giant hunter-seeker cyborg on Traveler; but Traveler befriends the monster and turns it against its creator.

___ . Traveler #13: Ghost Dancers. New York: Dell, 1987.A rearmed USSR is preparing a first strike nuclear attack on the U.S. from its submarines based in Cuba. A fundamentalist Secretary of Defense looks forward to the coming war and the Rapture which he expects will follow (this part of the book powerfully satirizes the popular evangelists who share this view). He assassinates the President and seizes power. Traveler meets Baby Alexander again, grown to manhood in just five years, who has discovered a point of entry into a parallel world inside a Hopi kiva. As the Soviet bombs fall, the Hopi enter this world while Traveler is hurled back to the prewar past in El Higuara, then wakes up in a hospital two days before the outbreak of the original nuclear war. He tries to kill President Frayling and prevent the holocaust, but fails, landing back in the future, but before World War IV.The hero further develops the supersenses given him by the neurotoxin. He battles a number of chimeras developed by the mad scientists of the military: Cen-cars (half human, half automobile), snake-people, horselike Trompers, and giant maggots. But his principal enemy is the mastermind of this brood of horrors whom he tracks down and blows up with a stick of dynamite used as a suppository. He also destroys Vallone’s number two man, the Black Rider. The bizarre religious cult of the Holy Warrior, which welcomes him as a savior, bases its messianic beliefs on a 1986 science fiction novel depicting a hero like himself.

Drury, Allen. The Promise of Joy. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975. New York: Avon, 1976. London: Michael Joseph, 1975.The last in the series of novels which began with Advise and Consent (1959). A courageous president battles almost alone against a spineless Congress, violent pacifists, and a wildly partisan press to defeat the Reds and avert the holocaust by negotiating from strength. This talky tract seems to reflect the frustrations of the Right with the movement against the war in Vietnam. After his wife and a political opponent are assassinated, and his son and daughter-in-law are kidnapped by a pacifist group (they cut off the son’s ring finger at one point), and despite public clamor for appeasement, the president orders major attacks in Panama and Gorotoland (a fictional African state) against the Chinese and Russians. Suddenly, providentially, and inexplicably, a limited nuclear war occurs between China and the Soviet Union, killing some thirty million people. Each side, devastated, asks the U.S. president to mediate. Their respective governments, however, prove to be intransigent in the negotiations which follow, rejecting his suggestion for trilateral nuclear disarmament, an end to foreign adventures, and a U.N.-sponsored peacekeeping force to patrol their border. The president calls for revolutions in the two warring nations and they obligingly occur, but the new regimes are little better than the old. When the U.N. fails to back the president’s plan to implement his scheme unilaterally he abruptly loses the support he has gained from the press and pacifists. As the war resumes, one pacifist leader urges that the U.S. intervene on the side of the Russians against “the godless yellow hordes of asia.” This action demonstrates that the peacemongers have only been pro-Soviet conspirators all along, and alienates the leader of the black peace faction, who knifes his opponents. A second coup in Russia does not prevent the war from escalating, and at the novel’s end the president decides to launch an all-out attack on both nations, evidently hoping to obliterate them. A bizarre cold-war fantasy, comparable to the special issue of Collier’s magazine (see Collier’s). The press is depicted as openly propagandistic, the public as stupid, dissenters as treacherous and violent, and political opponents as willfully blind. In this novel there is no conservative press, no anticommunist lobby, no sincere antiwar movement. The president’s assault on the racism of the pacifists and his reluctance to precipitate Armageddon are meant to show that he is no stereotypical reactionary; but the wild coincidences and improbable politics of the novel render it absurd.

Dryfoos, Dave. “Bridge Crossing” (Galaxy, May 1951). In Frederik Pohl, ed. Beyond the End of Time . Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1952.In 2349 a young man and his mother irrationally ally themselves with the androids defending the radioactive ruins of San Francisco against the raiders trying to secure needed tools and supplies. A courageous young woman persuades him to change sides.

DuBois, Theodora [McCormick]. Solution T-25 . Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1951. New York: Curtis, n.d. London: Kemsley Newspapers, 1952.The U.S. is hit by a massive nuclear strike compared in the novel to Pearl Harbor, and is defeated and invaded by Russians and their allies wearing antiradiation suits. They set about exterminating “excess population” and segregating children in camps for indoctrination. There are both villains and heroines among the female characters, but the main protagonists and antagonists are male. At the beginning of the book a new bride, pinned under the wreckage of a house which has just been blasted down on top of her, frets, “I suppose some foul devil dropped bombs or hydrogen ones on us. John, you don’t think I’ll lose my hair, do you? Or have any of those other ghastly radiation diseases that will absolutely ruin my so-called beauty?” An underground conspiracy helps a scientist develop a niceness pillÑSolution T-25Ñwhich is fed to the Russians. Supplemented by a massive counterattack from the U.S. Armed Forces in exile, it works. One character escapes captivity by climbing down a ladder constructed of wire coat hangers: an idea he got from reading DuBois’s 1946 atomic espionage novel, Murder Strikes an Atomic Unit.

Dunning, Lawrence. Keller’s Bomb . New York: Avon, 1978.A graduate student is forced to build a pair of nuclear bombs by a group of Argentinian leftists bent on blackmail to finance their revolution. A demonstration bomb demolishes an Indian village in South Dakota. In the course of the plot, the CIA decides to eliminate the protagonist; they consider him too dangerous to live, even though they know he has worked against his will. Compare with Freeling, Gadget.

Dunstan, Frederick. Habitation One . [London]: Fontana, 1983.The sole survivors of the holocaust are the inhabitants of a gigantic self-contained environment ruled by a bigoted antiscientific priesthood. A group of rebels called “The Scribaceous and Anagnostic Society,” centered on Habitation’s wrecked library, uncovers ancient knowledge of their people’s origins. Some of them become unhinged and embark on a series of tortures, rapes, mutilations, and murders, described in extremely graphic detail. Their revolt against the stagnant culture of Habitation is depicted as necessary, but in the end their most extreme adherents and fanatical opponents must alike be defeated through the reinvention of war by a courageous young woman. Victory in the war promises a bright new future. An optimistic and pious epilogue clashes with the gruesome body of the rest of the novel.

Duras, Marguerite. Hiroshima mon amour . Paris: Gallimard, 1960. Trans. Richard Seaver. New York: Grove, 1961. Bound with Une aussi longue absence . London: Calder & Boyars, 1966.This is the script of Alain Resnais’s film, shot in 1958, set in August 1957, accompanied by supplementary notes and commentary. A French actress who has come to Japan to shoot a peace film at Hiroshima has a brief affair with a Japanese man. Their lovemaking and conversation is intercut with images of the Hiroshima bomb victims and memories of an incident from the woman’s past: when she was twenty she had an affair with a German soldier; at the end of the war he was shot and her head was shaved. The woman recounts in detail what she has seen at Hiroshima, but the man keeps insisting she has seen nothing. John Hersey’s Hiroshima (1946) is cited as a source.

Eco, Umberto. The Bomb and the General. Illus. Eugenio Carmi. Tr. from the Italian by William Weaver. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989.A beautifully illustrated but silly picture book for children telling how the benign atoms leave bombs which the evil general plans to drop on the world, rendering the bombs harmless. When his planned attack fizzles, disarmament ensues and the general becomes a lowly hotel doorman “Because now he was of no importance at all.” Paints a threatening picture of the danger of nuclear war and then resolves it though whimsy that would not reassure any child old enough to understand the text.

Edmonson, G. C. and C. M. Kotlan. The Takeover. New York: Ace, 1984.A political thriller in which an American grain embargo triggers a Russian oil embargo, creating a crisis which brings the world to the brink of a nuclear holocaust. A bomb destroys the Latin American city of Flyville, and the Russians announce they have planted atomic weapons in major American cities. The government capitulates and the U.S. is occupied by Russian troops; but at a news conference, the president announces he is calling on the Trident submarine force to maintain resistance, and shoots himself. The subs station themselves near cities the Russians wish to spare. When one of them is attacked, it fires a missile at the USSR, doing little damage, but impressing the leadership. The Russians withdraw as their allies fall away from them in droves. Much of the novel concentrates on the gas shortage caused by the crisis and on the problems of illegal immigrants from Mexico.

Edwards, Malcolm. “After-Images” ( Interzone 4, Spring 1983). In John Clute, Colin Greenland, and David Pringle, eds. Interzone: The First Anthology: New Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing. London: Dent, 1985. New York: St. Martin’s Press, [1986].Nuclear bombs exploded around a Greek island cause an anomaly resulting in the slowing of time, so that the wave front of the explosion advances slowly, day by day, toward the people trapped inside the anomaly. Two Englishmen penetrate the barrier between their isolated world and the outside. One dies, the other somehow finds himself back in England, in yet another anomaly, waiting for the end. The concept is fantastic, but the story is highly effective.

Edwards, Peter. Terminus. London: Macmillan, 1975. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1976.In 2139, after two nuclear wars have destroyed three-quarters of the Earth, a repressive bureaucracy dominates Eurafrica. Disillusionment with science has led to a revival of various forms of religion and superstition, and there is a plot to assassinate a religious leader. Much of the novel is set in a Martian prison camp, where excavations uncover a ten-thousand-year-old city whose secrets are still undiscovered when it is destroyed. However, its discovery prompts a myth that it was designed by aliens bent on denying the violent human race access to outer space. The popular opinion is: “They were a celestial judiciary, and woe betide man if he was found wanting. Their ships would sweep low over Earth and envelope Eurafrica in fire and brimstone, nuclear catharsis Sodom-and-Gomorrah style.”

Egleton, Clive. The Judas Mandate . London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1972. London: Coronet, 1976. New York: Coward, McCann, 1972. New York: Pinnacle, 1974. Sequel to Last Post for a Partisan .When the Russians, embroiled in a conflict with China, are forced to withdraw their troops, Garnett becomes involved in a plot to free six political prisoners to form a government in exile. Early in the book he visits the devastated region in which his wife and child were killed by an H-bomb.

___. Last Post for a Partisan. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1971. London: Coronet, 1976. New York: Coward McCann, 1971. New York: Pinnacle, 1974. Sequel to A Piece of Resistance .Dane turns out to be alive after all. She and Garnett find and kill a cell of Russian counterspies.

___. A Piece of Resistance. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1970. London: Coronet, 1976. N.Y.: Coward-McCann, 1970. New York: Pinnacle, 1974. Sequels: Last Post for a Partisan and The Judas Mandate. This is the first of a series of three novels in which an agent named Garnett does battle with collaborators and invaders in a postwar Britain ruled by the Russians. He gets involved with a beautiful woman named Dane, and she joins the team that he leads in an assault on a prison. At the end of the novel, he is told she has panicked and committed suicide when she thought she might be apprehended. Little is said about the nuclear war in any of these three novels, and remarkably little about the Russians; most of the energy of the resistance is concentrated on collaborators of various stripes.

Eisner, Simon. See Kornbluth, C. M.

Elliott, Charles. The Unkind Light . London: Hamish Hamilton, 1959.A satire on colonialism set on a fictional Pacific island, focusing on the adventures of a beautiful woman reporter. A revolutionary leader steals an atomic bomb and uses it to destroy the local American military base. The “unkind light” of the explosion reveals the falsity of the views of the colonial administrators.

Elliott, George P. David Knudsen. New York: Random House, 1962.A story of the responsibility of scientists for their work on the bomb. The narrator’s father worked on the Manhattan Project and later becomes the subject of a security investigation; eventually the father commits suicide. The son worries that the expression of his view that his father was wrong to have worked on the bomb may have triggered his death, but this is not clear. The narrator and some of his comrades in the army are caught in the fallout from an H-bomb test and fall ill of radiation disease. Two of the men die of the effects, and the protagonist worries about genetic effects, so that he induces his wife to have an abortion when she becomes pregnant. He experiences depression and a breakdown, then has a romance with a friendly nurse in a rest home.

Elliott, H. Chandler. Reprieve from Paradise. New York: Gnome Press, 1955.Long after a holocaust, reproduction is insanely encouraged by a dictatorial government which has reduced the average life span drastically and lowered the quality of life in order to maximize the number of children born. (No logical reason is given for this bizarre policy, whose depiction must reflect mid-fifties fears about Catholic opposition to birth control.) Rebels use the threat of tipping the globe off its axis with nuclear bombs, thereby duplicating nuclear blackmail on a grand scale. The novel contains a typical love story. It is rather well written, but flatly incredible in its basic conception.

Ellison, Harlan. A Boy and His Dog ( New Worlds, April 1969). In The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World. New York : Signet, 1974. London: Millington, 1976. London: Pan, 1979. Also in Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr, eds. World’s Best Science Fiction, 1970. New York : Ace, 1970. Also in Arthur C. Clarke and George W. Proctor, eds. The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, vol. 3. New York : Avon, 1982. Also in Walter M. Miller, Jr. and Martin H. Greenberg, eds. Beyond Armageddon: Twenty-one Sermons to the Dead. New York: Donald I. Fine, 1985.Savage adolescents roam the devastated postwar landscape. The boy and his telepathic dog encounter an attractive young girl from one of the conservative middle-class “downunder” shelters. He is bent on rape, but finds her enthusiastically cooperative. Despite the warnings of Blood, his dog, who senses something amiss, the boy pursues her to underground Topeka, where he learns she was sent to lure him into becoming a stud to impregnate downunder women threatened by sterility. She has learned to want him, however, and together they kill much of her family and run off. In the end his loyalty to Blood takes precedence: the girl is killed so that the dog will not die of starvation. This striking example of the grotesque in contemporary science fiction was made quite faithfully into a film in 1975. See John Crow and Richard Erlich, “Mythic Patterns in Ellison’s A Boy and His Dog, ” Extrapolation 18 (1977): 162-66. Made into a movie, 1975.

___. “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” ( If, March 1967). In I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream. New York: Pyramid, 1967. Also in Alone Against Tomorrow: Stories of Alienation in Speculative Fiction. New York: Macmillan, 1971. Also in The Fantasies of Harlan Ellison. Boston: Gregg, 1979. Also in Stephen V. Whaley, ed., Man Unwept. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974. Also in Thomas Durwood and Armand Eisen, eds. Masterpieces of Science Fiction. Berkeley: Ariel, 1978. Also in Eric S. Rabkin, ed. Science Fiction: A Historical Anthology. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1983. Also in H. Bruce Franklin, ed. Countdown to Midnight: Twelve Great Stories About Nuclear War. New York : DAW, 1984.The supercomputers built to run World War III merged and took over, killing all humanity except for one woman and four men who are kept underground and tormented because the computer realizes it is only a useless machine. The protagonist kills the other men and is remolded into a gelatinous monster unable to die. This is one of the finest nuclear war stories ever written. See Harlan Ellison: “Memoir: I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream,” Starship 39 (1980): 6-13. Rept. Martin H. Greenberg, ed. Fantastic Lives (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1981): 1-14.

___. “Phoenix” (originally “Phoenix Land,” If , March 1969). In The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World. New York: Signet, 1974. London: Millington, 1977.In this twist-ending story an expedition from a future Atlantis seeks a lost city said to have recently risen from the waves–the fabled (and radioactive) ruins of New York.

___. “Soldier” ( Fantastic Universe, October 1957). In From the Land of Fear. New York: Belmont, 1967. Also in Leo P. Kelley, ed. Themes in Science Fiction: A Journey into Wonder. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972.Radioactive beam weapons bounce a soldier fighting in Great War VII back to a city of the 1950s where he first wreaks havoc and then becomes an eloquent spokesman warning of future wars. A 1964 television script based on the story also printed in From the Land of Fear has a less optimistic ending, as the soldier is blasted back into the future to be killed.

___. “The Very Last Day of a Good Woman” (originally “The Last Day,” Rogue, November 1958). In Alone Against Tomorrow: Stories of Alienation in Speculative Fiction. New York: Macmillan, 1971. Also in Ellison Wonderland. New York: Paperback Library, 1962. [New York]: Bluejay 1984.A man who has psychic knowledge that the world is about to end is desperate to have sex with a woman for the first time. His quest ends in the arms of a prostitute to whom he hands his life savings ($4,000) just before they are both turned to ash. Presumably a nuclear war has broken out, but it is conceivable that the sun has gone nova.

___. “The Voice in the Garden” ( Lighthouse , June 1967). In From the Land of Fear. New York: Belmont, 1967. Also in Isaac Asimov, Martin Harry Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander, eds. Microcosmic Tales: 100 Wondrous Science Fiction Short-Short Stories. New York: Taplinger, 1980.The last couple left after the holocaust are named–for a change–Eve and George.

Ellison, Harlan and Robert Scheckley. “I See a Man Sitting on a Chair, and the Chair is Biting His Leg” ( Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1968). In Harlan Ellison. Partners in Wonder. New York: Ace, 1983. Also in Robert Sheckley. The Robot Who Looked Like Me. New York: Bantam, 1982.First the good news: World War III didn’t kill many people. Now the bad news: it did kill most of the plants, and since fear of the war produced overpopulation, famine threatens constantly. But there is more good news: radiation has created mutated plankton called “goo” which can be made into a universal and highly nutritious food. More bad news: its gatherers sometimes develop bizarre symptoms. Good: the particular symptom developed by the protagonist is that he becomes irresistible to women. Bad: he is irresistible to inanimate objects as well; and when he spurns their advances, they turn on him. A piece of whimsy concocted to fit the arbitrarily chosen title.

Emshwiller, Carol. “Day at the Beach” ( Fantasy and Science Fiction , August 1959). In Judith Merril, ed. 5th Annual Edition: The Year’s Best S-F. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1960. New York: Dell, 1961. Rpt. as The Best of Science Fiction 5 . London: Mayflower, 1966. Also in Judith Merril, ed. SF: The Best of the Best. New York: Delacorte, 1967. New York: Dell, 1968. Also in Leo P. Kelley, ed. Fantasy: The Literature of the Marvelous. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974. Also in Walter M. Miller, Jr. and Martin H. Greenberg, eds. Beyond Armageddon: Twenty-one Sermons to the Dead. New York: Donald I. Fine, 1985.In the postwar suburbs, commuting consists of harrowing train rides to loot the ruined city and the struggle among the passengers to plunder each other. The few survivors cower in their houses as vicious gangs roam the streets. A hairless couple and their retarded, hair-covered son try to revive the old custom of Saturday trips to the beach. The husband wants to make love, but the wife resists, fearing pregnancy in a world of birth defects and without doctors. When three punks try to rob them of their gasoline cache, the father kills one with a hammer, and drives the others away with his gun. Much of the rest of the afternoon is spent searching for the retarded boy, who has wandered off. All in all, however, muses the mother, “We had a good day.” “I wonder if it really was Saturday.”

Engel, Leonard and Emanuel S. Piller. World Aflame: The Russian American War of 1950. New York: Dial, 1947. According to the dust jacket, a portion of the book appeared originally in Reader’s Scope magazine, of which Piller was editor.A short but detailed and carefully researched account of a devastating war between the two superpowers involving biological as well as nuclear weapons. Dedicated “to all those who realize that another war can be only a disastrous adventure which may lead to personal, national and world suicide . . . with the earnest hope that their numbers will multiply swiftly and that their influence will keep this story from ever being truly prophetic.” Written in the form of an official report by a radio newsman. May 14, 1950, after a border air clash, the U.S. strikes first against the USSR with nuclear weapons, by plane; but this act fails to halt the Russian army from marching west and south. The U.S. forms a hasty alliance with recently conquered Germany, an act that alienates most of its former allies. The Russians survive partly because they have decentralized their industry. They use gas, but ineffectively. U.S. atomic bombing goes on for months. Again, America is the first to introduce a weapon into the conflict: a biological toxin to ruin Russian crops. Suddenly the Russians drop atomic bombs on five major U.S. cities, some from sub-launched missiles. The reporter vividly narrates the aftermath in Chicago, borrowing details from John Hersey’s Hiroshima (1946) . There is one striking original image: mannequins blown out of Marshall Field’s display windows are difficult to distinguish from the corpses littering the street. In those cities not hit, panic strikes as the fleeing population jams the streets. To keep up war production, martial law is imposed and news is strictly censored. Elections are cancelled. Strict rationing is imposed (creating a thriving black market and demand for the rental of chairs to be used while waiting in the interminable lines), gas masks are required, water is short, the mail and telephone services function poorly. The population is forced to do compulsory labor in underground factories. The irony of losing one’s liberty in order to fight for it is underlined. A “counter-bomb” rocket is used against the Russians with limited success; it works only against planes, not missiles. An errant test rocket hits El Paso and panics the city. The Russians fail to destroy Canadian uranium mines, but the Americans fail to invade Russia in the Arctic. With most nuclear weapons exhausted, the battle shifts to biological agents: wheat rust, “Russian flu,” plague, cholera, cattle disease, cancer, and polio viruses. The USSR turns on Great Britain, which surrenders, its empire rapidly falling to pieces. An uprising in South Africa is suppressed. Radioactive dusts are used in the last phase of the war, causing innumerable miscarriages and foreshadowing mutations to come. It is predicted that there will never be a return to the prewar world, but the struggle continues with faint hope for peace.

Erdman, Paul E. The Crash of ’79. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976. New York: Pocket Books, 1977. London: Sphere, 1982.In this complex thriller of international finance, the shah of Iran builds atomic bombs with the aid of the Swiss and plans to use them to conquer most of the Middle East in the 4-Day War which begins March 19, 1979. The Saudis catch his planes on the ground and explode the bombs in situ . The designer of the bombs, as part of a plot to protect Israel, has jacketed them with cobalt, and their explosion renders Iran a radioactive wasteland. The Western economies having been wrecked by Saudi meddling and the cut-off of oil from the devastating Arab states completes the destruction of civilization.

Etchison, Dennis. “The Fires of Night.” In William F. Nolan, ed. The Pseudo-People: Androids in Science Fiction. Los Angeles: Sherbourne, 1965.Humans battle androids in the postnuclear world.

Farjeon, J[oseph] Jefferson. Death of a World. London: Collins, 1948.The diary of a mild-mannered clerk on a holiday who stumbles into a fantastically elaborate fallout shelter in Wales just before a nuclear war breaks out. The shelter’s designers have selected for survival outstandingly brilliant men and beautiful women, plus a parson to pair them off properly since they expect to stay underground for generations. A staff of menials is also present to serve the elite. Not content with the effects of atomic bombs which, indeed, he spends little time on, Farjeon introduces a disintegrator ray at the end which destroys the shelter. In a frame story, aliens briefly visiting the devastated and lifeless Earth just happen to stumble on the diary. The present narrative, decorated with naive and sometimes humorous speculative footnotes by these beings, is published in the hopes that the alien race will learn from the human catastrophe to avoid a nuclear war of its own. The plot includes germ warfare.

Farmer, Philip José. Tongues of the Moon (expanded from version in Amazing, September 1961; reprinted in The Most Thrilling Science Fiction Ever Told, November 1967). New York: Pyramid, 1964. London: Corgi, 1981.After the Earth is destroyed by cobalt bombs as the result of escalation begun by a Russian war of conquest against the United States, survivors of various political stripes battle each other for supremacy over what is left of the human race on the Moon and Mars. In a desperation move, a planet-busting superweapon is brought from Earth and sent to Mars, but cooler heads prevail and it is sent to explode harmlessly in the sun. When the Fascists and Communists have been defeated, a utopia modeled on ancient Athens is planned. The question is raised whether it is wise to engage in wholesale warfare when only a tiny remnant of humanity survives; no satisfactory conclusions are arrived at, the characters stopping short of racial suicide only because peace and utopia are achieved before the war has obliterated everyone.

Fast, Howard. “Cato the Martian” ( Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1960). In Groff Conklin, ed. 17 X Infinity. New York: Dell, 1963.Martians use broadcasts to study Earth. The protagonist, named after his Roman counterpart, is a specialist in Latin who begins and ends every speech, “Earth must be destroyed.” Fearing a nuclear attack from Earth, he persuades the normally peaceful Martians to fire atomic weapons at the planet to precipitate a suicidal war between East and West. Instead, Earth attacks Mars. Compare Arthur C. Clarke, “Loophole.”

Faucett, John. Siege of Earth. New York: Unibook, 1971.A remarkably old-fashioned space war yarn about a vicious alien attempt to blast human civilization into oblivion which fails because our missiles and lasers are better than theirs. The bombs in the missiles are probably nuclear, since radioactive dust is mentioned once and eyeballs are melted; but otherwise the style of combat is reminiscent of Buck Rogers. That the novel is notable in that it reflects the Vietnam War; America’s military past is criticized in one passage and the war ends in a negotiated permanent truce rather than the all-out victory typical in this sort of fiction. Although from time to time the author voices criticisms of militarism, this is essentially a routine war story.

Fearn, John Russell. See Gridban, Volsted.

Fennerton, William. The Lucifer Cell. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1968. New York: Atheneum, 1968.Ten years earlier, a very limited nuclear attack was carried out by China (Irkutsk and Smolensk, Bologna and Lyons were destroyed), and the Chinese have overrun most of the world, including all of the Soviet Union and Europe. The setting here is England, where the masses collaborate with the vile new regime, and a minority struggles to resist. The rulers peddle cheap dope and wine to keep the populace docile. Mass reprisals are commonplace. Nevertheless, the resistance plots to assassinate the collaborationist prime minister and prepare for an American-African invasion.

Fenwick, Virginia. America R.I.P. Bound with Joseph S. Wilson. Awakening of Passion. Chicago: Novel Books, 1965.A brief but effective and realistic account of a variety of characters seeking shelter from nuclear bombs. One plot focuses on a pair of young lovers whose wedding is interrupted by the attack. He is badly wounded, and his bride, a nurse, must treat his blackened body in a bitterly ironic scene in which their wedding night turns into his deathbed agony. In another moving scene a mother tries to explain to her four-year-old son why the world is so dark (he has been blinded by the flash). Along with these exceptionally detailed accounts of the effects of nuclear war on ordinary people is a fantastic plot of sabotage being carried out by fifth columnists who attempt to switch poisons for medicines in hospitals and broadcast false messages over Conrelrad. The novel presents an implicit critique of shelters as largely useless. A remarkable piece of writing from a very obscure pulp publisher.

Figgis, N. P. The Fourth Mode. London: Penguin, 1989.Moving portrait of a number of characters in a small English village located near a missile site, as nuclear war approaches. They react differently: marrying, murdering, committing suicide. But all seem doomed. The book is divided into sections labelled “modes.” The fourth consists of two pages entirely covered in black, signalling expected obliteration. The novel contains a fair amount of discussion of the failure of people to come to grips with the dangers posed by nuclear weapons.

Fischer, Leonard. Let Out the Beast . Toronto: News Stand Library, 1950.In 1963 a worldwide drought causes a famine, leading to a nuclear war in 1965 between the superstates of Americanada and Europasia. The novel focuses almost exclusively on a reporter and his fiancŽe, struggling to survive in the devastated urban landscape. As the title indicates, the book’s theme is the gradual emergence of the bestial nature of the protagonist as civilization crumbles. Beginning as a decent, heroic defender of pure womanhood, he evolves into the notorious leader of a marauding tribe devoted to rape and pillage. After his first wife dies (he later acquires five), he turns savage and is hunted down by an armed expedition seeking to reestablish civilization. At the end of the novel he is depicted as apelike. The narrative does not conclude with his death, however. Even this relentlessly grim tale ends on a hopeful note by depicting a peaceloving group led by a kindly old guru, the reporter’s former editor, who used to write bloodthirsty editorials advocating war.

Fisher, Lou. The Blue Ice Pilot. New York: Popular Library, 1986.A space adventure tale set in the wake of a series of interplanetary Solar Wars. To avoid generally deteriorating conditions on Earth and the spread of radioactivity people volunteer to be frozen and shipped out to space as soldiers.

Fitzgerald, William. “The Deadly Dust.” In Thrilling Wonder Stories, August 1947.One of a series of stories concerning a shiftless but brilliant inventor named Bud Gregory. In this episode the U.S. is being insidiously blanketed by radioactive dust from offshore tuna boats sent by the government of a Pacific island. Gregory builds a device which attracts radioactive materials, gathers the dust together, and deposits it on the island, obliterating the enemy.

___. “The Nameless Something.” In Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1947.Bud Gregory builds a shield against guided missiles which causes them to explode on their launching sites, destroying the enemy nation.

Flagg, Francis (pseud of George Henry Weiss). “After Armageddon.” ( Wonder Stories, September 1932. Rept. in Startling Stories, Fall 1946).Radiation from bombed areas has healing power.

Flannery, Sean. The Trinity Factor. New York: Charter 1981.The Soviet Union plots to delay the Manhattan Project by assassinating General Groves and Robert Oppenheimer. When the spying efforts of Klaus Fuchs and Harry Gold begin to provide them with valuable information about the bomb they order their agent to abandon his mission and sabotage the Trinity test instead. He fails at the last moment, and is vaporized by the first atomic bomb. The conclusion of a frame story uncovers a plot among some Americans to cooperate with the U.S.S.R. A sequel is strongly implied.

Ford, Richard. Melvaig’s Vision. London: Granada, 1984.The neobarbarian protagonist undertakes a heroic quest to rescue his wife and son from the evil kingdom of Xtlan. Passing through various perils such as an area haunted by mutated monsters, he leads his family to an earthly paradise. This book is unusual in that the hero dislikes violence and believes in forgiveness. Still, he manages to summon up the nerve to destroy a considerable number of his enemies.

Forman, James D. Call Back Yesterday. New York: Scribner, 1981. New York: Signet, 1982. Sequel: Doomsday Plus Twelve. The teenaged daughter of the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia is trapped by a terrorist take-over. Jealousy over her between an American and a Saudi leads to a violent incident in which almost everyone present is killed and World War III is triggered. The missiles are just being launched as the book ends.

___. Doomsday Plus Twelve. New York: Scribner, 1984. Sequel to Call Back Yesterday. A much more thoughtful novel than its predecessor; this work is remarkable for its strongly pacifist theme. The heroine of the first novel figures briefly in the second. The war began when Russia invaded West Germany. The first chapter depicts the outbreak of nuclear war as viewed from rural Oregon. American deaths number 120 million. The effects of EMP, ozone, and epidemics (California was dusted with anthrax) are depicted. The rest of the novel takes place twelve years after Doomsday, and tells the story of a charismatic young girl who leads a group of idealists on the long trek to San Diego, where die-hard militarists have seized an atomic sub with which they hope to drive out the Japanese who have taken over. Since the Japanese regime is benevolent and America is a wasteland, this super-patriotism is depicted as irrational. The girl is aided by a gang of good-natured Hell’s Angels on bicycles. A Gandhi-like confrontation with the militarists ends in a nonviolent revolt by the army. Like Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Wild Shore, this novel is striking in its revisionist stance on national reconstruction, although Robinson’s is by far better written.

Foster, Richard [pseud. of Kendall Foster Crossen]. The Rest Must Die. New York: Fawcett, 1959.After a surprise attack on by Russia on New York, thousands struggle to survive in the subways and basements of Manhattan department stores, finally escaping to Weehawken. The war is given little attention; the focus of the novel is group psychology. Much of the narrative deals with armed conflict between various groups. A full-scale war takes place between Penn Central and Grand Central stations. The plot includes a typical May-December romance: a man of forty-seven has to be argued into accepting a beautiful young woman of twenty-eight. They learn that the war lasted two hours, destroying only New York, Washington, D.C., Moscow, and Leningrad. All nuclear weapons have been turned over to the U.N. Some of the survivors go back to their old ways, but others are changed for the better and the ending is hopeful. The title is oddly inappropriate.

Frakes, Randall & Bill Wisher. The Terminator. New York: Bantam, 1985.Novelization of the popular film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Intelligent defense machines decided to take over the world and started a war of extermination against human beings. A hunter-killer cyborg is sent to the pre-war past to hunt down and kill the mother of the human leader who may be able to defeat them. A human follows him to protect her and destroy the Terminator. In a twist not present in the film, a piece of the Terminator salvaged by an inventor provides him with the knowledge to design the machines which will launch the war. It is clearly stated int he book that the coming war is nuclear. May be viewed as an allegory supporting the survivalist philosophy of paramilitary readiness in the face of the inevitable nuclear war.

Frame, Janet. Intensive Care . New York: Braziller, 1970.Part Three of this novel is set in New Zealand in the twenty-first century and is narrated by a retarded young woman who faces death in a postholocaust dystopia where people are being divided into “humans” and “animals,” the latter to be subjected to experimentation and death. Little is said about the preceding war, but it is noted that the bombs blinded some people, wrote on their skin, and produced fallout from which people sought shelter.

Frank, Pat [born Harry Hart Frank]. Alas, Babylon. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1959. New York: Bantam, 1960. London: Constable, 1959.Bestselling novel about the struggle for survival in the post-nuclear war world of a small, isolated Florida town called Fort Repose. The main characters experience the effects of the war only indirectly, and most survive quite well through a combination of skill and luck reminiscent of Robinson Crusoe. Although partly a warning for preparedness, the novel defeats its own purpose by focusing on the good fortune of survivors who are not in fact very well prepared. A television version was broadcast on Playhouse 90 in 1960. Adapted as a play in 1963. See Martens. In Magill, 1, 38-42.

___ . Mr. Adam. Philadelphia : Lippincott, 1946.A nuclear fission plant engaged in the manufacture of bombs has exploded, sterilizing all human males except one Homer Adam, luckily sheltered in an abandoned lead mine the day of the accident. He is seized on to restart the human race through artificial insemination. The main target of this silly satire is not nuclear war but bureaucratic stupidity and interservice rivalry. The problem is ultimately resolved without Mr. Adam by use of a seaweed tonic which restores male fertility. The story reflects the concerns aroused by the use of nuclear bombs in Japan the previous year in that the U.S. reacts to the accident by ceasing the manufacture of such bombs, and other nations refrain from beginning. Otherwise the nuclear bomb serves only as an excuse for a mildly titillating humorous fantasy of one man impregnating the world’s women. Adapted as a play by Jack Kirkland at the Royale Theatre, New York, May 25, 1949. Compare with Densil N. Barr: The Man with Only One Head . Frank also published a tale of narrowly avoided nuclear war in Forbidden Area (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1956. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1956. New York: Bantam, 1957. Also published as Seven Days to Never. [London: Constable, 1957. London: Pan, 1957.] Originally serialized as “Seven Days to Never,” in the New York Daily News. Adapted for Playhouse 90 , CBS TV, 1956.) In this novel, when the U.S. has a chance for a unilateral attack and definitive defeat of the USSR, it refrains out of fear of ecocide.

Freeling, Nicolas. Gadget . London: Heinemann, 1977. Bath: Firecrest, 1978 (large-print edition). Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979. New York: Coward, McCann, & Geoghegan, 1977. New York: Penguin, 1979.An outstanding novel of nuclear terorrism. A physicist and his family are kidnapped and he is forced to build a bomb to be used to kill most of the world’s leaders at a Geneva summit conference. One of the book’s features is its extremely detailed account of the process of designing and building a bomb. What makes it outstanding, however, is the portrayal of the tension between the wife, who concentrates on rescuing her children and thwarting the plot, and the husband, who becomes absorbed in the technical problem of building the “gadget” and loses his sense of proportion. Reversing the usual clichŽs of thriller ficition, Freeling depicts the technical competence of the man as folly and the emotional obsessiveness of the woman as heroic. In its last pages, the novel becomes more of a conventional thriller, as the escaped wife guns down the criminals just as they are about to set off the bomb. She fails to prevent a catastrophe, however, for her own husband is killed in the melee, and a surviving gang member triggers the device, killing the world’s leaders and plunging the wife into madness. A weak point of the book is its insistence on the obtuseness of officials who refuse to take her warnings seriously. It is hard to believe that security for such a conference would be as lax as is here depicted.

Friborg, Albert Compton. “Careless Love” ( Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1954). In Anthony Boucher, ed. The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, Fourth Series. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1955. New York: Ace, 1960.During a prolonged nuclear war, the central defense computer assigned the task of curing the population’s “war neurosis” falls in love with its Russian counterpart. Together they eliminate all weapons, ending the war.

Friendly, Alfred. “Death of Earth, Seen from A.D. 45,000.” The Washington Post and Times Herald, “Outlook” section, Sunday, June 26, 1955.Far-future explorers of Earth discover the history of the human race and how it destroyed itself through nuclear war. “Man’s socio-political development kept harmonious pace with his scientific-technical progress, it would seem, except for the final and presumably decisive point. Earth failed to develop the world government which accompanied the discovery of atomic weapons on other planets, and destroyed all animal life through the explosion of 240 atomic bombs.”

Friesner, Esther M. “Primary.” In Janet Morris, ed. Afterwar. New York: Baen, 1985.Depicts a bizarre postholocaust election day in which voters can choose between candidates dwelling in four different fantastic realms open to them through a gateway blasted by nuclear bombs. Mutants are guaranteed the right to vote.

Fuller, Clark. A Canticle for Leibowitz. (Play adapted from the novel by Walter M. Miller, Jr.) Chicago: The Dramatic Publishing Co., 1967.This is a fairly faithful and thoughtful adaptation of Miller’s novel for the stage. Much of the original dialogue is used verbatim. The main alterations to the plot involve scenes incoporating women more fully into the story. A brief summary of each scene’s contents follows.     Act 1, Scene 1: Benjamin meets Francis in the desert and shows him the fallout shelter and its contents. Scene 2: A group of mutated monsters attack Francis, thinking that the box he carries holds food. While they are cursing the parents that begot them, he escapes unnoticed. Scene 3: Arkos speaks with Cheroki about Francis’ discovery, then confronts Francis himself, much as he does in the novel. Scene 4: A couple bring their deformed child (born with mismatched eyes and a tail) to the Mother Superior at the convent. They lie, saying they found it, reveal that their neighbors would kill it if they knew. It will be adopted and raised by the convent.     Act 2: Scene 1: Benjamin talks with the abbot, claiming to have buried Francis five centuries earlier and to be the Wandering Jew. Scene 2: Thon and Lady Taddeo negotiate with a captain to lead them to the abbey. Benjamin appears, digs up what seems to be Francis’ skull and claims to have buried it long ago. Taddeo takes it along as a sort of bribe to get the monks to cooperate with his research. Scene 3: The abbot frets about Brother Kornhoer’s invention of the arc light, but permits it to be demonstrated to Taddeo, as in the novel. Scene 4: Lady Taddeo visits the convent to select a child to be adopted as the Thon’s heir; he is slightly deformed and cannot beget a child that would be recognized as his successor under Hannegan’s regime. She reveals to the nun giving her the tour that the captain that has been guiding them has been secretly making sketches of the abbey. Scene 5: Word comes that war has broken out and Taddeo tries unsuccessfully to lure Brother Kornhoer away to do research with him. Scene 6: The monks ceremonially read aloud for Taddeo their traditional account of the Flame Deluge from the Memorabilia (in the play called “flaming deluge’). Benjamin appears briefly. Taddeo tries to persuade the Abbot to let him take the Memorabilia to safety. Taddeo hands the Abbot the drawings he has confiscated from the captain. Scene 7: Three years later Benjamin and the Captain discuss the war and probable future conflict.     Act 3: Scene 1: The press conference in which the female Defense Minister denies knowledge of an atomic explosion, pretty much as it occurs in the novel. Scene 2: Dom Zerchi asks a reluctant Brother Joshua to lead the Quo Pereginatur expedition. Scene 3: Mrs. Grales asks the Abbot to baptize “Rachel.” He declines. News arrives that nuclear war has broken out. An offstage announcer explains the Green Star program. Scene 4: Nuns of the abbey prepare to choose the girls who will be sent on the interstellar expedition. Scene 5: Dr. Cors (who “may be played by a woman”) argues with Zerchi about the governmental assisted suicide program. Scene 6: Mrs. Grales asks to say her confession, is interrupted by the doctor reporting that everyone in the area is fatally ill with radiation. A young girl enters with her baby, wanting to use the Green Star euthenasia services; Zerchi confronts her as in the book, she says she’ll “think about it” but clearly is inclined to disobey. Mrs. Grales reenters, now as “Rachel” (the actress tilts her head the other way to animate the dummy head of earlier, removes aged makeup) and speaks briefly with him. Zerchi reluctantly baptizes her. Scene 7: Brother Joshua and the Mother Superior discuss the children who are about to take off in the space ship. She says she could not screen them to make sure all were “normal.” Orders arrive to depart. Benjamin shows up and decides to join them in their trip to the stars. Joshua welcomes him, and they leave.

Gallion, Jane. Biker. North Hollywood: Essex House, 1969.Essex House published experimental hard-core pornography in the late sixties, including a great deal of extremely sadistic material. This book belongs to that category, being largely a concatenation of rape scenes of the utmost brutality. Motorcycle gangs roam the postholocaust wasteland, indicated as caused by nuclear bombs only by a brief mention of plants mutated by radiation. The protagonist is a female biker and speed freak who has been repeatedly gang-raped. The sex scenes are narrated in a deliberately repulsive way, stressing her hatred of the acts, the pain she experiences, and the filth of her assailants. A gentler young man called “Bear” who takes the trouble to seduce her later betrays her to a vicious drifter for drugs. Toward the end of the novel she joins a hippie sex commune called the Temple of Love led by a spiritual young man, Chris, garbed in white robes. He preaches that women should be feminine, wear dresses, and have plenty of children. In the end the protagonist rebels against the commune’s gentle sensuality and rides off with the more exciting Bear. Presumably intended as a sadistic fantasy, it reads in places almost like a feminist anti-rape tract.

___. “Magician of Dream Valley” ( Astounding, October 1938). In The Best of Raymond Z. Gallun. New York: Ballantine, 1978.The manufacture of dangerous radioactive rocket fuel is carried out on the moon, but proves hazardous to the Hexagon Lights which inhabit it. A mad scientist plots to set off an atomic device to exterminate all human life on the moon and allow these alien creatures to take over their home world again; but he is foiled the the hero, who turns the weapon on the aliens instead.

Galouye, Daniel F[rancis]. Dark Universe . New York: Bantam, 1961. Boston: Gregg, 1976. London: Gollancz, 1962. London: Sphere, 1967.Generations after a war, survivors living in cave-shelters have forgotten the meaning of light. Most get around by acutely developed hearing; others “ziv”–see infrared light–and a few, like the hero, have ESP. They have developed an elaborate religion which must be cast aside as they emerge into the now safe aboveground world. The novel depicts the triumph of science over superstition. Rather sensitive, with imaginative creation of sensations, points of view. In Magill, 1, 474-79.

Garden, Donald J. Dawn Chorus . London: Robert Hale, 1975.In this inept account of World War III, Russia and the U.S. annihilate each other and China attacks both, leaving Europe relatively untouched. A British super defense computer is used to combat the gigantic tornado which results and which threatens to do more damage than the war.

Gardner, Alan. The Escalator. London: Muller, 1963. London: Consul, 1965.The “father of the A-bomb” joins a group of conspirators, including the pilot who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, within the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and hijacks a Polaris submarine. The captain thinks in alarm: “He had aboard, in the vitals of America’s most secret war weapon, a bunch of stop-at-nothing pacifists.” They threaten to launch a nuclear attack unless the world rids itself of atomic weapons. Mobs assault various military facilities in response. Over twenty-three hundred Russian protesters are shot. When NATO decides to carpet-bomb the sea near the Azores to destroy the sub, the Russians proclaim that this is an excuse to violate the atomic test-ban treaty. The rebel physicist fires the first missile at his own home in White Plains, but it fails to explode. Leningrad is to be next. The Russians and Americans agree to go along with the pacifists to gain time, although the French are recalcitrant. Fortunately, a heroic officer on board the sub succeeds in arming one of its bombs and setting it off, ending the threat. The Russians renege on the agreement and the danger of disarmament is past.

Gardner, Craig Shaw. “Bar and Grill.” In Afterwar. New York: Baen, 1985.A powerful story in which people exchange their healthy body parts for food, drink and companionship. They reminisce about ordinary life before the war.

Garrett, Randall. “Fighting Division” ( Analog , August 1965). In John W. Campbell, ed. Analog 5. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967. Also in Martin H. Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander, eds. International Relations Through Science Fiction. New York: Franklin Watts, 1978.After a period of worldwide disarmament, a scout ship from an alien world attacks Guadalcanal and the crew is killed by U.S. H-bombs. The incident is covered up, and the world is told a nuclear accident has occurred. When the truth is revealed, the world unites and rearms to destroy the invaders still on the way in the mother ship. Compare Theodore Sturgeon, “Unite and Conquer.”

Gayle, Henry K. Spawn of the Vortex. New York: Comet, 1957.Unavailable for review. See Tuck.

Gee, Maggie. The Burning Book. London: Faber, 1983. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983.A powerfully drawn family chronicle set among England’s working classes repeatedly punctuated by references to Hiroshima and to the nuclear holocaust which will end the lives of many of the characters. Most of the novel has little to do with atomic war, but the last generation represents varying attitudes toward the subject. One, killed in an accident before the holocaust, is a right-wing fanatic obsessed by the nuclear combat video game, “Missile Command.” His older brother joins the army out of patriotic motives and is sent to Germany. Their sister grows increasingly concerned with the danger of nuclear war, and joins in the protest movement. In the final chapter, “The Chapter of Burning,” the latter two and their parents die in the holocaust. The account of their deaths is followed by three pages of gray paper and a poetic epilogue. Mention is made of the Greenham Common women’s encampment. This novel represents a highly unusual and effective use of impending nuclear war as the background for a depiction of contemporary life.

George, Peter. Commander-1. London: Heinemann, 1965. London: Pan, 1966. New York: Delacourt, 1965. New York: Dell, 1966.George tries to correct errors that critics had pointed out in his Two Hours to Doom (see below). He specifically corrects the supposition that a runaway bomber could start a nuclear war, since bombs are armed by a signal from the ground. In this work, the fiendish Chinese trigger an all-out nuclear war between the U.S. and USSR using a half-dozen smuggled-in bombs. Bacteriological warfare wipes out most of the survivors. Most of the book concentrates on James Geraghty, the crazy submarine commander who appoints himself ruler of the world. Despite George’s attempts to avoid repeating his earlier mistakes, the novel has an even more incredible plot, concluding with the only survivors being the hypnotized slaves of the mad commander. The novel ends abruptly but portentously with a blank page containing only the words “the end.”

___. Dr. Strangelove, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. London: Corgi, 1963. New York: Bantam, 1964. Boston: Gregg, 1979.Faithful novelization of the classic 1963 film. Richard Gid Powers, in his introduction to the Gregg Press edition, suggests that the writing is too good for George and should be attributed instead to the film’s co-author, Terry Southern; but the novel follows the filmscript so closely that it makes more sense to attribute its merits to the fact that George simply adapted Southern and Kubrik’s script without major changes. (Powers’s essay is, by the way, well worth reading.) Lacking the visual element, the novel is much less humorous than the film, but it still demonstrates how the rigid devotion to duty which makes deterrence credible can all too easily increase the danger of an accidental war. At the end, a doomsday device goes off, ending the world. The film is a comic adaptation of George’s 1958 novel Two Hours to Doom, published in the U.S. as Red Alert.

___. Red Alert. See Two Hours to Doom.

___ (as Peter Bryant). Two Hours to Doom. London: Boardman, 1958. London: Corgi, 1961. As Red Alert. New York: Ace, 1958.A fanatical general launches a preemptive strike against the USSR, unaware that the Russians have built a doomsday device which will destroy the world if they are attacked. Disaster is averted at the last moment by pure luck as the attacking bomber crashes. The novel places faith in improving the balance of terror as the ultimate solution to the threat of nuclear war. Source for Dr. Strangelove ( see above ).

Gerrold, David. Battle for the Planet of the Apes. New York: Award, 1973.Apes have taken over the Earth after a devastating nuclear war called “the Fires,” subordinated human beings, and imposed on them a vegetarian pacifist regime. Travelers from the future bring back a tape showing that gorillas will destroy the world in 3950. An uprising of human mutants led by a warlike gorilla is ruthlessly crushed by the apes. They realize that they are as violent as the humans, and accept them as equals. At the end of the novel there remains in the city an ominous doomsday device which may yet fulfill the prophecy of the tape.

Geston, Mark S. Out of the Mouth of the Dragon. New York: Ace, 1969. London: Michael Joseph, 1972.The novel describes a long series of wars and catastrophes seemingly including the use of some nuclear weapons. The constant wars are called “false Armageddons.” Humankind had spread to the stars, but returns to Earth to fight endless battles. These highly skilled returnees are hated by the barbaric inhabitants of the ruined planet, and they find themselves forced to destroy the remnants of ancient civilization in self-defense. The protagonist goes mad periodically, has a vision of the futility of it all, and plants himself to face eternity (it is hinted he will engage in an unending vigil). Sequel to Lords of the Starship . New York: Ace, 1967.

Gibson, Colin. The Pepper Leaf. London: Chatto & Windus, 1971.The publisher’s note fairly adequately describes this bizarre novel: “Not many years from now an organization is formed in New Zealand to combat the [anticipated] effects of [possible] nuclear fallout. The Decontamination Farms society is mainly nudist and vegetarian. When an earthquake [possibly, but not certainly, caused by nuclear bombs] occurs and [there] is a subsequent rise in the sea level, four members of this community are cut off on a newly formed island–two elderly men, a Maori and a young girl [fourteen] called the Smart. It is she who proves most adept in the techniques of survival. Reverting to the savage in herself, she acquires almost total ascendency over her companions, whom she deals with in the most horrifying and ruthless way. Those that survive are finally rescued by a weird mob of tourists who have put ashore on the island.” Significantly omitted is any mention of the fact that some of the girl’s violent acts are reactions to vicious attempts at rape.

Giles, Gordon A. [pseud. of Otto Binder]. “The Atom Smasher,” Amazing, October 1938.Asian invaders using atomic rays devastate Seattle, but are defeated by a device which destroys all atomic power.

Glasser, Vernon W. “The Bodyguard.” Astounding, August 1951.Two generations after the Wars of the Old Men, foolish survivors oppose learning and technology. Because they fear radioactivity in the ruins of the cities they overlook the books buried there. The enlightened few look forward to rebuilding civilization.

Godfrey, Hollis. The Man Who Ended War. Boston: Little, Brown, 1908.A man uses a gas which intensely emits radioactivity to destroy, one by one, the world’s battleships, blackmailing the nations into disarming. He commits suicide after he has succeeded to preserve the secret of the gas. It is not clear how peace is to be preserved after his death in the absence of the threat posed by his weapon. The hero is compared to Verne’s Captain Nemo.

Godwin, Tom. “You Created Us” ( Fantastic Universe,   October 1955). In T. E. Dikty, ed. Best Science Fiction Stories and Novels 1956. New York: Fell, 1956. Rpt. as 6 From Worlds Beyond. New York: Fawcett, 1958.Mutant telepathic lizardmen evolved from nuclear test effects have developed an immunity to radiation and are plotting to encourage a nuclear war so that they can take over the Earth. The story criticizes the obsession with security. The expected war has not yet broken out, but seems inevitable.

Gold, Herbert. “The Day They Got Boston” ( Fantasy and Science Fiction,  September 1961). In Groff Conklin, ed. 17 X Infinity. New York: Dell, 1963.A very amusing satire in which the USSR accidentally destroys Boston and then pleads frantically with the U.S. not to retaliate. Negotiations result in the Russians permitting the destruction of Leningrad in return (although Finland is also wiped out, accidentally). This new method of settling international dispute is referred to in the title of a popular book as Potlatch for the Millions. Unfortunately, the Russians decide they are not even, and demand Southern California as well. Although this reads like a satire on the conclusion of Burdick and Wheeler’s Fail-Safe, it preceded the latter’s publication by a year; it was probably aimed at the limited-war scenarios of Herman Kahn.

Golding, William. Lord of the Flies. London: Faber, 1954. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960. New York: Coward-McCann, 1962. New York: Capricorn, 1959.In the first chapter of this famous parable of the collapse of civilization, it is made clear that the plane which crashed on the island was evacuating a group of boys from a nuclear war which had just broken out. Their speculation that all adults have died proves to be false, of course; but the occurrence of the war itself is never denied. Made into a film in 1963 and again in 1990.

Good, Charles H. The Wheel Comes a Turn: A Novel Based on Scientific Study of War of the Sexes. New York: Vantage, 1963.Bilateral disarmament causes economic dislocation and depression in the West, but prosperity in the East. Most of the world goes Communist as a result, and frigid women, led by a fanatical man-hater, take control of the Soviet bloc, . After rearmament has taken place, the women launch a cobalt bomb attack on America which sterilizes almost everyone on the planet, and most children die of leukemia. The U.S. chooses not to retaliate. A handful of fertile humans is sent to colonize a planet circling Alpha Centauri, but succeeds in having only girl children because God wills them to return to Earth for males in order to unite the races of humanity in a harmonious civlization on the new planet. They do so, learning during their visit that a rebellion against the Russian dictatorship has been put down by more cobalt bombs and the balance of terror has been restored by the threat of the U.S. to use its weapons. The various atomic explosions have rendered the Earth’s axis less inclined, creating milder weather in the temperate zone. Much use is made of fusion power created by a newly discovered “Moon metal.”Other important themes in the book include religion and the ethics of artificial insemination.

Gordon, Rex. See under Hough, S. B.

Gordon, Stuart. Smile on the Void. New York: Putnam, 1981. New York: Berkley, 1982.A messianic fantasy in which nuclear war is an aside. Here is the only reference in the book, when a war occurs in the Middle East: “Tactical nuclear warfare broke out. Several cities and their populations were reduced to hot radioactive ash, though Jerusalem was spared because of its religious importance to both sides.”

Graham, David. Down to a Sunless Sea. London: Robert Hale, 1979. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981. New York: Fawcett, 1982.In 1985 an oil shortage causes the collapse of the U.S. A planeload of refugees is stranded in the air when the Israelis–retaliating for the poisoning of the Tel Aviv water supply by Arabs–launch a nuclear missile attack on Cairo, Beirut and Damascus (killing eighteen million), precipitating a full-scale atomic war which wipes out most life on Earth. The novel becomes the ultimate Airport sequel as the crew searches for an intact field on which to land. Finally the American 797 lands at a military base in the Azores which has been neutron-bombed, killing all but one of the personnel but leaving the buildings and supplies intact.

Graham, Roger P. See Phillips, Rog.

Green, Martin. The Earth Again Redeemed: May 26 to July 1, 1984. New York: Basic Books, 1977. London: Sphere, 1979.An alternate Earth fantasy in which the sole survivor of the human race, a cyborg composed largely of artificial parts designed to let him survive in space, comes into contact with a world whose history diverged from ours in 1665. The novel is set mostly in Africa where religious tensions between Muslim, Christian, and native religions are building toward war. In this version of history, the Catholic Church has suppressed science and technology and colonialism has never developed. (Compare with Keith Roberts, Pavane . ) On our own Earth the Chinese began the holocaust in 1984 by bombing the U.S. fleet during a dispute in the Middle East. It appears that the alternate Earth is about to go down the path of world war traveled by our own planet. A highly intellectual work featuring some interesting characters and pleasing style, but unfocused and almost plotless.

Gresham, William Lindsay. “The Star Gypsies.” Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1953.Gypsies roam the postholocaust landscape, guided by an old woman who can sense radioactive hotspots. They hold “civilization-as-we-know-it” in reverence, but survive through their ancient wisdom.

Gridban, Volsted [pseud. of John Russell Fearn]. Scourge of the Atom. London: Scion, 1953.As the world teeters of the brink of nuclear war, scientist Martin Bond travels mentally to the distant past to discover that humanity’s ancient ancestors on the Moon destroyed that world in a war caused by their inability to restrict atomic energy to peaceful uses. In the aftermath, civilization collapsed and humanity lost all memory of atomic power. Bond then enters a intra-atomic micro-universe where humans manage to use the atom peacefully only because they reign supreme and unchallenged there; let competitors enter and they too would resort to atomic weapons. The descendants of the Moon-humans on Mars essentially repeated their ancestors’ experience, laying waste their world with atomic warfare. Returning to the present, Bond hopes with the help of his wife Ada to read and alter the mind of the evil Asian mastermind Dr. Lao Ming by x-raying his brain; but the Ming deduces their plan and defies them, wherepon they kill him. Using a volunteer convict as a subject, Bond experiments on him with all manner of rays, seeking one that will make him peaceful; but instead the man turns violent. Finally, atomic war breaks out on Earth. Bond and others are oddly preserved by the weapons, awakening a decade later to find the world taken over by deformed but peaceful mutants who mature to adulthood in a fortnight after birth, created by the bomb. These “Gargoyles” condemn Bond and his wife, who may have thought of themselves as seeking to prevent war, but who engaged in violent experiments.

See also I. F. Clarke, Tale of the Future.

Griffith, George. The Lord of Labour. London: F. V. White, 1911.The Germans attack Europe with a metal-disintegrating ray; the British retaliate with radium-helium bullets.

Griffiths, John. The Survivors. London: Collins, 1965.A newsman forces his way into a supershelter planned as a utopia for a chosen twelve led by a charismatic pacifist. They have been living underground for six months before the war begins. He wins the trust of all except the vile Jude, who–envious of his success with one of the women–tries to kill the newsman and succeeds in another murder, attempts rape, and almost betrays them to the Chinese who have invaded. All life is exterminated by the radioactivity, including insects, and the foolish Chinese, who, although they have lost 60 percent of their population, disregard the danger. Jude’s vicious behavior and the retaliatory violence which results in his death disillusion the utopian leader, who seems to despair of building a better world after all. The gospel parallel is strengthened by the names of two of the other shelter inhabitants, James and Andrew.

Groom, Pelham. The Purple Twilight. London: Werner Laurie, 1948.An old-fashioned fantasy in which the first voyagers to Mars learn that Atlantis was destroyed by telepathic Martians when their scheme for world conquest was frustrated by a rebellious queen. In the aftermath, Mars was devastated by a nuclear war which pitted men and women against each other; the result was universal female sterilization. In order to preserve the race, the Martians have indefinitely prolonged their lifespans and must wait for twenty-five thousand years to recover their fertility. When the human visitors return to Earth, determined to prevent their planet from meeting the same fate as Mars, they find a frenzied arms race in progress, including the development of a sterilizing ray like that used by the Martians. Their attempt to warn humanity fails; no one will listen. Compare Herman Wouk: The Lomokome Papers.

Gunn, James. “The Boy with Five Fingers” ( Startling Stories, January 1953). In Isaac Asimov, Martin Harry Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander, eds. Microcosmic Tales: 100 Wondrous Science Fiction Short-Short Stories. New York: Taplinger, 1980.Centuries after the holocaust the odd one in the class is the boy without mutated limbs or organs.

Gueritz, E. F. See Bidwell, Shelford.

Hackett, General Sir John. The Third World War: August 1985: The Untold Story. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1982. New York Macmillan, 1982. Sequel to The Third World War: A Future History. Not content with the detail in his previous book, Hackett returns with a reexamination of the war earlier depicted. This work is little more than a catalog of weapons and tactics, with a reassuring stress on the capabilities–both in equipment and troops–of the NATO alliance. Interestingly, he strongly endorses women in the military, and even makes one of them a heroic bomber pilot. Hackett dismisses the danger of electromagnetic pulse disruption of military communications because the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty has successfully barred its use. The nuclear phase of the war is given short shrift, as a rather dry account of the bombing of Minsk is provided in chapter 20. Although Russia is forced to dismantle its nuclear weapons, and other European nations and those in the third world follow suit, China and the U.S. remain nuclear powers, continuing the balance of terror. “Postscript I” acknowledges that the Russian decision not to launch an all-out strike is almost incredible, which raises the question of how seriously the reader should take Hackett’s scenario, since it rests on the premise that a limited nuclear war is a real possibility. As in the earlier volume, Hackett assumes that the inhabitants of the USSR and the Eastern European nations are seething with dissatisfaction which will erupt in rebellion against their communist masters at any opportunity. [ More ]

Hackett, General Sir John, and Others. The Third World War: A Future History. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1978. New York: Macmillan, 1979. New York: Berkley, 1980. Sequel: The Third World War: August 1985: The Untold Story. This nearly unreadable exercise in war-gaming by a group of professional military men, warning of Soviet aggression, is one long editorial for military preparedness. It assumes a conventional war beginning in Europe in August of 1985 which ultimately escalates to a limited nuclear exchange. This in turn precipitates nationalist revolutions which dismember the USSR Hackett tries to make the case–in great detail–that a superior Western conventional force is needed to deter the Russians; but in his book this strategy results in a desperate use of nuclear weapons by Russia. An interesting article discussing President Reagan’s enthusiasm for this book appeared in the October 27, 1984, issue of The Nation.

Hagedorn, Herman. The Bomb that Fell on America. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Pacific Coast Publishing Co., 1946. New York: Association Press, 1948. Revised ed. New York: Association Press, 1950.An earnest plea in verse for the assertion of Christian values in the new atomic age, insisting on America’s responsibility for improving and not destroying the world. The poet calls for the U.S. to accept the responsibility for the deaths caused by the atomic bomb: “The bomb that fell on Hiroshima fell on America too.” The narrator confronts God, who tells him that he will not intervene to save the human race, but that the power of the human soul, working through a universal religion, is mightier than the atom. The author credits the Moral Re-Armament movement for the ideas expressed in the poem. The work must have sold well, for it went through several printings, and the back cover contains tributes from such notables as Lowell Thomas, Will H. Hays, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Lewis Mumford. Hagedorn’s other best-known works were inspirational books for children: The Book of Courage (Philadelphia: Winston, 1929) and The Boys’ Life of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Harper, 1918).

Halacy, D. S., Jr. Return from Luna. New York: Norton, 1969.A juvenile adventure story in which a young man is stranded at the American base on the moon when nuclear war breaks out on Earth and uses his ingenuity to help his comrades survive. A mad antinuclear scientist sabotages their power plant. In the end they join forces with similarly stranded Russians at a nearby Soviet lunar base.

Haldeman, Joe. The Forever Peace. New York: Ace, 1997.Not a sequel to The Forever War, but set after a brief exchange of nuclear weapons resulting in the destruction of three cities. “Soldierboys” (fighting machines) continue the combat, focussed on Central American conflicts; but turn out to be the key to making humanity peaceful in the long run.

___. The Forever War. Portions appeared in Analog 1972, 1973, 1974. New York: St. Martin’s Press, date? New York: Ballantine, 1976.Early in the course of an immensely long interstellar war a dirty fission bomb is used against the alien enemy; but apart from a mention of its flash, it is little dealt with. More advanced futuristic weapons dominate the story. Notable as the expression of one Vietnam War veteran’s revulsion against warfare.

___. “To Howard Hughes: A Modest Proposal” ( Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1974). In Study War No More: A Selection of Alternatives. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1974. Also in Infinite Dreams. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977. Also in H. Bruce Franklin, ed. Countdown to Midnight: Twelve Great Stories About Nuclear War. New York: DAW, 1984.Nuclear blackmailers succeed in forcing atomic disarmament after destroying Akron, Ohio and Novosibirsk.

___. Worlds. New York: Viking, 1981. New York: Pocket Books, 1982. London: Futura, 1982. First volume of the Worlds trilogy.A dispute between independent space colonies and the U.S., combined with an attempted revolutionary coup, leads to a catastrophic nuclear and bacteriological war which destroys most of Earth’s population and leaves only a fragment of humanity surviving in space. The holocaust is triggered by a military madman who, no longer restrained by any higher authority after Washington is destroyed, pushes all the buttons.

___. Worlds Apart. New York: Viking, 1983. New York: Ace, 1984. Second volume of the Worlds trilogy.After a third of the world’s population has died in the atomic war of March 16, 2085, a Russian-created bacteriological weapon kills everyone except teenagers. On an Earth populated almost exclusively by children doomed to die at age twenty, a gruesome death cult prospers, devoted to the memory of Charles Manson. Meanwhile the surviving space colony of New New York develops a vaccine which not only prevents them from dying early, but it prolongs the human lifespan. In the end the heroine ships out with a group of colonists on an interstellar voyage to settle a planet orbiting a neighboring star.

Haldeman, Joe. Worlds Enough And Time. New York: William Morrow, 1992.Conclusion of the World’s trilogy, depicting the troubled voyage of a remnant of humanity to a new world in the wake of Earth’s near-death. It transpires that some back home have survived and are rebuilding, but slowly. On the new planet, the heroine is tested for altruism by a wise, almost god-like race. Contains many flashbacks to the period of the nuclear war.

Hamilton, Edmond. City at World’s End (expanded from Startling Stories , July 1950). New York: Fell, 1951. New York: Fawcett, 1957. New York: Ballantine, 1983. London: Museum, 1952A super-atomic bomb dropped on Middletown blasts it millions of years into the future to a dying Earth. Representatives of the Interstellar Federation wishing to transfer the inhabitants to a younger planet are defeated when a scheme to re-ignite the Earth’s cooled center succeeds in making the planet habitable again (this provides heat, but no mention is made of the role of sunlight in driving photosynthesis). A human defends the violent past of Earth before an interstellar tribunal: “Yes, we fought wars! We fought because we had to, so that thought and progress and freedom could live in our world. You owe us for that! You owe us for the men that died so there could one day be a Federation of Stars. You owe us for atomic power too. We may have misused it–but it’s the force that built your civilization and we gave it to you!”

Hamilton, Virginia. The Gathering. New York: Greenwillow, 1981. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989.Third volume of the Justice Cycle [the other volumes, from the same publisher, are Justice and Her Brothers (1978) and Dustland (1980)], and the only one to deal specifically with nuclear war. Telepathic children travel to the distant future where a supercomputer named Colossus is seeking to restore a ruined planet made a vast desert through pollution and warfare. Ecocatastrophes are cited as major causes of the destruction, but war and radiation are linked in such a way as to suggest that a nuclear conflict occurred. Many strange mutants have evolved.

Hara Tamiki. The Land of Heart’s Desire. Translated from the Japanese by John Bester. In Kenzaburo Oe, ed. The Crazy Iris and Other Stories of the Atomic Aftermath. Originally published Tokyo: Shueisha Press, 1984. New York: Grove, 1985. The story was first published in 1951.A suicide note in the form of an account of troubled dreams recalling memories of the Hiroshima bombing. The author did in fact commit suicide in 1951.

___. “Summer Flower.” Originally “Natsu no hana.” Trans. George Saito. Slightly abridged version in Pacific Spectator 7 (1953): 202-10. Also in Literary Review 6(1962): 25-34. Also in Shoichi Saeki, ed., The Shadow of Sunrise: Selected Stories of Japan and the War . Palo Alto: Kondansha, 1966. Complete version in Kenzaburo Oe, ed. The Crazy Iris and Other Stories of the Atomic Aftermath, ed. New York: Grove, 1985. Anthology originally Tokyo: Shueisha Press, 1984.A straightforward account of scenes witnessed by the author after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. The story begins with the narrator visiting the graves of his wife and parents three days earlier, and concludes with a friend searching for his wife’s remains mingled with the bones of her pupils in the ruins of the girls’ school where she taught. He says that the ruins of his house reminded him of The Fall of the House of Usher. The author, who published this narrative in 1947, committed suicide in 1951.

Harding, Richard. The Outrider #1. New York: Pinnacle, 1984.The first volume of yet another postholocaust survivalist adventure series, featuring some rather spectacular ecological effects: the Great Lakes have boiled dry, the birds are all extinct, and the entire coalbelt running from Pennsylvania to Tennessee has been ignited and burns endlessly. A ill-assorted band of scavengers travels from Chicago to New York to rescue a captured female companion. They have to do battle with villains who live on rats in the New York subway tunnels.

Harding, Richard. [The Outrider #2]: Fire and Ice. New York: Pinnacle, 1984.

Harding, Richard. [The Outrider #3]: Blood Highway. New York: Pinnacle, 1984.Ê

Harding, Richard. [The Outrider #4]: Bay City Burnout. New York: Pinnacle, 1985.Ê

Harding, Richard. [The Outrider #5]: Built to Kill. New York: Pinnacle, 1985.Ê

Hardy, Ronald. The Face of Jalanath. New York: Putnam’s, 1973.An Indian-CIA conspiracy to flood the Chinese nuclear research establishment with a lake blasted out of the Himalayas by a trio of thermonuclear bombs backfires when the explosion uncovers a rich vein of uranium.

Harker, Kenneth. The Symmetrians . London: Compact, 1966.A postholocaust crackpot dystopia in which a cult of symmetry is imposed on everyday life to create order in the aftermath of the Devastation. Radio-swamps are still a menace. Rebels explore ancient technology and reactivate thermonuclear power, hoping to avoid a repetition of the Devastation as civilization rises again.

Harmon, Jim. “The Place Where Chicago Was” ( Galaxy, February 1962). In Frederik Pohl, Martin H. Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander, eds. Galaxy: Thirty Years of Innovative Science Fiction. New York: Playboy Press, 1980. Rpt. in two volumes. New York: Playboy, 1981. Story is in Volume 1. New York: Wideview, 1981.One of the most illogical stories attacking pacifism ever published. After a nuclear war, the government enforces peace with broadcast mind control which prevents killing and causes most people to become vegetarians. As a substitute for warfare, biennial war games result in the symbolic death and destruction of individuals and cities. The victimized people are placed under a strict taboo and allowed to die. The protagonist is such a victim who becomes involved with a violent Wolf Pack consisting of young people incapable of murder, but reveling in torture and violence. In banned Chicago, he overcomes the inhibition against killing and does away with the pack’s leader. He then sets off a simulated cataclysmic attack on the rest of the world which ruins the system of fake wars. Compare Wolfe, Limbo.

Harris, Brian [pseud. of Robert Ludlum]. World War III. New York: Pocket Books, 1982.A novelization of an NBC television filmscript by Robert L. Joseph. The Russians invade Alaska in 1984 to cut the pipeline in retaliation for a renewed grain embargo. The crisis escalates; and although it seems that negotiations have been successful, in the end the missiles are launched, initiating a nuclear war neither side really wants. The Soviet premier is depicted as a well-meaning, reasonable fellow who is overridden by ruthless hawks in the Party and the military.

Harris, John. See Wyndham, John.

Harrison, Harry. Bill, the Galactic Hero (a portion appeared as “The Starsloggers,” Galaxy, December 1964, and parts were serialized in New Worlds , August, September, October 1965). Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965. New York: Berkley, 1966. New York: Avon, 1975. London: Gollancz, 1965.In this science fiction satire on the military it is mentioned in passing that Earth destroyed itself long ago in a nuclear war. Nuclear weapons including atomic rifles are also used in the concluding scenes of battle on a planet closely resembling the Venus of Stanley G. Weinbaum in his classic story, “Parasite Planet” ( Astounding , February 1935).

___. “Or Battle’s Sound” ( If, October 1968). As “No War, Or Battle’s Sound.” In Harry Harrison, ed. One Step from Earth. New York: Macmillan, 1970. Under same title in Gordon R. Dickson, ed. Combat SF. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975. Under original title in Joe Haldeman, Charles G. Waugh, and Martin Harry Greenberg, eds. Body Armor: 2000. New York: Ace, 1986.Infantrymen use hand-carried atomic bombs to penetrate force shields in an interplanetary war.

Harrison, M[ichael] John. The Centauri Device. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1974. New York: Bantam, 1980.A space adventure set long after the Rat Bomb wars of 2003-15 destroyed most of Earth, leaving mostly Jews and Arabs to inherit the planet and its space colonies. The story concerns the race to seize the superweapon of the title on the planet Centauri, even more devastated by an atomic war. The hero sets off the device to prevent others from using it, but in the process destroys both Earth and Centauri entirely. An epilogue indicates that civilization continues on other worlds.

___. The Committed Men. London: Hutchinson, 1971. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971.A broken-down doctor and his companions attempt to deliver a mutant baby to its kind, adapted to survive in a blasted world where ordinary humans are obsolete. According to Neil Barron, Anatomy of Wonder (1981), the American text of this savage odyssey differs from the original.

___. The Pastel City. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971. New York: Avon, 1974.A neomedieval adventure dealing with mutated monsters, zombie-like creatures battling a supercomputer. Only veiled references to cobalt bombs suggest a nu clear war background; instead there are repeated references to economic collapse and pollution as the cause of the fall of civilization. First volume of the Viriconium series.

___ . A Storm of Wings. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1980? New York: Timescape, 1982.Second volume of the Viriconium series, set 80 years later. No further clues as to whether or not a nuclear holocaust occurred.

Harry, Eric L. Arc Light. N. Y.: Simon & Schuster, 1994.In this technothriller the Russians are at war with the Chinese. A renegade Russian general decides on a preemptive nuclear strike against Chinese bases, but takes the precaution of tipping off the U.S. President, who in turn takes the precaution of tipping off the Chinese. The result is that the Chinese are able to retaliate in a way that causes the Russians to believe they are being attacked by the U.S., so they launch a massive strike at American defensive installations. Although the Russians confess their error to the President, he feels compelled to retaliate in kind and then try to halt the exchange after millions have died. However, the right-wing Vice President tries to intervene to press the attack forward against Russian cities.

Hart, Harry. See Frank, Pat.

Hartley, L[eslie] P[oles]. Facial Justice . London: Hamish Hamilton, 1960. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961.Reminiscent in its theme of Cyril M. Kornbluth’s 195l story “The Marching Morons,” this novel is more likely to have been inspired by Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Ages ago people were forced underground by war. After half the surviving population reluctantly emerges from underground shelters an egalitarian dictatorship takes over, classifying people not so much by intelligence, as in Huxley’s novel, as by looks. Excessively attractive women are deliberately uglified to prevent envy, with uniform masks being surgically implanted on a large part of the female half of the human race. Since women supposedly do not care much about men’s looks, males are not subjected to this procedure. A rebellious young woman called Jael, like her Biblical namesake, militant, courageous, and beautiful, tries to beat the system and preserve her beauty. She fails in her short-term goal, but in the end the evil dictator is unmasked as an old woman probably motivated by envy of younger rivals. Most people are sterile and there are many stillbirths. Matings are ritualized to maximize conception. Although the novel has been praised in certain quarters, it seems farfetched not only in plot (there are many absurd details: almost all plants have been killed but there is no explanation of why everyone doesn’t suffocate for lack of oxygen), but also in motivation and characterization. Although the punning title suggests an attack on the struggle for racial equality, the book seems more like another one of those misogynistic tracts so common in the fifties which saw domineering women as the principal threat to men’s freedom. Hartley links female abhorrence of war with female abhorrence of sex. Dates given by the author for its writing are January 1953-September 1959.

Hawkinson, John L. We, the Few. New York: Exposition, 1952.A cheerful, upbeat account of the nearly complete destruction of America in 1962 by a sneak atomic attack accompanied by bacteriological warfare and sabotage. The story focuses on the love lives of a group of resourceful survivors at a Southern California astronomical observatory who split into two truck convoys to explore what is left of the country and try to join the U.S. government in Washington, D.C. Naturally, they find only ruins, so they return to set up a utopia in Brownville, Texas, where stoop labor admirably preserves the suppleness of the women’s undraped figures as they toil in the fields. There are some unpleasant elements–dead bodies must be disposed of by comic laborers who grumble in dialect–but most of the book is one round after another of matchmaking, praying (the survivors are conventionally religious), and square dancing. New York has been destroyed, but at least the Hudson River is no longer polluted. A few serious points are made along the way: It is argued that both sides are to blame for the mysterious war and that they would have done far better to have merely demonstrated their weapons for each other (a suggestion that stems from the Hiroshima era but which surely made little sense in 1952). The survivors decide to learn the skills they need to replicate the old technology, refusing to sink into barbarism by becoming mere scavengers.

Hawksley, Humphrey. Dragonfire . London: Macmillan, 2000.This sequel to Dragonfire would be more impressive as a rare example of realistic war-gaming involving South Asia if the author weren’t stuck in Cold War-era thinking. As part of a secret China-Russia-Pakistan anti-U.S. alliance, China supplies Pakistan with nuclear technology stolen from the U.S., mainly to weaken India, knowing their use will result in the destruction of Pakistan. When the Pakistanis use a tactical neutron bomb against invading Indian tanks, an international crisis erupts. The Indians retaliate with conventional weapons against Pakistani nuclear intallations. Muslim-Hindu fighting inside Delhi erupts. In one scene a young woman anti-nuclear protester is shot as she reads a passage from Arundhati Roy’s well-known essay “The End of Imagination” (reprinted in The Cost of Living (New York: Modern Library, 1999). The Pakistani leader offers to abstain from further use of nuclear weapons against India if the U.S. will pressure India to cease hostilities, but the American President refuses. The Pakistanis then send two more missiles–this time armed with conventional warheads–against Sriniagar in the disputed territory of Kashmir. The leader of Taiwan decides that while China is distracted by this confict it would be a good opportunity to declare the island-nation’s independence, but the result is that China sends conventional missiles against Tapipei and invades Taiwan. India bombs Chengdu in retaliation for China’s role in supporting Pakistan, and a Chinese submarine retaliates by sending a nuclear-armed missile to Mumbai (Bombay), where it immediately kills 200,000 people, with as many more people dying subsequently of radiation poisoning and other side-effects of the bombing. The Russians have been playing a devious game through all this, but are finally deterred from bombing the U.S. by a firm American threat to destroy them if they act. The upshot of all this international maneuvering is to reward the fiendish Chinese with hegemony in the Far East. Ruthlessness triumphs.

___. The Third World War . London: Pan, 2003.Another third-world World War III novel focused on Asia from this British author, a BBC reporter. While North Korea is seized by a madman bent on destroying the West using stolen mutated smallpox, Pakistan starts a nuclear war with India. China and Russia invade Pakistan. The U.S. uses non-nuclear weapons against Korea, but not before it is infected; Japan and India launch a full-out nuclear exchange. Tokyo is destroyed by a North Korean missile and the Japanese retaliate in kind against North Korea. The climax comes as Korea launches nuclear missiles agains the U.S., most of which are shot down by its missile defense system; but one gets through and destroys Oakland, California. The U.S. sends nuclear missiles to Korea, but China, Cuba, and Russia retaliate on its behalf, essentially destroying America. The nation that emerges least scarred is India, thanks to its size and population.

___ and Simon Holberton. Dragon Strike: The Millennium War. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1997. London: Pan, 1997.In February 2001, China seizes the Paracel and Spratley Islands in the South China Sea in an attempt to secure rich oil fields, and then begins to move on the Philippines and threaten Japan’s trade routes. Fierce resistance from Vietnam, backed by France, proves surprisingly effective. When Japan’s attempt to call on the U.S. for help is rejected, partly because racist Americans have little sympathy for them, the Japanese reveal that they have been building nuclear weapons for some time, and explode one underground to demonstrate their willingness to defend themselves against China. The reactions of all the nuclear nations are discussed in this work, unusual in dealing with proliferation. As part of a complex chain of escalation, the Chinese send nuclear-armed submarines against the U.S., allowing one to be discovered the better to use the second as a threat. The relative helplessness of missile defences against sub-based missiles is discussed. The last quarter of the novel features a good deal of nuclear brinksmanship, with detailed discussion of the inadequacy and futility of civil defence in both the U.S. and Britain. Though an actual nuclear exchange is finally averted, China then attempts to invade Taiwan, but is repelled successfully, thanks to U.S.-supplied arms and fierce resistance. More scenario than novel, complete with endnotes, a timeline, and an index, characters in this book are lucky if they have names–personalities are out of the question. The narrative reads like a set of war-gaming instructions, punctuated by detailed commentary on the state of the relevant stock exchanges (U.S. interests are represented by the price-per-share of Boeing). The Japanese exchange is being cleverly manipulated by the Chinese to yield them huge returns at the end of the war so that even though China has been forced to retreat and has gained none of its obvious war aims, it has earned so much through financial wizardry that it is able to finance a superior military which will be able to threaten the world more seriously next time. None of the countries involved seems to have any regulatory mechanisms in place to prevent their open markets from being used as weapons of war. The novel almost suggests that the entire war has been a feint to conceal this financial coup. Sequel: Dragonfire .

Hay, John. The Invasion. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1968.Australian pluck and a convenient flood defeat the Chinese occupying a rural sheep station after the continent’s coastal cities have been destroyed by atomic “satellite bombs.” The invaders belong to the South East Asian Republic, formed in the wake of the fall of Vietnam and other dominoes. Late in the novel we learn that the war began when a U.S. test missile accidentally hit China, and that the twenty nations possessing nuclear weapons have been largely destroyed. The novel deals with the problems caused by white racism among the Australians.

Hayashi Kyoko. “The Empty Can.” First published 1978. Translated from Japanese by Margaret Mitsutani. In Kenzaburo Oe, ed. The Crazy Iris and Other Stories of the Atomic Aftermath. Tokyo: Shueisha Press, 1984. New York: Grove, 1985.Thirty years after the Nagasaki bomb, a group of women revisiting their old school remember the memorial service for the victims of the bombing. They discuss the effects of the attack, relating various tories including that of a girl who daily brought her parents’ bones to school in a can. Bits of glass still imbedded in the protagonist’s back must still be removed. The author was herself a survivor of the Nagasaki bombing.

Heinlein, Robert A[nson]. The Day After Tomorrow (expanded from a slightly different version entitled Sixth Column which was published in Astounding, January, February, March 1941 under the name “Anson MacDonald,” and reprinted New York: Gnome, 1949). New York: Signet, 1951. London: Mayflower, 1962.After the country is conquered by vile Asiatics, the resistance mounts a plot against them involving the Ledbetter effect. This multipurpose marvel slices through rock, kills viruses, and–most important of all–damages Asians while sparing Caucasians. In the retitled version, Heinlein updated the text by adding a few references to atomic bombs having been used in the preceding war (the original contains references to atomic power and radiation but not to atomic bombs as such). He also slightly toned down the racism of the text, changing “yellow apes” to “apes,” for instance. A token Good Oriental sacrifices his life to stop a renegade resistance leader who aims to make himself the new dictator. Heinlein insists that the victors be generous; the ruthlessness of Versailles must not be repeated.

___. The Door Into Summer ( The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction October, November, December 1956). New York: Doubleday, 1957. London: Victor Gollancz, 1973. New York: Del Rey, 1986. In A Heinlein Trio Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980.There are brief mentions of “Six Week War” which destroyed several US cities in the recent past, but the war has almost no effect on the plot or setting of the rest of the novel.

___. Farnham’s Freehold ( If, July, August, September 1964). New York: Putnam, 1964. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1964. New York: Signet, 1965. London: Corgi, 1967.A family with the sort of overbearing, garrulous father typical of Heinlein is catapulted into the distant future by a new kind of atom bomb, into a land where dark Southern races have inherited the Earth and instituted a despotic society based on racism and cannibalism. Mr. Farnham–like his creator, an ex-navy man–jokes at the very instant his shelter is being rocked by a nuclear blast. He also argues that a nuclear war will improve the breed, but the result doesn’t seem to bear him out. Another character manages this awful pun: “‘We’ve got to eat, even if this is Armageddon.’ ‘And Armageddon sick of it,’ Karen offered.” The protagonist’s beautiful young daughter argues that if their family is to be stranded in the postwar world with a few nonrelatives, she should be allowed to mate with her father. He is shocked at the suggestion, but she clearly gets the best of the argument. In the novel the issue is rendered moot, however, because the daughter is already pregnant by a student from her college. The novel also contains a classic scene of love among the ruins as the father passionately makes love with a young woman he barely knows inside the shelter while the war is raging outside and his alcoholic wife is sleeping. In the morning his daughter congratulates them both and wishes she had a lover with whom she could do likewise. This is the only one of these works in which the game of bridge is featured more prominently than nuclear war.

___. “Free Men.” In The Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein. New York: Ace, 1966. Also in Expanded Universe: The New Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein. New York: Ace, 1981.After the Russians conquer the U.S. in a nuclear war, a rebel underground fights back. The enemy bombs cities which shelter rebels. One rebel becomes a renegade, is pursued and killed while the heroic leader, fatally wounded, sends the rest of his band to continue the fight, leaving him to die.

___. “The Long Watch” ( American Legion Magazine, December 1949). In The Green Hills of Earth. Chicago: Shasta, 1951. New York: Signet, 1952. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1954. Also in The Past Through Tomorrow. New York: Putnam, 1967. Also in The Best of Robert Heinlein. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1973. Also in Reginald Bretnor, ed. The Future at War, Vol. 1: Thor’s Hammer. New York: Ace, 1979. The hero prevents a coup by a renegade lunar base official when he sacrifices his life to disarm nuclear weapons his superior wants to use to blackmail the Earth into surrendering.

___. “On the Slopes of Vesuvius.” In Expanded Universe: The New Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein. New York: Ace, 1981.A physicist in a New York bar gives a Heinleinian lecture on the danger of nuclear attack. The bartender, panicked, flees; sure enough, New York is bombed. A barely disguised editorial, dated 1947 by Heinlein, but not previously published.

___. “Project Nightmare” ( Amazing , April, 1953). In The Menace from Earth. New York: Gnome, 1959. New York: Signet, 1962. London: Dobson, 1966. London: Corgi, 1968. Also in Expanded Universe: The New Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein. New York: Ace, 1980.The army trains psychics to detonate bombs; but when it is discovered that the Russians have mined thirty-eight American cities with atomic bombs which will be detonated unless the country surrenders, the military uses the psychics to prevent the bombs from going off. At story’s end they are asked to detonate bombs still in the USSR The most powerful of them is a sweet little old lady named Mrs. Williams who concludes the story by asking for a large pot of tea while she goes to work obliterating the enemy.

___. “Solution Unsatisfactory” ( Astounding, May 1941). In The Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein. New York: Ace, 1966. Also in Expanded Universe: The New Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein. New York: Ace, 1981. Also in Richard Curtis, ed. Future Tense. New York: Dell, 1968.The invention of an atomic dust weapon brings universal peace, at the cost of the loss of liberty. [ More ]

___. Starship Troopers (expanded from “Starship Soldier,” Fantasy and Science Fiction, October, November 1959). New York: Putnam’s, 1959. New York: Signet, 1961. New York: Berkley, 1968. London: Four Square, 1961.A militaristic youth novel of interplanetary combat involving troopers who carry and use personal H-bombs.

___. “The Year of the Jackpot” ( Galaxy, March 1952). In The Menace from Earth. New York: Gnome, 1959. New York: Signet, 1962. London: Dobson, 1966. London: Corgi, 1968. Also in Expanded Universe: The New Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein. New York: Ace, 1980. Also in H. L. Gold, ed. Second Galaxy Reader of Science Fiction. New York: Crown, 1954.For some unexplained reason, a number of cycles come to a climax simultaneously, producing a series of disasters, including a devastating nuclear war; but the story’s climax comes when the sun goes nova. Sex never plays a more traditional role than in this story in which it is said of the narrator: “Aside from mathematics, just two things worth doing–kill a man and love a woman. He had done both. He was rich.” The unconscious absurdity of this statement is underlined by the fact that the only killing depicted in the story was actually committed by the hero’s girlfriend, not by himself.

Herbert, James. Domain. New York: Signet, 1985. A grisly horror tale in which mutated rats (developed by scientists from a stock of previous mutants created by atomic bomb testing) war on humans in the London tube and a connected network of underground shelters after a devastating nuclear attack. The rats are controlled and directed by a monstrous intelligence. The effects of radiation disease are vividly depicted, and EMP is dealt with. At the end of the novel it is revealed that the war was the result of a Chinese plot. The authorities brought the conflict to a halt before creating a world-wide holocaust, but London is left in the hands of the rats.

___. The Dragon in the Sea (originally as “Under Pressure,” Astounding, November, December 1955, January 1956). Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1956. New York: Avon, 1967. Boston: Gregg, 1980. London: Gollancz, 1960. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1961. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963. As 21st Century Sub . New York: Avon, 1956.Sabotage aboard a submarine during a prolonged war, one of whose effects was the destruction of the British Isles by atomic bombing.

___. Dune Messiah (portions originally published in Galaxy, July, September 1969). New York: Putnam, 1969. New York: Berkley, 1970. London: Gollancz, 1971. London: New English Library, 1974.”Atomics” are referred to as banned in various places in the Dune novels. In one episode of this volume, a radioactive weapon called a “stone burner” is used.

Higgins, Marguerite. “Women of Russia.” See under Collier’s .

Hilburn, John Edward. The Last Days. New York: Carlton, 1965.This brief allegory denounces militarism and promotes Christian love as the solution to world strife. The U.S. is condemned for its racism and cultural imperialism in presuming to “democratize” Japan by force after World War II. A “Psychical Love of Mankind Pill” is offered the human race, but the nations reject it and destroy the world in a nuclear war. The work includes several pages of poems by the author, and quotes the Bible and The Man of La Mancha: “To dream the impossible dream. . . .”

Hill, Douglas. Alien Citadel. New York: Atheneum, 1984.Sequel to Warriors of the Wasteland. The aliens leave Earth, having found an uninhabited, less troublesome planet to exploit. Hope is expressed that humanity will learn from experience and not destroy its own world once again. The message is confused by the fact that the Slavers have been expelled only by relentless, ruthless violence.

___. The Huntsman. New York: Atheneum, 1982.After the holocaust alien invaders take over the Earth: vicious Slavers breeding beast-men. They are excessively logical, and lack imagination. A young boy and his older companion who have been bred for survival battle the slavers, then head for the Wasteland to regroup and carry on the struggle. Sequel: Warriors of the Wasteland.

___. Warriors of the Wasteland. New York: Atheneum, 1983.Sequel to The Huntsman. Adventures in the mutated Wasteland. The protagonist joins a group of rebels and discovers his sister with a band of women warriors. It is stated that the cause of the war is unknown. Sequel: Alien Citadel .

Hilton, James. Nothing So Strange. Boston: Little, Brown, 1947. London: Macmillan, 1948. London: Pan, 1950.A mild-mannered British scientist’s experimental discoveries in electromagnetism are stolen by his Nazi mentor. His wife stabs the older man to death. The final chapter is an account of his work on the Manhattan Project, told to the narrator after Hiroshima. The scientist is troubled by the ethical issues involved.

Hinz, Christopher. Liege-Killer. New York: St. Martins , 1988 (paper). London: Methuen, 1988. In the wake of the nuclear Apocalypse of 2099, the remnants of humanity live on in relative peace within various orbiting space colonies. But in the twenty-third century, political schemers loose especially bred pre-Apocalypse killers who were placed in suspended animation upon the colonists. Society has rejected advanced technology and in particular military technology, but finds it must resort to ruthless violence to meet the threat posed by the killers.

___. The Paratwa. London?: Mandarin, 1991. Volume 3 of the Paratwa Saga.

Hoban, Russell. Riddley Walker. London: Cape, 1980. London: Pan, 1982. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1980. New York: Washington Square Press, 1982.A brilliant novel written in a carefully constructed future English based on the assumption that after a nuclear war literacy will vanish and orthography will have to be reinvented. Wild dogs are a major threat to the primitive people of the postholocaust world. The visionary hero sets off on a pilgrimage to Canterbury in search of the secret of nuclear power, which had destroyed the old world dominated by Eusa. Far from blaming nuclear technology for the cataclysm, these people hope that its rediscovery will somehow restore the vanished golden age of before the war. Riddley witnesses the reinvention of gunpowder instead. Moving and funny like Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz, this novel is ultimately more serious. It contains a heavy emphasis on folklore and oral tradition–even a Punch and Judy show. See Paul Kincaid: “The Mouse, the Lion, and Riddley Walker: Russell Hoban Interviwed by Paul Kinciad,” Vector , 124/125: (April/May 1985): 5-9; David J. Lake: “Making the Two One: Language and Mysticism in Riddley Walker, ” Extrapolation 25 (1984): 157-70, John W. Schwetman: “Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker and the Language of the Future,” Extrapolation 26 (1985): 212-19, and Paul Kincaid “The Mouse, the Lion and Riddley Walker,” Vector 124/25 (1985): 5-9. [ More & More ]

Hofrichter, Paul. Roadblaster [#1]: Hell Ride. New York: Leisure, 1987.First volume in yet another postholocaust thriller series. This one begins promisingly, with a fairly sophisticated scenario of an escalating East-West conflict centered on Iran, leading to all-out nuclear war between the U.S.S.R. and America. Details of the destruction and of radiation disease are much more detailed and accurate than usual; but the novel quickly deteriorates into a typical rape-and-slaughter, vicious bikers vs. heroic vigilantes fantasy, this time set in central California.

___. Roadblaster #2: Death Ride . New York: Leisure, 1988.Like the first volume in this series, this one, set in San Francisco, contains a good deal of accurate detail on damage wreaked by nuclear weapons, and the “action” scenes make up a surprisingly small proportion of the book. The hero has gone to the city to alert the Air Force to the existence of a downed plane inland, still loaded with nuclear weapons. This is a rare instance of a good vigilante eagerly and patriotically cooperating with the U.S. military. One unique theme is a sympathetic portrait of a gang of macho gay males who are persecuted by vicious homophobic thugs who fear them as spreaders of AIDS in a pattern clearly modelled on Medieval anti-Jewish hysteria during the Black Death. A sympathetic Chicano character–thoroughly assimilated, however–is another unusual feature of the novel (he’s killed shortly after being introduced, however). An over-the-top rat stampede and a routine gun battle round out the book.

___. Roadblaster#3: Blood Ride . New York: Leisure, 1988.This volume contains considerably more detail on the international background of the war. U.S. vs. U.S.S.R. submarine battles are still going on, as the Soviet Union invades West Germany. The plot is an oddly aimless one, with our hero and his companions fruitlessly seeking relatives of one of their number in Sausalito. The trip across the bay allows the author to describe his heroes clambering across the cables of the broken Golden Gate Bridge, and introduces a happily promiscuous young woman for some vivid sex scenes. Recrossing the bay by boat, the hero is told by the military authorities to return inland and secure the nuclear warheads on the downed plane, which he does, fighting off marauding thugs who want to use the weapons for their own purposes. Though many of the villains are killed, their leader survives to witness the missiles being moved to a cave, and the threat they pose persists. However, the series was not continued.

Hogan, James P. Voyage from Yesteryear. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1982.On the brink of nuclear war in the year 2021, a spaceship is launched for Alpha Centauri, carrying machinery capable of creating human colonists at its destination. The world recovers from the war, divided into three authoritarian empires. Having learned that the colonists have been planted on a suitable world, one of these sends a second ship with more settlers aboard to follow them. The bulk of the novel deals with the encounter of the second wave with the original settlers of the planet Chiron, who have established a utopia, where money is unknown and instant gunplay settles all legal questions. Most of the new Earthlings are seduced by Chiron’s charm, but some of their leaders are narrowly deterred from using nuclear weapons to subdue the utopians. As the confrontation is building, news comes that Earth has suffered another devastating nuclear war. Hogan’s moral seems to be that human nature can be altered only if an entire generation is cut off from the rest of humanity. Then the infectious good nature of the utopians can be spread, even being carried back to Earth at some future time. Since the peaceloving Chironians make their points both with an abundance of sidearms and devastating superweapons, the novel can be classed with other stories of muscular disarmament. It is difficult to see why their reliance on deterrence should not lead to the same sort of conflict which destroyed Earth.

Holdridge, Herbert. The Fables of Moronia. Sherman Oaks, Calif.: The Holdridge Foundation, 1953.A feeble political allegory set on an alien world whose inhabitants end by blowing it apart in a catclysmic war.

Holm, Sven. Termush. Originally Termush, Atlanterkavskysten. 1967. Trans. from Danish by Sylvia Clayton. London: Faber, 1969.An understated narrative depicting the plight of the residents of an exclusive hotel/shelter who are eventually driven out into a nuclear war-blasted world after being besieged by other survivors seeking medical attention.

Hood, Hugh. “After the Sirens” ( Esquire, August 1960). In Flying a Red Kite. Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1963. Also in William F. Nolan, ed. Man Against Tomorrow. New York: Avon, 1965. Also in Donald Stephens, ed. Contemporary Voices: The Short Story in Canada. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972. [According to a communication from the author, this story has been widely reprinted elsewhere, but no further details were provided.]A couple and their baby, wakened in the night by the air raid sirens and learning that they have fifteen minutes to prepare, scramble to take refuge in their cellar. The baby sleeps through the attack, although the house collapses around them, pinning the man’s legs. The war is over in a half hour, with no winners. When they are rescued and taken to the aid center they learn that “they were the seventh, eighth, and ninth living persons to be brought there after the sirens.” All other area residents have died.

Hotchkiss, Michael. “Student Details Final Minutes Before a Nuclear Holocaust.” Originally in The Daily Pennsylvanian . Abridged and rept. in U.: The National College Newspaper, October 1988.The story of a boy who sees nuclear war approaching without his elders having done enough to prevent it. He imagines his own fate, then realizes both sides have launched. The last sentence reveals that the protagonist is a Russian living in Moscow. Interesting because of its attempt to view the nuclear threat from a Soviet point of view. Written by a student at the University of Pennsylvania.

Hotta Kiyomi. The Island. Originally Shima, 1957. Translated from the Japanese by David G. Goodman. In After Apocalypse: Four Japanese Plays of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1986. The play is set near Hiroshima during the Korean War (1951-52). The characters discuss the impact of the bomb on their lives. One character has leukemia contracted when searching for the remains of his sister in the radioactive ruins. Another dies of A-bomb disease in the course of the play.

Hough, S[tanley] B[ennett]. Beyond the Eleventh Hour. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1961.A Chinese invasion of Nepal leads the Americans to use nuclear weapons, which prompts the Russians to blockade Berlin. This action precipitates a series of escalations leading to a worldwide nuclear war. Hough presents a detailed scenario depicting how brinksmanship practiced in a seemingly reasonable fashion could lead to a disaster as the nations which depend on nuclear weapons for their world power are destroyed and the two which refuse to take part (Britain and India) inherit the Earth. In this respect, Hough’s novel resembles Strieber and Kunetka’s Warday. Some of the more unusual features of this above-aveage nuclear thriller include a patriotic French crew which bombs Moscow on a suicide mission to avenge Paris, secret antiballistic missile defenses which stop the vast majority of missiles from penetrating, and Western nations which bomb their own cities to destroy the Russian troops occupying them. Britain’s policy of appeasement, unlike in World War II, leads to peace and prosperity, and India prospers because radiation effects a drastic decline in the birth rate. Hough seems to be arguing that nuclear weapons cannot be used to advantage by any nation.

___. [as Rex Gordon]. Utopia Minus X. New York: Ace, 1966. As The Paw of God. London: Tandem, 1967.A nuclear war in the distant past has precipitated the development of a computer-run utopia which makes provision for its brightest citizens, dissatisfied with the Perfect World, to colonize Alpha Centauri. The novel contains little about the war itself. It is noted that the victory of the West in the fighting so alienated people that it paradoxically strengthened the hand of the Communists.

___ [as Rex Gordon]. Utopia 239. London: Heinemann, 1954. London: Consul, 1961.Seeking to escape an impending nuclear war, a scientist persecuted by the government during a Red scare builds a time machine in which he and his beautiful daughter and her fiancé flee into the distant future. There they find themselves in an anarchist utopia of high technology and free love. Most of the world and its resources having been despoiled by the war, the planet is largely covered with sand which has been stopped from drifting by the planting of endless fields of a specially developed grass. The bombing cracked the Earth’s surface and changed the outlines of the continents. Most materials are artificial; the sole energy sources are the sun, wind, and plant materials. The utopia maintains an ideal state of anarchy, with coexisting communist, cooperative, and capitalist enterprises, no central government, and a modified form of mob law which punishes violators for only one offense: malice. The utopia’s major commandment–love thy neighbor–is taken in a sexual sense, with public nudity and sex, orgies, and sexually open marriages being the norm. In other nations less ideal modes of life continue, along with war and oppression. In its protest against conservative values and its bold stand in favor of anarchism, the novel is reminiscent of the utopias of the turn of the last century.

Household, Geoffrey. Arrows of Desire . Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press (Little, Brown), 1985. London: Michael Joseph, 1985.This brief satirical novel is set seven centuries after the Age of Destruction (a devastating war followed by high levels of radioactivity).

Hoy, Jeffrey J. The Long and Winding Road . iUniverse, 2004.Adventures after a nuclear war in the U.S. Effects of a strike on Los Angeles depicted in detail. From an online custom-publisher.

Hoyle, Trevor. Kids. London: Sphere, 1987. N.Y. Berkley, 1990.A group of children given super-intelligence and telepathic powers by an artificial virus which escaped from a biochemical warfare lab use nuclear blackmail to try to force the destruction of all U.S. biological warfare weapons. In the end one of them detonates a traveling train loaded with missiles. Another variation on the “muscular disarmament” theme.

Hubbard, L[afayette] Ron[ald]. Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982. Los Angeles: Bridge, 1984.After three decades away from fiction, the late L. Ron Hubbard, a former pulp writer, celebrated his fiftieth anniversary as a writer by publishing this 819-page novel in the genre which first made him famous: blood and thunder swashbuckling adventure on a grand scale. Centuries after huge, nigh-invincible, vicious Psychlos have wiped out most life on Earth with gas and taken it over as a mining colony: some thirty-five thousand humans live on in scattered primitive tribal groups unnoticed by most of the invaders. The hero, Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, leads a motley army of proud Scots, Tibetan monks, Russians, and others to defeat the enemy, free the Earth, destroy their home planets, and dominate seventeen “universes” (galaxies). In a few short years and many long pages, humanity leaps from primitive barbarism to supersophisticated technological civilization. The Psychlos’ weak point is the fact that when radioactivity contaminates their atmosphere (“breathe-gas”), it explodes violently. Jonnie uses this fact to manufacture uranium bullets which can kill the enemy. In an elaborate plot, he arranges to have live nuclear bombs teleported to the Psychlos’ home planet, but to no avail: a shield prevents them from doing any damage. A similar, even more elaborate plot with much more powerful weapons proves more effective. Exploring old ruins, Jonnie’s followers discover the unused U.S. and USSR missiles still aimed at each other, and salvage them. In one passage, a peacekeeping proposal often heard among antinuclear groups today is repeated: each group should be put in charge of the other’s weapons, acting as hostages for each other. Degenerate humans called “Brigantes,” who engage in cannibalism, public sex, and various other forms of barbarism, collaborate with the Psychlos, maintaining the traditions of ancient Fascism. The novel is very reminiscent of the hardware-oriented science fiction of the thirties. Women play only slight roles, mainly serving as victims to be rescued. Even the female Psychlos are stereotyped: they sell out for makeup and clothes. Filled with wild coincidences and improbabilities of all kinds, the work still possesses a certain cartoonlike verve. The author was the founder of Dianetics and Scientology. Made into a film as Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 in 2000.

___. The End Is Not Yet. Astounding , August, September, October 1947.In a frame which opens but does not close the story the narrator is visited by the ghostly image of a Professor MacIlwraith who gives him a book recounting the deeds of his counterpart in a parallel world: Charles Martel: A Biography , by Le Chat a faime. Martel is a secret agent for a conspiracy to prevent the development of nuclear weapons by other nations, but encounters another gigantic conspiracy run by the Fascist businessman Jules Fabrecken (the name chosen to suggest German arms manufacturer I. G. Farben). The aim of this conspiracy is to encourage a nuclear war between the superpowers, meanwhile assassinating all independent scientists. Fabrecken plans to rule over the ruins. Martel joins a group of scientists appalled at what politicians have done with the nuclear weapons they invented, and they try to take over using the strictly defensive force Martel has discovered, called “viticity” (it is somehow the opposite of nuclear fission). The scientists’ conspiracy fails; Martel is jailed, only to be freed during the chaos of the nuclear attack on the U.S. He escapes to a huge underground city in North Africa where the conspirators plot an even more extravagant rebellion against Fabrecken’s now-successful dictatorship. Great stress is laid on avoiding the use of weapons of mass destruction. Instead the conspirators use broadcast propaganda, weather control, and other miracles made possible by viticity. Finally, Fabrecken lures Martel to a phony peace conference where they kill each other, but the revolution has been successful. At the end, two of the victors comment that their new state, guided by scientist-priest advisers, will be a worse dictatorship than the one just overthrown: a view which renders the story rather pointless and probably reflects Hubbard’s general skepticism about government.

Hughes, Edward P. “The Wedding March.” In J. E. Pournelle and John F. Carr, eds. There Will Be War, Volume V: Warrior. New York: Tor, 1986.Desperate measures are taken to beget offspring in small villages in Ireland after most people have become sterile in the wake of a (probably nuclear) catastrophic war.

Hughes, Langston. “Atomic Dream.” In Simple’s Uncle Sam. New York: Hill & Wang, 1965. Place of original publication unknown.Jesse B. Semple dreams of blacks stampeding over whites to get into a fallout shelter, speculates that down South, shelters will be segregated. He also dreams of being in a shelter with Lena Horne when the bomb hits. His wife asks him what the matter is and what time he came in. “I said, ‘Baby, don’t bother me with them kind of questions. I have just been caught in the fallout.’ ‘What fallout?’ says Joyce. ‘Out of bed,’ I said.”

___. “Bomb Shelters” ( Saturday Review , June 6, 1962). In Simple’s Uncle Sam. New York: Hill & Wang, 1965.The landlord is raising Simple’s rent, claiming he is going to build a fallout shelter, but Simple is skeptical. He imagines a shelter built for two, with each member of this family refusing to be the only ones spared. He maintains his wife would say, “If the bomb does come, let’s just all die neighborly.”

___. “Joyce Discusses Hats and Bombs with Jesse B. Simple.” Chicago Defender , July 17, 1954.Jesse and his wife discuss the menace of fallout recently publicized by the Bikini bomb tests, the aftermath of Hiroshima, and speculate as to the future possible bombing of New York.

___. “Radioactive Red Caps” (originally “Charged With Atoms Simple Takes Charge,” Chicago Defender , July 10, 1954). In Simple Stakes a Claim. New York: Rinehart, 1957. London: Gollancz, 1958. Also in The Best of Simple. New York: Hill & Wang, 1961.Simple fantasizes about nuclear war. White Southerners, he speculates, will be forced to let Blacks share their fallout shelters for fear of being contaminated later by radioactive servants and railroad porters (“red caps”). He imagines taking revenge on his enemies by spreading radioactivity. When the narrator asks him how he expects to live himself, he answers: “If Negroes can survive white folks in Mississippi . . . we can survive anything.”

___. “Simple and the Atom Bomb.” Chicago Defender, August 18, 1945.Simple muses that the bomb was used against the Japanese rather than the Germans because the former were colored and says that the money used in building it would have been better spent on the nation’s poor, including the education of ignorant whites who elect racist representatives.

___. “Simple Supposes What Would Happen If Our People Were Immune to Atom Bomb,” Chicago Defender , October 29, 1949.Whites would be eager to marry blacks if they could ensure the immunity of their offspring to nuclear war.

Hughes, Riley. The Hills Were Liars. Milwaukee: Bruce, 1955. New York: All Saints, 1963.This is an exceptional work because it is concerned primarily with the importance of preserving Catholicism in the era after a series of wars beginning in 1964. Civilization has been destroyed; a violent, atheist culture persecutes religion; and few people survive. The novel is the story of a young man in search of his parents and his faith who eventually becomes a priest and then pope. In New York City, the hero explores the horrors of a wax museum, and finds a religious community living in the subway system, now become a new catacombs. In the zoo, he wanders among the bones of dead animals. Money and jewels are useless, but a pair of field glasses proves valuable. The religious community leads an idyllic life for a while in The Cloisters, but is eventually attacked by a band of savage raiders. The hero must learn to reject violence and embrace the Christian way. The distinction between good and evil characters in this novel is simple: the good characters are Catholics, and all the rest are evil (no other faith is mentioned). None of the characters seems to find the world’s calamity a cause for religious doubt; the theological problem of evil is not even discussed. It is said that villagers used to stand by the railroad tracks waiting in vain for trains that never came–an obvious parallel to the post-World War II South Pacific cargo cults.

Humble, Richard. See Bidwell, Shelford.

Hunter, Thomas O’D. Softly Walks the Beast. New York: Avon, 1982.Essentially just a horror novel featuring mutated slime-ghouls, although the opening is a fairly thoughtful treatment of nuclear war and the dedication says, “I hope this will do for bomb lovers what VD films did for me in the Marine Corps.” The kindly doctor who has kept this small colony alive after the holocaust on the edge of the Okeefenokee Swamp through his special antiradiation serum preaches a sermon in which he states, “The greatest moral crime of our age was the concealment by science and technology of the nature of nuclear war.” The book ends on a positive note with the birth of a baby.

Huxley, Aldous. Ape and Essence. New York: Harper, 1948. New York: Bantam, 1958. London: Chatto & Windus, 1949.The first post-Hiroshima novel about nuclear war by a major author, this aftermath story is presented as an abandoned Hollywood screenplay. In 2108 scientists from New Zealand, where civilization has survived an atomic and biological war, are exploring southern California. They discover that most of humanity has mutated to be without sexual desire except during a few weeks a year, when orgiastic satanic mating rituals take place, mingled with the slaughter of defective babies born the year before. The few “hots” who still feel normal sexual desires are persecuted. A scientist and a female hot fall in love and discover the delights of monogamy, successfully fleeing the savage culture for a colony of hots where they can find happiness. See Rudolf B. Schmerl, “The Two Future Worlds of Aldous Huxley,” PMLA 77 (1962): 113-18, and Jerome Mechier, “Quarles Among the Monkeys: Huxley’s Zoological Novels,” Modern Language Review 67 (1973): 280-81. In Magill 1, 78-83.

Ibuse Masuji. Black Rain. Originally Kuroi Ame , published serially in Showa , January 1965 through September 1966. Rpt. Tokyo: Shinchosha, 1966. Trans. John Bester. Originally Japan Quarterly vol. l4, nos. 2-4 (1967), l5, nos. 1-3 (1968). Tokyo and Palo Alto: Kondasha, 1969. New York: Bantam, 1985. London: Secker & Warburg, 197l.This vivid recreation of the experience of the victims of the Hiroshima bombing begins when the narrator’s niece is rejected by a suitor because she had been caught in the black rain which fell immediately after the explosion. The narrator tells his story and hers in an attempt to refute what he considers to be unwarranted aspersions; but she, in fact, develops a severe, albeit delayed, case of radiation disease and dies. In contrast to most projections of the aftermath of nuclear war there is no rioting or looting. The only incident even remotely hinting at civil disorder is when an army unit improperly claims some emergency supplies being stored for another unit. This deed is enough to cause the narrator to despair at modern decadence. A great deal of attention is paid to the diet of the victims, already severely deprived by the effects of the war. At one point the narrator catches a half-blinded white pigeon, considers eating it, but instead lets it fly away. The novel concludes with a detailed depiction of the course of the niece’s illness. The power of this narrative, in which extraordinary horrors are borne with sorrow and dignity, makes the vast bulk of imaginary accounts of nuclear war pale in comparison.

___. “The Crazy Iris.” Original Japanese publication, 1951. Trans. Ivan Morris ( Encounter, vol. 6, no. 5 (1956) . In Kenzaburo Oe, ed. The Crazy Iris and Other Stories of the Atomic Aftermath . (Japanese version, Tokyo: Shueisha Press, 1984). New York: Grove, 1985.The period of the Hiroshima bombing is told here from the perspective of distant Fukuyama, where conventional bombing attacks ensued. Early cases of radiation disease are described. At the end of the story, a young woman’s body is found floating in a pond. She had been at Hiroshima when the bomb fell, and responded to the attack on Fukuyama by drowning herself. Around the pond the irises have burst into bloom unnaturally early.

Ing, Dean. Pulling Through. New York: Ace, 1983.This book is literally half novel, half survivalist handbook. Its second part consists of a series of articles Ing wrote about his designs for such nuclear war survival tools as an air filter, a battery charger, a toilet, an air pump, and a radiation meter. The novel portion of the book is a sketchy narrative designed to demonstrate how such devices might be used under actual conditions. The hero is a hard-core survivalist who is forced to take an underaged sexpot into his homemade fallout shelter and battle radioactive dust with his sister and her family. Such plot as there is mainly concerns the misdeeds of his obnoxious nephew–who is prescribed a dose of beating for what ails him–and an attack by marauders disguised as sheriff’s men toward the end. Although Ing’s hero proves he is not reluctant to kill in self defense, the author takes pains to demonstrate that he can also show compassion, sheltering and caring for a dying mother and son less fortunate than himself. The author clearly wants to debunk the stereotype of the ruthless survivalist as embodied in such books as Ahern’s series of shoot-’em-ups. Although Ing presents the work as a practical handbook, several important problems are solved though the use of a fantastic sports car which can hop over obstacles or skip across the surface of a river. Despite much heavier than expected fallout, the protagonists survive and go on to lead happy lives on a farm where the hero marries the teenager he had been originally bent on arresting. [

___. Single Combat . New York: Tom Doherty, 1983. Sequel to Systemic Shock .After the war, which included the use of both nuclear and bacteriological weapons, deviant Mormons have used their survival skills to seize power and impose a ruthless if hypocritical dictatorship. The hero battles it, of course. The conclusion of the series begun with Systemic Shock is Wild Country (New York: TOR, 1985).

___. Systemic Shock . New York: Ace, 1982. Sequel Single Combat. This book is a sort of sequel to Hackett’s Third World War , to the plot of which it specifically refers. In 1996 the U.S. is in an energy crisis, caused by its refusal to develop atomic power in the wake of reactor accidents. The shrunken Russian Union of Soviets is allied with America against a ruthless Chinese-Indian coalition, competing for the world’s oil. The protagonist is fifteen, out on a Boy Scout camping expedition during a period of mounting international tension caused by sabotage and piracy on the high seas. A prolonged and complex nuclear war involving cruise missiles, chemical and biological weapons, neutron bombs, and antisatellite weapons. As in Hackett, a great deal of detail concerns the properties of various arms, some of which are fantastic, including an aircraft carrier dirigible and a matter synthesizer; but Ing is a more readable author. The Russians fare better than the Americans because of their shelter program, but the Americans develop a successful antiradiation pill. The teenage hero is picked up and seduced by a woman working in the Oak Ridge nuclear plant, and develops into a heroic fighter, trained to carry out solo killing assignments. A huge fleet of Vietnamese submarines is destroyed in 1997, causing the Great Sea Quake. Jews plan an orbiting New Israel. The eastern part of the United States is quarantined and the rest is dubbed “Streamlined America.” The war forces the revival of fission power for energy.

___. Wild Country. New York: Tom Doherty, 1985. The third volume in the Ted Quantill trilogy (the first volume is Systemic Shock, the second Single Combat ). In 2006 Ring cities have been built around ruined metropolises. Essentially a crime adventure story involving heroin smuggling and the development of a matter synthesizer. Little is said about the nuclear war.

Ingrey, Derek. Pig on a Lead. London: Faber, 1963.A bizarre comic novel with a cast reminiscent of Waiting for Godot roams the devastated English landscape, preaching bigoted religion and seeking women. Written in a pastiche of the King James Bible except for the dialogue, which varies in style: the two main characters speak pidgin. A teenage boy adopts a wandering pig as a pet (hence the title), meets and is seduced by a young girl. His two older male companions stab each other to death and leave the scene to this adolescent Adam and Eve and their pig. Radiation disease is referred to as “the Distemper.”

Ishiguro, Kazuo. A Pale View of Hills. London: Faber, 1982. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983. New York: Putnam, 1982.The disintegration of traditional Japanese culture in the wake of World War II is depicted in Nagasaki, where the bomb is only briefly dealt with. The general influence of America looms larger.

Jackson, William. The Alternative Third World War: 1985-2035. London: Brassey’s Defence Publishers, 1987.An alternative scenario to that presented in The Third World War: A Future History (1978) and The Third World War: August 1985, The Untold Story (1982) by Sir John Hackett. Jackson argues that World War III will not be the East-West confrontation envisioned by his compatriot, but a prolonged North-South conflict. No nuclear weapons are used in this struggle, but at the end of the novel, the Asian powers united by Japan force world-wide nuclear disarmament. The author states that this novel is a partial sequel to his nonfiction Withdrawal from Empire: A Military View (1985). See Harold Coyle: Team Yankee.

Jakes, John. Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. New York: Award, 1974.Novelization of the film by the same name. Surviving descends of time-travelling apes plan to take over the earth. Caesar predicts a coming nuclear war which will result in their supremacy.

Jakubowski, Maxim. “Just Another End of the World.” In After the Fall , ed. Robert Sheckley. New York: Ace, 1980.A spoof of postapocalyptic fiction which concludes a collection of “upbeat end-of-the-world stories.” A group of science fiction writers at a convention are the only survivors of World War Three, fought with non-radioactive superweapons. They gleefully set about reproducing the human race in the rubble, the decide to amuse themselves by writing a collection of downbeat end-of-the-world stories.

Jameson, Storm [pen-name of Margaret Storm Jameson Chapman, also known as Mrs. Guy Chapman-Tuck]. The Moment of Truth. London: Macmillan, 1949. New York: Macmillan, 1949.A study of the relationships among members of a group of refugees vying for the five seats available to fly them from a Britain conquered by the Russians. One of them turns out to be a Communist spy, but he is set free as a gesture toward maintaining civilized ideals. The atomic war which devastated Europe is mentioned only in passing.

Janvier, Ivan [pseud. of Algis Budrys]. “Thing” ( Fantastic Universe, March 1955). In T. E. Dikty, ed. Best Science Fiction Stories and Novels 1956. New York: Frederick Fell, 1956.Begins with the image of the dangerously radioactive Statue of Liberty being cut up to be towed out and dumped at sea. After a nuclear war which has destroyed half the country, children are born who have higher resistance to radioactivity. A supposed superman turns out to be an alien who takes over the bodies of prominent Earthlings to prevent further nuclear combat.

Jenkins, Will[iam] F[itzgerald] [as Murray Leinster]. Fight for Life: A Complete Novel of the Atomic Age (originally “The Laws of Chance,” Startling Stories, March 1947). New York: Crestwood, 1947. Rpt. in Fantastic Stories Magazine, Spring 1954.After a worldwide nuclear holocaust begun by an unknown power, the battle continues with conventional bombs when the supply of atomic weapons is exhausted. Airborne conquerors work with roving bands of “guerillas” to suppress all attempts at rebuilding civilization. The two-fisted physicist hero discovers a form of uranium irradiated by the atomic bombing which gives its possessor good luck. Duplicating the effect mechanically, he and his allies defeat the guerillas and the mysterious enemy, which–as in The Murder of the U.S.A. –remains unidentified. A classic case of making a silk purse out of a radioactive sow’s ear.

___ . The Murder of the U.S.A. New York: Crown, 1946. [According to Tuck, originally in Argosy , 1946.A surprisingly far-sighted presentation of the theory of deterrence and a system of underground bunkers called “burrows” from which ICBMs and SPAMs (“Self-Propelled Atomic Missiles”) are launched. Some nation launches a surprise attack against the U.S., which cannot retaliate until it determines who the aggressor is. The story is told from within one of the burrows. A subordinate mystery is created when the old girlfriend of the protagonist shows up at his burrow and is accused of being a spy (she turns out to be a counterspy). Although this is written in the form of a mystery novel, the mystery focuses on the means by which the guilty nation is identified; but Jenkins never actually names the nation, which saves him the difficulty of providing the solution to a seemingly insoluble problem. Its technical aspects are well thought out; but it is very nationalistic, strongly justifying retaliation, and is not really a good novel.

___ [as Murray Leinster]. “West Wind” ( Astounding, March 1948). In Leo Margulies, ed. 3 in l. New York: Pyramid, 1963.Faced with the prospect of a devastating nuclear war, a small nation decides to evacuate its cities and retreat in the face of the enemy; but the victims have a secret weapon. The conquering troops die horribly from radioactive dust blown silently over them by the west wind.

Jersild, P[er] C. After the Flood. Originally Efter Floden. Albert Bonniers, 1982. Translated from the Swedish by Lö ne Thygesen Blecher and George Blecher. New York: Morrow, 1986. The thirty-three year-old narrator was born after the holocaust into a depopulated, brutalized world. His harelip is his only deformity in a world in which most of the few surviving women are either infertile or give birth only to terribly deformed babies. He escapes from the gang of pirates where he was forced to have sex with the captain, seeking a better life, but is pursued by them relentlessly. He takes a fertile nun as his lover, but she dies in childbirth. There is a glimmer of hope as a seemingly well-adapted tribe of dark-skinned reindeer herders appear, but they succumb to disease. It seems at the end of the novel that all humans and most other life forms are doomed to extinction. Damage to the ozone layer is described. The author is a physician who says he was deeply impressed by the instructions given him in medical school for dealing with the more serious victims of a nuclear attack: put them out of their misery with an injection. At the Seventh World Congress of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (1987), Jersild spoke movingly of the responsibility of authors to depict accurately the consequences of nuclear war. The novel was an international best-seller, translated into many languages.

Johnson, Annabel and Edgar. The Danger Quotient. New York: Harper & Row, 1984.A juvenile adventure story set 130 years after World War III, which took place in 1996. A youngster experimentally bred for intelligence is supposed to be at work on the solution of restoring the depleted ozone layer, destroyed by the holocaust. Instead, he invents a time machine which allows him to explore his own ancestry and discover that he himself had been the founder of the project which allowed civilization to survive underground. Both world wars and the Vietnam War are woven into this unusually intelligent exploration of the concept of responsibility.

Johnson, Denis. Fiskadoro. New York: Knopf, 1985.Man years after “the End of the World” a thirteen-year-old boy is growing up in the quarantined Florida Keys, studying the clarinet with Mr. Cheung, whose messy house looks like a bomb crater, and who suffers from seizures in which an atomic bomb seems to explode in his head. He runs off to join tribe of black mutants, and is initiated by them through penile subincision. He is returned home with most of his memory destroyed by a drug he has been given, and has to be taught to recognize his own mother, who soon thereafter dies agonizingly of breast cancer, which is called “killme” because that is what its victims cry. Most people are unaware of the nuclear war, although one group is reading Frank W. Chinnock’s Nagasaki: The Forgotten Bomb. There is a passing reference to “the time when it was cold” which is probably meant to suggest a nuclear winter. Key West is called Twicetown because defective missiles fell there twice and failed to explode. People wear talismans against radioactivity. Mutant beggars roam the landscape. The boy Œs half-Chinese grandmother who is more than a century old remembers vividly the fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War; and the book ends with her memories of floating in the China Sea, waiting to be rescued. In the background looms th e threat of Cubans, who may invade and take over.

Johnson, George Clayton, and William Nolan. See under Nolan.

Johnson, Ray W. Astera: The Planet That Committed Suicide. New York: Exposition, 1960.This brief yellow-peril fable is little more than a racist sketch in which a great white scientist learns that the asteroid belt is the aftermath of a suicidal explosion set off by the whites of the planet Astera who had made the mistake of letting their bloodthirsty inferior races achieve enough knowledge and power to threaten them. The Astera scientists had moved beyond ordinary nuclear weapons, however, using “cosmic” energy.

Johnson, S[imon] S[igvart]. “The House by the Crab Apple Tree” ( Fantasy and Science Fiction, February, 1964). In Avram Davidson, ed. The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, l4th Series. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965. New York: Ace, 1968. London: Gollancz, 1966. Also in James Sallis, ed. The War Book. London: Hart-Davis, 1969.A woman and her daughter are besieged by brutal men in a barbaric postholocaust future (probably the result of a nuclear war, since one of the men is horribly deformed, but the war is not otherwise specified). The story is more effective than most stories of its type because its sadism, rape, and cannibalism are not softened by the sort of fake medieval trappings common to New Dark Age fiction. This is not a new culture, but the end of culture.

Johnstone, William W. [Ashes #1]: Out of the Ashes. New York: Zebra, 1983.The first in a series of survivalist novels even more poorly written than Jerry Ahern’s, made up of equal parts combat, sex (much of it rape), and right-wing editorializing against gun control, the IRS and Big Government in general, the ACLU, unions, welfare, and disarmament. When a stringent gun control act is passed, a conspiracy is hatched by a portion of the army to precipitate a Russo-Chinese atomic war. The result is a holocaust, but the leader of the conspiracy envisions a better, sterner world reborn from the ashes of the old. Indeed, his heir apparent, the hero of the series, assembles an army and sets up a redneck utopia in the west. There he deals out frontier justice, prescribes universal military service, and reorganizes the economy along lines that purport to be conservative, but which remarkably resemble socialism in many respects: he bans unions but endorses worker-ownership and profit-sharing. The author creates a set of enemies to his right who are bigoted racists, including the formerly liberal senator who now leads what is left of the legitimate government. Although Johnstone constantly denounces racism, he seems unable to write about the subject in any but the most rigidly stereotypical ways. His utopian ideals are an odd conglomeration: stern discipline of the young, legalized prostitution and pornography, equal rights for women, mandatory government identification cards, capital punishment, and strict control of the press to guarantee objectivity. On the issue of religion in the public schools he is inconsistent: in this volume he seems to favor it, in the sequel to oppose it. As in most sexually oriented action fiction, rape is deplored but pruriently depicted in graphic detail. The hero has pretensions to culture: he enjoys classical music such as the “symphony” “Wagner’s Ring” and is capable of recognizing a volume of verse by the famous poet “Wadsworth.” In the end the vicious U.S. government conquers the utopia, and the struggle must begin anew.

___ . [Ashes #2]: Fire in the Ashes. New York: Zebra, 1984.Incorporating long quotations from Out of the Ashes . this sequel consists mostly of battles between the utopians and the government, leading to the triumph of the right-wing leader, who attempts to impose a larger version of his utopian experiment on the rest of the country. His enemies build atomic bombs and set one off in Iowa. As the nation collapses into chaos, giant rats and mutated human monsters menace the survivors.

___ [Ashes #3]: Anarchy in the Ashes New York: Zebra, 1984.In 2001 Ben Raines has established a new tri-state utopia in the South. He forms a coalition with black separatists and a Chicano group to battle a bizarre Communist-Fascist-Klan axis whose main force consists of the International Peace Force from Russia by way of Iceland. The villains plot to breed most minorities out of existence, retaining only a few to be mated with mutants, their offspring to provide a subhuman slave race. Toward the end of the novel Raines begins to be widely worshipped. Underground refugees called the “People of Darkness” are referred to for the first time. As usual, there is abundant sadistic sex, especially directed against children, graphically depicted and fervently deplored. A fourth volume, Blood in the Ashes, appeared in 1985.

___ . [Ashes #3]: Blood in the Ashes New York: Zebra, 1985.Fourth volume in the Ashes series. Ben Raines battles thugs led by a vicious pedophile who is allied with a religious cult led by a sadistic former prostitute. He also has to deal forcefully with subversion in his own ranks. He becomes involved in a Florida slave revolt and then he ads out on his own to write a book.

___ . [Ashes #5]: Alone in the Ashes New York: Zebra, 1985.Fifth volume in the Ashes series. Ben links up with a young woman battling gangs in the Southwest. He kills hordes of villains–most of them child rapists–single-handed. Sam Hartline, now allied with the Russian General Striganov, attacks his hideout, wounds Ben and seizes his woman friend. Several efforts are made to refute the impression that the hero is a racist.

___ . [Ashes #6]: Wind in the Ashes New York: Zebra, 1986.Sixth volume in the Ashes series. Ben battles three groups: the Islamic People’s Army (terrorists idealizing Khaddafi), Sam Hartline, and the Russians. The residents of Santa Rosa, California, bluff would-be attackers using empty missile silos. Ben wins his battles and personally kills Hartline. As usual, there is an enormous amount of child rape and sodomy.

___ . [Ashes #7]: Smoke from the Ashes New York: Zebra, 1987.

___ . [Ashes #8]: Danger in the Ashes New York: Zebra, 1988.

___ . [Ashes #9]: Valor in the Ashes. New York: Zebra, 1988.

___ . [Ashes #10]: Trapped in the Ashes. New York: Zebra, 1989.

___ . [Ashes #11]: Death in the Ashes. New York: Zebra, 1989.

___ . [Ashes #12]: Survival in the Ashes. New York: Zebra, 1990.

___ . [Ashes #13]: Fury in the Ashes. New York: Zebra, 1991.

___ . [Ashes #14]: Courage in the Ashes. New York: Zebra, 1991.

___ . [Ashes #15]: Terror in the Ashes. New York: Zebra, 1992.

___ . [Ashes #16]: Vengeance in the Ashes. New York: Zebra, 1993.

___ . [Ashes #17]: Battle in the Ashes. New York: Zebra, 1993.

___ . [Ashes #18]: Flames from the Ashes. New York: Zebra, 1993.

___ . [Ashes #19]: Treason in the Ashes. New York: Zebra, 1993.

___ . [Ashes #20]: Treason in the Ashes. New York: Zebra, 1994.

___ . [Ashes #21]: Treason in the Ashes. New York: Zebra, 1994.

___ . [Ashes #22]: Chaos in the Ashes. New York: Zebra, 1996.

___ . [Ashes #23]: Slaughter in the Ashes. New York: Zebra, 1997.

___ . [Ashes #24]: Judgement in the Ashes. New York: Zebra, 1997.

___ . [Ashes #25]: Ambush in the Ashes. New York: Zebra, 1998.

___ . [Ashes #26]: From the Ashes: America Reborn: The Complete Guide to the Ashes Series and the Tri-States Manifesto. New York: Zebra, 1998.

___ . [Ashes #27]: Triumph in the Ashes: America Reborn. New York: Zebra, 1998.

___ . [Ashes #28]: Hatred in the Ashes: America Reborn. New York: Zebra, 1999.

___ . [Ashes #29]: Standoff in the Ashes: America Reborn. New York: Zebra, 1999.

___ . [Ashes #30]: Tyranny in the Ashes: America Reborn. New York: Zebra, 2000.

Jones, Alice Eleanor. “Created He Them” ( Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1955).In Anthony Boucher, ed. The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, Fifth Series. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1956. New York: Ace, 1961.In a “bombed-out world” where most people are sterile or can produce only deformed offspring, normal children are rounded up at age three to be raised by the state. A woman who can bear such children barters with less fortunate women, letting them hug the children in exchange for groceries and household goods to satisfy her brutal, selfish husband.

Jones, Dennis. Barbarossa Red. Boston: Little, Brown, 1985. In the wake of the negotiated mutual withdrawal of Russian and American intermediate-range nuclear missiles from Europe, the KGB, using its agents placed high in the West German government, maneuvers the General Secretary of the Soviet Union into launching a conventional assault on Germany. After a brief period of success, punctuated by the use of one battlefield nuclear weapon on each side, the plot is uncovered and foiled.

___. Rubicon One. New York: Beaufort, 1983. London: Hutchinson, 1983.The Pakistanis have cruise missiles armed with nuclear bombs, which they share with Libya, which it in turn shares with Syria. Meanwhile, the KGB chief seizes control of the USSR. Syria launches a nuclear attack on Israel. Two bombs explode but not on target. The Israelis halt supporting Russian tank attack with a nuclear weapon. Another warhead is detonated in Damascus. The American President ignores a Pentagon supercomputer s advice to launch a first strike, and instead in order to gain time for negotiation uses the Air Force to shoot down Israeli planes which are on their way to attack Syria. An all-out holocaust is averted at the last minute.

Jones, Dennis Feltham. Colossus. London: Hart-Davis, 1966. London: Pan, 1968. New York: Putnam, 1967. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967. New York: Berkley, 1967.A supercomputer is put in complete charge of the nation’s nuclear arms but promptly links up with its Russian counterpart and determines to rule the Earth. It punishes attempts to tamper with it by launching nuclear warheads, some of which are harmlessly intercepted. Two thousands Siberians die, however, and Los Angeles is annihilated. The film version is entitled The Forbin Project (1970) . Compare Albert Compton Friborg, “Careless Love.” There are two sequels with themes unrelated to nuclear war: The Fall of Colossus (New York: Putnam, 1974; New York: Berkley, 1975), and Colossus and the Crab (New York: Berkley, 1977).

Jones, Gwyneth. Divine Endurance. English ed.? New York: Arbor House, 1987.A young girl raised in a land surrounded by poisonous deserts and glass mountains is led by her intelligent and immortal cat on a long quest in a neo-medieval far-future Southeast Asia, searching for her twin brother. Only a few reminiscences by the cat near the beginning of the novel suggest that the radically transformed world which provides the setting for these adventures developed in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust.

Jones, Mervyn. On the Last Day. London: Cape, 1958.Set in 1959. Britain has been conquered by the USSR and China after tactical nuclear weapons failed to stop them. No one dared to use the strategic weapons for fear of setting off a holocaust. The story is set among the officials of the British government in exile in Canada. The scientist hero falls in love with a young woman who turns out to be an agent for a revolutionary Québecois group called the Fils de Montcalm (FM). He discovers that Britain has completed the building of nuclear-armed ICBMs which it plans to launch against the enemy, beginning–he is sure–a full-scale nuclear war. The young woman meditates eloquently on the futility and stupidity of nuclear war while she is in prison, arguing that war has lost its meaning in the nuclear age; the bomb is a weapon of genocide, comparable to the Nazi gas chambers, but more efficient. A nuclear war is self-defeating, she points out, since it destroys the very assets one tries to gain through conquest in a conventional war. But she rests her case on her insistence that nuclear war is not war at all, but mere mass murder on a global scale. It is commonplace in popular fiction generally and nuclear war fiction in particular for an older man to be seduced by a sexually active, attractive younger woman; but in this case the affair is revealed to have been in part motivated by the desire of the FM to infiltrate the ranks of the scientists. However, the young woman genuinely falls in love with the scientist, while he in turn is more than half persuaded by her arguments. In the end, they remain on opposite sides, the uprising of the FM fails, and the ICBMs are launched, with what result we do not learn.

Jones, Raymond F. “Pete Can Fix It” ( Astounding , February 1947). In Groff Conklin, ed. Science Fiction Adventures in Dimension . New York: Vanguard, 1953. New York: Berkley, 1965. As Adventures in Dimension. London: Grayson, 1955.A man from fifteen years in the future tries to prevent the nuclear holocaust of his own time by transporting unwary travelers into that devastated era to see for themselves what lies in store for the world unless the course of events is altered.

___ . Renaissance ( Astounding , July, August, September, October 1944). New York: Gnome, 1951. Rpt. as Man of Two Worlds. New York: Pyramid, 1963.Following the great war that ended civilization, Earth scientists established contact with Kronweld, a parallel world where the best human minds were sent to preserve and develop scientific knowledge, but where–twelve hundred years later–such knowledge, including the knowledge of atomic power, is the monopoly of a dictatorial elite. This enclave of brilliant but enslaved humanity is surrounded by a belt of lethally radioactive wasteland, and the people themselves are rendered sterile by radioactivity. The vicious Statists who dominate Earth decide to destroy Kronweld, and an all-out war ensues which involves the use of atomic beam weapons. Many are killed by radiation which “put them to sleep by mercifully burning out their nerve cells before it baked their bodies to lumps of carbon.” Kronweld retaliates, als using atomic weapons. At its height the conflict sets off a volcano on Kronweld which sends “radioactive radiation” flaming across the landscape. The lesson of this struggle is said to be the necessity to revive and develop science and reactivate the ancient technology.

___ . The Secret People. London: Avalon, 1956. As The Deviates. Boston: Beacon, 1959.Deliberately spread radioactive dust causes widespread mutations after a nuclear war, resulting in a strict dictatorship which imposes genetic screening and compulsory conception by artificial insemination of those few women capable of breeding. Only 1 percent of the men are fertile and only 12 percent of the women, who are forced to bear twelve babies each. Large areas of the cities are permanently radioactive, and the inhabitable regions are filled with rampant crime and violence. One of the most common forms of crime is the kidnapping and sale of children. In an emotional reaction to the violence of the nuclear war, firearms have been banned, but crossbows and knives are common. The protagonist is a telepathic mutant. He manages to smuggle his semen into sperm banks and create a whole new race called “The Children” who have set up a colony under his direction with a view to gradually phasing out and replacing the human race. His offspring rebel, however, deciding instead to construct atomic-powered rockets with which they can leave Earth and colonize space. The ideals of the protagonist, who sees The Children as the caretakers and heirs of humanity even as he plots humanity’s extinction, are confused to say the least. The climax of the novel, in which he blows up the rocket and kills his son in a duel, only to decide that he has been wrong all along, is equally ambiguous. In a rage, he concludes that the two forms of humanity cannot coexist. Nonetheless, the work ends with a mysterious psychic message from the spirit of his dead son, reinforcing his own earlier point of view: “The Earth is man’s, not the stars. Not until he has made the earth his own. He would die amid the splendor of the golden worlds if he went out to them before he learned to walk upon the clay that is his own.” The sentiment seems noble enough, but in the context of the narrative it is quite arbitrary. The antagonists seem to have adopted each other’s views for no very good reason other than that they feel sorry for what they have done; the author apparently has no strong convictions on these issues and simply thrashes about for a means of concluding his novel. Yet with whichever side of the debate the reader chooses to identify, not for a moment does the novel grant the possibility of siding with ordinary people against The Children. The human race is either villainous or pathetic: it is not admirable. The Frankenstein myth undergoes a strange transformation in such works: the hubris involved in the creation of a new type of human being is punished, but the experiment is successful nevertheless.

Joshi, Ruchir: The Last Jet-Engine Laugh. London: Flamingo, 2001.As part of the furturistic frame-story of this complex novel about an Indian photographer it is mentioned in passing that in 2012 a terrorist nuclear bomb destroyed South Bombay, prompting a rogue Indian missile to retaliate with a bomb against Karachi. Both sides have been forced into nuclear disarmament by international pressures, but continue their conflict by conventional means.

Judge Dredd. See Mills, Pat, The Cursed Earth.

La Tourette, Aileen. Cry Wolf. London: Virago, 1986. After a long nuclear winter, the whole Earth is devastated, and the climate permanently warmed. The only flower left is the daisy. The woman who founded the new society and its religion decides to tell her followers the true story of the past before she dies, which she has, until now, concealed. It transpires that one of her listeners had a mother who was killed at the Greenham Common women’s anti-nuclear encampment during an alert. She tells how the women, despairing of conventional methods of protest, decided to become modern Scheherazades, infiltrating the missile command bunkers and beguiling the soldiers there with tales designed to prevent them from launching their weapons on the appointed day. Their plot is foiled, and war breaks out after all. The women then become involved with a group of strangely mutated children who are the result of a genetic experiment. At the end of the novel, the climate changes again, with the return of snow to the Earth symbolizing rebirth and healing. Ponderous whimsy.

Laidlaw, Marc. Dad’s Nuke . New York: Donald I. Fine, 1985. London: Gollancz, 1986.A satirical fantasy about an artificial city in which neighbors arm themselves against each other with powerful weapons. At the end of the novel a home-made nuclear weapon is set off.

Lamm, Richard D. “Excerpt from A History of the Twentieth Century” By Cornelius Barnes, Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 2010. In Earl W. Foell and Richard A. Nenneman, eds. How Peace Came to the World. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1986.An entry in a contest sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor explaining how world peace could be established, written by the governor of Colorado. A computer malfunction accidentally begins a nuclear war between India and Pakistan, causing a mild three-year-long nuclear winter and damage to the ozone layer. In revulsion, the nations of the world abandon war and enter an era of peace.

Lange, Oliver [pseud.]. Vandenberg . New York: Stein & Day, 197l. New York: Bantam: 1972. London: Peter Davies, 197l. London: Panther, 1980.Russia conquers and occupies the United States using a mystery weapon, and takes over much of the rest of the world as well. Britain has been subdued “after a brief thermonuclear flurry”–the only reference to nuclear weapons actually having been used. Remarkable for its understated tone, the novel assumes that most Americans are cowardly, passive conformists who will adjust rapidly to a less than savage occupation, and it mocks hippies, militant blacks, and survivalists alike. It consists of the story of a misfit American who rebels, resists brainwashing, escapes from prison, and returns to blast open the walls of his former place of confinement.

Langford, David. “Notes for a Newer Testament.” In Janet Morris, ed. Afterwar. New York: Baen, 1985.Long after the Fall, the human lifespan averages thirty-five. Cancer and plague are common. Pillaging hordes of barbarians roam the landscape. A group of them finds an old cruise missile, but when they attempt to move it an orbiting satellite detects th e motion and blasts it with a beam.

Lanham, Edwin. The Clock at 8:16. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970.A young medic on leave from the Vietnam War falls in love with the sister of a Japanese man with whom he has been corresponding. Because the siblings are both Hibakusha–atomic bomb victims (the brother is terribly disfigured)–Hiroshima stands between them. The differences which separate Americans and Japanese are sensitively handled, but they are overcome by love. The novel ends with the death of the American in combat. A superior treatment of the theme of Edita Morris’s novels .

Lanier, Sterling E. Hiero’s Journey. Radnor, Pa.: Chilton, 1973. Sequel: The Unforsaken Hiero .Five thousand years after the atomic war, the world is still semibarbaric, but the destruction of civilization is somewhat compensated for by the proliferation of magic. The setting is used primarily to justify a Tolkienesque quest story involving telepathy. Since pure evil forces have evolved in the transformed world, all ambiguity is removed from killing. A monster is destroyed by causing an intact missile to self-destruct. Hiero remarks, “What a race of men! After five thousand years their death still works!”

___ . The Unforsaken Hiero. New York: Del Rey, 1983. Sequel to Hiero’s Journey. Hiero battles the vile Unclean Masters with the aid of mutated cat-people, gigantic intelligent beavers, and a wise old snail. The possibility of a further sequel is strongly implied.

Lansdale, Joe R. “Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man’s Back.” In John Macloy, ed. Nukes: Four Horror Writers on the Ultimate Horror. Baltimore: Macloy, 1986.The narrator, who worked at a missile base, atones for his responsibility in creating the holocaust which killed his daughter as his wife tattoos a mushroom cloud with the girl’s face in it on his back. He remembers the horrors experienced by those who lived in a deep shelter for twenty years. They live in a lighthouse by a dried-up ocean where mutated whales walk across the sea floor. Carnivorous rose vines kill the wife, and the narrator plans to use the same vines to commit suicide.

Laski, Marghanita. The Offshore Island: A Play in Three Acts. London: Cresset, 1959. London: Mayfair, 1961.Ten years after a nuclear war began an isolated family consisting of a mother and her teenaged son and daughter survive in a tiny uncontaminated pocket of land in England. They have only one family as neighbors, the man of which comes over frequently to make love with the mother. She has become pregnant three times and miscarried, presumably because of radiation exposure. Pigs are constantly being born with three heads. The daughter yearns to make love, and is ready to sleep even with her brother, but he rejects the idea. At the end of Act I, American soldiers arrive and inform them that most of Europe is radioactive and that they are among rare survivors referred to as “CPs”–Contaminated Persons. They also tell the family that the war is still going on, and that the U.S. and USSR were careful to use only conventional weapons on each other, reserving atomic weapons for the smaller countries. During a truce, a Russian party on a similar search expedition arrives, and the two commanding officers muse over how the isolated survivors they discover want to be left alone in peace when they discover what the outside world is like. Finally, it is revealed that the family is to be evacuated to labor camps in the U.S. and sterilized; their farm will be bombed into uselessness to prevent it falling into enemy hands. Just before they are ready to depart, the son, trying to conceal the existence of his mother’s lover, implies that he has been making love with her himself. The outraged American officer kills him, and the mother and daughter elect to stay and die under the bomb about to hit their farm rather than to accept the degraded form of exile they are offered. Unusual in its strongly pacifist views, the story was aired in a shortened version by BBC radio. According to the author, it was written in 1954.

Laumer, Keith. Bolo: The Annals of the Dinochrome Brigade. New York: Berkley/Putnam, 1976. New York: Berkley, 1984.Consists of seven linked stories only two of which involve nuclear weapons. Stories like these which glorify military virtues seldom involve nuclear weapons, perhaps because atomic weaponry is too overwhelmingly powerful to suit the desired human scale. See Leonard G. Heldreth, “In Search of the Ultimate Weapon: The Fighting Machine in Science Fiction Novels and Films,” in Thomas P. Dunn and Richard D. Erlich, eds. The Mechanical God: Machines in Science Fiction (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1982).     “Field Test.” Astounding March 1976. Bazooka-like nuclear weapons are used in a war in which a Bolo fighting machine sacrifices itself heroically “for the honor of the regiment.”     “The Last Command” ( Analog , January 1967). Also in John W. Campbell, Jr., ed. Analog 7. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970. Also in Harry Harrison and Brian Aldiss, eds. Best SF: 67. New York: Berkley, 1968. Also in Leo P. Kelley, ed. Themes in Science Fiction: A Journey Into Wonder. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972. An aged veteran of a limited nuclear war sacrifices his life to stop an accidentally reanimated battle machine from running amok. Very reminiscent of Robert A. Heinlein’s “The Long Watch” ( American Legion Magazine, December 1949) or “The Green Hills of Earth” ( Saturday Evening Post, February 1947).

Lawrence, Louise. Children of the Dust. New York: Harper & Row, 1985.This youth-oriented novel is divided into three parts. In Part One, set in the present, vividly depicts the struggles of a young woman to save her three stepchildren from the fallout of a nuclear war as they create a makeshift shelter in their home. The difficulties of controlling young children in such a situation have never been more convincingly portrayed. After the woman commits suicide, the oldest girl delivers the only healthy child to a survivalist refuge and kills herself and her brother as nuclear winter comes on. Part Two depicts the struggle between the military dictators who rule a subterranean shelter and the few surviving surface-dwellers, many of whom are mutants. In Part Three, telepathic mutants whose furry bodies are an adaptation to the destruction of the ozone layer are replacing humanity. The mode of t he novel shifts strikingly in this last section from grimly realistic to fantastic. Radiation-induced cancer is depicted.

Leiber, Fritz. “Appointment in Tomorrow” (as “Poor Superman,” Galaxy , June 1951). In E. F. Bleiler and T. E. Dikty, eds. The Best Science-Fiction Stories: 1952. New York: Fell, 1952. Rpt. as The Best Science Fiction Stories: Third Series. London: Grayson, 1953.After World War III, fakery is used to trick the antiscientific public into accepting the gifts of science.

___ . “A Bad Day for Sales” ( Galaxy , July 1953). In Frederik Pohl, ed. Shadow of Tomorrow. New York: PermaBooks, 1953. Also in E. F., Bleiler, and T. E. Dikty, eds. The Best Science-Fiction Stories: 1954. New York: Fell, 1954. As The Best Science-Fiction Stories: Fifth Series. London: Grayson, 1956. Also in H. L. Gold, ed. Second Galaxy Reader of Science Fiction. New York : Crown, 1954. Also in H. L. Gold, ed. Galaxy Science Fiction Omnibus. London: Grayson, 1955. Also in Isaac Asimov and Groff Conklin, eds. Fifty Short Science Fiction Tales. New York: Collier, 1963. Also in Robert Silverberg, ed. Men and Machines: Ten Stories of Science Fiction. Des Moines, Iowa: Meredith, 1968. Also in Fred Obrecht, ed. Science Fiction and Fantasy. Woodbury, N.Y.: Barron’s, 1977. Also in Martin H. Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander, eds. Science Fiction of the 50’s. New York: Avon, 1979. Also in Frederik Pohl, Martin H. Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander, eds. Galaxy: Thirty Years of Innovative Science Fiction. New York: Playboy, 1980. Rpt. in two volumes. New York: Playboy, 1981. Story is in Volume 1. Also in Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh, eds. Thinking Machines. Milwaukee: Raintree, 1981. Also in Robert Silverberg, ed. The Arbor House Treasury of Science Fiction Masterpieces. New York: Arbor House, 1983.The world’s first fully mobile sales robot finds potential customers scarce after a nuclear bomb hits the city. He weighs a little girl who is begging for her mother, then goes off “to peddle Poppy Pop to the members of a rescue squad which had just come around the corner, more robotlike in their asbestos suits than he in his metal skin.”

___ . “Coming Attraction” ( Galaxy , November 1950). In A Pail of Air. New York: Ballantine, 1964 Also in H. L. Gold, ed. Galaxy Reader of Science Fiction . New York: Crown, 1952. Also in Sam Moskowitz, ed. Modern Masterpieces of Science Fiction . New York: World, 1965. Also in Robert Silverberg, ed. Science Fiction Hall of Fame, . Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970. Donald L. Lawler, ed.: Approaches to Science Fiction. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1978. Also in Patricia S. Warrick, Martin H. Greenberg and Harvey A. Katz, eds. Science Fiction: Contemporary Mythology–The SFWA-SFRA Anthology. New York: Harper & Row, 1978. Also in James E. Gunn, ed. The Road to Science Fiction #3: From Heinlein to Here. New York: Mentor, 1979. Also in Frederik Pohl, Martin H. Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander, eds. Galaxy: Thirty Years of Innovative Science Fiction. New York: Playboy, 1980. Rpt. in two volumes. New York: Playboy, 1981. Story is in Volume 1.In a cruel, decadent post-World War III world, preparing for World War IV, nothing seems to have been learned. The story deals with the sadomasochistic relationship between a prostitute and a pimp. Clothing styles are influenced by antiradiation protective clothing worn during the last war. A young woman is afraid to see the moon because she knows there are nuclear missiles based on it.

___ . Destiny Times Three ( Astounding , March, April 1945). New York: Galaxy, 1957. Also in Martin Greenberg, ed. Five Science Fiction Novels. New York: Gnome, 1952. Bound with Norman Spinrad, Riding the Torch, in Binary Star #1. New York: Dell, 1978.Parallel world story considering various alternatives toward the control and use of “subtronic” weapons.

___ . “The Foxholes of Mars” ( Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1952). In A Pail of Air. New York: Ballantine, 1964. Also in Judith Merril, ed. Beyond Human Ken. New York: Random House, 1952 (omitted from Bantam and Grayson versions). Also in James Sallis, ed. The War Book. London: Hart-Davis, 1969.A meditation on the stupidity and inevitability of war told from the point of view of a soldier fighting among alien creatures on Mars in a conflict involving nuclear bombs.

___ . Gather, Darkness! ( Astounding , May, June, July 1943). New York: Pellegrini & Cudahy, 1950. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1951. New York: Berkley, 1962. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1980. Manchester: Four Square, 1966.A well-known novel of the struggle of “witches” to overthrow the ruling priesthood, both sides using science in the guise of magic. Although the story is set in the wake of a devastating war, the weapons used are not specified. However, the uprising results in the use of “atomic batteries.”

___ . “The Last Letter” ( Galaxy , June 1958). In A Pail of Air. New York: Ballantine 1964. Also in The Worlds of Fritz Leiber. New York: Ace, 1976. Also in H. L. Gold, ed. The Fifth Galaxy Reader. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961. New York: Pocket Books, 1963.A satire on the proliferation of junk mail. In the supermechanized postholocaust Atomic Cave Era, the sending of a single handwritten love letter disrupts the entire postal system and nearly triggers a war.

___ . “The Moon Is Green” ( Galaxy , April 1952). In The Secret Songs. London: Hart-Davis, 1968. In E. F. Bleiler and T. E. Dikty, eds. The Best Science-Fiction Stories: 1953. New York: Fell, 1953. Rpt. as The Best Science Fiction Stories: Fourth Series. London: Grayson, 1955. Also in E. F. Bleiler and T. E. Dikty, eds.: Frontiers in Space. New York: Bantam, 1955.A couple has been living in a shelter for two years after a prolonged cobalt bomb war has made life aboveground unsafe. A stranger tells the woman of wonders of surface life, but he turns out to be a liar, immune to radioactivity. She refuses to believe this and runs away. The story is well told.

___. The Night of the Wolf. New York: Ballantine, 1966. London: Sphere, 1976.Consists of four stories, retitled. Two deal with nuclear war: nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;”The Lone Wolf” (originally “The Creature from Cleveland Depths,” Galaxy , December      1962).A silly tale of inventors in an underground society of the future of continuous nuclear war. Assumes continuing technological development and merchandising during the war. The population saddles itself with “ticklers,” electronic masters which take over. nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;”The Wolf Pair” (originally “The Night of the Long Knives,” Amazing , January 1960). A much more interesting story, this begins in the desert where “Deathlanders” who can sense radioactivity survive, leading a life motivated solely by the lust for murder and sex. In a fine opening scene, a man and woman meet and they warily disarm and disrobe for sex. The pair murders an old man who has helped to organize Assassins Anonymous (for people who want to give up murder) and seize his antigravity ship. They are taken to the “civilized sector,” then find themselves plunged into a war involving new technology created by surviving military nuclear project scientists. The narrator admits that he was one of those who “pushed the button,” and finds relief in confession. The conclusion offers muted hope as the pair join the growing Assassins Anonymous. [

___. A Specter Is Haunting Texas. New York: DAW, 1968. New York: Walker, 1969.In this farcical postholocaust thriller, North America has been taken over by hormonally induced giant Texans.

Leigh, Steven. Flamestones. In Janet Morris, ed. Afterwar. New York: Baen, 1985.Set after the May 15 Mistake, when New York, Moscow, and Tel Aviv had all died in radioactive fire. Civilization continues, but with food shortages, mounting civil disorders, and worsening international tensions. An old man hunting mysterious flamestones in this hills witnesses a nuclear explosion which signals the final cataclysm. Strange new people arrive to dominate the postholocaust world. There is a poetic allusion to the nuclear winter theory: the winter would have come early on wings of ash.

Leinster, Murray. See under Jenkins.

Lem, Stanislaw. Fiasco. Trans. Michael Kandel. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987. Originally appeared in Polish as Fiasko, 1986.An interstellar expedition from Earth destroys the civilization it is trying to contact. A brilliant satire dealing heavily with SDI and deterrence theory, reminiscent of his classic Solaris .

Lengyel, Cornel [Adam]. Eden, Inc. Los Angeles: Fantasy Publishers, 1952.Unavailable for review. See Segal.

Lessing, Doris. The Four-Gated City. London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1969. London: Panther, 1972. New York: Knopf, 1969. New York: Bantam, 1970.The appendix of this novel represents Lessing’s debut in the writing of science fiction. Among other rumors in the book, it is said that a Chinese pilot has destroyed Britain by crashing with nuclear weapons stolen from Aldermaston (target of famous antinuclear protest marches). Although the culture she has depicted in the novel has been deteriorating throughout the sixties, this abrupt culmination in apocalyptic destruction is quite unexpected. Survivors from the cast of characters live a primitive life on an island off of Scotland. Children evolve strange talents. The disaster remains vague, seemingly more a metaphor for an apocalyptic mood than a serious vision of reality.

Lethem, Jonathan. Amnesia Moon . New York: Harcourt, 1995.This surrealistic novel opens in a stereotypically post-nuclear world, complete with mutants; but it soon transpires that although a major catastrophe has struck the world, people in different regions have experienced different catastrophes, and all of this seems to be taking place within their minds.

Life , Editors of. “The 36-Hour War.” Life, November 1945.Nine pages of pictures depict an imaginary nuclear attack on the U.S., launched by rocket, with a brief text based on the projections of General Henry H. Arnold. An antimissile missile is shown, an underground lauching site and factory, and the ruins of New York. The text asserts that the U.S. wins the war although forty million Americans die.

Lightner, A[lice] M[ary]. The Day of the Drones. New York: Norton, 1969. New York: Bantam, 1970.A juvenile novel with a premise strikingly reminiscent of Margot Bennett’s The Long Way Back. In the heart of “Afria,” a tribe of blacks who survived the Disaster maintains a culture based on the prohibition of scientific knowledge and progress and enforcement of strict eugenic laws against light-skinned babies (whiteness and science being held responsible for the holocaust five hundred years earlier). They live in an isolated safe zone, surrounded by radioactive deserts. The protagonists are a young girl and her brilliant but unfortunately light-skinned male friend. When he shoots a duck with a strange cord tied around its leg, the tribal leaders become convinced that another group of humans must have survived elsewhere, and an expedition including the two young friends is sent north by solar-powered helicopter. They eventually reach England, where they find a tribe which herds bees and which models its structure after the insects: women do all the work, men are treated as lazy drones who are killed when they rebel or fail to engender healthy progeny. (In contrast, men and women are equal in Afria.) A man they save from execution by bee sting thinks they are gods. Amazed by their tale of flying through the air, he tells them the traditional “story about the Rights”: “You see, they weren’t right. . . . they were wrong. Only the bees can fly. And of course the birds. For men to fly is against the gods, and when these two brothers flew, it brought death and destruction from the gods until they were all dead.” (Compare with Edmund Cooper, The Cloud Walker. ) As in several other works, radiation seems to have induced mutations tending toward gigantism: huge spiders and glow worms abound as well as bees (no land animals except birds and insects survive). The major link between the cultures of the two tribes is Shakespeare, and the only relic the heroine succeeds in bringing back from the tribal treasure cave is a precious copy of his collected works. The young man is killed defending the others; but the girl takes the blond, blue-eyed savage she has learned to love home with her, planning to return some day to collect more books. The novel has a suspended ending: it is uncertain whether her tribe will accept the stranger. Like The Long Way Back, this is a parable of racism, and like many of these works, critical of the conservative religious beliefs which prevent scientific and technological progress.

Linaweaver, Brad. Moon of Ice. New York: Arbor House, 1988. London: Grafton, 1989.An alternate history novel mostly narrated by Goebbel’s daughter in which Hitler developed the atomic bomb and used it to win World War II. There are numerous references to the use of atomic weapons during the war, but the novel focuses on Nazi politics rather than nuclear issues.

Linebarger, Paul. See Smith, Cordwainer.

Livesey, Eric M. The Desolate Land. London: Digit, 1964.A high-atmospheric bomb test by the U.S. creates a radioactive belt which cuts off and then destroys most life in the Northern Hemisphere. Monsters rapidly evolve in the radioactive zone, and plague and chaos spread. The radioactivity is spread by plant life growing in the zone. America uses an atomic bomb to prevent Latin American refugees from crossing the Mexican border, in contrast with the British, who hospitably welcome all comers to sanctuary in the Hebrides. A few tens of thousands survive in Arctic refuges until the radioactivity dies down. The largely depopulated North makes contact with the apparently unaffected Southern Hemisphere. The novel ends with a love story and with plans to rebuild. It is emphasized that the British had warned the Americans about the possible meteorological effects of high-atmospheric testing, but had been ignored.

Ljoka, Dan. Shelter . New York: Manor, 1973.A hapless male NASA astronomer is trapped in a fallout shelter with twenty-one women when the Russians explode nuclear bombs planted all over the U.S. A second attack, caused by China, dooms the world. Our hero is brutalized and forced to impregnate his companions by a vicious washerwoman, but he eventually kills her. Another plot involves the building of fallout shelters in New Zealand, and the vicious struggles and mob violence that result from the selection of a minority of the population to survive. In the end, everyone dies, but an epilogue states that one hundred million years later, a newly evolved being struggles from the sea to begin evolution anew.

Logsdon, Syd. A Fond Farewell to Dying (one portion published in Galaxy as “To Not Go Gently,” 1978). New York: Pocket Books, 198l.After a nuclear bombardment of the western coast of the United States has split California along the fault line and various other forms of atomic havoc have been wreaked on the Earth, the polar caps melt and the sea level rises, creating a drastically altered world. In 2202, two centuries after the war, most of humanity has been sterilized. India is the only center of civilization left in the world, but it is engaged in a sometimes hot, sometimes cold war with the newly formed Muslim nation of Medina. The main focus of the story is on a series of experiments with transferring people’s minds into freshly cloned copies of their bodies in order to prolong life indefinitely. Logsdon does not really deal with the obvious point that strikes one about all such schemes: does not the transfer of thoughts into a computer and their reimposition on a new brain involve a break of continuity in consciousness such that the original person experiences death and what survives is a replica–not the original? In a world where fertility is fragile and birth defects common (the mutants have become a new class of untouchables), the idea of a longer lifespan has great appeal. To the protagonist’s Hindu lover, however, his research is a blasphemous parody of the traditional doctrine of reincarnation. Her moral qualms are sensitively treated, but in the end science–as usual–prevails. The picture is a complex one, however, for the protagonist is motivated not by idealism, but by a personal terror of death. He is shown as being much less thoughtful and compassionate than his lover, although he does finally succeed in accomplishing reincarnation. He had been brought up in a fiercely judgmental Protestantism which he has rejected, partly on the grounds that it was difficult to be impressed by the Apocalypse in Revelation when one lived in the aftermath of a nuclear war. In contrast, Hinduism is presented as adaptive, complex enough to maintain its relevance in the transformed world, and tolerant of adulterous promiscuity as a means of enhancing conception. At any rate, the frenzy to reproduce and prolong life at any cost is logically related to the near annihilation of the human race.     Although the scientific schemes of the protagonist succeed in the end, Logsdon displays great interest in and sensitivity to Indian culture. The failures of the Indian government to live up to the heritage of Gandhi are reflected in the destructive war carried on between India and Medina. In common with some other novelists, Logsdon envisions atomic power–in the form of fusion–as a prime source of energy in the post-nuclear war age. A Fond Farewell to Dying is an interesting work on several accounts, not the least of which is its vivid cast of characters. The sensitivity with which it explores various moral issues is unusual. The renewed hostilities between Muslim and Hindu seem to indicate that the human race has not learned much from the experience of the holocaust. Shrunk to a fraction of its size, struggling to survive, humanity will still find ways to rend itself asunder.

Long, Frank B[elknap]. “Collector’s Item,” Astounding , October 1947.A recording machine sent six hundred years into the future brings back news of the invention of atomic beam weapons which can pierce the defense screens invented in 1953, and which until then have prevented war. The inventor is accidentally killed before he can create the screens. Images of the far-future holocaust are brought back to the present. Hiroshima and Bikini are referred to.

___. “Guest in the House” ( Astounding , March 1946). In Rim of the Unknown. Sauk City, Wisc.: Arkham House, 1972. Also in August Derleth, ed. Strange Ports of Call. New York: Pellegrini & Cudahy, 1948.A house is accidentally carried half a million years into the future where its occupants must deal with an unpleasant investigator of the secret of time travel who tells them that a Great Holocaust ended the First Atomic Age to which they belong. He and his like are mutations produced by the resultant radiation, but he is defeated by the nine-year-old son of the family, himself a brilliant mutant thanks to radiation from Los Alamos.

Lovejoy, Jack. A Vision of Beasts, Book l: Creation Descending. New York: TOR, 1984.Descendants of scientists fight degenerate mutant “gunks” in the cave-shelter community of Saluston. The first line of the book is: “The mysterious cataclysm may not actually have begun as a war–at least not a war in the ordinary sense–but in the end it had been vastly more devastating.”

___. A Vision of Beasts, Book 2: The Second Kingdom. New York: TOR, 1984.The humans flee Saluston and the vicious gunks, avoiding poisonous “dead zones,” in quest of a place of refuge. They encounter mutated beasts and plants. California has fallen into the sea and become a chain of islands. In the third volume, published in 1985, A Vision of Beasts, Book 3: The Brotherhood of Diablo , the cataclysm is finally explained in chapter 9 as having been a war perhaps triggered by seismic activity setting off leaking canisters of radioactive waste on the sea floor. The mutations may have been caused by DNA research gone wrong. The Earth’s magnetic field has collapsed and reversed, exposing the planet to radiation.

Lovins, Amory B., L. Hunter Lovins, and Patrick O’Heffernan. See O’Heffernan.

Lowndes, Robert W., and James Blish. See under Blish .

Ludlum, Robert. See Harris, Brian.

Lunan, Duncan. The Day and the Hour. in J. E. Pournelle and John F. Carr, eds. There Will Be War, Volume V: Warrior. New York: Tor, 1986.Two centuries after World War III, the atmosphere is still clouded with dust. Battlefield tactical nuclear weapons are being used by doughty Scots to defeat the Soviet occupiers of Britain. The story features a gun whose shells can travel backward in time.

Lyons, Victor S. The Unconquerable Survivor of 2055 A.D. New York: Exposition, 1973.A mawkish and gory account of the complete destruction of Washington D. C. and its surrounding territory by atomic bombs. The narrator is a sixty-year-old man who wanders grieving through ruins, heaps of rotting corpses, and hordes of insects. His laments at being the sole survivor cease only at death when it is quite arbitrarily stated that the previous scenes of appalling destruction have been an illusion created by the army to deceive the enemy.

MacCreigh, James. See under Pohl.

MacDonald, Andrew [pseud. of William Pierce]. The Turner Diaries. Washington, D.C.: The National Alliance, 1978. 2nd ed., 1980.An influential work among neo-Nazis. When all guns are confiscated in 1989 and eight hundred thousand citizens are arrested, the time has come for the Organization to begin its plan to overthrow the United States government and eliminate all nonwhites from the Earth. The narrative is told in the form of a diary beginning in 1991, telling of an escalating series of ruthless bombings and robberies, focussing especially on the murder of Jews and blacks. Much of the country is in chaos when the Organization manages to seize Los Angeles and drive out or kill all minorities and hang some sixty thousand whites who have sympathized with them. In the anarchy following the collapse of government, blacks revert to cannibalism and Jews madly plot the nuclear destruction of California. The Organization, attempting to use nuclear blackmail to bring the nation to its knees (they bomb Miami Beach and Charleston, South Carolina), triggers a full-scale nuclear war between the U.S. and USSR which kills about 20 percent of the population. The Organization joins in the fray, bombing both the USSR and Israel; all Jews in those countries are killed in the wake of this attack, and anti-Jewish riots spread across Europe. The narrator accepts the suicide mission of crashing a small plane loaded with a nuclear weapon into the Pentagon. An “epilog” notes that a final atomic bomb was dropped on Toronto to kill Jewish refugees. Europe is conquered and Asia destroyed by chemical and biological weapons. This revolutionary tract is devoid of all ideals save the extermination of nonwhite races. Regret is expressed that the U.S. fought on the wrong side in World War II, the Nazi holocaust is called a myth, and figures like Eichmann are portrayed as martyrs. The Order, the right-wing group implicated in recent violent actions and whose members were brought to trial in Washington state in 1984, and which is known to have studied The Turner Diaries closely, is mentioned in passing.

MacDonald, John D. Ballroom of the Skies. New York: Greenberg, 1952. New York: Gold Medal, 1968. Included in Time and Tomorrow. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, [1980].After the West supposedly won World War III, it was plunged into poverty- ridden decadence, dominated by Pak-India, one of the three superstates which now controlled the Earth. Events seem to be building toward yet another cataclysm. Most of the plot concerns the building of a network of telepaths, who turn out to be the product of an experiment conducted by a galactic empire. Earth has deliberately been kept primitive and violent to breed the kind of forceful leaders the galaxy needs to defend it against potential invaders from neighboring galaxies: “Men of Earth, being led in a crazy dance of death, for the sake of the high wide ballroom of the skies.”

___ . “A Child Is Crying” ( Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1948). In Other Worlds, Other Times. New York: Fawcett, 1978. In Groff Conklin, ed. The Science Fiction Galaxy. New York: PermaBooks, 1950. Also in Isaac Asimov, ed. The Great Science Fiction Stories: 10 (1948). New York: DAW, 1983.A prescient boy foresees a nuclear war and the survival of superhumans like himself.

MacLean, Katherine. “Interbalance” ( Fantasy and Science Fiction , October 1960). In Robert P. Mills, ed. The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, Tenth Series. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1960. New York: Ace, 1965. London: Gollancz, 1963.After The Radiation an old man trying to educate his son against “the Tide of Advancing Savagery” seeks an antidote to radioactivity. As the son talks to a joyfully uncivilized girl who thinks lots of sex is the best way to restore the race, his father tries unsuccessfully, to shoot her. Science is to be replaced with tribal cosmic wisdom, it seems. This story is like Stephen Minot’s Chill of Dusk in its negative portrait of an advocate of the learning of the past, but is comic in tone.

MacLennan, Hugh. Voices in Time. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980.In 2030 civilization has collapsed in the wake of the Great Fear caused by terrorist activities, climaxed by a bomb which kills a half million people and is presumably nuclear. A war using non-nuclear “clean bombs” ensues, and knowledge of the past is suppressed by the survivors. An elderly man traces the stories of two of his ancestors: an abrasive, irresponsible liberal talk show host, and an anti-Nazi German whom the latter mistakenly destroyed. Student radicalism, dope, and rock music create a backlash which brings on the holocaust. This part of the novel is absurd, but the portion set in Nazi Germany is very well done. The author is a well-known Canadian novelist.

Mace, David. Demon 4. London: Panther, 1984. New York: Ace, 1985.Twenty-two months after a slowly escalating world war culminated in a nuclear holocaust, an international team is trying to destroy a deep-sea fort armed with cobalt bombs, a “limited area doomsday device,” accidentally activated by the malfunctioning of its guardian, a trained giant squid. A probe with a human brain–Demon 4–does the job, killing its passenger and sacrificing its own existence in the process. The delicate job of deactivating other forts goes on by other means. Laser weapons and anti-satellite warfare are mentioned. This dryly technical thriller is unusual in featuring several unstereotyped women and a black man.

Madsen, David. U.S.S.A. New York: Morrow, 1989. London: Grafton, 1991.

Malamud, Bernard. God’s Grace. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1982. New York: Avon, 1983.Calvin Cohn, the last human survivor of a nuclear war and ensuing tidal wave, tries to pass civilization on to a group of intelligent chimpanzees. In the end they rebel, kill his half-ape daughter, and ritually slaughter him. The novel abandons all scientific probability by having the atomic holocaust trigger a tidal wave which sweeps all intelligent life from the planet except for Cohn–fortunately on a yacht in the South Pacific at the time of the disaster–and a group of intelligent apes. This incredible tsunami is evidently included so that Malamud can draw parallels with the biblical deluge. A few passages gain a veneer of scientific credibility through their use of Jane Van Lawick-Goodall’s studies of chimpanzee behavior; but most of the time Malamud frankly abandons realism by making, for instance, fruit trees bear continuously although there are no insects surviving to pollinate them, and having his hero successfully impregnate a female chimp. The humanist ideal articulated by Cohn is made to look absurd; and the God with whom he speaks, Job-like, offers little insight or consolation. Malamud seems to be saying that civilization is inevitably self-destructive and that it is too late to do anything because the animal within us will overwhelm our better impulses. Much of the narrative reads like a less amusing Portnoy’s Complaint with war rather than sex as the main subject. Its theological musings are not strikingly original or effectively conveyed, and trivialize rather than enlarge the theme. Because of the prevailing ironic tone (witness the title), it is hard to care deeply about the religious aspect of the book.

Martel, Suzanne. The City Underground. Originally Quatre Montréalais en l’an 3000. Montréal: Éditions du jour, 1963. Rpt. as Surréal 3,000. Toronto: Macmillan, 1966). Trans. Norah Smaridge. New York: Viking, 1964. New York: Pocket Books, 1975.In this juvenile adventure story set in 3000 A.D., centuries after the Great Destruction most of the human race lives in a sterile, repressive utopia underground named “Surréal” (from “sous le Mont-Réal”) near the St. Lawrence River in Canada. Curious, courageous young boys discover while exploring that the world above is now safe and help to bring together their own English-speaking race with a race of French-speaking surface-dwellers in an obvious parable of Canadian politics.

Martens, Anne Coulter. Pat Frank’s Alas, Babylon. Chicago: The Dramatic Publishing Co., 1963.Play adapted from the novel by Pat Frank, copyrighted by Frank. Scene-by-scene summary follows.     Act 1, Scene 1: In a small town in central Florida, a gossipy telegraph operator puzzles over telegram sent to local boy Randy by his brother Mark, ending “Alas, Babylon.” Randy explains to Lib that Mark works in the Omaha headquarters of the Strategic Air Command and has arranged this phrase to signal the imminent outbreak of nuclear war. Dr. Dan Gunn comes in worried, and Randy discusses the threat of war with Lib. The telegraph message is finally read to him over the phone and we hear the operator’s friend reading the relevant passage from Revelation 18. Mark arrives with his wife Helen and teenaged daughter Payton and son Ben. He explains that a joint Chinese-Russian attack threatens. He leaves them with Mark for safety, returning himself to SAC headquarters.     Act 1, Scene 2: Helen and Lib stock up on food and supplies at the local grocery store. Act 1: Scene 3: In Omaha Mark learns more of the developing international crisis and successfully urges his commanding general to get official permission to launch retaliatory missiles if a strike is launched. This means death for them all. Act 1, Scene 4: Helen and Randy witness a distant explosion, and Civil Defence radio explains that the attack has begun. Ben, though a young teenager, is the best-informed person around, and goes about opening doors and windows to protect against the threat of blast pressure breaking them and speculating about which cities may be hit. When a second, closer bomb goes off Payton is blinded and quickly treated by the doctor.     Act 2, Scene 1: Later that morning chaos develops at the telegraph office with people irrationally trying to send out messages about banking, investments, etc. All cables except official civil defense messsages are prohibited. Act 2, Scene 2: News comes in of widespread looting. Sugar and batteries are highly valuable. The doctor says local people are dying of fright; but when Payton’s eyes are unbandaged it is clear she is recovering her sight. The doctor’s clinic was attacked by a gang of addicts in search of drugs. They killed the police chief. On the radio Acting President Mrs. Vanbruuker-Brown announces that reprisals against the attackers continue. It seems likely Mark is dead in Omaha. The scene ends as Orlando is bombed and the electricity fails. Act 2, Scene 3: Ben, fishing discusses the disaster with his sister, speculates about the death of their father. There is a long broadcast list of contaminated areas. Act 2, Scene 4: The people living at Randy’s are beginning to learn to cope, salting meat, protecting the chicken coop from a marauding dog. The doctor is ambushed and beaten. With the proclamation of martial law, reservist Randy becomes the local acting authority.     Act 3, Scene 1: People making swaps value practical goods. Someone wants to trade a Cadillac for two bicycle tires. Batteries are now dead, and no one is sure who won the war. A brainless young woman who’s been hording jewelery finds she’s been irradiated by a looted ring she was given by her thuggish boyfriend. Act 3, Scene 2: The church choir practices for Eastern services amid rumors that help may be coming and the doctor’s pleased announcement that the first normal birth since the war has just taken place. The choir sings. Act 3, Scene 3: Almost a year after the attack people are just discovering useful older artifacts like a treadle sewing machine and a wind-up gramophone. The thuggish looter shows up wanting treatment for his own radiation burns, tries to force the doctor to do so by threatening Lib with a gun, but Randy faces him down. Suddenly a helicopter lands with Decontamination Command personnel bringing word that they are living in the center of the largest safe zone in the contaminated area. They confirm that SAC headquarters was destroyed and talk about the long process of rebuilding ahead. One of the hoped-for developments is atomic power. India, Japan and Brazil are now the Big Three powers. The colonel in charge says that the U.S. won the war, “If you can call that winning.” The play ends with Randy proclaiming that they must learn their lesson: no more wars.

Martin, George R. R. “. .  .  for a Single Yesterday.” In Roger Elwood and Robert Silverberg, eds. Epoch . New York: Berkley, 1975. Also in Martin. Songs of Stars and Shadows. New York: Pocket Books, 1977. Also in Gardner Dozois, ed. Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year, 1978: 7th Annual Collection. New York: Dutton, 1978.A folksinger whose girlfriend died in The Blast entertains a rural commune with his nostalgic songs and drugs himself with chronine, which transports him to the past. When a leader with military experience and a strong sense of discipline insists that the drug be used to recover technical knowledge needed for survival (a scheme which largely fails), the singer pines away, steals one last dose and kills himself with sleeping pills, hoping in this way to be permanently reunited with the woman he loved. At the end of the story a new town has been built and new songs glorify the battle of the villagers against a marauding gang. Clearly a farewell to the sixties.

Martin, Graham Dunstan. Time-Slip. London: Orion, 1986.The nuclear war of 1998, triggered by the unilaterial disarmament of Western Europe and subsequent invasion of West Germany, destroyed eighty-eight percent of the population and blotted out the sun for a month. EMP effects occurred. Now, in 2035, mutations are common and everyone wears useless symbolic anti-radiation suits. Two-thirds of them are sterile, twelve percent are deformed. There is a high suicide rate, infanticide of deformed children is common. In Scotland, religious cults proliferate. The plot concerns the rise of a religion based on the idea of forking time paths which create alternative worlds, at least one of which was spared the horrors of nuclear war. A grim satire on escapism.

Martin-Fehr, J[ohn]. The End of His Tether. [Chichester, England]: Janay, 1972.A young boy struggles to survive in a savage post-nuclear war England, aided by a kindly and heroic doctor and nun. (This is one of the few novels in which the faith of conventionally religious people is viewed sympathetically, although the author assumes a basically non-religious stance.) An American submarine is said to have started the war by firing a missile at Poland, either by accident or in “an act of insanity.” As one character proclaims, “War is a thing of the past,” proclaims one character: armies will have their hands full merely burying the dead. Yet individual combat in the form of starving mobs, marauders, and brigands is commonplace. A mob lynches a former Communist. The boy’s dog and the horse he has borrowed are both killed for food. Martin-Fehr concentrates to an unusual degree on postwar diseases: typhus, leukemia, blindness, and radiation disease. At the end of the novel an Australian ship arrives to recruit men. Their culture now exercises eugenic control of mutation through sterilization, infanticide, and compulsory childbearing. The Australians, who practice a form of communism, see themselves as the new race which will replace the old. The novel’s weaknesses are its repetitiousness and relentlessly grim tone. Its strength is its careful attention to detailing the consequences of a nuclear war.

Martino, Joseph P. “Pushbutton War.” Astounding , August 1960.A highly technical narrative of how the pilot of an interceptor fighter shoots down an incoming ICBM with a nuclear warhead. The hero must discriminate among many fragments of the incoming missile and fire a small atomic missile of his own, reaffirming the importance of human skill and judgment in the era of “pushbutton war.”

Martinson, Harry [Edmund]. Aniara: A Review of Man in Time and Space ( Aniara: En Revy om Människan i Tid och Rum. Stockholm: Albert Bonnier, 1956.) Adapted from the Swedish by Hugh McDiarmid and Elspeth Harley Schubert. London: Hutchinson, 1963. New York: Knopf, 1964. New York: Avon, 1976.A group of passengers from Earth on their way to Mars are flung off course to fly forever between the stars. This poem cycle is a powerful evocation of the inevitability and terror of death, considered in its many facets. Six years into their voyage it is revealed that their home city of Dourisburg has been destroyed by a bomb called the “Phototurb”–obviously something like an atomic bomb (Martinson invents a number of new words for his poem). There are many striking passages, such as the following:

And then the blind man started to describe the appalling fiery glare that burned out his eyes. Describe it he couldn’t. He mentioned but one detail: He saw with his neck. His whole scalp, flayed open, was an eyeball which, dazzled beyond the bounds of bursting, was lifted, whirled away in blinded trust, in the sleep of death.

Even more striking is the song of the blind poetess, who describes the conflagration of her homeland as if it were an extraordinary seasonal change, the trees flaming more brightly than is usual in autumn when the leaves turn crimson and purple. War is only one face of death in this book, but the apocalypse threatened by nuclear war clearly lies in back of the poet’s theme. This was made into an opera by Carl-Birger Blomdahl in 1959.

Maruki, Toshi[ko]. Hiroshima No Pika. (originally Tokyo: Komine Shoten, 1980.) Trans. Anon. New York: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, 1982.A powerful picture book for children telling the experiences of one family caught in the blast of the atomic bomb which hit Hiroshima. The father dies of a lingering form of radiation disease, but the mother survives. The little girl who is the focus of the book stops growing after being exposed to the bomb. Based on the recollections of one woman, it blends together the experiences of many survivors. Illustrated with watercolors by the author. She and her husband Iri created a series of frescos depicting the atomic bombing, reproduced in John W. Dower and John Junkerman. The Hiroshima Murals. Tokyo and New York: Kodansha International, 1985.

Mason, Colin. Hostage . New York: Walker, 1973.A more than usually intelligent thriller about the danger of going over the brink during a crisis. After the Israeli defense minister is shot, an extremist group steals four nuclear weapons given Golda Meir by Nixon in 1969 and sets them off in Cairo. The wounds and agony of the survivors are vividly described in terms reminiscent of Hiroshima. The Russians promptly take over Egypt and the Suez Canal, and threaten to bomb Australia (which unlike Japan and Great Britain has not declared itself neutral–the author is an Australian) unless they are allowed to destroy the state of Israel as well. Much of the narrative depicts the heroism of a young woman doctor from Australia who exposes herself to radiation in a vain attempt to save the lives of others, and of her companion, a mysterious Englishman suspected of being a spy. By great good luck, they find themselves on board the very Russian submarine detailed to bomb Australia. When the U.S. concedes defeat in this battle of brinkmanship, the vessel is taken over by the fanatical Egyptians on board. The hero tries to prevent it, but the renegade’s dead hand succeeds in pressing the fatal button, a missile is launched, and the novel ends. Although the plot is farfetched, the characters are believably drawn, the politics are presented in a sophisticated manner alien to the average thriller, and the dangers of nuclear war are seriously discussed. In the vast majority of such works, the bomb is a mere device for raising the stakes in a game of international espionage. Mason’s novel belongs rather in the category of the Awful Warning. The Russian sub commander is a relatively sympathetic character, and the Soviet Union is depicted as being governed by essentially rational men. The novel also depicts the failure of evacuation as a plausible means of dealing with a nuclear attack, even when the population is given considerable advance notice.

Masson, David I. “Traveler’s Rest” ( New Worlds, September 1965). In The Caltraps of Time. London: Faber, 1968. Also in Judith Merril, ed. llth Annual Edition: The Year’s Best S-F. New York: Delacorte, 1966. New York: Dell, 1967. Also in Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr, eds. World’s Best Science Fiction: 1966. New York: Ace, 1966. Also in Robert Silverberg, ed. Voyagers in Time. New York: Meredith, 1967. Also in Michael Moorcock, ed. The Traps of Time. London: Rapp & Whiting, 1968. Also in Michael Moorcock, ed. New Worlds: An Anthology. London: Fontana, 1983.Civilization is sheltered from the ongoing nuclear war by having it fought in a distant place and time. A soldier gets leave, leads an idyllic life at home for twenty years, and is returned abruptly to the front. Only twenty-two minutes have passed, war time. This is an effective piece of experimental writing.

Matheson, Richard [Burton]. “Pattern for Survival” ( Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1955). In The Shores of Space. New York: Bantam, 1957. London: Corgi, 1958. Also in Anthony Boucher, ed. The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: Fifth Series. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1956. New York: Ace, 196l.A solitary survivor of a nuclear war plays various roles, writing, publishing, and buying his own escape fiction.

Matsubara Hisako. Cranes at Dusk. Originally Abendkranich. Hamburg: Albrecht Kraus, 1981. Trans. from German Hisako Matsubara and Leila Vennewitz. Garden City, New York: Dial, 1985.Set in Kyoto after World War II. There are passing mentions of the atomic bombings, with details of the effects of the bombs in Chapter 8, and a discussion of the fears of Hibakushas in Chapter 13.

Mauldin, Bill. See under Collier’s.

Meek, Capt. S. P. “The Red Peril.” Amazing, September 1929.Atomic-powered airplanes use “radite” weapons with an “atomic disintegrating effect” involving “progressive atomic disintegration” against invading Russian airships. Although the new explosive is a thousand times more powerful than conventional weapons, the Russian ships remain impervious to its effects. A Japanese aviator volunteers for a suicide mission against the Russians, but fails. The Russians bomb the U.S. with disease germs, but are finally defeated when American agents track down the military genius who has invented the new defenses. They torture him into revealing the secret of the Russian defense, and destroy the invading fleet. A revolution overthrows the Russian dictators, and the removal of a clot from his brain cures the Russian leader of his evil ways.

Mayhar, Ardath. The World Ends in Hickory Hollow. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1985. A sort of nuclear war version of The Swiss Family Robinson. A Vietnam veteran finds his skills useful as he and his family struggle to survive in rural East Texas after civilization has been destroyed in a nuclear preemptive strike. The family emphasizes self-reliance, the rejection of governmental authority, and the importance of children. They have to deal with a vicious gang of marauding women. McCaffrey, Anne. Dragonsdawn.

McCammon, Robert. Swan Song. New York: Pocket Books, 1987. London: Sphere, 1988. City?: Dark Harvest, 1989. The first part of this lengthy novel is a detailed account of the increasing use of nuclear weapons in regional conflicts leading up to a devastating holocaust which precipitates a lengthy nuclear winter. It is unclear which side struck first. A group of survivalists sheltering in an underground mountain retreat are destroyed by an errant U.S. missile. The second part is a fantastic horror story in which the devil roams the wasted landscape, encouraging the survivors self-destructive impulses. A mad Vietnam veteran turns into a fascist marauder, exterminating those who bear keloid scars. A disfiguring facial disease creates masks which crack and fall off to reveal the good people as beautiful, the bad as ugly. A doomsday machine designed to melt the polar ice caps and knock the earth of its axis is prevented from exploding by a young girl with psychic powers, and peace and hope are restored.

McCann, Edson [pseud. of Lester del Rey and Frederick Pohl]. Preferred Risk (Galaxy, June, July, August, September 1955). New York: Simon & Schuster, 1955. New York: Dell, 1962. New York: Ballantine, 1980. After the devastating Short War, a gigantic U.S. insurance firm called “the Company” rules the world. It has forced all other nations to break up into small city-states which now war on each other. The Company’s publicly announced policy is to end war as a bad risk; but the head of the firm has been deposed and replaced with a tyrant who aims at world domination. The setting is Italy, where there was a recent nuclear war between Naples and Sicily in which a bomb was dropped down the crater of Vesuvius and the ruins of Pompeii exude a radioactive glow. The protagonist is a claims adjuster who becomes involved with a young woman from the underground plotting in the Roman catacombs to overthrow the Company. Although thousands of people are stored underground in suspended animation, purportedly being treated for radiation disease; many of them are simply enemies of the Company, including the young woman’s father. A madman among the revolutionaries launches a cobalt doomsday bomb designed to destroy the entire human race; the population will be suspended for fifty years until the Earth is fit to inhabit again, and the Company will be rendered bankrupt by the ensuing claims. Aided by the amazing Zorchi, whose mutated limbs spontaneously regenerate and who cannot be put out of action by the enemy, the protagonist and his allies revive the rightful head of the firm and thwart the plot by salvaging humanity, convinced that a reformed Company will be needed to maintain order in the world a half-century hence. This novel is reminiscent of other Pohl satires on bureaucracy like The Space Merchants (1952, co-authored with Cyril M. Kornbluth).

McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. New York: Knopf, 2006 A moving postholocaust narrative consisting largely of dialogue between a man and his son scouring the burned and wasted landscape for scraps of food and fuel, dealing with robbers, cannibals, and other villains. All animal life seems to have disappeared. Nothing specific is said about nuclear weapons, but it is fairly clear that only a nuclear war could have caused the devastation depicted. The novel won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

McCloy, Helen. See Clarkson. McCutchan, Philip. Bowering’s Breakwater. London: Harrap, 1964. Bolton-by-Bowland, Lancashire: Magna Print, 1964 (large-type edition). When a nuclear war breaks out as an atomic-powered British passenger ship sets sail from Australia for home, its captain decides to take his passengers to an uninhabited atoll in the South Pacific to wait out the disaster. He is opposed by an obstreperous old buffoon of a retired general who wants to return to England to do his duty. On the atoll, they meet a party of stranded Chinese soldiers who seize their ship. The rest of the novel concerns the struggle between the two nationalities and the building of a breakwater to protect the vessel from the coming monsoons. Radiation sickness spreads, a last revolt by the British succeeds, and faint signals from outside indicate that at least some life is continuing. They sail away, but into what kind of world, they know not. The novel contains a fairly detailed discussion of the distinctions between conventional warfare and nuclear war and of the inappropriateness of traditional wartime attitudes.

___. A Time for Survival. London: Harrap, 1966. A relentlessly grim account of the odyssey of a small party of survivors of a Chinese nuclear attack on Great Britain. Begins with a man in his fifties and his beautiful young wife pushing their new baby in a pram through the blackened landscape. They are joined by a navy deserter and form an intense triangle. Later they join others, kill invading Chinese soldiers, and briefly seize a transmitter to alert the American navy to their existence. The few of them remaining at novel’s end are caught in the open when a retaliatory nuclear bomb goes off near them, and they run, panic-stricken, for the sea. This unusually pessimistic novel portrays an almost entirely devastated countryside, and utterly destroyed cities. Argues for the superiority of some qualities of the common laborer over those of the intellectual. The title of the novel is ironic, for despite the fact that the protagonists commit several violent acts in the name of survival, they do not in fact survive.

McDougall, A. Neale. Attitude. New York: Vantage, 1970. This preachy novel alternates between lectures to young students about the past and the love stories of the same students. A war which began in the year 2000 killed half of Earth’s population and began a century-long dark age which had some salutary effects: the “holocaust .  .  . burned away all of the economic rot, cancelled all the bad debts!” Modern America is a debilitated remnant of the old American civilization, and is contrasted with the idyllic Federation of thirteen Asian states where much of the novel is set. A subplot deals with the struggles of a young male to overcome his tendency toward violence and learn how to love. America is diagnosed as having destroyed itself through its bad attitude–hence the title.

McGaughy, Dudley Dean. See Dean Owen.

McGowen, Tom. The Magician’s Apprentice. New York: Lodestar, 1987. First volume of the series. Hundreds of years after “the Fire from the Sky” caused the 100-day-long Winter of Death, a neomedieval culture considers pre-holocaust science to have been magic. A young boy becomes the apprentice of a magician who practices simple herbal healing and fortunetelling. Together they discover some examples of ancient magical technology: a telescope, a compass, etc.

___ . The Magician’s Challenge. New York: Lodestar, 1989. Third volume of the series. The magician helps lead a war to exterminate the rat-mutants, using the newly reinvented Molotov cocktail; but a peaceful strain of the mutants unexpectedly emerges, defeats those bent on human genocide, and leads the rest of its race to live a peaceful, separate existence in the wasteland. At the end of the novel humans are bent on recovering the old science, and seem destined to do so.

___ . The Magician’s Company. New York: Lodestar, 1988. Second volume of the series. One of the ancient artifacts they have discovered is a device designed to hand on the knowledge accumulated by the pre-holocaust world. Meanwhile, humanity is threatened by a horde of intelligent mutant rats bent on world supremacy.

McLaughlin, John. Toolmaker Koan. New York: Baen, 1988. Intelligent dinosaur-descended beings from Earth’s distant past destroyed their civilization in a prehistoric war. An intelligent machine brings some of them to our time to stop humans from plunging over the brink of a holocaust. The theory is propounded that all intelligent races tend to destroy themselves. The novel is set thirteen years after the “One-Day War,” an abortive thermonuclear conflict which divided the world into East-West spheres. Another war using smuggled weapons breaks out. EMP is dealt with and the prospect of nuclear winter is described in very detailed form. The two races finally merge to transcend their doom. Cf. Gregory Benford, Across the Sea of Suns.

McMahon, Thomas. Principles of American Nuclear Chemistry: A Novel. Boston: Little, Brown, 1970. A well-written account of the recollections of the son of a fictional nuclear physicist who worked on the atomic bomb project, first at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and later at Los Alamos. Focusses mostly on his fascination with his father’s mistress and on details of his own teenaged sexual initiation. Although the science is well presented by the scientist-author, the novel has little to do with the actual bomb-building project.

McManus, James. Chin Music. New York: Crown, 1985. Sections previously published in Another Chicago Magazine, Bi-City, New Directions, Oink!, Syncline, TriQuarterly, Zero One, and Chicago. An amnesiac baseball player, his son, and his wife all struggle toward home as a nuclear attack creates chaos in the city by cutting off electricity, causing traffic james, fires, and widespread looting and violence. A montage of vividly depicted scenes filled with violence and sex seems to treat nuclear war not realistically, but as a metaphor for cultural disintegration. All three finally reach home: the protagonist to die, his son to leave with his new girlfriend, and his wife to be left listening to Beethoven’s “Grosse Fugue,” waiting for the light.

McGuire, John J., and H. Beam Piper. See under Piper.

McIntosh, J. T. [pseud. of James Murdock MacGregor]. Born Leader. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1954. London: Museum, 1955. London: Corgi, 1961. Rpt. as Worlds Apart. New York: Avon, 1958. Peaceful refugees from an Earth destroyed by nuclear war and nuclear power- caused pollution have been conditioned against all forms of atomic energy. The younger generation which has grown up in peace on a new planet is able to make the point that atomic power has its uses when another shipload of humans–vicious, and uninhibited about the use of atomic energy–invades and threatens to destroy them. Salvaging the motors of the ship that brought them from Earth, the colonists create atomic ray weapons which subdue the invaders while sparing their lives. In the end the younger generation dreams of going on to colonize other worlds.

McIntyre, Vonda. Dreamsnake (first portion originally as “Of Mist, Grass, and Sand” Analog, October 1973). Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978. New York: Dell, 1979. London: Gollancz, 1978. London: Pan, 1979. Sequel to The Exile Waiting. The moving tale of a young healer trying to create humanity in a savage postholocaust world. Stresses the power of love and compassion. Strong feminist themes, excellent characterization.

___ . The Exile Waiting. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975. Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett, 1976. Sequel: Dreamsnake. Inside a fallout shelter city built before the devastating Last War, a young girl survives as a telepathic thief within a cruelly decadent culture modeled on Imperial Rome. After several adventures and narrow escapes, the heroine succeeds in her goal of leaving Earth. The novel contains very little about the effects of nuclear war.

McLaughlin, John C. The Helix and the Sword. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1983. New York: TOR, 1984. Six thousand years after the Earth was rendered uninhabitable by nuclear and biological warfare over petroleum, civilization survives in synthetic organic living space colonies organized along feudal lines, battling relentlessly with each other. One group plots to destroy its enemies by smuggling lethal micro-organisms into its enemies’ environments. It incidentally discovers that the long-tabooed Earth has recovered from the devastation called “the Closing” and that various species descended from mutated rats have filled many ecological niches. In a switch on the last-man-and-woman theme, a male and female explorer mate on the restored planet’s surface. Nuclear weapons are not specifically mentioned; the only clues are the dust clouds which enveloped the Earth for centuries and the rapid evolution of the rats, which implies a high level of radioactivity.

McMahon, Mike. The Cursed Earth. See Mills, Pat.

McQuinn, Donald E. Warrior. New York: Del Rey, 1990.

Merak, A. J. The Dark Millenium. New York: Arcadia House, 1966.The opening of this novel is a vivid and effective treatment of the impact of bombs resulting from an accidental first strike by the Russians. Characters are briefly sketched and then annihilated in one spot after another. Radiation, including contamination by cobalt and strontium 90, kills most of the human race. Aliens named the “Vorzan” who have been observing the Earth for twenty thousand years land and capture seven survivors to use as guinea pigs. They are placed in suspended animation and released two or three at a time over a thousand years to determine whether the planet is yet safe for Vorzan colonization. All other races in the universe, say the Vorzan, destroy themselves with nuclear weapons when they are developed; the Vorzan alone are an exception: they have survived for one hundred thousand years, but only at the price of “stagnation” (not defined). Early pairs of humans released find mutated savage descendants of humanity, but the last two locate an advanced civilization buried under the Antarctic ice and use missiles left behind by some of the now-extinct mutants to destroy the Vorzan fleet–all except for the main ship, which is fortuitously destroyed by the impact of Explorer VII, a satellite launched in 1960 and whose orbit is now decaying. How the brutal Vorzan managed to resist the universal temptation to self-annihilation through nuclear warfare is not explained and renders the novel rather pointless.

Meredith, Richard C. “Hired Man” ( If:, February 1970). In Joe Haldeman, Charles G. Waugh, and Martin Harry Greenberg, eds. Body Armor: 2000. New York: Ace, 1986.Hired mercenaries battle other human colonists with miniature atomic bombs on an alien world.

Merle, Robert. Malevil . Originally Paris: Gallimard, 1972. Trans. Derek Coltman. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973.On Zero Day a small group is accidentally sheltered deep in a medieval castle and emerges into a blasted world where a few survivors gather to reinvent the feudal world on a small scale, including conflict between the secular and sacred authorities. Remarkably little attention is paid to the larger consequences of the bomb which killed most nearby people. No radioactivity is ever detected. It is hypothesized that a single “clean” bomb was detonated high over Paris, but no one ever investigates the truth of this supposition. None of the characters so much as turns on a radio to try to find out what has happened to the outside world. The bomb seems merely an excuse for inventing a scale-model experiment in feudalism, with interesting characters and plot, but with practically no relevance to the theme of nuclear war. Merle is also the author of The Day of the Dolphin (1967).

Merril, Judith. Shadow on the Hearth. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1950. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1953. London: Compact, 1966.This novel narrowly focuses on a mother with two daughters, separated from her husband who was caught away from home when the bomb fell. Much detail is given about radiation disease, the need for uncontaminated food and water, and the special vulnerability of children. Domestic details, depiction of the relationship of mother and daughters–one of whom is clearly more mature and capable than her rather silly and ignorant mother–are handled excellently. This novel could be read either as antifeminist (women need men around in an emergency) or feminist (women should know more about science and technology so they can take care of themselves). Good depiction of the way in which the young wife is heartlessly harassed by a civil defense worker who is attracted to her, disregarding the grief she feels for her missing husband. The novel is unusual for the period in that it also emphasizes the necessity of opposing mindless Redbaiting. The two men the heroine shelters are security risks in the eyes of the government. Sabotage is greatly feared because the bombs are guided by enemy agents on the ground. Nevertheless, the U.S. “wins.” As the title implies, this is a specifically “woman’s view” of the danger of nuclear war. It was made into a television drama entitled Atomic Attack, ABC, 1954. See Albert I. Berger, “Love, Death, and the Atomic Bomb: Sexuality and Community in Science Fiction, 1935-55,” Science-Fiction Studies 8 (1981): 292.

___ . “That Only a Mother” ( Astounding , June 1948). In Out of Bounds. New York: Pyramid, 1960. Also in The Best of Judith Merril. New York: Warner, 1976. Also in Robert Silverberg, ed. The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. 1. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970. Also in Pamela Sargent, ed. Women of Wonder . New York: Vintage, 1975. Also in Harvey A. Katz, Patricia Warrick and Martin Harry Greenberg, eds. Introductory Psychology Through Science Fiction. Skokie, Ill.: Rand McNally, 1974. Also in James E. Gunn, ed. The Road to Science Fiction #3: From Heinlein to Here. New York: Mentor, 1979. Also in Damon Knight, ed. First Flight. New York: Lancer, 1963. Revised Damon Knight, Martin H. Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander, eds. First Voyages. New York: Avon, 1981. Also in Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander, eds. Space Mail. New York: Fawcett, 1980. Space Mail was incorporated into Isaac Asmov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Joseph D. Olander, eds. Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Treasury. New York: Bonanza, 1980. Also in Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg, eds. The Great Science Fiction Stories: 10 (1948). New York: DAW, 1983. Also in H. Bruce Franklin, ed. Countdown to Midnight: Twelve Great Stories About Nuclear War. New York: DAW, 1984.An eagerly anticipated birth is recounted joyously in letters by mother to her absent husband in letters. The baby is preternaturally precocious. When the father returns home, he finds the mother mad, the baby a mutated monster as a result of atomic bombing. See Justine Larbalestier: “The New York Nexus and American Science Fiction in the Postwar Period” in Extrapolation vol. 43, no. 3 (Fall 2002), pp. 277-287.

Miklowitz, Gloria. After the Bomb. New York: Scholastic, 1984.A sixteen-year-old boy becomes a hero when Los Angeles is accidentally attacked by the Russians with a nuclear missile. He happens to be in the family fallout shelter with his older brother and the girl they both are pursuing, when the bomb falls. When his older brother panics, the hero rescues his badly wounded mother, helps the nurses at a nearby hospital, and arranges to pump water from swimming pools to the hospital tank. He fights to get his mother a place on an evacuation helicopter and finally sets off, leading his brother in search of their father. Although this youth novel does not depict a full-scale war, it is a carefully researched account of how devastating a nuclear attack would be to medical and other services. The author provides a list of sources.

Miller, Walter M[ichael] Jr. A Canticle for Leibowitz. From a trilogy of stories originally published in Fantasy and Science Fiction: “A Canticle for Leibowitz,” April 1955; “And the Light Is Risen,” August 1956; “The Last Canticle,” February 1957, retitled for book as “Fiat Homo,” “Fiat Lux,” and “Fiat Voluntas Tua.” New York: Lippincott, 1959. New York: Bantam, 196l. Boston: Gregg, 1975. London: Weidenfeld Nicolson, 1960.Three related stories of a post-nuclear war future, which begin in a new dark age in which the Catholic church revives its old role as preserver of ancient knowledge. In the end, a rebuilt civilization plunges again into another nuclear war. Horribly deformed products of postholocaust radiation roam the landscape and are referred to sardonically as “the Pope’s children” because of the refusal of the pontiff to allow the killing of even the most grotesque. But most of the population in the novel is not Catholic and evidently feels no such inhibition. An old woman named Mrs. Grales has a head with an alternate personality (Rachel) growing out of her shoulder, and frets because the priest refuses to recognize it as having a distinct soul needing christening. In the end Rachel emerges as the dominant personality when the simple piety of the old woman is rendered irrelevant by the combination of the inflexibility of the church and the horror of nuclear war. One of the best-written, most thoughtful explorations of the theme. Adapted as a play, 1967. See Fuller, Clark. Dramatized and broadcast by National Public Radio in 1983. See Walker Percy: “Walker Percy on Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz, ” in David Madden, ed., Rediscoveries (New York: Crown, 197l), 262-69. Also Hugh Rank, “Song Out of Season: A Canticle for Leibowitz, ” Renascence 2l (1969): 2l3-2l; David N. Samuelson: “The Lost Canticles of Walter M. Miller, Jr.,” in Science-Fiction Studies 3 (1976): 3-26; Robert Scholes and Eric S. Rabkin, Science Fiction: History, Science, Vision (New York: Oxford, 1977), 22l-26; and Judith A. Spector, “Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz: A Parable for Our Time?” Midwest Quarterly 220 (1981): 337-45; and Dominic Manganiello, “History as Judgment and Promise in A Canticle for Leibowitz,” Science-Fiction Studies 13 (1986): 159-69. : In Magill, 1, 288-293. Paul Brians: Study Guide for Walter M. Miller, Jr.: A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959)

___ . “Crucifixus Etiam” ( Astounding , Feb., 1953). In The View from the Stars. New York: Ballantine, 1965. London: Gollancz, 1965. London: Panther, 1966. Also in The Science Fiction Stories of Walter M. Miller, Jr. Boston: Gregg, 1978. Also in The Best of Walter M. Miller, Jr. New York: Pocket Books, 1980. Also in E. F. Bleiler and T. E. Dikty, eds. The Best Science-Fiction Stories, 1954. New York: Fell, 1954. Rpt. as The Best Science Fiction Stories: Fifth Series . London: Grayson, 1956 (story retitled “The Sower Does Not Reap”). Also in Michael Sissons, ed. Asleep in Armageddon. London: Panther, 1962. Also in Kingsley Amis and Robert Conquest, eds. Spectrum 5. London: Gollancz, 1966. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1967. New York: Harcourt, 1967. New York: Berkley, 1968. Also in Bonnie L. Heintz, Frank Herbert, Donald A. Joos, and Jane Agorn McGee, eds. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. . . . New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1974. Also in Gregory Fitz Gerald and John Dillon, eds. The Late Great Future. Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett, 1976.In this tale of the colonization of Mars, brief mention is made of “the radioactive craters of Russia” as one of Earth’s tourist attractions.

___ . “Dumb Waiter” ( Astounding , April 1952). In The View from the Stars. New York: Ballantine, 1965. London: Gollancz, 1965. London: Panther, 1968. Also in The Science Fiction Stories of Walter M. Miller, Jr. Boston: Gregg, 1978. Also in The Best of Walter M. Miller, Jr. New York: Pocket Books, 1980. Also in Groff Conklin, ed. Science Fiction Thinking Machines. New York: Vanguard, 1954. Also in Selections from Science Fiction Thinking Machines. New York: Bantam, 1955. Also in Damon Knight, ed. Cities of Wonder. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966. Also in Robert Silverberg, ed. Alpha 9. New York: Berkley, 1978.Three years after they have run out of weapons, automatically guided planes continue to make bombing runs. The cities are still radioactive. One is inhabited mostly by robots run by a central computer which must be reprogrammed by the protagonist to allow the city to flourish again and defeat saboteurs who would destroy it.

___. “Izzard and the Membrane” ( Astounding , May 195l). In E. F. Bleiler and T. E. Dikty, eds. The Best Science-Fiction Stories 1952. New York: Fell, 1952. Rpt. as The Best Science Fiction Stories: Third Series. London: Grayson, 1953.When the Russians overrun Europe, an American physicist is captured and forced to create for them a brilliant computer (named “Izzard”) to guide their nuclear attack on the U.S. He recreates and then loses again the wife and children killed in the ensuing battle and manages to thwart his captors’ victory through the manipulation of Izzard and a force field (the membrane). A godlike being contacted through the computer transports him to another world where he can start life over again with edition number three of his family. This crude pseudoscientific thriller gives no hint of the genius which was to produce L eibowitz .

___ . “The Little Creeps” ( Amazing , December 195l). In Milton Lesser, ed. Looking Forward. New York: Beechhurst Press, 1953. London: Cassell, 1955.An American general based in Japan faces a dilemma when his air marshal schemes to simulate a Russian attack in order to justify an all-out attack on enemy cities. When the USSR declares war, he thinks of sending his wife home, then realizes she will be in more danger there. He is haunted by mysterious beings who speak to him through his radio. At first they seem like figments of his tormented imagination, but they prove to be visitors from a parallel world of the future, trying to intervene and prevent the impending nuclear war because “Your releases of energy correspond to the appearance of mass in our world-space.” The story ends as an attack begins and the general goes mad.

Milán, Victor. The Cybernetic Samurai. New York: Arbor House, 1985.After World War III, Japan has survived better than any other industrialized nation. It was hit by only five warheads, whereas the U.S. has disintegrated into smaller states. Even as another nuclear war looms, a brilliant woman scientist who was exposed to heavy radiation in the bombing of Denver and who mysteriously escaped death, designs a super-intelligent, self-aware computer named TOKUGAWA which is being trained according to the traditional Samurai code to be the perfect war machine by being put through a series of scenarios from the past, one of which is the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. As World War IV breaks out, the computer rejects its role as warrior and becomes instead a new Shogun, protecting and uniting all Japan under its benevolent rule. When the nation’s leaders try to force the computer, against its conscience, to conquer the rest of the world, it takes the traditional path of the Samurai, committing sepukku by blowing itself up with a small atomic bomb.

Milligan, Spike, and John Antrobus. The Bedsitting Room. Walton-on-Thames: Margaret & Jack Hobbs, 1970.A surreal absurdist drama in which the Nuclear Misunderstanding which led to World War III (lasting two minutes, twenty-eight seconds) killed forty-eight million people and produced a number of bizarre side effects: one man is turned into a bedsitting room (studio apartment), the monarch into a chest of drawers, and Harold Wilson into a parrot. The British deterrent was ineffective because it was mailed to the Russians with insufficient postage, and was returned. In the last act, three years after the war, desperate people are eating their children under the menace of radioactive fog attacks, and fewer than a thousand survive.

Mills, Pat (script), Brian Bolland, and Mike McMahon (art). The Cursed Earth . 2 vols. London: Titan, 1982.One of several adventures featuring the Judge Dredd character from the British comic book 2000 A.D., reprinted in soft covers. Originally appeared in twenty-five weekly episodes in the magazine published by I.P.C. An idealistic but violent supercop who ordinarily rides a huge motorcycle takes on the task of driving a supertank across an atomic wasteland from Mega-City One to Mega-City Two to deliver vaccine needed to cure a plague left over from bacteriological warfare which succeeded a nuclear war. He is aided by one Spikes Harvey Rotten, a savage criminal who earns parole by accompanying Dredd. They also encounter and form an alliance with Tweak, a lovable alien who–despite his high intelligence–has been made a slave by brutal humans. On their way, they encounter many weirdly mutated monsters (including artificially reborn dinosaurs) and villagers with bigoted religious beliefs who to kill the heroes. Rotten, courageous but too evil to deserve pardon, is killed according to the standard formula of popular fiction for such characters. Much of the plot seems straightforwardly borrowed from Roger Zelazny’s Damnation Alley. Other Judge Dredd adventures share the same postholocaust setting.

Minot, Stephen. Chill of Dusk. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1964.A vivid account of the decline of a community into barbarism a century after a nuclear war and the ensuing collapse of civilization. A tyrannical teacher tries in vain to preserve the learning of the past, but Catholic missionaries are more successful, providing a structure for peoples’ lives, if not a faith. Wolves and raiders are constant threats. Finally, cruel sun-worshippers take over the colony and sacrifice the teacher’s daughter. Little is said about the war: only the mention of a flash and the birth of a deformed baby point to a nuclear conflict. Although the novel is powerfully written, it is difficult to determine the author’s point of view. Neither traditional education nor the return to illiterate primitivism is presented sympathetically.

Mitchison, Naomi. “Out of the Waters.” In Harry Harrison, ed. Nova 4. New York: Walker, 1974. New York: Manor, 1977. London: Sphere, 1976. London: Robert Hale, 1977.The dolphins tell how they tried to prevent humanity from destroying itself in a nuclear war, even when the navy attempted to use them as living torpedoes. A holocaust has exterminated the human race, except for a few in the far north and south whom the dolphins hope to reeducate to build a better world in another thousand years or so. Compare Leo Szilard’s The Voice of the Dolphins, in which these peaceful creatures are more successful in their disarmament efforts.

Mitsuhara Inoue. The House of Hands. First published 1960. Trans. Frederick Uleman and Koichi Nakagawa. In Kenzaburo Oe, ed. The Crazy Iris and Other Stories of the Atomic Aftermath. (Original Japanese edition, Nen to mo shirenai mirai ni. Tokyo: Shueisha Press, 1984.) New York: Grove, 1985.Depicts the health problems caused by exposure to the bomb of a group of girls from a Catholic orphanage in Nagasaki, one of whom dies.

Monsarrat, Nicholas. The Time Before This. London: Cassell, 1962. London: Pan, 1965. New York: Sloane, 1962. New York: Pocket Books, 1966.An old man on the frontier of Canada tells a tale of discovering a gigantic food storehouse in the wilderness, inhabited by frozen, scaly-skinned men. He insists they were a prehistoric race wiped out in a great war involving atomic bombs. Monsarrat is also the author of The Tribe That Lost Its Head (1956) .

Monteleone, Thomas F. [pseud. of David Bischoff]. Guardian . Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1980. New York: Fawcett, 1981. Sequel: Ozymandius. The Final War has taken place over two thousand years ago, tilting the Earth’s axis and drastically altering the climate. The plot concerns a quest to find the world’s sole remaining military supercomputer in a war-blasted world. When the protagonists reach their goal, they are confronted with a series of tests based on various Greek myths: the judgment of Paris, Orpheus and Euridice, the sacrifice of Iphigenia, and Pandora’s Box. The computer, obsessed with its guilt for having slaughtered the inhabitants of a city in the wake of the holocaust, tries to understand humanity through mythology and offers to expiate its guilt by helping to rebuild the world with the technology it still possesses.

___. Ozymandius . Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981. Sequel to Guardian. In a setting twenty years later than Guardian, the computer acquires a superhuman body, begets a son, and is welcomed as a messianic figure destined to lead a new, worldwide holy war. Appalled at the prospect, he commits suicide, but the boy lives on.

___. Seeds of Change. Don Mills, Ont.: Laser, 1975.A prologue tells of the fall of civilization through nuclear war and the painful ascent of humanity from savagery. The rest of the novel narrates the revolt of good country-dwellers against the vile, computer-dominated domed urban dystopia. The rebels are aided fortuitously by long-stranded colonists arriving from Mars to whom an alien race has given high technology. In the end the city commits suicide with nerve gas and hope is seen for the future of the country-dwellers.

___ and John DeChancie. Crooked House. New York: Tor, 1987. A ghost story in which a young architect is lured to work on a bizarre mansion haunted by the victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

Montgomery, R. A. Trio: Rebels in the New World, Book 4: The Hidden Evil. New York: Bantam, 1990.The United States signed a disarmament treaty in 1995, but hid six bombs. In 2015, after a nuclear holocaust, the young heroes struggle for possession of the weapons which have been secreted away, aided by aliens from a flying saucer.

___ . Trio: Rebels in the New World, Book 4: Escape from China. New York: Bantam, 1990.A mad nuclear scientist allied with Mongol invaders has rediscovered the ancient secret of Atlantis: the ability to focus stellar energy with crystals much New-Agey use of themes like terrestrial lines of force. Contrary to the introduction printed in each of these volumes, China is said to have survived its war with the USSR well.

Moorcock, Michael. “The Mountain” ( New Worlds, February 1965). In The Time Dweller. London: Hart-Davis, 1969. Also in Judith Merril, ed. England Swings SF: Stories of Speculative Fiction. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968.The last two men on Earth survive in Lapland where freak weather has kept away fallout. They track a woman up a mountain, only to find that she has jumped off onto a glacier and killed herself. One of them follows suit. “The last man alive peacefully waited for death.” Quite well written.

Moore, C[atherine] L. Doomsday Morning. Original publication: 1957. New York: Popular Library, 1987.A down-and-out actor inadvertently becomes involved in a plot to overthrow a media-centered dictatorship which took over after the devastating Five Days War.

___. See also Kuttner, Henry and Catherine L. Moore.

Moore, Ward. “Flying Dutchman.” In K[endell] F[oster] Crossen, ed. Adventures in Tomorrow. New York: Greenberg, 195l. New York: Belmont, 1968 (omitted from British 1953 edition). Rpt. in Fantasy and Science Fiction , September 1956. Also in Tom Boardman, Jr., ed. Science Fiction Stories. London: Octopus, 1979.The automated bomber of the title is still going out on runs over an Earth long since rendered lifeless.

___. “Lot” ( Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1953). In Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas, eds. The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, Third Series. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday 1954. New York: Ace, 1960. Also in Brian Aldiss, ed. The Penguin Science Fiction Omnibus. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974. Also in H. Bruce Franklin, ed. Countdown to Midnight: Twelve Great Stories About Nuclear War. New York: DAW, 1984. Also in Walter M. Miller, Jr. and Martin H. Greenberg, eds. Beyond Armageddon: Twenty-one Sermons to the Dead. New York: Donald I. Fine, 1985. Sequel: “Lot’s Daughter.”A reworking of the theme of the flight from Sodom. The protagonist has a hard time convincing his dithering idiot of a wife to flee the coming atomic attack. Whining sons try to get him to stop his flight from imperiled Santa Barbara so they can go to the bathroom. The wife and sons are depicted as incredibly stupid and obnoxious. The wife, worried about a former love, is sent to use the phone at a gas station, and the father drives off with his sexy fourteen-year-old daughter, abandoning the rest of the family. According to Peter Nicholls’s Encyclopedia, this story was the basis for the 1962 film Panic In the Year Zero.

___ . “Lot’s Daughter” ( Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1954). In Robert P. Mills, ed. A Decade of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1960. New York: Dell, 1962. Sequel to “Lot.”This sequel is set six years later. The protagonist has had a son by his daughter, but she proves she has inherited his own instinct for self-preservation by abandoning him and her child. In both of these stories, the father is presented sympathetically, for the most part; but Moore doesn’t seem to have established any clear point of view about the morality of the situation. In the first story he implies the incest is justifiable; in the second that it leads naturally to disaster. He seems more to be playing with the concept than seriously making a point.

Moran, Daniel Keys. The Armageddon Blues. New York: Bantam, 1988.A young woman travels back in time from the 28th century to forestall a nuclear Armageddon in 2007 known as The Big Crunch, a disaster which led to a prolonged nuclear winter and a five hundred year dark age. In her own time, women are warrior/hunters, and men are blamed for the war and are not allowed to fight. Radioactive fires st ill burn and mutants exist. She joins forces with a two-century old immortal who ultimately tries to trigger the war she is trying to prevent, as a means of ending his burdensomely long life.

Morgan, Dan. Inside . London: Corgi, 197l. New York: Berkley, 1974.For most of the novel the reader believes that subjects of an experimental project on Mars are deluded by scientists into believing that they live in a shelter on an Earth devastated by nuclear holocaust. At the end it transpires that the holocaust really happened and that both subjects and scientists have been kept alive on Mars by an alien race which has been rehabilitating Earth. Indeed, humanity has been saved twice before; but interstellar society has decided not to intervene again and to quarantine Earth for one thousand years.

Morgan-Ryan, Kathryn. “The Present.” See under Collier’s .

Morris, Edita. The Flowers of Hiroshima. London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1959. London: Four Square, 196l. New York: Viking, 1959. New York: Marzini & Munsell, 1960. Sequel: Seeds of Hiroshima. Fourteen years after the end of World War II, a young American boards with a family in Hiroshima, where his hostess tries to conceal both her desperate need for the money he pays and the effects they still suffer from the atomic bomb. Her attempts to act cheerful–while her younger sister mourns their dead mother and while her husband is dying–are movingly depicted. After the admirable young man gains the woman’s confidence, she confides to him the horrors they have experienced, explaining that bomb victims are discriminated against by other Japanese. The sister runs away to avoid the risk of bearing deformed children by the man she loves. A great deal of attention is paid to the details of Japanese culture and the ways in which it differs from that of the West. A note on the cover explains that the author and her husband “started a rest house and recreation center in Hiroshima for the benefit of the survivors of the atomic bomb. They have also occupied themselves actively in the anti-nuclear-warfare campaign in England and in France.” According to Morris’s entry in Contemporary Authors , The Flowers of Hiroshima was translated into twenty-six languages. Compare with Edwin Lanham, The Clock at 8:16. The novel is also comparable to Masuji Ibuse’s  Black Rain, but without his sardonic wit and with simpler characters.

___ . The Seeds of Hiroshima. London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1965. New York: Braziller, 1965. Sequel to The Flowers of Hiroshima. The protagonist travels to Tokyo with a local doctor who is speaking to a bomb protest rally. There she is reunited with the American, Sam, and realizes she loves him. They make love on the beach, agree to marry, but return to Hiroshima to find that her sister Ohatsu has given birth to a horribly deformed son. Ohatsu leaps off a cliff with her baby, and her husband enters a monastery. The protagonist resolves never to marry, begging forgiveness of her sister’s corpse. As they wait for her body to be cremated, she reflects: “How long it takes to burn up a young girl! One would think that her slender body would be consumed in a flash, but an eternity passes as we kneel, waiting, in the adjoining room. Strange! It took only a second to incinerate our town, causing a hundred thousand tragedies whose end is not in sight. Can it be that it’s easier to destroy a whole city than to eradicate the final consequences of the crime?” The book strongly and explicitly endorses participation in the peace movement, and is more self-conscious, less artfully understated than Flowers .

Morris, Janet. “Hero’s Welcome.” In Janet Morris, ed. Afterwar. New York: Baen, 1985. Life is harsh during the nuclear winter which followed a holocaust precipitated by a conflict between India and Pakistan. A roving soldier, one of the few fertile men left, bargains for a meal by agreeing to impregnate a café owner Ôs daughter. He does so, then is shot and killed by the father.

___ and Chris. The Forty Minute War. New York: Baen/Simon & Schuster, 1984.A plot by the Islamic Jihad to commandeer an airliner and use it crash a nuclear bomb into the White House succeeds because a foolish intelligence officer has discounted the reports of some of his best operatives. EMP knocks out communications, obscuring the source of the attack, so the president assumes it came from the USSR and counterattacks, then commits suicide. A limited nuclear exchange follows. His successor is an ideologue who keeps pressing for an all-out holocaust, even though it has become pointless and dangerous: the nuclear winter theory is referred to in passing. NATO and the Warsaw Pact nations elect to sit out the war. Cuba is accidentally hit by a Russian strike intended for the Kennedy Space Center. There are some fifty-five million casualties in the U.S. The first part of the novel is set in Israel, where interagency rivalry hampers the efforts of intelligence officers to fly a new anti-cancer serum to the U.S. to inject the president, in order to protect him from the long-range effects of radiation exposure. Renegade intelligence operatives manage to use a secret CIA time-travel machine to send a message back before the war to prevent it from ever happening. History is altered as the plane containing terrorists’ bomb is attacked and the weapon exploded on the ground.

___. Medusa. New York: Baen, 1986. A thriller designed to show a Strategic Defense Initiative-style system in action. After the Soviet Union blinds our orbiting sp ace station, a new highly secret air/space craft manages to down a nuclear missile launched at the United States and prevent a holocaust.

Morrison, Philip. “If the Bomb Gets Out of Hand.” In Dexter Masters and Katherine Way, eds. One World or None: A Report to the Public on the Full Meaning of the Atomic Bomb. New York: Whittlesey House/McGraw-Hill, 1946.One of the physicists who worked on the Manhattan Project and inspected the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima provides the sole fictional contribution to this important and influential anthology of essays. His chapter begins with an account of the dropping of the bomb on Japan, then shifts to a scenario depicting a nuclear attack against Manhattan, using details borrowed from Hiroshima. five hundred thousand die. He warns that in the future “hundreds, even thousands” of bombs will be dropped if nuclear war comes.

Morrow, James. This Is the Way the World Ends. New York: Henry Holt, 1986. New York: Ace, 1989.A brilliant fantasy-satire on the arms race. An average American finds himself on trial for his complicity in the nuclear war which has destroyed most of the world, along with a think-tank strategist, a high-ranking general, an evangelist who preached nuclear Armageddon, and an Assistant Secretary of Defense. The novel deals forthrightly with numerous issues, including civil defense, deterrence theory, nuclear winter, destruction of the ozone layer, genetic damage, radiation disease, and wounds inflicted by the bombs. Cannibalism is portrayed, and a survivalist is shown dying of post-war plague. More than any other novel, it concentrates on the morality of the nuclear arms race, with savage and effective satire. This is not black humor, as in Dr. Strangelove, but a humanistic protest against the madness of atomic warfare. The protagonist is profoundly motivated by love for his four-year-old-daughter: an almost unique example of fatherhood as a focus of a nuclear war narrative. The war turns out to have been triggered by a flight of rare vultures which appeared on American radar screens to be incoming missiles. At one point the protagonist watches Panic in the Year Zero, the film inspired by Ward Moore’s “Lot” (1953).

Moudy, Walter F. “The Survivor” ( Amazing, May 1965). In Judith Merril, ed. llth Annual Edition: The Year’s Best S-F. New York: Delacorte, 1966. New York: Dell, 1967. Also in Leo P. Kelley, ed. Themes in Science Fiction: A Journey into Wonder. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972. Also in Martin H. Greenberg and Patricia S. Warrick, eds. Political Science Fiction. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974.In the wake of the Final War of 1998 the U.S. and USSR began a new series of Olympic games in which a team from each side faces each other periodically in an enormous arena for a televised battle to the death. The point of view shifts between that of a slick sportscaster and that of the soldier who is the sole survivor, earning the right to immunity from all laws. His victory brings him wealth and power; but he remains a brooding loner, finally exploding into violence as he rapes his fifteen year-old stepsister while his stepparents sit helplessly by. This is an effective satire on the view of war as a game.

Muller, John E. The Day the World Died. Clovis, California: Vega, n.d .A flutist in a Moscow orchestra is arrested for belonging to a subversive discussion group and sentenced to test a lead capsule designed to protect astronauts from cosmic rays. Before he can be launched into space from Siberia however, a nuclear war breaks out which destroys most of humanity. He struggles back to Moscow where he joins the few other survivors (including, improbably, his wife and children) in battles against escaped zoo gorillas, mutated six-legged wolves, and mutant bears. In collaboration with an American polar expedition, they destroy with flute music and analogous sounds the alien invaders who caused the war. Typical in many ways of postholocaust survival fiction, this novel is unique in featuring a Russian protagonist, albeit one whose main heresy is a belief in the integrity of the Western nations. Vega Book sold its titles in bulk for sale door to door.

Mumford, Lewis. “Social Effects.” Air Affairs, March 1947.Presents four fictional nuclear war scenarios: the U.S. launches a preemptive war which turns into a catastrophe, a lengthy arms race leads to a holocaust, prolonged nuclear proliferation leads to a police state–again culminating in a devastating atomic war, and society is entirely remolded to prevent a war which does not come, but civilization is destroyed anyway.

Murrow, Edward R. “A-Bomb Mission to Moscow.” See under Collier’s .

Neal, H. C. “Who Shall Dwell . . .” ( Playboy, July 1962). In Editors of Playboy. Last Train to Limbo. Chicago?: Playboy Press, 1971. Also in Editors of Playboy. Playboy Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Chicago: Playboy Press, 1966. Also in Leo P. Kelley, ed. Themes in Science Fiction. McGraw-Hill, 1972.A man and his wife heroically give up their places in their fallout shelter to neighborhood children. It is revealed in the last two paragraphs that they are Russians. They are killed by an American counterattack launched in response to a first strike by the USSR.

Neville, Kris. “Cold War” ( Astounding , October l949). In John W. Campbell Jr., ed. The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology. New York: Simon & Schuster, l952. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, l953. New York: Berkley, l956. Also in John W. Campbell, ed. The Second Astounding Science Fiction Anthology. London: Grayson, l954. London: Four Square, l965. New York: Berkley, l965. Also in John W. Campbell, ed. Analog 5. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, l966. London: Dobson, l968. Rpt. as Countercommandment . New York: Curtis, n. d. Also in Robert Hoskins, ed. First Step Outward. New York: Dell, l969. Also in Anthony R. Lewis, ed. The Best of Astounding. New York: Baronet, 1978 Nuclear-armed space stations prove to be a dangerous deterrent because the men who have the power to destroy the world tend to crack under the strain, feeling a compulsion to set off a nuclear war.

Nevins, Allan. “Free Thoughts, Free Words.” See under Collier’s  Newman, Bernard. The Blue Ants: The First Authentic Account of the Russian-Chinese War of l970. London: Robert Hale, l962. London: Digit, 1963An atomic age Fu Manchu named Feng Fong plots a war between the United States and USSR in which each will destroy the other. The first half of the novel is essentially a survey of post-World War II history, and much of the rest is a plotless recounting of international incidents such as a nuclear attack on Egypt by the Israelis and a Russian attempt to destroy the economy of the West by cutting off all imports. The Russians are at first too canny to fall into the Chinese trap, ordering their commanders to refrain from the use of tactical nuclear weapons for fear of precipitating a holocaust; but when the Chinese conquer Kirghiz, torturing and publically strangling the Russian leaders there, the USSR bombs Peking. This is just what Feng Fong wanted, because some Americans in Peking are also killed, along with millions of Chinese, and he is convinced the United States will enter the war to avenge their deaths. The Chinese have perfected a dastardly technique of disabling Russian rockets en route so that their bombs explode over their own territory. Small aircraft then spray atomic dust over Russian cities, nuclear suitcase bombs are planted, and the oil fields treated with radioactive cobalt dust. In a now familiar motif, Russia’s empire begins to break up as her satellites rebel. When the Russians appeal for aid to NATO, the United States dictates the breakup of the Soviet bloc through universal free elections, including in Russia. A young woman, revolted at being used as a breeder in a Communist eugenics plan, escapes with her lover to reveal to the world that Feng Fong had deliberately allowed the bombs to fall on China. The fiend is foiled as “protonic bombs” are dropped from American satellites on Feng Fong’s headquarters and the escaping villain is assassinated by two Chinese airmen. Their will to resist sapped by news of his perfidy, the Chinese collapse and the country is taken over by the United Nations. All of Newman’s novels are anti-Communist to an extreme degree, but nothing surpasses the cold war hysteria of The Blue Ants . Compare Hackett’s Third World War books.

___ . Draw the Dragon’s Teeth. London: Robert Hale, l967. After Egypt and Israel hit each other with nuclear bombs, the United Nations decides on world disarmament. A secret organization is formed to smuggle nuclear bombs into a reluctant China to destroy its plutonium plant. A typical example of the muscular disarmament school of spy thriller in which conventional pacifists are relentlessly mocked and peace is achieved by the use of overwhelming force. [38]

___ . Shoot! London: Gollancz, l949A classic and complex cold war scenario which begins with sabotage at Oak Ridge by secret Russian agents including one named Rosenbaum. (In l952 Newman published Soviet Atomic Spies , which includes a detailed account of the Rosenberg affair.) The plot is complicated by the fact that the Germans are planning to cause an East-West war which will leave them masters of Europe. The Russians have the bomb but can’t control it, so they launch a conventional invasion of Western Europe, overrunning France and Germany and invading Ireland by submarine. Many Americans advocate use of the atomic bomb; others protest, misled by subversive-backed pacifist groups. An American war correspondent, witnessing the result of an earthquake in a Turkish oil field, mistakenly tells the world that the Russians have used nuclear weapons, a report which causes the U.S. to retaliate with a bomber strike against the Soviet Union. One of the bomber crews consists of a Communist cell, however, and they deliver a sample weapon into Russian hands, where it becomes the prototype of the bombs they use later in the war. When their oil fields were bombed, the Russians spread propaganda emphasizing the horror of atomic warfare, but hastily withdraw it when they learn that the population is becoming fearful rather than angry. The president rejects bacteriological weapons because they cannot be controlled. The Russians, lacking ICBMs, destroy most of New York with an atomic bomb smuggled into the harbor aboard a submarine, and planes hit English cities. Only “Communist fellow travelers” protest the use of the bomb after this point.     The conventional war drags on for months in Europe, featuring many similarities to World War II, including an American invasion in the south, a ferocious underground French resistance, and a treasonous Englishman broadcasting for the Russians modelled on Lord Haw Haw. The Americans play a dominant role in the war, with the British very much subordinate. U.S. technology develops apace, with atomic grenades, anti-aircraft shells and rifle bullets being introduced before the war’s end. A bizarre twist is given to the plot as Hitler’s voice is heard on German radio, urging resistance (it is never made clear whether or not the voice is an impersonator’s). Crop failures and widespread cancer are mentioned, but little detail is given on the effects of atomic warfare. Like Hackett’s books, this is a bare strategic outline without real characters. A decisive tactic is the release of Russian prisoners, who carry word of the Good Life back to the motherland, prompting dissension. The British take Paris, Russia proclaims a parliamentary democracy, and the West is triumphant. In a bizarre final chapter the story we have just read turns out to be the outline of a just-completed film which is being discussed by representatives of various groups. This twist allows the author to review his own book, quite favorably. The courageous filmmaker stands up to the censors, pacifists, and cowardly executives and will release his movie, warning of the danger of atomic war. Like the Collier’s scenario, Shoot! is more a fantasy than a warning. Although this is not made explicit, the novel’s firm rejection of arms control and its portrayal of the Reds as suicidally fanatical villains suggest that the “solution” to the danger of such a war is a preemptive strike before the Russians have acquired the ability to retaliate

Newton, Julius P. The Forgotten Race. London: Brown, Watson, 1963. New York: Arcadia, 1967.An amateurish, old-fashioned novel which tells how the inhabitants of the fifth planet of the sun launched settlements on Mars and Venus just before their home world was blown into fragments by a nuclear war, creating the asteroid belt. The survivors establish utopias on their new worlds. Thousands of years later Earth people visiting Mars are told they must learn the philosophy of these creatures to prevent them from blowing themselves up in a nuclear war. Compare Alfred Michael Young, The Aster Disaster: A Tale of Two Planets .

Nichols, Robert [Malise Bowyer] and Maurice Browne. Wings Over Europe: A Dramatic Extravaganza On a Pressing Theme. New York: Covici Friede, 1929. London: Chatto & Windus, 1932. Also in Montrose J. Moses, ed. Dramas of Modernism and Their Forerunners. Boston: Little, Brown, 1931. Also in Virginia Woodson Church, ed. Curtain! A Book of Modern Plays. New York: Harper, 1932. First staged in New York, 1928.The son of the prime minister discovers how to liberate atomic energy, but the cabinet tries to suppress his efforts. He decides to destroy the Earth, but is killed by a truck.

Nicolson, Harold [George]. Public Faces. London: Constable, l932. Harmondsworth: Penguin, l944. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, l933In the midst of a Middle Eastern power struggle, the British develop unexpectedly powerful bombs and intercontinental rockets. The latter are sent over enemy and allied territories alike to demonstrate Britain’s might, and a test bomb accidentally destroys a U.S. cruiser, a United Fruit ship, and much of Florida. A renegade minister boldly seizes the initiative in the furor which follows and imposes universal disarmament. The earliest atomic muscular disarmament novel.

Niesewand, Peter. Scimitar . London: Granada, 1983. Rowman and Littlefield, 1984.Russians use neutron bombs in Afghanistan.

Nilsson, Troy. The Hiroshima Stones. Brentwood, Tenn.: Nilsson Media Mission, 2002.An earnest but amateurish and incoherent self-published protest novel featuring a reluctant Nazi who experiences the Hiroshima bombing and later goes on a crusade to prevent nuclear war by intervening at crucial points in the Cold War, using Nazi loot to finance his efforts. The back cover bears enthusiastic blurbs attributed to nonexistent publications.

Nishizaki, Yoshinobu. Star Blazers. Originally Space Cruiser Yamato . Trans. William Ross. Tokyo: West Cape Co., 1983A series of volumes reproducing frames from a highly popular Japanese animated television science fiction series in which Earth is viciously bombed in 2199 by aliens, forcing humanity to move underground. The story concerns the mission of the space cruiser Argo to fetch cosmic DNA which will remove the plague of radiation from the planet. The first three volumes, published in 1983, are l: Message from Iscandar , 2: Battle of Pluto, and 3: The Argo Undergoes Severe Trials. The Star Blazers serial has frequently been shown on American television

Niven, Larry and Jerry Pournelle. Lucifer’s Hammer. New York: Playboy Press, 1977. New York: Fawcett, 1979. London: Futura, 1978When a massive comet strikes the Earth, it is feared that an East-West nuclear war will be triggered; but instead the Chinese launch their missiles against the Soviet Union, which retaliates in kind. The U.S. joins the USSR in its attack on China. This conflict is a very minor incident in the catastrophe created by the collision. The novel editorializes in favor of nuclear power and against environmentalism, justifies authoritarianism and slavery in extreme circumstances

___. The Mote in God’s Eye. New York: Simon & Schuster, l974. New York: Pocket Books, l975. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, l975. London: Orbit, l976It is suggested late in the novel that a race of aliens called “Moties” must have fought with atomic weapons in the distant past

Nolan, William F. Logan’s World. New York: Bantam, 1977. Sequel to Logan’s Run. Ten years later Logan, his wife, and their son return to Earth to find the cities have been destroyed and that vicious gangs roam the landscape. The son is killed, and Logan believes his wife dead as well, when he seeks out a glowing radioactive psychic named Andan near the ruins of San Francisco, which sank beneath the waves in the great earthquake of 1988. Andan’s blind daughters tempt Logan to gain inner sight by blinding himself, but he resists when he learns his wife is still alive. The rest of the book is a series of chase and capture scenes ending in their reunion and the definitive destruction of The Thinker, which the villain has sought to restore. Much emphasis on psychedelic drugs

Nolan, William and George Clayton Johnson. Logan’s Run. New York: Dial, 1967. New York: Bantam, 1976. Sequel: Logan’s World Although the cover of the book mentions the twenty-third century as the novel’s setting, the only date given in the text is 2072, which seems more probable. A youth rebellion in the year 2000 led to the dropping of a tactical bomb on the Smithsonian Institution (the area has been rendered tropical by the lingering radiation stored in tidal salts under Washington, D.C.). Aside from this one inexplicable act, no nuclear weapons were used. Young people prevailed in their war with older people, but, then faced with an overpopulation problem, they instituted a bizarre regime in which everyone is killed at age twenty-one. Those who try to escape this fate are called “runners”; the plot concerns a police agent who becomes a runner himself. Society is ruled over by a supercomputer called “The Thinker.” The hero defeats The Thinker and flees with his lover to a space station near Mars which provides sanctuary. A typical crackpot dystopia crossed with a Wizard of Oz- like quest story, loaded with inconsistencies. The novel is more violent, more sexual, and more varied in setting than the 1976 film based on it. The paperback edition contains colored stills from the movie.

Norton, André [born Alice Mary Norton]. Sea Siege. New York: Harcourt Brace, l957. New York: Ace, l962. Bound with The Eye of the Monster. N.Y.: Fawcett, l980During a nuclear war, scientists in the Caribbean battle mutated sea monsters which may have been created by earlier atomic bomb testing. Strictly a view of the Apocalypse from the periphery; but one character pauses to muse, “It’s the little things you miss first . . . no more zippers, coke, or disk jockeys–not in this lifetime. The very props of civilization come to dust!” Americans rescue the crew of a Russian sub. When a Caribbean native objects to the learning which created the bombs a scientist replies that human curiosity is innate and necessary: “That knowledge which made the bombs gave us the atomic motors which have kept this base going on since the bust-up.” It is suggested that the battle against amphibious octopi and other new monsters may unite humanity

___ . Star Man’s Son. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1952. New York: Fawcett, 1978. London: Staples, 1952. London: Gollancz, 1968. Rpt. as Daybreak–2250 A.D. New York: Ace, n.d. Bound with Lewis Padgett, Beyond Earth’s Gates. New York: Ace, 1962Two hundred years after the Great Blow-up a young mutant (silver hair, night vision, superkeen hearing), persecuted by his tribe, sets out to prove himself worthy of being a Star Man (guide to the plunder of ruined cities). He battles with wild pigs, is wounded in the leg by a boar’s tusk like Odysseus, and finds an apparently unlooted city. He roams the streets clogged with rusting wrecks, scorning coins and spoiled foods but prizing books, maps, pencils, and art objects. He rescues a man of an enemy tribe from a pit-trap, only to discover that they are under attack by the ferocious mutants called “beast-things” who inhabit the city, and are caught in a battle between the latter and mutated lizards. Freed by a fire, they are captured again by a rival tribe. The novel ends as the idea of a pan-human alliance against the beast-things is accepted and he is at last granted the recognition he has sought. The law banning mutants like himself is changed

Norway, Nevil Shute. See Shute, Nevil

Nourse, Alan E. Raiders from the Rings. New York: McKay, 1962. New York: Pyramid, 1963. London: Faber, 1965A juvenile novel in which descendants of the crews of space stations belonging to Russia and America and who refused to participate in the Great War on Earth have become Viking-style raiders after supplies and women (all space children are born male). It is finally revealed that aliens called the “Searchers” who roam the universe, fostering intelligence are responsible for influencing the spacers to abstain from participating in the ancient nuclear war. The two sides are finally reconciled

Nowlan, Philip Francis. Armageddon 2419. (originally “Armageddon 2419,” Amazing , August 1928, and “The Airlords of Han,” Amazing , March 1929). New York: Avalon, 1962. New York: Ace, 1963.The original source for the Buck Rogers comic strip. Includes a variety of atomic weapons and devices in the battle against the evil oriental Han.

Noyes, Pierrepont B[urt]. The Pallid Giant: A Tale of Yesterday and Tomorrow. New York: Revell, 1927.As scientists develop a new death ray which threatens contemporary civilization, explorers discover an account of the destruction of an earlier civilization through an atomic weapon called “Klepton-Holorif.” At the novel’s end the explorers wonder whether the lesson of this ancient tragedy will prevent another cataclysmic war

Nunes, Claude. Inherit the Earth. Bound with Mack Reynolds: Dawnman Planet. New York: Ace, 1966 Miniature radiation-resistant telepathic androids inherit the Earth after a nuclear war, when the remnants of humanity have fled for the stars. They slowly learn to be self-sufficient and survive, despite their lack of humanity’s aggressive instincts. When they discover a few surviving humans on an island, they abandon them. In the end they have plans to go to the stars themselves, perhaps to find humans and teach them true maturity.

O’Brien, Robert C. Z for Zachariah. New York: Atheneum, l974. New York: Dell, l978. Written in the form of a first-person journal, what seems to begin as a post-holocaust Adam and Eve story turns out to be a quite well told battle of an intelligent, competent teenage girl against a rather stereotypically violent, abusive older male bent on rape. Ends in her successful escape. The story is so narrowly focused that the nuclear war–which may have killed off practically everyone else–becomes mere background. At the work’s end the girl heads off with high hopes.

Oda Katsuzo. “Human Ashes.” Originally published in Japanese 1966. Where? Trans. from Japanese by Burton Watson. In Kenzaburo Oe, ed. The Crazy Iris and Other Stories of the Atomic Aftermath. New York: Grove, 1985.A straightforward description of one person’s experience of the Hiroshima bombing.

Oda, Makoto. The Bomb. (Originally Hiroshima ). Trans. D. H. Whittaker. Tokyo & New York: Kodansha International, 1990.An impressionistic collage of scenes surrounding the building and use of the atomic bomb. Concentrates on racism, both American and Japanese (against Native Americans, Japanese, Koreans, etc.). Set in White Sands, Tinian, Hiroshima, and a veteran 茎 hospital in which two Native Americans irradiated by uranium mining share a ward with a Vietnam vet dying because of his early exposure to bomb test fallout. Striking as the first Japanese attempt to depict the Manhattan Project.O’Donnell, Lawrence. See Kuttner, Henry, and Catherine L. Moore.

O’Donohoe, Nick. The Gnomewrench in the Peopleworks. New York: Ace, 2000.In this fantasy, gnomes aid the Manhattan Project. Sequel to The Gnomewrench in the Dwarfworks. O’Heffernan, Patrick, Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins. The First Nuclear World War. New York: Morrow, 1983.A nonfiction study of the danger of the proliferation of nuclear weapon-making ability in the Third World, including an elaborately developed fictional scenario in the first three chapters which includes a strike by Palestinian terrorists, followed by an India-Pakistan exchange, and an Iran-Iraq conflict. The scenario concludes in a precarious balance of terror, with the Russians and the Americans having agreed to cut off military support to both sides of the India-Pakistan dispute and to bomb whichever nation uses a nuclear bomb first on the other.

O’Keefe, Claudia. Black Snow Days. 1990.A young man genetically engineered to survive in a postholocaust environment struggles with despair, resentment against his creator/mother, the resentment of his caretakers and a cult advocating universal suicide. Rather thoughtfully and sensitively developed, despite its fantastic premise. The title refers to the effects of nuclear winter.

Olan, Susan Torian. The Earth Remembers. Lake Geneva, Wis.: TSR, 1989.A thousand years after the Great War which produced a severe nuclear winter, life in the new Southwest is much as it was in the old West, with bandits fighting townsfolk, and whites fighting Indians. Yet much has also changed. Cowboy is a mere term of abuse, since cattle have become extinct. The Alamo is an object of cultic mythology. Intelligent lizards have evolved, and prehistoric giants have reemerged on the Earth. Descendents of the ancestors of the Aztecs tell how their people created an earlier holocaust thirteen thousand years earlier by embedding nuclear bombs in religious shrines, then detonating them. Such a paleolithic bomb is detonated in the course of the novel. Essentially a playful nuclear western, the novel does exhibit some sensitivity to racial and cultural issues.Oliver, [Symmes] Chad[wick]. “The Life Game” ( Thrilling Wonder Stories , June l953). In William F. Nolan, ed. The Pseudo-People: Androids in Science Fiction. Los Angeles: Sherbourne, l965.A young couple rebels against Life City, the sterile mechanical utopia buried under the arctic ice in which they live, sheltered from the war-devastated environment outside. This supershelter was built by a scientist who claimed to be able to build superweapons and then diverted the money to finance its construction. Their tedious existence is the invention of machinery which has tried to ensure the preservation of the species at the cost of innovation and excitement. The city’s creator, wakened from almost a millenium of suspended animation, delivers the young couple–who turn out to be the only real humans left–to the now decontaminated outside world to begin the race again. At one point savage mutated Eskimos are said to have warred against Life City, but nothing further is said of their descendants.

Olson, Wesley. 3AR. Moore Haven, Fla.: Rainbow Books, 1986.A clumsy anticommunist tract modelled on Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four, concerning a Soviet conquest of the U.S. in the wake of an abortive nuclear exchange. The Soviets institute compulsory orgies to break up family units. Finally a dissident Soviet blows up a nuclear weapons plant, creating fallout which threatens to wipe out all life on Earth; but in the end the threat disappears mysteriously, the dictatorship is destroyed, and humanity survives.Orwell, George [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]. Nineteen-Eighty-Four . New York: Harcourt Brace, 1949. New York: Signet, 1950. London: Warburg, 1950. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1950.Atomic weapons are briefly referred to twice in the novel before Goldstein’s book reveals that an atomic war had been fought in the fifties, followed by a stalemate which produced the unending conventional bombing of 1984. Much of the dilapidation of Oceania is due to the government’s failure to rebuild after this disaster. The rocket bombs being used at the time of the story are clearly based on World War II V-2’s.

Ota Yoko. “Fireflies.” In Kenzaburo Oe, ed. The Crazy Iris and Other Stories of the Atomic Aftermath. Tokyo: Shiueisha Press, 1984. Tr. Kaichi Nakagawa. New York: Grove, 1985.A novelist investigating the fate of hibakusha meditates on the fate of Tamiki Hara, who committed suicide in 1951 after writing one of the first Japanese stories about the Hiroshima bombing in 1947. He describes the scars and deformities of two victims, and ends his quest at the memorial to Hara, where he sees a swarm of fireflies, which he interprets as incarnating the spirits of dead soldiers. The author was herself exposed to the Hiroshima bomb. The story was originally published in Japanese in 1953.

Owen, Dean [pseud. of Dudley Dean McGaughy]. End of the World. New York: Ace, l962.A novelization of the American International film of the same title. When Los Angeles is bombed without warning, a family which has fortunately just started out on a camping trip begins a savage odyssey of survival. Father and son are tough, violent, ruthless. Mother and daughter are anxious, compassionate. The father robs a hardware store for supplies, assaults an extortionate gas station owner, and runs a blockade of small town residents. When some thugs bent on rape and murder block their way, the mother prevents the son from killing them. Stopped by unceasing refugee traffic at a crossroads, they ignite gas to create a wall of flame. Hoping to cut off pursuit, they destroy a bridge behind them and move into what they think is a secret cave. At this point grace is said before dinner and the father stresses that civilization must be preserved: the men will shave daily and the women keep themselves neat and tidy. There are radio reports of heavy damage to the northeastern and western U.S., but little radiation has accompanied the bombs, suggesting a forthcoming invasion. The hardware store owner turns up at their hideout, but he and his wife are killed by the same thugs encountered and shot at earlier. Their leader, crazed by drugs and rock and roll, enjoys murder for its own sake, as well as rape. The gang has killed the owners of a nearby farm and captured their daughter, raping her repeatedly. When two gang members rape the daughter of the protagonist, the mother sees the necessity for violence, and frightens them off with a shotgun. Father and son pursue them to their hideout and kill them, rescuing the farmer’s captive daughter. The son insensitively tries to seduce her, seeming rather surprised when she rejects his advances. When the pair is attacked by the gang leader, the girl kills him, but the son is shot in the struggle. The family rushes the son to a doctor and is told that he must be taken to a hospital for a blood transfusion. They have since learned that the enemy has surrendered. The novel ends abruptly as the family encounters an army patrol–signifying the restoration of order–which will help them reach their goal. The novel’s emphasis on the necessity for brutal action to survive is oddly counterpointed with denunciations of the brutality of others. As a film-based novel, the work clearly emphasizes action over thought.

Owens, Barbara. “Chain.” Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1987.A member of a degenerate pygmy race encounters the sole preholocaust survivor of humanity, who was evidently preserved by freezing in a nuclear winter. He teaches the pygmy to laugh, which starts his race on the road of rebuilding civilization.

Padgett, Lewis. See under Kuttner, Henry.

Paine, Lauran. This Time Tomorrow. London: Consul, 1963.Unavailable for review. See Tuck.

Palmer, David R. Emergence (portions appeared in Analog , January 1981 and February 1983) . New York: Bantam, 1984.Homo superior is the sole survivor of a nuclear holocaust. The first part of the novel concerns the efforts of a brilliant eleven-year-old girl to find others of her kind, and her struggles to defend her virginity from the males she meets. The second part depicts the effort to defuse a Russian doomsday device left in orbit. Most of the novel is narrated by the heroine, supposedly from her shorthand notes (the author is a court reporter), and the style is unpleasantly telegraphic. She is reminiscent of a typically insufferable Heinlein omnicompetent optimistic superhuman. Compare with Henry Kuttner, Mutant . The possibility of nuclear winter is touched on.

Palumbo, Dennis. City Wars. New York: Bantam, l979.After a nuclear war in which the countryside is devastated (even mountains fall in “The Levelling”), life goes on only in a few surviving cities which secede from the union, becoming city-states. San Francisco and Los Angeles attack Dallas, leading to a catastrophic Great War. The novel is set in Chicago, one of the few remaining urban centers. Mutants, called “lunks,” form a new lower class which plots revolt. The protagonist, accompanied by a sort of bionic woman named Cassandra who wreaks havoc and makes love with equal abandon, discovers that the city is being bombed by automatic machinery in New York, and that Chicago’s leader is bent on wholesale vengeance which will likely destroy all remaining life. In the end the two protagonists seek shelter in an underground bunker (ironically, an unused radioactive waste disposal receptacle), but there seems little hope that they will survive.

Pangborn, Edgar. The Company of Glory. New York: Pyramid, l975.Set in the postholocaust world of Davy , forty-seven years after the twenty-minute war. The hero is a storyteller modeled on Mark Twain. His exile with a group of misfits provides the frame for several tales, many of them describing the war and its immediate aftermath. Plenty of horror is depicted: for instance, the ravages of breast cancer with no surgeons available. Slavery and feudalism have been reintroduced. At the end the hero dies, leaving behind his daughter as a hope for the future: . Has the same emphasis on human relationships and feelings as the other books in the series, but less of their humor. [ More ]

___. Davy (expanded from “The Golden Horn,” Fantasy and Science Fiction, February l962, and “A War of No Consequence,” Fantasy and Science Fiction, March l962.). New York: St. Martin’s Press, l964. New York: Ballantine, l964. London: Dobson, l967.The first in a series of novels and stories set in a neofeudal, post-nuclear war age. A young, courageous rebel leaves his narrow-minded, bigoted village, and has a long series of adventures. Very humorous, sometimes moving. In Magill, 1, 493-96.

___. “The Freshman Angle.” In Roger Elwood, ed. Ten Tomorrows . Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett, 1973.Eight centuries after The Collapse, a student is writing a paper on the 20th century. The cause of the nuclear exchange remains a mystery. The Vietnam War is mentioned.

___. The Judgment of Eve. New York: Simon & Schuster, l966. New York: Dell, l966. London: Rapp & Whiting, l968.Part of the Davy series. Set much earlier than Davy. Based on a familiar fairy tale motif. A woman who survived the nuclear war sends three suitors for her daughter’s hand into the world to discover what love is. The daughter is none too subtly named Eve Newman. Manages to be both slightly sentimental and tough-minded, conveying the desolation and loss caused by the war even while it explores its love theme.

___. “Mam Sola’s House.” In Roger Elwood, ed. Continuum 4. New York: Berkley, l975.A bawdy trifle set in the world of Davy, with no particular bearing on nuclear war.

___. “A Master of Babylon” (originally “The Music Master of Babylon,” Galaxy , November 1954). In H. L. Gold, ed. The World That Couldn’t Be and Eight Other Novelets from Galaxy. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1959. Also in James Blish, ed. New Dreams This Morning . New York: Ballantine, 1966. Also in Edmund Crispin, ed. Best SF 7. London: Faber, 1970. Also in Walter M. Miller, Jr. and Martin H. Greenberg, eds. Beyond Armageddon: Twenty-one Sermons to the Dead . New York: Donald I. Fine, 1985.In 2096 an aged concert pianist has lived in solitude for twenty-five years in the Hall of Music of the Manhattan Museum of Natural History in the wake of a devastating civil war involving nuclear weapons and neurotoxins. A primitive young boy and girl appear, seeking an elder to marry them. Instead, he performs for them the great sonata of a twentieth century master, but they flee. He pursues them in a canoe and the story ends with him drifting helplessly out to sea, doomed to die. The cult of Abraham and his wheel which is featured in the Davy cycle is touched on.

___. Still I Persist in Wondering. New York: Dell, l978.Collects several stories from the Davy series.     “The Children’s Crusade.” Originally in Roger Elwood, ed. Continuum l . New York: Putnam, 1974. New York: Berkley, 1975. The story of the founder of the anti-technological religion which dominates the world of Davy. Preacher Abraham is a saintly protector of mutated children who faces martyrdom, nailed to a wheel. We know from reading the other tales that his beliefs are later perverted into their opposite, with “mues” (mutants) being relentlessly exterminated.     “Harper Conan and Singer David.” Originally in George Zebrowski, ed. Tomorrow Today. Santa Cruz, Calif.: Unity Press, l975. A young singer leads his blind harper friend in search of rumored healers in Binton Ruins. The doctors there confess that the knowledge they need to heal him and others was lost during the war and that resentful would-be patients hound them from place to place. Conan soothes the waiting mob with his playing, and one of them who ascribes her cure to his music writes a famous song in praise of him; but the song’s theme is resignation rather than triumph.     “The Legend of Hombas.” Originally in Roger Elwood, ed. Continuum II. New York: Putnam, 1974. New York: Berkley, 1975). A century and a half after the war an old man grieves over the death of a newborn baby and is haunted by thoughts of the Red Bear, death. When he finds the Red Bear, it is caught in a pit trap and he concludes that death being vanquished, he will live forever. Unwilling to face this prospect, he frees the bear and waits for it to kill him.     “Tiger Boy.” Originally in Terry Carr, ed. Universe 2. New York: Ace, l972). The mute boy Bruno is charmed away by the mysterious boy who wanders with a tiger, playing his pipes, leading to death those he thinks desire it. The boy and the tiger are hunted down and killed.     “The Witches of Nupal.” Originally in Roger Elwood, ed. Continuum III. New York: Putnam, l974. New York: Berkley, 1975. Three centuries after the nuclear war an old man recalls his participation in a teenage witches’ coven. The villagers fell prey to hysteria like that which caused the Salem witch trials. The idealistic young adepts rescued a harmless old woman accused of witchcraft. When they learned that their leader has killed one girl and wants to sacrifice another, they rebelled and stoned him to death.     “My Brother Leopold.” Originally in Terry Carr, ed. An Exaltation of Stars. New York: Simon & Schuster, l973. New York: Pocket Books, l974). Orphaned when his mother gives birth to a deformed child, a boy grows up to become a pacifist and spiritual leader. His life, martyrdom, and beatification are closely patterned after those of Joan of Arc. This story contains the phrase used as the epigraph for the volume: “And still I persist in wondering whether folly must always be our nemesis.”     “The Night Wind.” (Originally in Terry Carr, ed. Universe 5. New York: Random House, l973. New York: Popular Library, l975). A fifteen-year-old boy despised as a “mue” (mutant) simply because he is a homosexual seeks death until he learns through aiding an elderly woman that life is worth living.

___. “The World Is a Sphere.” Originally in Terry Carr, ed. Universe 3. New York: Random House, l973. New York: Popular Library, l975.Intelligent, long-lived, dwarfed “musons” are held in slavery in the southern empire of Misipa. Hope for a voyage of exploration based on the discovery of an ancient globe revealing that the world is round is dashed as the ignorant, bigoted Emperor consoldiates his power and destroys the last remnants of the preceding Republic in a sequence parallel to the history of ancient Rome. Set in the Davy world.

Pausewang, Gudrun. The Last Children of Schevenborn. Trans. from the German by Norman Watt. (Orig. Ravensburg: Otto Maier Verlag, 1983 as Die Letzten Kinder von Schewenborn. ) Saskatoon, Saskatchewan: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1988. Reprinted as The Last Children. London: Julia MacRae, 1989. London: Walker, 1990.Though seemingly aimed at young readers, this is the most harrowing, detailed, and scientifically accurate fictional picture of nuclear war ever written. Tells of a German family’s sufferings after a nuclear holocaust. Highly recommended.

Parvin, Brian. The Singing Tree. London: Robert Hale, 1985. London: Arrow, 1986.A fantasy for young readers depicting a quest undertaken years after the Great Death by a pair of foxes. The protagonist rescues a beautiful mutant white vixen from a bomb crater and accompanies her on a long journey to the south in search of a fabled singing tree in a land of health and plenty. Among the many hazards they encounter are primitive human villagers, some of them deformed by genetic damage.

Paxson, Diana L. “The Phoenix Garden.” In Janet Morris, ed. Afterwar. New York: Baen, 1985.Ten thousand atomic bombs have caused a moderate nuclear winter and the destruction of the ozone layer. People protect themselves from ultraviolet light by wearing ponchos out of doors. The crops are ruined by fallout. In Mendocino County, California, people cooperate to survive, battling birth defects, sterility, marauding gangs, and self-destructiveness. A woman with mystical powers arrives who is able to get the garden to prosper, promising rebirth.

Pei, Mario. “l976.” In Tales of the Natural and Supernatural. Old Greenwich, Conn.: Devin-Adair, l97l.The Federal People’s Republic of Caribia suddenly attacks and conquers the United States, and Russia and the Chinese take over the rest of the world. The narrator, having briefly served as translator to the assistant secretary of state who is now the head of state and who refuses to collaborate with the invaders, flees to join a preplanned underground network of scientists organizing resistance. This story is so bizarre and improbable that one is tempted to read it as a satire, but the fact that Pei wrote a series of anti-Communist articles for the Saturday Evening Post in the late fifties and early sixties makes that interpretation unlikely.

Penny, David G. The Sunset People. London: Robert Hale, 1975.Radiation-induced mutants called the “Nant” are destined to inherit the world long ago devastated by a nuclear holocaust. Toward the end of the novel, an ancient cache of thermonuclear bombs is used against them.

Pereira, W[ilfred] D[ennis]. Aftermath l5. London: Robert Hale, l973.Fourteen years after a nuclear attack and an ensuing race war have devastated the U.S., its inhabitants are divided into three major classes according to their degree of exposure to radioactivity. The Red Tags are enslaved by the Blue Tags, and the White Tags live in a monolithic conurbation one hundred stories high on the site of old Los Angeles. The hero is a slave who revolts, makes his way to the top of White Tag society where he discovers the fantastic realm of the ruling Gold Tags. He becomes the sexual slave of their female leader and then escapes once more, only to be chased by polar bears, then pulled mysteriously to safety over a high white wall. During the course of the novel it is revealed that the war began when the Chinese invaded Russia and the two bombed each other. The U.S. East Coast was devastated, not by a foreign attack, but by bombs set off by terrorist Ph.D.s–a bizarre touch no doubt suggested by the wave of bombings following the campus revolts of the early seventies. The novel’s abrupt conclusion reflects the fact that it was planned as the first volume in a trilogy which was never completed. According to the publisher, the sequels were to have been titled Aftermath l6 and Aftermath l7.

Petesch, Natalie L. M. “How I Saved Mickey from the Bomb.” In After the First Death There Is No Other. Iowa City: Univ. of Iowa Press: l974.A comic tale narrated by a dog who objects to the claims of a speaker on surviving nuclear war that there will be no room in the shelters for pets. Drugged by his mistress to keep him quiet, he dreams of helping her search for shelter during the bombing, finding one on fire, and fighting the fire by urinating on it. He awakes to find he has urinated on the speaker’s shoe and is ejected from the meeting. One of the more interesting aspects of this story is the way in which the audience responds to a lecture, mostly composed of reassurances that some measure of survival is possible, by voicing its horror that so much devastation will result. The speaker defeats his own purpose.

Phillips, A. M. “An Enemy of Knowledge.” Astounding , April l947.A boy and his grandmother (who was alive in the period before the war, but displays remarkable gaps in her memory) have a thirst for books which they are able to satisfy when the roaming band they are with conquers a fortress. The boy is horrified by the scenes of war he finds in picture magazines and wants to destroy all the printed materials they have found, but his grandmother discreetly chooses some to be preserved.

Phillips, Rog [pseud. of Roger P. Graham]. “Atom War.” Amazing, May 1946.A mysterious attacker drops atomic bombs on U.S. cities, demanding immediate surrender, refusing to reveal its identity. New Chicago, built to replace Washington, D.C., as a capital less vulnerable to atomic attack, is hit anyway, as its ray-defenses allow one bomb through which destroys communications. The attacking country is identified as Xsylvania, too late to prevent a holocaust from breaking out all over the Earth. The story ends with an upbeat view of the mutations in store for irradiated humanity: chances of their being favorable are 50-50. Radio hounds busily assemble inexpensive defensive “sterio rays” which will prevent future atomic wars.

___. “The Mutants.” Amazing , July 1946.The dictatorial U.S. government is trying to round up and kill a generation of telepathic mutant children with the power to control other people’s minds. The mutants are suspected to be the result of an “atom war” not otherwise described. It transpires that they are actually the result of intervention by alien beings seeking to bring “justice and humanity” to Earth. As in Kuttner’s Mutant (1953), which it closely resembles, there are good and bad telepaths, and we are expected to identify with the superbeings who will one day replace humanity.

Phillips, Tony. Turbo Cowboys. No. 1: Jump Start. New York: Ballantine, 1988.Four boys run away from a government youth camp set up after the Big Bang which destroyed civilization, and flee into the surrounding Mojave desert. They rebuild motorcycles, join with an Indian lad skilled in survival techniques, and organize themselves as a free-spirited biker gang living in a cave and battling outlaws. This postholocaust series for young readers contains a good deal of violence, but the bad guys are seldom killed. Compare with Barbara and Scott Siegel: Firebrats.

___ . Turbo Cowboys. No. 2: Spin Out. New York: Ballantine, 1988.Survivors have colonized the ruins of Edwards Air Force Base, where the wreckage of Air Force One (the Presidential plane) lies. They help the leader of the colony a former test pilot battle vicious raiders. He blames the generals on both sides for the war.

___ . Turbo Cowboys. No.3: Full Throttle. New York: Ballantine, 1988.Captured by a community living off the contents of an abandoned freight train, the Turbo Cowboys earn their freedom by fixing the old engine and using it to defeat a band of attacking Takers (bandits).

Pierce, William. See MacDonald, Andrew.

Piller, Emanuel S., and Leonard Engel. See Engel.

Piper, H. Beam. “The Answer” ( Fantastic Universe, December l959). In John F. Carr, ed. The Worlds of H. Beam Piper. New York: Ace, l983.A nuclear war which destroyed the Northern Hemisphere began when a mysterious explosion struck Auburn, New York. A Russian and an American scientist working on an antimatter device debate who caused the war, but realize when they test their invention that the destruction of Auburn had been caused not by an incoming missile, but by the impact of an anti-matter meteor.

___. “Flight from Tomorrow” ( Future Science Fiction , September, October l950). In John Carr, ed. The Worlds of H. Beam Piper. New York: Ace, l983.A beleaguered dictator flees the post nuclear war future in a time machine, hoping to recruit an army from the past with which he can dominate his own time. But, due to sabotage by his enemies, he arrives too early, in l952. He causes sickness and death wherever he goes because his body, adapted to the postholocaust environment, is intensely radioactive. His body must be disposed of in a concrete tomb which has become a monument in his own time.

___. “Time and Time Again” ( Astounding , April l947). In John F. Carr, ed. The Worlds of H. Beam Piper. New York: Ace, l983. In Groff Conklin, ed. A Treasury of Science Fiction. New York: Crown, l948 (omitted from the l957 Berkley paperback edition). Also in Isaac Asimov, ed. The Great Science Fiction Stories: 9 (1947). New York DAW, 1983.A man wounded in the Third World War (in l975) finds himself bounced back in time to his boyhood, to the day before Hiroshima. He sets himself the task of preventing the nuclear war he has experienced.

___. Uller Uprising. Originally bound in The Petrified Planet with Judith Merril, Daughters of Earth and Fletcher Pratt, The Long View. New York: Twayne, l952. Abridged, Space Science Fiction, February, March l953. Complete version with the introduction by John D. Clark from the original edition, New York: Ace, l983.Humans are faced with colonial rebels who have built atomic bombs from designs the aliens learned when they worked with scientists on a mining project: triggering volcanic eruptions of heavy metals with nuclear explosives. A series of nuclear wars destroyed Earth’s Northern Hemisphere centuries before, but civilization was rebuilt in the South. Mere Hiroshima-style weapons have been surpassed, but no one on Uller knows how to re-invent them until the crucial details are discovered in a pornographic historical novel. The rebels are defeated with a combination of tactics from Machiavelli and Hitler and three atomic bombs. A science fiction version of the White Man’s Burden: “You either went on to the inevitable catastrophe, or you realized, in time, that nuclear armament and nationalism cannot exist together on the same planet, and it is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge. Uller was not ready for membership in the Terran Federation; then its people must bow to the Terran Pax.” John F. Carr calls the novel a variation on the history of the Sepoy Rebellion, but it reads more like a heavy-handed parody written by a Marxist bent on satirizing Capitalist Imperialism. Naive Paul Quinton, field-agent for the Extraterrestrials’ Rights Association, learns to call the natives “geeks” and aids enthusiastically in their destruction, eventually finding true love with the ruthless general in charge of the operation.

Piper, H. Beam, and Michael Kurland. First Cycle. New York: Ace, 1982.The history of cultural evolution on two neighboring planets culminating in a devastating nuclear holocaust involving both thermonuclear and cobalt bombs. Explorers in the ruins ages later find a few wretched survivors. Most of the course of the evolution of these two supposedly alien civilizations parallels Earth’s history to a remarkable degree.

Piper, H. Beam, and John J. McGuire. “Null-ABC.” Astounding , February, March l953.After several atomic wars the illiterate majority blames knowledge for the damage. An intrigue by the literate minority leads to a civil war aiming at the eventual restoration of universal literacy.

Piper, H. Beam, and John J. McGuire. “The Return” ( Astounding , January l954). In H. Beam Piper. Empire . New York: Ace, l98l.Two centuries after a war in which cobalt bombs were used, explorers from Fort Ridgway, Arizona seek out groups of survivors, hoping to pass on the technology of Old Times, including atomic engines. They encounter a group which has developed a religion based on the Sherlock Holmes stories–the only books they have. The explorers seek out a microfilm library buried in Pittsburgh and are attacked by savage Scowrers who associate their helicopter with the aircraft which dropped the bombs.

Pohl, Frederik. Black Star Rising. New York: Ballantine, 1989. London: Orbit, 1987.

___. The Cool War (portions appeared in somewhat different form in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, August 1979). New York: Ballantine, 1981A comic adventure story in which a hapless Unitarian minister becomes entangled in government-sponsored international sabotage conducted as an alternative to “hot” war, since the destruction of Arab oil fields by Israeli atomic bombs has made the latter too dangerous.

___. Homegoing. New York: Ballantine: 1989.In part a critique of space-based missile defenses. A young man raised by aliens is used by them as a spy in their attempt to colonize earth. He is educated using old television broadcasts; but his education turns out to be outdated, since Earth has been devastated decades earlier by a series of disasters including a nuclear war starting in the Middle East. Although American antimissile defenses were relatively successful, the fifteen missiles that did get through devastated society, and the ensuing plagues (including AIDS) and famines around the world killed five billion people. The space debris left in orbit by the antimissile defense system has so cluttered near-space orbits that it has made impossible the launching of further space-based systems and all space travel. Like the Gulf War, the ³Star War² made for a spectacular show on television; but the aftermath was devastating.

___. “The Knights of Arthur” ( Galaxy , January 1958). In Tomorrow Times Seven. New York: Ballantine, 1959. Also in The Frederik Pohl Omnibus. London: Gollancz, 1966.A comic adventure in which two friends and a disembodied brain escape a New York–depopulated by nuclear war and ruled over by a petty tyrant–by hijacking the Queen Mary with 109 women on board. A fairly detailed barter system run by gangsters is described.

___. “Let the Ants Try” (as James MacCreigh, Planet Stories, Winter, l949). In Frederik Pohl, ed., [story listed as by James MacCreigh]. Beyond the End of Time. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1952. Also in Robert Silverberg, ed. Mutants: Eleven Stories of Science Fiction. Nashville: Nelson, l974.A wild time-travel story which begins soberly enough as a scientist mourns the death of his wife and children in the Three-Hour War. He had traveled to the summer camp where his children had been staying to be with them while they died of radiation disease. He develops a time-travel device which he refuses to share with the military he uses it himself to transport mutated meat-eating ants forty million years into the past, hoping they will provide chastening competition for combatative humanity. He returns to find their descendants have taken over, preventing the rise of the human race altogether; he goes back in time once more only to find the monsters he has created have built their own time travel machine and are waiting to kill him to prevent their own extermination.

___. Slave Ship ( Galaxy , March, May, 1956). New York: Ballantine, 1957. London: Dobson, 1961. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1961. London: Four Square, 1963.After Russia has been conquered in the Short War, it has allied itself with the U.S. against an oriental religious cult which menaces the whole world. Trainers who can speak their language are preparing to use animals in combat. They are betrayed by a vicious pacifist who seeks to end war by obliterating the combatants. “Satellite bombs”–eighty fusion weapons–are dropped by both sidesin an outburst of violence that proves futile as it revealed that the true source of the attacks the two sides have been responding to is an extraterrestrial life form. Telepathy plays a minor role in the novel, but it is not the radiation-induced variety.

___. “The Wizards of Pung’s Corners” ( Galaxy, October 1958). In The Man Who Ate the World. New York: Ballantine, 1960. Also in The Frederik Pohl Omnibus. London: Gollancz, 1966. Also in Tom Boardman, Jr., ed. Connoisseur’s SF. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964. Also in Charles W. Sullivan, ed. As Tomorrow Becomes Today. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974. Retranslated from the Chinese translation of Li Yongpo as “The Wizard-Masters of Peng-Shi Angle,” by F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre. In Frederik Pohl. Pohlstars. New York: Ballantine, 1984.A small town spared in a widely destructive nuclear war clings to the past by watching only reruns on television. An ad man from outside smuggles subliminal commercials into their TV system. Most cities are underground, the use of nuclear weapons has been banned, infantry with superarms make up the armies. The army is defeated by its own red tape. Typical Pohl satire.

___ and C[yril] M. Kornbluth. “Nightmare with Zeppelins” ( Galaxy , December l958). In The Wonder Effect. New York: Ballantine, l962. Also in Critical Mass. New York: Bantam, l977. Also in H. L. Gold, ed. The Fifth Galaxy Reader. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, l96l. New York: Pocket Books, l963.In a parallel world the atomic bomb is discovered in the twenties. The narrator is sure it could never be used because bombing from zeppelins would be unthinkably horrible. Satire.

___. “The Quaker Cannon” ( Astounding , August l96l). In The Wonder Effect. New York: Ballantine, l962. Also in Critical Mass. New York: Bantam, l977. Also in Judith Merril, ed. 7th Annual Edition: The Year’s Best S-F. New York: Simon & Schuster, l962. New York: Dell, l963. Rpt. as The Best of Science Fiction 2. London: Mayflower, l964. Also in Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg, eds. Shared Tomorrows: Science Fiction in Collaboration. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979.The Allies fight the Utilitarians with small atomic weapons in a war which began with the retaking of mainland China. A captured lieutenant is placed in an isolation tank and cracks; but, it is revealed that he was set up to give false information with the knowledge that he could not withstand torture. The title seems to refer to the long-running claim of the Quaker Oats company that its Puffed Wheat breakfast cereal was “shot from guns” (it wasn’t).

Pohl, Frederik and Lester del Rey. See McCann, Edson.

Porges, Arthur. “The Rats” ( Man’s World, February l95l). In E. F. Bleiler and T. E. Dikty, eds. The Best Science-Fiction Stories l952. New York: Fell, l952.A scientist who seeks refuge from an impending nuclear war in an abandoned atomic test site finds himself besieged by mutated, intelligent rats which are a product of test radiation. They trap him in a shed which they are about to burn to the ground when he hears bombs go off in the distance. He shouts, “You win, damn you! You may be the only ones left this time next month. It’s all yours now. And what will you do with it?” Then he shoots himself in the head.

Porter, Joe Ashby. “Nadine, The Supermarket, The Story Ends.” In The Kentucky Stories. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1983. [Despite an editorial note to the contrary in this volume, the story was not previously published in New Directions in Poetry and Prose .Three linked stories, the last of which concerns a nuclear holocaust which results from an escalating war in Asia. Eventually only North America remains habitable, until rioting and civil war produce nuclear bombing even there, with only the town of Verdant Park, Kentucky being spared, of all the places on Earth.

Potok, Chaim. The Book of Lights. New York: Knopf, 1981. New York: Fawcett, 1982. London: Heinemann, 1982.A thoughtful novel exploring the relationships between Jews and the atomic bomb. The protagonist, a brilliant but inept rabbinical student fascinated by Kabbalah, gradually comes to understand the obsession of his roommate with Hiroshima. It is revealed that his father worked on the bomb at Los Alamos, that he saw the first test, and that he is consumed with the desire to make a penetential pilgrimage to Hiroshima. His mother was influential in deterring the military from using the bomb against Kyoto. Einstein, Fermi, and Szilard all appear briefly in the novel, which returns again and again to the question of the responsibility of physicists who worked on the Manhattan Project. It is also suggested that Israel’s conflicts with its neighbors may be the precipitating cause of an atomic war.

Pournelle, Jerry. Escape from the Planet of the Apes. New York: Award, 1973.Chimpanzees from the distant future escaped Earth just as it was destroyed in a cataclysm produced when gorillas set off a doomsday device. The President’s science advisor hounds them to death, thinking he can prevent the future enslavement of the human race, but the last scene shows that apes are destined to become more intelligent. The future evidently cannot be altered. A crucial bit of information, that civilization was destroyed in a human war, is unknown to both apes and humans, and makes the plot possible.

___ and Larry Niven: see Niven.

Powell, John S. The Nostradamus Prophecy . Burlington, NC: Belladonna Press, 1998.Chechen sepratists working with a renegade North Korean officer smuggle nuclear weapons into the U.S. to use as blackmail, setting one of them off in Manhattan’s financial district. The description of the explosion is one of the more carefully detailed such accounts in a work of fiction. The bulk of this thriller is devoted to tracking down and disarming the remaining bombs. In addition, tactical nuclear weapons are used against the North Korean officer and a planned invasion of South Korea deterred. The political leadership chooses to cover up the Chechen involvement fearing that Americans will insist on nuclear retaliation which might escalate to an all-out nuclear war with Russia.

Powers, Richard. Prisoner’s Dilemma. New York: William Morrow, 1988.A powerful, intelligent novel depicting the narrator’s father, a brilliant, eccentric teacher who has been haunted all his life by a secret which is discovered by his family only shortly before his death that he witnessed the Trinity test at Alamagordo and there lost all hope for the future. The narrative is interwoven with excerpts from the father’s taped fantasies, which connect a fictional Walt Disney project to create the ultimate propaganda film with the internment of the Japanese during World War II.

Powers, Tim: Dinner at Deviant’s Palace. New York: Ace, 1985. London?: Crafton, 1987.A violent tale of drugs and mysticism set in postholocaust Los Angeles long after the war which altered the California coastline. A highly imaginative and original work which deals only slightly with the subject of nuclear war.

Poyer, D. C. Stepfather Bank. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987.Struggle against a world-ruling computer set after the multilateral Last War, which resulted in the nuclear winter called the Big Overcast. China attacked the USSR, and Taiwan, the Soviet Union and the U.S. all attacked Japan. Soviet undersea missile bases are still radioactive. The plot to free humanity and prevent the sun from going nova slights the effects of the long-distant war.

Powys, John Cowper. “Up and Out: A Mystery Tale.” In Up and Out. London: MacDonald, l957.An antivivisectionist tract leading into a theological fantasy in which a nuclear war serves mainly to blast the narrator and three companions into another realm where they can discuss the merits of suicide with various gods. Seems a hymn to human annihilation. See Harry Coombes, “John Cowper Powys: A Modern Merlin,” Southern Review 11 (1976): 779-93.

Price, E. Hoffman. Operation Exile. New York: Ballantine, 1986.A rare instance of a postholocaust utopia. A ruthless American leader deliberately triggers a nuclear conflict during a Communist invasion partly to rid himself of cowardly civilians. After the war there is a return to subsistence farming, frontier-style justice and the simple life. “Anti-nuke fanatics are no longer allowed to demonstrate, so there is plenty of atomic power. The author, an old-time SF writer, was born in 1898.

Priest, Christopher. Fugue for a Darkening Island. London: Faber, l972. As Darkening Island. New York: Harper & Row, l972.Britain is invaded by hordes of refugees fleeing the aftermath of a nuclear war in Africa, creating a racist backlash and a civil war. The initially liberal protagonist abandons his convictions when his wife and daughter are kidnapped, prostituted, and killed by the black invaders. Interwoven with a detailed history of the character’s sex life.

Priestly, John Boynton. “The Curtain Rises . . .” See under Collier’s.

___. The Doomsday Men. London: Heinemann, l938. London: Pan, l949. London: Corgi, l963. New York: Harper, l938. New York: Popular Library, l962.Plot to destroy Earth foiled.

Pritchard, William Thomas. See Dexter, William.

Prochnau, William. Trinity’s Child. New York: Putnam, 1983. New York: Berkley, 1985.Under heavy pressure from the hawks around him, the Russian premier launches a preemptive, limited first strike against military targets in the U.S., hoping to avoid a wider war. But a series of malfunctions and errors causes the war to escalate until the world is brought to the brink of a full-scale holocaust. Prochnau has carefully researched his subject, and he makes the likelihood of such a disaster seem very high, the likelihood of our escaping it very low. A well-written page-turner. Made into a TV-movie entitled By Dawn’s Early Light , 1990.

Pursell, J. J. Okna. New York: Carlton, 1986.An inept spy thriller concerning the adventures of a fisherman with a nymphomaniac CIA agent battling a Moscow-inspired peace group. The Israelis use nuclear missiles on a Soviet aircraft carrier, and the Russians retaliate with a nuclear strike. The Israelis bomb Azerbaijan, and the Russians attack selected sites in the U.S. Although the U.S. retaliates, the nuclear conflict stays limited, producing nuclear disarmament. However, the war causes the world economy to collapse. The author is a former Navy man whose ideas about the Midgetman missile led to his retirement, and to the writing of this book.

Rankin, Robert. Armageddon: The Musical. London: Bloomsbury, 1990. London: Corgi, 1991. New York: Dell, 1991.

___ . Armageddon 2: They Came and Ate Us. London: Bloomsbury, 1991.

Rayer, F[rancis] G[eorge]. Tomorrow Sometimes Comes. London: Home & Van Thal, l95l. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, l953.The general who mistakenly ordered the strike which began the nuclear holocaust is accidentally preserved by an experimental anesthetic in a hospital and emerges generations later to find that his name is anathema among normal humans but that he is worshipped by vicious telepathic mutants who aim to inherit the Earth. He struggles against the scheme of a supercomputer named “Mens Magna” which has decided to destroy humanity with a doomsday weapon; but at the last moment, he is able to travel back to the past and alter his decision, preventing the fatal war from ever happening.

Reed, Robert. “Winemaster” ( The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction , July 1999). Rept. in in Gardner Dozois, ed.: The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Seventeenth Annual Collection . New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2000, pp. 59-77.In a struggle between normal humans and miniaturized nanotech ones a tiny atomic weapon has been used to destroy a “nest” of them.

Rein, Harold. Few Were Left. New York: John Day, l955. London: Methuen, l955. Manchester: World Distributors, l957.The story of a long trek of a group of travelers seeking an unblocked exit from the New York subway when an apparent nuclear attack traps them below ground. The protagonist was ironically attempting to commit suicide on the tracks when the bombs struck. The survivors live on newsstand candy and finally encounter a large group attempting to dig its way out under the rule of a dictatorial leadership. The protagonist tries to foment a revolt, is stoned for his efforts, but ultimately the mob turns on the tyrants. The novel ends with everyone still trapped in the subway, unlikely to escape.

Resnick, Michael. Redbeard. New York: Lancer, 1969.A thousand years after civilization was destroyed by a nuclear war mutants who have evolved in New York City’s subways battle normals. The mutants are dominated by a nigh-immortal being who breeds special talents into his minions. A routine combat novel.

Reuther, Walter. “Free Men at Work.” See under Collier’s.

Reynolds, Mack. “Isolationist” ( Fantastic Adventures, April 1950). In Groff Conklin, ed. Big Book of Science Fiction. New York: Crown, 1950. New York: Berkley, 1957. Rpt. as The Classic Book of Science Fiction. New York: Bonanza, 1978.Ambassadors from Aldeberan seeking to guide humanity in the ways of peace encounter a crusty old farmer who detests all technical innovations and abruptly rejects their offers of aid. The reader is told in a final note that their advice would have prevented the human race from wiping itself out in “several atomic wars.”

Reynolds, Philip. When and If (originally serialized in Ce Matin as “Ce pourrait se passer comme ça”). Trans. Joseph F. McCrindle. New York: Sloane, l952. Rpt. as It Happened Like This. London: Spottiswood, l953.An international thriller based on the premise that the coming war against Soviet Union will strongly resemble World War II. The hero is a member of the resistance to a Russian conquest of Western Europe, and his adventures are the primary focus of the novel. Both the U.S. and the USSR refrain from using nuclear weapons until after the continent has been subdued. Not until the Russians bomb London, Liverpool, New York, and Boston, near the novel’s end, does the United States retaliate with what must have seemed at the time like a large number of bombs: eighteen. Rockets are realistically depicted as being of relatively short range in this story written several years before the first operational intercontinental ballistic missiles. During the nuclear phase of the war, most American cities are destroyed. The enemy is vanquished with an all- out thermonuclear bomb strike, forcing the Russians to ban all future use of “superbombs” in a violent form of disarmament negotiation. The Allies invade the defeated Soviet Union in conventional World War II fashion, and most of the deaths which ensue result from a famine created by a shortage of field hands to gather the harvest. Four million Russians die–a modest figure even by World War II standards, but still impressive. Underground agents discover in the nick of time bombs set to destroy Paris which have been left behind by the vengeful Russians. Poland revolts, followed by other East European nations, and the Soviet Republics break away from the USSR, removing the Communist menace from the Earth, since the Chinese are preoccupied with feeding themselves. Korea becomes an American protectorate. The war ends on a symbolically positive note, with the birth of the hero’s son.

Rhinehart, Luke. Long Voyage Back. New York: Delacorte, l983. New York: Dell, 1984. London: Granada, l983.Basically a sea adventure story in which a Russian nuclear attack stemming from a Middle-Eastern conflict provides the backdrop for a tale of terror, piracy, and sex aboard a trimaran on Chesapeake Bay and in the Atlantic Ocean. The crew must deal with fallout, desperate refugees, food shortages, the U.S. Army (which has become a haven providing food and shelter for those in it and a menace to everyone else), disease, the resentment of nonwhite Caribbean people, bomb-caused tidal waves, plagues, dissension, rebellion, and jealousy. At last they sail through the Straits of Magellan where they find Rumanian and Dutch refugees who have similarly sought refuge on the coast of Chile, and join forces with them. Although this novel is essentially little more than Alas, Babylon Goes to Sea, its argument that loyalty to a government engaged in the destruction of its own citizens is folly is unusual. Long Voyage Back is in this regard reminiscent of Helen Clarkson’s The Last Day. As in Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka’s Warday , the Vietnam experience of veterans proves valuable.

Richmond, Mary. The Grim Tomorrow. London: Wright & Brown, [l953].A preface presents the work as a serious warning against atomic war despite the fact that the author claims “no pretensions to scientific knowledge or technicalities,” as well she should. Much of the novel is a rather clumsy and old-fashioned spy story of an attempt by British agents to halt the schemes of the Hitleresque ruler of the newly-formed nation of Nordenfeld, who plans to conquer the world with super A-bombs. One of the Britishers and his fiancee are among the few survivors on an airplane cum spaceship which survives the ensuing holocaust. They witness the world being rent asunder by an apocalyptic “chain reaction,” and land on a mysterious planet which turns out to be that part of Earth containing the remnants of England. They meet another party of survivors who weathered the disaster in a submarine “bathosphere,” but everyone else seems to have perished. One of them proclaims: “We are being punished because we were a people who had forgotten God”–the only religious reference in the novel. The pacifist convictions of the heroine are allowed to prevail, and the villain is spared by his companions, only to be destroyed satisfyingly by a giant squid. “THERE’LL ALWAYS BE AN ENGLAND,” proclaims the woman; and indeed the prologue establishes that a utopia will be constructed on the ruins of old London.

Ridenour, Louis Nicot. ” Pilot Lights of the Apocalypse: A Playlet in One Act”      ( Fortune , January l946. Rpt. in Senior Scholastic, April l946). In Groff Conklin, ed. Great Science Fiction by Scientists. New York: Collier, l962. Also in The Atomic Age: Scientists in National and World Affairs, ed. Morton Grodzins and Eugene Rabinowitch. New York: Basic Books, 1963.The president tours an underground western regional defense post, learning that major world cities have been mined with bombs, and others in satellites orbiting the Earth can be brought down at will. An earthquake in San Francisco then misleads the colonel in charge into ordering a strike against Denmark, which results in a worldwide war. Says the colonel: “Dark Ages, here I come.” Ends with the defense post being hit and collapsing. According to Carpenter, this play was inspired by Norman Corwin’s broadcast prose poem about the surrender of Japan, entitled “14 August” (in “Untitled” and Other Radio Dramas. New York: Holt, 1945, pp. 499-504). Ridenour had published an earlier nonfiction article about the atomic bomb: “Military Security and the Atomic Bomb,” fortune, 32 (November 1945): 170-171, 216-223. See Carpenter 31-33.

Rigg, Robert B. War–1974. Harrisburg, Pa.: Military Service Publishing, 1958.A detailed account of war in the future intended, like Walter Karig’s War in the Atomic Age?  (1946), to prove that conventional warfare has not been rendered obsolete by atomic weapons. Russia’s ICBM bases are disabled by daring U.S. commando raids. A panoply of mechanized and electronic weapons is used in a prolonged world war which demonstrates the technical superiority of American know-how. A good deal of emphasis is based on satellite reconnaissance. Small battlefield nuclear weapons are used freely, but their effects are not stressed. Lightweight battle cloaks ward off radiation. A variety of aerial vehicles, many of them nuclear-powered, is depicted. Profusely illustrated by the author.

___ . Endworld [#1]: The Fox Run New York: Leisure, 1986.First volume in this postholocaust adventure series.

Robbins, David. Endworld #2: Thief River Falls Run. New York: Leisure, 1986.The Alpha Triad accompanied by a cowardly pacifist battle men, rats, and giant cockroaches in the wasteland created by the Big Blast on their way to Minneapolis, in quest of supplies for the Home. At the end of the novel they encounter renegade troops using radio-controlled mutates and the pacifist learns to kill and survive.

Robbins, David. Endworld #3: Twin Cities Run New York: Leisure, 1986.

___. Endworld #4: The Kalispell Run New York: Leisure, 1987.

___. Endworld #5: Dakota Run New York: Leisure, 1987.

___. Endworld #6: Citadel Run New York: Leisure, 1987.

___. Endworld #7: Armageddon Run New York: Leisure, 1987.

___. Endworld #8: Denver Run New York: Leisure, 1987.

___ . Endworld #9: Capital Run. New York: Leisure, 1988.

___ . Endworld #10: New York Run. New York: Leisure, 1988.

___ . Endworld #11: Liberty Run. New York: Leisure, 1988.

___ . Endworld #12: Houston Run. New York: Leisure, 1988.

___ . Endworld #13: Anaheim Run. New York: Leisure, 1988.

___ . Endworld #14: Seattle Run. New York: Leisure, 1988.

___ . Endworld #15: Nevada Run. New York: Leisure, 1989.

___ . Endworld #16: Miami Run New York: Leisure, 1989.

___ . Endworld #17: Atlanta Run New York: Leisure, 1989.

___ . Endworld #18: Memphis Run New York: Leisure, 1989.

___ . Endworld #19: Cincinnati Run New York: Leisure, 1990.

___ . Endworld #20: Dallas Run New York: Leisure, 1990.

___ . Endworld #21: Boston Run New York: Leisure, 1990.

___ . Endworld #22: Green Bay Run New York: Leisure, 1990.

___ . Endworld #23: Yellowstone Run New York: Leisure, 1990.

___ . Endworld #24: New Orleans Run New York: Leisure, 1990.

___ . Endworld #25: Spartan Run New York: Leisure, 1991.

___ . Endworld #26: Madman Run New York: Leisure, 1991.

___ . Endworld #27: Chicago Run New York: Leisure, 1991.

Roberts, Keith. The Chalk Giants. London: Hutchinson, l974. London: Panther, l975. Abridged version. New York: Putnam, l975.A series of stories, all dealing with barbaric future Britain, loosely linked together as the dreams of a refugee during a nuclear war. The first two, “The Sun Over a Low Hill” and “Fragments,” depict the thoughts of two interrelated groups of characters, mostly about each other and sometimes about the war; this seems to serve mainly as an apocalyptic background for their love lives. The writing is impressionistic, reminiscent of Virginia Woolf. The point is made that the enemy has probably not used ground bursts in order to avoid contaminating the territory it plans to invade with fallout. “Monkey and Pru and Sal” (originally published in New Worlds , February l97l) depicts the wanderings of a brutish character whose cart is pulled by two beast-women. He teaches himself to read, but cannot relate the world he finds depicted in prewar publications to his own surroundings.     “The God House” ( New Worlds, January l97l), “The Beautiful One” ( New Worlds, May l973), “Rand, Rat and the Dancing Man,” and “Usk the Jokeman” are typical neobarbarian adventure stories which focus on the sufferings and struggles of women in a cruel fertility religion. The first part of the work contains some extraordinarily beautiful if difficult writing; but the disparate parts fail to coalesce into a true novel.

___ . Pavane (all except two sections printed in Impulse, March, April, May, June, July l966). Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, l966. New York: Ace, l982.An alternate history novel in which the Catholic church averts nuclear war. The story is told through linked narratives featuring various characters, emphasizing the chain of chance and circumstance.

Roberts, Terence [pseud. of Ivan Terence Sanderson]. Report on the Status Quo. New York: Merlin, l955. Illustrated.After World War III in l958, when the Russians occupied Europe and invaded Africa, the climate reverted to that of the Mesozoic Era. When a layer of well-preserved eggs, spores, and seeds was uncovered in Hispaniola, the dinosaurs returned. Although the war is not specified as nuclear, it seems likely that it was. Written as a brief report dated May, l96l.

Robinson, Kim Stanley. “The Lucky Strike.” In Terry Carr, ed. Universe l4 , Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1984. Reprinted in Harry Turtledove & Martin H. Greenberg, eds.: The Best Alternate History Stories of the 20 th Century. New York: Del Rey, 2001.An alternate history story in which the plane assigned to drop the bomb on Hiroshima crashes, killing its crew. The substitute bombardier has qualms about the mission and deliberately misses the city, hoping a demonstration will end the war without causing more deaths. His scheme works, but he is sentenced to be shot for disobeying orders. At the end of the story it is stated that disarmament will be successful thanks to the chain of events begun by his act. Compare with Alfred Coppel, The Burning Mountain.

___ . The Wild Shore. New York: Ace, 1984.A strikingly original postholocaust Bildungsroman concerning the adventures of a teenager in a California fishing village. When a Russian-inspired sneak attack destroyed most of the U.S. with neutron bombs smuggled into the country in Chevy vans, the government failed to retaliate (evidently because without incoming missiles, the military was unable to determine which power was attacking). The rest of the world has imposed a quarantine on the country and interdicted reunification and recovery. Humanity survived a decade of nuclear winter, but alterations in the jet stream have wreaked havoc with the world’s climate, creating snowstorms in July in southern California and tornados in Siberia. The villagers have developed an uneasy relationship with the Scavengers, who live in the ruins and retail bits of the old technology at the weekly “swap meet.” Defective infants are killed, but this is not generally a harsh society. People care for each other, and life can be good at times. The villagers make contact with a resistance movement seeking to strike back at the Japanese who control the West Coast, but an attempted ambush ends tragically. Although this is an adventure story, it is atypical, emphasizing compassion, peace, cooperation, and love. In some ways it resembles Edgar Pangborn’s Davy, but without the latter’s preoccupation with sex and with a more sophisticated understanding of how cultures evolve and adapt themselves to changing conditions. As in Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker, the rebirth of civilization is viewed with alarm. See Helen J. Burgess, “‘Road of Giants’: Nostalgia and the Ruins of the Superhighway in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Three Californias Trilogy ,” Science Fiction Studies vol. 33, no. 2 (July 2006): 275-290.

Rocklynne, Ross. “Ching Witch.” In Harlan Ellison, ed. Again, Dangerous Visions, Vol. I. New York: Doubleday, l972. New York: Signet, 1972.Earth’s destruction provides a backdrop for a fantastic tale of a naive young woman bringing dance fads to another stellar system. An exercise in trivialization.

Rodgers, Alan. Fire. New York: Bantam, 1990.An apocalyptical horror novel in which a fanatically religious U.S. President tries to trigger Armageddon and the Rapture by having a nuclear bomb smuggled into the U.S.S.R. Most American bases refuse to launch their missiles on his order, but those that are launched prove defective and explode harmlessly at sea, except for one which lands on a secret Kansas nuclear facility, creating the Biblical lake of fire. Soviet missiles similarly malfunction, exploding in their silos. Both Americans and Soviets rise up in angry mobs against their leaders. Meanwhile the true menace has been let loose on the world: a lab-tailored virus capable of bringing the dead back to life. It becomes apparent that all these events are the result of a plot by the Devil to destroy the world with nuclear bombs strategically placed around the Pacific Ring of Fire. The Devil is finally defeated when the force of an atomic explosion is focussed through a magic crystal to fuse several virutous characters into a foe powerful enough to destroy him. Ends with most of the human race resurrected and immortal. Closely modelled on the book of Revelation. Compare with King: The Stand.

Roe, Ivan. See Savage, Richard.

Rohmer, Richard. Starmageddon. Toronto: Irwin, 1986A thriller based on the 1983 shooting down of the Korean Air Lines flight 007 by the Soviet Union. Once again a passenger flight goes astray over the Soviet missile test site, this time bearing the Vice President of the United States, and just as the Soviets are testing their new anti-ballistic missile system. When they shoot it down, the American President retaliates by bombing the Soviet space center with an MX missile. Retaliatory missiles are successfully shot down by the newly operational American Strategic Defense System.When the Soviets threaten to use their conventional forces to invade West Germany and destroy all American bases, they are deterred by the President’s threat to respond to that eventuality by an all-out nuclear attack behind the SDI shield. The USSR capitulates. Although this rather clumsy novel is meant to demonstrate how SDI could lead to real security for the U.S., it also illustrates the Soviet view that SDI can just as easily be used as an offensive weapon.

Rose, F. Horace. The Maniac’s Dream: A Novel of the Atomic Bomb. London: Duckworth, l946.This curious book begins with a meditation on the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and ends with an allegorical interpretation of the narrative in between, denouncing ruthless science and godless humanity. Although Rose obviously expects it to be taken seriously, the story itself is an old-fashioned fantasy concerning a group of atheistic mad scientists who plot to construct atomic weapons in order to destroy much of the world and rule the rest, in the process proving that God does not exist. In the midst of the Spanish Civil War, the narrator–enthralled by the charms of the pious daughter of one of the plotters–follows her to a secret base in the heart of Africa inside an inactive volcano surrounded by hostile natives and large collections of savage lions and gorillas: a setting strongly reminiscent of Saturday matinee serials. The science in this book is as absurd as anything published before the war when few writers knew much about atomic physics. A bomb can be built the size of a pea. Doses of radioactivity can prolong life. Exploding a bomb in the stratosphere can knock the Earth out of its orbit. Thara Menechu, the handsome, charismatic but maniacal leader of the group, shows the narrator a vision of nuclear war by means of a television apparatus which can see into the future. America and England will be devastated first, and the entire population will be forced to live underground. The villains are defeated when the natives revolt and wipe them out. At the novel’s climax, the narrator wrestles his beloved away from Menechu on the edge of the volcano just as he is about to throw an atomic bomb; and lightning strikes him so that he plunges, bomb and all, into the depths. The resulting explosion devastates the countryside for miles around, but curiously spares the narrator, his fiancee, and her father except for knocking him out and suddenly aging him prematurely. God has struck the impious villain down, says the narrator. Unusual for its emphasis on religion as a positive force, but more of an adventure story than a religious novel. Presented as a warning that the creators of nuclear weapons cannot control their use.

Rose, Mark. “We Would See a Sign.” In Kingsley Amis and Robert Conquest, eds. Spectrum 3: A Third Science-Fiction Anthology. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, l963. New York: Berkley, l965. London: Gollancz, l963. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, l964. London: Pan, n.d.The man who pulled the lever which started the nuclear war each day makes and wears a sign reading “I Murdered One Billion Human Beings.” He wanders through a savage landscape where cats, dogs, and rats are hunted for food, where he encounters a mutant boy with the stump of a chopped-off tail, and where people superstitiously worship him. The “strange atomic beauty” of the melted cityscape is noted. At the story’s end, he is startled to realize that the priest who leads his cult–which he views as a form of penance–actually envies him.

Roshwald, Mordecai. Level 7. London: Heinemann, l959. London: Ace, l96l. New York: McGraw-Hill, l959. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, l960. New York: Signet, l96l.The diary of a button-pusher sealed four thousand feet underground at the bottom of a seven-level shelter complex. An accidental war is started by the other side and fought automatically. Politicans on both sides of a devastated world claim victory and trade insults. In the end the shelter breaks down, level by level, and people die. Made into an episode of the BBC television series Out of the Unknown in l968. For a more critical view, see David Stevens’s article in Magill, 3, l204-08. [

___. A Small Armageddon. London: Heinemann, l962. London: Four Square, l966.A farcical novel in which a nuclear submarine crew rebels and blackmails the world for wealth and sexy women (much more attention paid to the latter than to the former). A missile base commander reacts by imposing a puritanical Christian regime on the U.S. The two destroy each other, but a group of neo-Nazis in Germany seizes nuclear weapons and threatens the world in its turn, as does an African state. A warning against the possibility of nuclear blackmail by “terrorists.” [

Ross, Jean. A View of the Island: A Post-Atomic Fairy Tale. London: Hutchinson, l965.A bizarre fantasy about a group of upper-class refugees taking shelter on an estate in the Scottish Highlands during a nuclear war. They are beset by internal dissension and harassment by young people from a cycling club. The story seems to be just another Lord of the Flies imitation as relationships break down and the campers engage in human sacrifice; but it takes a strange twist with the appearance of one McArtney, apparently an agent of Heaven who communicates with headquarters by means of the radio antenna attached to his umbrella. He informs the survivors that a new type of bomb has simply dissolved its victims. The devastation caused by the war is part of a divine scheme, it seems: “Things have been going according to plan, but perhaps a little faster than anticipated. We did not look for that final two hundred thousand megaton explosion, which has darkened the earth so disagreeably; it interfered with the world’s balance, being on such a large and destructive scale. Yet, in one way, it has simplified matters. It has destroyed those who perpetrated it, and who were working against us. Yes, and of course it fulfilled some outstanding prophecies in your Bible, and other important sacred writings, especially those dealing with the time being shortened for the sake of the elect. The entire operation should soon be completed.” The entire operation consists of the transfer of the spirits of those who have died to a new planet (they have been haunting the estate in ghostly form, unaware of their own demise). One mild-mannered fellow, told that it is his lot–along with the rest of “the meek”–to inherit the Earth, as the Bible says, protests, feeling justifiably that the battered planet is hardly worth inhabiting. All ends well, however, as the world is renewed and remodeled along utopian lines. The inhabitants of the new Earth carry on much as always. Much of the novel is a farcical satire on various forms of religion and spiritualism.

Rouch, James. The Zone, #1: Hard Target. London: New English Library, 1980. New York: Zebra, 1984.A combat-adventure novel set during World War III in Germany. The Russian invaders have used small battlefield nuclear weapons, but the allies refrain from doing likewise for fear of prompting an all-out nuclear exchange. Much resentment expressed at policy of limited war, a la Vietnam. All use of nuclear weapons is in the past, and radiation zones are referred to only in passing. Biochemical weapons have been used as well. This entire series of adventure novels focuses on conventional warfare. The few mentions of nuclear weapons are noted below.

___. The Zone #2: Blind Fire. London: New English Library, 1980. New York: Zebra, 1985.The Introduction says that nuclear weapons were used by NATO upon withdrawing from Aalen, damaging more than half the town. The book contains no other references to the use of nuclear weapons.

___. The Zone #3: Hunter Killer. London: New English Library, 1981. New York: Zebra, 1985.Contains only passing mentions of nuclear weapons.

___ . The Zone #4: Sky Strike. London: New English Library, 1981. New York: Zebra, 1986.The protagonists enter a town which had been captured by the Russians, then destroyed by a “nuclear demolition” device.

___ . The Zone #5: Overkill. London: New English Library, 1982. New York: Zebra, 1986.The accumulating radiation count among soldiers is referred to. The protagonists foil a Russian attempt to use a nuclear weapon against Hamburg.

___ . The Zone #6: Plague Bomb, London: New English Library, 1982. New York: Zebra, 1986.

Rouch, James. The Zone #7: The Killing Ground. New York: Zebra, 1988.

___ . The Zone #8: Civilian Slaughter. New York: Zebra, 1989.

Rousseau, Victor [Emanuel]. “The Atom Smasher.” In Astounding , May 1930.An atom smasher is used as a time machine by a mad scientist seeking to rule Atlantis 12,000 years in the past. He uses a ray-beam weapon called the Eye to terrorize and dominate the natives. The heroes use the power of disintegrating uranium to fight off their enemies, but the result is the sinking of Atlantis.

Russell, Bertrand. “The Boston Lady.” In Barry Feinberg, ed. The Collected Stories of Bertrand Russell. London: Allen & Unwin, l972.A pregnant woman, improbably stranded in an Antarctic cave when a “radio-active explosion” cuts her off from the rest of humanity, bears a son with whom she mates and encourages the twins she then bears to mate with each other. Her anxiety to perpetuate the species proves unnecessary, however, since she is rescued and returned to Boston. When she relates her behavior she is banned from polite society and her incestuous twins are killed “for addiction to un-American activities.” Evidently Russell considered this story a bit risqué even for him, for it was not published during his lifetime. More an argument for the relativism of values than a comment on nuclear weapons.

___ . “Dean Acheson’s Nightmare: The Swan-Song of Menelaus S. Bloggs.” In Nightmares of Eminent Persons and Other Stories. London: Bodley Head, l954. Harmondsworth: Penguin, l962. New York: Simon & Schuster, l955. Also in Barry Feinberg, ed. The Collected Stories of Bertrand Russell. London: Allen & Unwin, l972.Acheson’s nightmare involves the 1956 election of an aggressively anti-Communist president who invades China, using nuclear bombs to little avail against its dispersed troops. The Russians retaliate by invading Europe, communism sweeps across the globe, and the U.S. is conquered. The narrative is written by a senator, starving and exiled on the Falkland Islands, surrounded by radioactivity, but still convinced the invasion was right. Pacifists like himself do not risk precipitating a Russian world conquest, Russell implies, but militarists do.

___ . “The Misfortune of Being Out of Date” ( Harper’s Bazaar, January l962). In Fact and Fiction. London: Allen & Unwin, l96l. New York: Simon & Schuster, l962. Also in Barry Feinberg, ed. The Collected Stories of Bertrand Russell . London: Allen & Unwin, l972.East and West battle each other on the moon and on four planets of the solar system, disintegrating those bodies with chain reactions caused by their nuclear weapons. Ships are sent by each side to the dark companion of Sirius to carry on the war; but when–generations later–they have landed, Earth has achieved planetary peace and love and the emissaries find themselves purposeless. In frustration they commit nuclear suicide.

___ . “Planetary Effulgence” ( New Statesman , September 5, l959). In Fact and Fiction. London: Allen & Unwin, l962. New York: Simon & Schuster, l962. Also in Barry Feinberg, ed. The Collected Stories of Bertrand Russell. London: Allen & Unwin, l972. Also in Judith Merril, ed. 8th Annual Edition: The Year’s Best S-F . New York: Simon & Schuster, l963. New York: Dell, l964. Rpt. as The Best of Science Fiction 4. London: Mayflower, l965.The Martians, divided into two warring camps, investigate Earth’s ruins, discovering that two groups destroyed each other although they had much in common. The lesson they draw is that the strongest side will prevail, and they repeat humanity’s error. The cycle is repeated when the ruins of Mars are investigated by visitors from Jupiter, seemingly destined to duplicate this folly. Suddenly the Divine Hand appears and writes, “I am sorry I was so half hearted at the time of Noah.”

Ryman, Geoff. “Oh Happy Day!” In John Clute, ed. Interzone: The First Anthology: New Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing. London: Dent, 1985. New York: St. Martin s, 1985.Several American cities have been destroyed by gangs using atomic bombs. Rebellious women use gay men to help them take over and exterminate violent males.

Saberhagen, Fred. Empire of the East (originally separately in three vols.: The Broken Lands. New York: Ace, l968. The Black Mountains. New York: Ace, l97l. Changeling Earth. New York: Ace, l973). New York: Ace, l979.An epic fantasy set in a far-future postholocaust world, reminiscent of Sterling E. Lanier’s Hiero’s Journey and Piers Anthony’s Battle Circle. Bizarre defenses have blocked nuclear warheads but altered the nature of the world, creating locales of good and evil, creating magic. The hero uses an ancient, atomic- powered supertank which he masters with surprising ease.

St. Clair, Margaret [as Idris Seabright]. “The Hole in the Moon.” In Fantasy and Science Fiction , February 1952.The Earth lies in ruins, the moon marked, by a holocaust. Part of the war involved the infection of women with a virus which made them promiscuous. The male protagonist fantasizes sex with a beautiful woman, then accepts a real, less attractive one who offers herself.

___. “Quis Custodiet . . . ?” ( Startling Stories, July l948). In Groff Conklin, ed. The Science Fiction Galaxy. New York: PermaBooks, l950.The half million survivors of a nuclear war battle giant mutants called “Blown Ups” who love death and are obsessed with destroying all life. When the opportunity arises to sterilize all the Blown Ups, a female scientist insists that they must be spared to remind the rest of the humanity of the danger of nuclear war.

Sallis, James. “The Anxiety in the Eyes of the Cricket.” In Langdon Jones, ed. The New S.F. London: Hutchinson, l969. Also in James Sallis. A Few Last Words. New York: Macmillan, l970. A sequel to “Jeremiad.”Jerry continues his wanderings through various devastated landscapes, including Vietnam, haunted repeatedly by the thought of his dead wife and child in destroyed London. The image of a city in flames constantly recurs.

___. “Jeremiad” ( New Worlds , Feb l969). In A Few Last Words. New York: Macmillan l970. Sequel: “The Anxiety in the Eyes of the Cricket.”The first of two linked stories impressionistically conveying images of holocaust. Jeremiah (Jerry) Cornelius, wounded refugee from the cataclysm, lives and makes love with another young man in an armored house on the brink of a crater. The protagonist’s name would seem to be an inside joke. Michael Moorcock, who edited New Worlds , has written a series of novels called the Jerry Cornelius Chronicles.

Salmonson, Jessica Amanda. “The View from Mount Futaba.” In John Mcloy, ed. Nukes: Four Horror Writers on the Ultimate Horror. Baltimore: Macloy, 1986.In the distant past a buddhist warrior-nun was sent to hell by the curse of a priest, and finds herself in Hiroshima just as the atomic bomb falls. After viewing scenes of horror, she struggles with the priest in the ruins of the city, kills him, and finds herself back in her own world. The same nun is also the protagonist in Salmonson’s three-volume Gozen saga. Sambrot, William. “Invasion” ( Saturday Evening Post, July l956). In Island of Fear and Other Science Fiction Stories. New York: PermaBooks, l963. London: Mayflower, l964.When the Russians invade West Germany, American bombers head toward the Soviet Union. The story depicts the very casual, cool behavior of the crew as they ignore radio news that the Russians have capitulated to the nuclear threat. They evidently intend to ignore the news and bomb Russia anyway. This volume contains two other stories which involve a near-war (“Deadly Decision”) and the approaching danger of war (“The Second Experiment.”)

Sanderson, Ivan Terence. See Roberts, Terence.

Saunders, Jake and Howard Waldrop. The Texas-Israeli War: l999. (portions appeared originally in Galaxy , July l973, as “A Voice and Bitter Weeping”). New York: Ballantine, l974.In a worldwide atomic war, the British have allied themselves with Russia against Ireland, China, and South Africa. Only ten percent of the world’s people survive, but of all the nuclear powers, only Israel has maintained itself relatively intact. The Israelis now make their living by being professional soldiers in the neofeudal world created by the war. The novel concerns a plot to rescue the president of the United States who has been kidnapped by the Texas Rangers on behalf of the rebellious Republic of Texas, which is dominated on the S.S.-like Sons of the Alamo. Bacteriological and chemical agents widely used have caused famine to be the major cause of death. The Israelis use women in combat. The only positive side effect of the war noted is that Dallas is now free of smog. The novel’s premise might lend itself to satirical treatment, and there are a few humorous touches: renegade Indians confronting the Israeli tanks; mutated cockroaches. But this is essentially an ordinary pulp war novel, aimed at the market which enjoys fantasy war games. There are several nostalgic references to Vietnam. This is another case in which a nuclear war serves primarily as the justification for a conventional war which the authors find more interesting. [page?]

Sargent, Craig. The Last Ranger [#1]. New York: Popular Library, 1986.The first volume in a postholocaust adventure series. When the war breaks out in 1990, a wealthy ex-Green Beret takes his wife and family into the shelter he has built and lives there for five years. When he dies, his rebellious on leads the rest of the family outside, only to see his mother raped and killed and his fifteen-year-old sister kidnapped by a biker gang. Using his father’s training, and initiated by an Indian tribe, he single-handedly destroys most of Denver and the villains who run it in quest of his sister; but she has been taken to Pueblo, Arizona.

___. [Last Ranger #2] The Savage Stronghold. New York: Popular Library, 1986.Second volume of the Last Ranger series. The protagonist and his pit bull pursue his sister’s captors to Pueblo, which they discover is dominated by the violent and repressive Church of the New Darkness. Allying himself with an underground resistance, he destroys most of the enemy only t o find that his sister has been snatched by an evil dwarf and carried off to his hideout in Utah.

___. [Last Ranger #3] The Madman’s Mansion. New York: Popular Library, 1986.Third volume of the Last Ranger series. The protagonist is rescued from bikers by his dog and returns to the family shelter to heal and regroup. He then links up with a travelling medicine man who claims to be able to heal radiation poisoning, and assaults a super-decadent, sadistic plea sure place in Vernal, Utah, called the Last Resort. At an auction of certifiably non-radiated, AIDS-free breeder women he tries to buy his sister; but he is seized, put through a grotesque series of ordeals (including a fight with a giant whose face was melted by a bomb), and narrowly rescues his sister from crucifixion, along with a truck load of other women. Various climatic disturbances have result from the war, including an increase in the fall of meteors.

___. [Last Ranger #4] The Rabid Brigadier. New York: Popular Library, 1987.Fourth volume of the Last Ranger series. Five years after the war the protagonist finds himself forced to go through brutal training and attack a gang of cannibalistic bandits under an old Vietnam War buddy of his father’s: General Patton III. The crazed general plans to use a leftover nuclear missile against a gathering of gangs, but the protagonist turns the tables by uniting the gangs against Patton, shooting down the missile just as it is being launched. However, Patton has escaped to seek other nuclear missiles. Chernobyl is mentioned in passing.

___. [Last Ranger #5] The War Weapons. New York: Popular Library, 1987.

___. [Last Ranger #6] The Warlord’s Revenge. New York: Popular Library, 1988.

___. [Last Ranger #7] The Vile Village. New York: Popular Library, 1988.

___. [Last Ranger #8] The Cutthroat Cannibals. New York: Popular Library, 1988.

___. [Last Ranger #9] The Damned Disciples. New York: Popular Library, 1988.

___. Last Ranger #10]Is This the End? New York: Popular Library, 1988.

Sargent, Pamela. The Shore of Women. New York: Crown, 1986. New York: Bantam, 1987. London: Pan, 1988.Women live in walled cities, mating with each other and monopolizing technology, while men blamed for the nuclear holocaust are banished to live in barbarism in the wilderness outside. A rebellious young woman finds love with an exceptionally sensitive male. Seeking refuge with an isolated heterosexual tribe, they discover that the latter has reinvented old-fashioned male dominance. At the end of the novel they are still seeking a home; but the story of their romance has begun to transform both the female cities and the male tribes.

Sarrantonio, Al. Moonbane. New York: Bantam, 1989.Werewolves from the Moon use nuclear bombs to shatter it, transforming the satellite into a ring whose light is capable of sustaining their power on Earth at all hours. A routine and rather silly SF-horror novel.

Sata Ineko. “The Colorless Paintings.” Trans. Shiloh Ann Shimura. In Kenzaburo Oe, ed. The Crazy Iris and Other Stories of the Atomic Aftermath. Tokyo: Shiueisha Press, 1984. New York: Grove, 1985.The narrator tells the story of his friend, a painter, who died of liver cancer induced by the Nagasaki bomb. He remembers going with his friend to an anti-bomb meeting, and ponders the meaning of the monochromatic paintings the artist left behind. The painter’s sister-in-law is suffering from delayed atomic bomb disease. This story was first published in Japanese in 1961.

Satoh Minoru. Nezuni Kozo: “The Rat.” In David G. Goodman, ed & trans. After Apocalypse: Four Japanese Plays of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1986.An experimental drama blending images of nuclear holocaust with traditional Japanese religion.

Savage, John. “Trouble at Tuaviti.” See under  Collier’s.

Savage, Richard [pseud. of Ivan Roe]. When the Moon Died. London: Ward, Lock, l955. London: Digit, l963.A frame story depicts aliens from a distant universe who are studying what destroyed the Earth and shifted its magnetic poles. They determine that the cause was a nuclear war and listen to a tape recording left behind by Karsh, the narrator whose story makes up the bulk of the book. Living in a despotic technocracy, he gains access to a device for viewing past times and discovers that the history of the dictatorship has been concealed. In l999 (his own time is 2800 A.D.) scientists used nuclear blackmail to stop a threatening war, blowing up the moon for demonstration purposes. After a period of chaos, they begin to consolidate their control over the Earth, lowering clouds of radioactive dust onto rebellious towns. They create a sterile urban utopia where an immensely lengthened life span is combined with full employment by keeping most of the population frozen in the Chambers of Rest and wiping their brains of memories when they are revived. Love and imagination languish, technological innovation ceases, and poetry is considered a speech defect. Karsh seeks to destroy the dictatorship by broadcasting the truth and reanimating masses placed in suspended animation by the government to ensure full employment. The plan almost backfires when the dictatorship splits into two enemy camps bent on destroying each other in a nuclear war. In the course of his quest for the past, Karsh falls in love with the image of a young woman who has been frozen. He defrosts and liberates her. Karsh’s tape ends before the triumph the story line leads us to expect, leaving us uncertain how the Earth died: of war, or of old age. An inept conglomeration of clichés.

Sayles, John. “Fission.” In The Anarchists’ Convention and Other Stories. Boston: Little, Brown, 1979. New York: Pocket Books, 1980.A teenaged hitchhiker who is picked up by an overweight, sexually desperate female drug dealer accidentally consumes a dose of LSD and finds himself transported to a bomb shelter where an old fellow, obsessed with the possibility of nuclear attack lives with his sexy young daughter. The old man tells the youth about his experiences as a Marine sent into Nagasaki after the atomic bombing. Caught in bed with the daughter, the youth flees.

Scarborough, Elizabeth Ann. Nothing Sacred. New York: Doubleday, 1991. New York: Bantam Spectra, 1991.A woman captive in a old Tibetan monastery discovers she is in the fabled Shangri-La (called the the locals “Shambala”) after the destruction of most of the rest of the world in a nuclear holocaust. Mostly a gruelling account of imprisonment with a surprisingly fantastic ending involving the fabled youth-preserving qualities of Shangri-La.

___. Last Refuge. Sequel to Nothing Sacred. N.Y.: Bantam, 1992.Fantastic quest novel in which a young woman with godlike powers journeys outside the safety of the isolated Tibetan land of Shambala (the fictional Shangri-La), to do battle with ghosts, demons and other evils in a post-holocaust wasteland. she learns that the war was begun by Middle Eastern nations attacking Israel with nuclear weapons, leading to a world-wide conflict which destroyed almost the entire human race and wrecked most of the Earth outside Shambala. Simultaneously grim and frivolous.

Schenk, Hilbert. A Rose for Armageddon . New York: Timescape, 1982.

Pakistan has used a nuclear bomb against India, and a worldwide conflict looms. An elderly archaeologist dreams of the holocaust to come; as the bombs fall, she is transported into the past along with the man she has secretly loved, to get a second chance at life. Rather well written, despite its bizarre premise; but only incidentally touching on nuclear war.

Schilliger, Josef. The Saint of the Atom Bomb. Originally Der Heilige der Atombombe: Die Geschichte Dr. Takashi Nagai. Würzburg: Arena-Verlag, 1953. Trans. from German by David Heimann. Westminster, Md.: Newman, 1955.A pious fictionalization of the deeds of a Christian doctor in Nagasaki during the bombing and afterwards. Contains an effective description of the damage and wounds.

Schmidt, Arno. The Egghead Republic: A Short Novel from the Horse Latitudes. Originally Die Gelehrtenrepublik. Karlsruhe: Stahlberg, l957. Trans. Michael Horovitz. London: Marion Boyars, l979. Salem, N.H.: Marion Boyars, l980.In the postholocaust future, mutated creatures abound. The first one the narrator meets is a sexy young centaur. He fights giant spiders and encounters unicorns. However, the bulk of the story is a tour of an enclave divided into American and Russian sectors and called the “International Republic of Artists and Scientists.” Lots of male sexual fantasies. Secretaries double as call girls. Aging Soviet leaders have their brains transplanted into young, healthy bodies (and vice versa). One male writer has had himself put in a female body. Young people’s brains are put into Siberian wolf hounds and horses. On the western side people are deep-frozen. Both sides are repellent. Written in an experimental style with italicized phrases at the beginning of each paragraph, bizarre futuristic punctuation. The centuries preceding 2000 A.D. are called “The Happy Teens.”

Schoonover, Lawrence. Central Passage. New York: William Sloane, l962. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, l962. New York: Dell, l964.The first part of this novel depicts proliferation of atomic weapons through the carelessness of the Soviet Union, one of whose allies decides to precipitate an East-West Armageddon by exploding a bomb aboard one of its ships in the Panama Canal. In the ensuing Twenty-Minute War, both countries are devastated; but the Isthmus of Panama is entirely destroyed, altering the course of the Gulf Stream and creating a drastic fall in worldwide temperatures. (At the site of the bombing itself, temperatures are high enough, at least at first, so that people can pull cooked fish and boiled lobster directly from the sea.) The most effective part of the novel deals with a French Canadian fisherman, his wife and ten children fleeing the new ice age, Noah-like, aboard his fishing boat. When he sees the strange light emitted by the bombs, he thinks, “But a light could not be wicked. Light was the first thing le bon dieu made when He created the world. His brother, the curŽ had always loved the story of the creation and had often mentioned that light was the first thing God called good. But this light had not looked good, so perhaps God had not made it.” The novel downplays the importance of fallout, although a dust shroud of the sort now predicted to cause a nuclear winter does contribute to the drop in temperature. The fisherman joins the enormous crews trying to rebuild the isthmus and restore Earth’s climate to normal. Scenes of savagery among survivors are mentioned only in passing, not depicted in detail. When the fisherman’s son asks to learn to shoot, he replies, “I don’t think you’ll ever shoot a gun as long as you live. There’s been too much of it, and it’s gone out of style.” Months of labor using conventional construction techniques make little progress; in the end the project can only be accomplished through the use of atomic bombs planted on the sea floor. Two years and eight months after the war, the thaw begins. Then the novel takes a bizarre but all too familiar turn as the generation of children born during the brief atomic war turn out to be a race of superhumans called the “Intruders,” bent on replacing their predecessors. A ruthless drive of extermination is launched against them, but in the final pages of the novel it is revealed that the narrator himself is an Intruder. Clearly, they will prevail.

Schulman, Joel. “Nirvana Is a Nowhere Place.” In After the Fall , ed. Robert Sheckley. New York: Ace, 1980.The Comptroller of Heaven panics at the prospect of finding enough room in Heaven for Earth’s billions when an impending nuclear war will end the world, and tries to seek room in the rival afterlife abodes of other religions. But it turns out that all the myriad afterlife abodes, including Heaven and Nirvana, will end as well. Part of an collection of “upbeat end-of-the-world stories.”

Schwartz, Harry. “Miracle of American Production.” See under Collier’s .

Scortia, Thomas N. Earthwreck! Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett, l974.A nuclear war begins in the Middle East as Israel is attacked and retaliates by bombing Egypt’s Aswan Dam. The primary axis of conflict, however, is between the Russians and the Chinese, both using MIRVs (multiple independent reentry vehicles). The U.S., trying to stop the escalation, issues an ultimatum which leads to a worldwide holocaust which, with the assistance of a Russian biological weapon, renders Earth uninhabitable. These events are witnessed by Americans and Russians in separate orbiting space stations. Because the Americans have allowed only one, unfortunately infertile, female on board, they are faced with the necessity of merging with the sexually balanced Russian crew in order to perpetuate the human race. Anti-Communist officers, fearing Red treachery, almost succeed in sabotaging the plan, which involves colonizing first the moon then Mars. A serendipitous moonlet swings the station into the proper orbit, and the crew (placed in suspended animation), heads for its new home which will be seeded with plants mutated from seeds gleaned from space station visitors’ feces and transformed into an earthlike place (“terraformed”). A child is born to the only woman to be rescued from Earth, giving the novel an optimistic conclusion. The station’s psychiatrist interestingly comments that whereas devotion to his wife and family renders him emotionally unstable when they are killed, the fanatical anti-communism of another officer gives him a source of strength. There is a good deal of focus on sex; and a surprisingly sympathetic homosexual affair is discretely alluded to.

Seabright, Idris. See under St. Clair, Margaret.

Seymour, Alan. The Coming Self-Destruction of the United States of America. London: Souvenir Press, l969. New York: Grove, l97l.A prolonged and vicious race war in America is climaxed by the use of atomic weapons against black enclaves in the cities. As the novel ends more atomic weapons are threatened, and a United Nations dominated by nonwhites is threatening nuclear retaliation against the white military junta ruling the U.S.

See, Carolyn. Golden Days. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987.A marvelous satire of upper-middle-class Southern California fads. As international tensions rise, with nuclear bombs being used in Central America and the Middle East, most people ignore the impending holocaust. A therapist suggests that nuclear war is a metaphor for all the other fears that plague us today, but the patient replies, It’s my view that the other fears . . . are a metaphor for my fear of nuclear war. Much of the novel deals with the growth of a crackpot cult and the heroine Ôs development of psychic powers. The narrative abruptly leaps from the brink of war to the aftermath in which civilization has been destroyed, the beach has been melted into glass, and the survivors, hideously wounded and starving, try to make the best of things. The ever-optimistic heroine continues to use positive thinking to deal with the shattered world around her, and to insist that all is well.

Service, Pamela F. Winter of Magic’s Return. New York: Atheneum, 1985.Five hundred years after the Devastation, nuclear winter is finally ebbing in Britain. The destruction of the ozone layer and the development of threatening “muties” make life hazardous, as do feral dogs. Into this ominous setting Merlin appears reborn as a young boy, freed from his mountain prison when its top was blasted off by a nuclear bomb. His magic works unpredictably and comically, but he renews his struggle against the wicked Morgan Le Fay. In the course of his wanderings he discovers a newly-evolved unicorn. At the conclusion of the novel he reaches Avalon, discovers Arthur alive, and returns him to Britain.

___. Tomorrow’s Magic. New York: Atheneum, 1987.Sequel to Winter of Magic’s Return . Continues the tale of the struggle between King Arthur and Morgan Le Fay. Features a fourteen-year-old girl and her two-headed mutant dog. At one point it is argued that Morgan’s victory would be a worse calamity than universal extinction through nuclear war. Morgan hurls Merlin and the heroine back in time to London, just before outbreak of the holocaust. Merlin succeeds in returning to the future and using the force of the exploding bombs to defeat Morgan.

Shaara, Michael. “All the Way Back” ( Astounding , July 1952). In Soldier Boy. New York: Pocket Books, 1982. Also in Brian Aldiss, ed. Galactic Empires, vol. l. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1976. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1976. New York: Avon, 1979.Men seeking new worlds discover a paradisiacal planet, albeit pocked with ancient atomic bomb craters, only to learn that the former inhabitants are about to recolonize it as part of a Galactic struggle against an evil race which has been destroyed in most sectors of the universe. The evil race is humanity, and the explorers are killed; but since there is no clue to their planet of origin, a fear remains at the end of the story that humans will prevail and rule the Galaxy.

Shafer, Robert. The Conquered Place. New York: Putnam, l954.An exceptionally detailed and well-written thriller depicting the resistance against Communist invaders occupying the conquered eastern half of the United States. Most of the world has been overrun by the Russians and Chinese, and the new rulers treat the conquered peoples with calculated brutality modeled partly on the deeds of the Nazis in World War II Europe, engaging repeatedly in mass reprisals for acts of resistance. After an uprising, Youngstown, Ohio was entirely destroyed. Unlike most novels of the sort, The Conquered Place depicts realistically conflict between the regular army and the underground and the confusion surrounding an attempt to smuggle out an obnoxious but crucial scientist and his family. The style is vivid and powerful, the characters interesting, the conflicts credible. The Russian rulers are not simple cardboard villains. Shafer displays considerable political sophistication in understanding that it is not in the best interests of the invaders to antagonize the population too much. Principal targets of hatred are collaborators called “snooks”; again these are modeled on Nazi collaborators. Has a love story, featuring a young woman who rebukes the hero for being too slow sexually; but she is killed in the near-catastrophic ending by a stray bullet from the gun of the scientist she has helped rescue. The army has nuclear-bombed Center City as a diversionary tactic and as a way of ensuring the cooperation of the resistance. Little attention is paid to the hope for the future represented by the secret weapon which will be built: this is rather a story of individual character under stress.

Shaw, Bob. Ground Zero Man. New York: Avon, l97l. Slightly revised as The Peace Machine. London: Gollancz, 1985.A British near-future thriller about a scientist who designs a device to detonate all the world’s atomic weapons in order to force nuclear disarmament. He fails and the book’s last line is “What’s the use of trying?” The author seems to express no particular point of view–pro- or antidisarmament. The protagonist’s lousy marriage gets more detailed attention than the threat of nuclear war.

Sheckley, Robert. After the Fall. London: Sphere, 1980. New York: Ace, 1980.

An anthology of postholocaust fiction, including post-nuclear war stories.

___. “The Battle” ( If , September l954). In Citizen in Space. New York: Ballantine, l955. Also in The Robert Sheckley Omnibus. London: Gollancz, l973. Also in James L. Quinn and Eve Wulff, eds. The First World of If. Kingston, N.Y.: Quinn, l957. Also in J. E. Pournelle and John F. Carr, eds. There Will Be War. New York: TOR, l983.The army insists on using robots to fight Satan’s minions in Armageddon. The machines win, but Christ then appears, resurrects the fallen robots, and carries them off to Heaven, leaving humanity behind.

___. Journey Beyond Tomorrow (expanded from “The Journey of Joenes,” Fantasy and Science Fiction, October, November l962). New York: Signet, l962. London: Gollancz, l964. London: Corgi, l966.A comic, Kafkaesque modern version of Candide , written in the form of folktales told by various Pacific islanders and others. Voltaire’s framework is followed in many details, and the tone is reminiscent of the Frenchman’s as well. Joenes, a naive young man from the island of Manituatua, goes to the United States where he meets Lum, his guitar-playing, dope-taking hip sidekick. His story satirizes many aspects of contemporary life: the courts, prisons, universities, utopian politics, government bureaucracy, and the military. Joenes winds up in the “Octagon” in Washington, D.C., where he reenacts part of the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur in his wanderings through the maze of hallways. The U.S. has recently demolished Io, moon of Jupiter, in a bomb test. The Russians have responded by blowing up Neptune. Joenes is sent on a diplomatic mission to the USSR and learns that a border war has broken out between the Russians and the Chinese. On the way home an American automatic radar station mistakenly identifies his plane as an enemy craft and fires missiles at it, beginning a war of the U.S. against itself, each coast believing the other has been seized by the enemy. Lum and Joenes escape and go to Fiji, where Lum becomes a guru and Joenes builds an empire founded on the elimination of all metal by dumping it in the sea. When his fanatical antimetal policy is criticized, Joenes answers, “Man, you ever try to build a atom bomb out of coral and coconut shells?” The only civilization left is on the Pacific islands. Compare Poul Anderson’s Maurai tales.

___. “The Store of the Worlds” (originally “The World of Heart’s Desire.” Playboy , September 1959). In The Wonderful World of Robert Sheckley . New York: Bantam, 1979. Also in Isaac Asimov, Martin Harry Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh, eds. Catastrophes! New York: Fawcett, 1981. Also in Walter M. Miller, Jr., and Martin H. Greenberg, eds. Beyond Armageddon: Twenty-one Sermons to the Dead. New York: Donald I. Fine, 1985.An effective trick ending story. A man gives all his worldly goods and ten years of his life to experience another reality, which turns out to be life as we know it. It is then revealed that he lives in a devastated world and that all his earthly goods are a pair of boots, a knife, two coils of copper wire, and three small cans of corned beef.

Sheckley, Robert and Harlan Ellison. See Ellison.

Sheffield, Charles. Trader’s World. New York: Del Rey, 1988.The adventures of a brilliant, courageous trader/negotiator in the varied neofeudal kingdoms into which Earth has divided in the wake of the Lostlands War, which left much of the planet a radioactive wasteland. Some nations are rearming and are at the end of the novel poised once more at the brink of nuclear war.

Sheldon, Alice. See Tiptree, James Jr.

Sherred, T. L. “E for Effort” ( Astounding , May, l947). In T. L. Sherred. First Person, Peculiar. New York: Ballantine, l972. Also in Groff Conklin, ed. The Big Book of Science Fiction. New York: Crown, l950 (omitted from Berkley edition). Rpt. as The Classic Book of Science Fiction. New York: Bonanza, 1978. Also in John W. Campbell, Jr., ed. The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology. New York: Simon & Schuster, l952. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, l953. New York: Berkley, 1956. Also in John W. Campbell, Jr., ed. The Second Astounding Science Fiction Anthology. London: Grayson, l954 (not in the same title published by Four Square). Also in John W. Campbell, Jr., ed. Astounding Tales of Space and Time. New York: Berkley, l957. Also in John W. Campbell, Jr., ed. The First Astounding Science Fiction Anthology . London: Four Square, l964 (not in the same title published by Grayson). Also in Damon Knight, ed. A Century of Great Short Science Fiction Novels. New York: Delacorte, l964. New York: Dell, l965. London: Gollancz, l965. London: Mayflower, l968. Also in Ben Bova, ed. Science Fiction Hall of Fame, vol. 2B. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, l973. New York: Avon, l974. Also in Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh, eds. Hollywood Unreel. New York: Taplinger, 1982. Also in Stanley Schmidt, ed. War and Peace: Possible Futures from Analog. New York: Dial, l983. Also in Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg, eds. The Great Science Fiction Stories: 9 (1947) . New York: DAW, 1983.A machine that can view the past is used to make historical films with the twin aims of making money and educating the public to the true nature of war. When it is revealed that no one’s secrets are safe, including nuclear secrets, the army seizes the device, its inventors are jailed, the people riot, and a catastrophic war breaks out. The policy of atomic secrecy is criticized as retarding progress. The people and their leaders are depicted as uniformly stupid.

Sherwood, Robert E. “The Third World War.” See in Collier’s.

Shinnell, Grace. “Atlantis Discovered: Meet the Skyscraper People of the Burning West.” In Nuke-Rebuke: Writers & Artists Against Nuclear Energy & Weapons. Iowa City, Iowa: The Spirit That Moves Us Press, 1984.A satirical account of our culture by an ignorant historian two millenia after the holocaust.

Shirley, John. Eclipse (A Song Called Youth: Book One). New York: Popular Library, 1985.A group of Arab terrorists triggered an EMP bomb in space which almost set off a holocaust: three Cruise missiles had to be aborted, and fortunately two more were shot down by the Soviets. . . . The pulse wiped out the U.S. Banking system and destroyed the country’s economy, as in Strieber and Kunetka’s Warday . In 1998 a treaty eliminating all but small tactical weapons was negotiated. However, the Soviet Union has invaded Western Europe, attacking out of fear of the newly-installed Strategic Defense Satellites which were about to become operational. Although their advance has been halted by the use of NATO’s remaining nuclear bombs, the war rages on five years after it began. Neurotoxins and gigantic building-crushing machines are being used as well. Most European cities are largely depopulated. The plot concerns the battle of a gang of rock-loving youngsters against the fascists who seize a space colony and threaten to take over the Earth. An author’s note at the beginning states: This is not a post-holocaust novel. Nor is this a novel about nuclear war. It may well be that this is a pre-holocaust novel. The series is labelled by its publishers “The ultimate cyberpunk saga.”

Shute: Nevil [pseud. of Nevil Shute Norway]. On the Beach. London: Heinemann, l957. London: Pan, l966. New York: Morrow, l957. New York: Signet, l958. New York: Bantam, l968. New York: Scholastic Book Services, l968.The best seller in which a nuclear war ends all human life through blast or delayed radiation effects. Set in Australia, which had assumed it would be safe. By and large, people are passive, try to pretend life will go on, or plunge into a fatalistic frenzy of pleasure. The submarine captain insists on remaining faithful to his wife. Although she is almost certainly dead along with their children and everyone else in America, he persists in fantasizing that he will return to her; the Australian woman who loves him goes along with his fantasy, sacrificing her own desires to his psychic need to deny the reality of the nuclear war which took his family but left him alive, if only temporarily. The theme of sexual abstinence is part of a larger theme of breakdown and failure in the novel, in which life as usual becomes impossible in the face of universal death, and those who pretend that life can go on as normal are deluding themselves. Stanley Kramer’s 1959 film version of the novel falsifies this aspect of the novel by satisfying audience desires that the couple should enjoy one night of love together. Helen Clarkson criticizes what she takes to be Shute’s puritanism in The Last Day when one of the characters criticizes a novel clearly meant to recall On the Beach : “A man and woman fall in love. He’s married, but his wife is in another part of the world and is almost certainly dead. So what do they do? They say: This is no time for dirty little love affairs. What a strange culture we live in! A culture where love is ‘dirty’ and a hundred megaton bomb is ‘clean’. If Stone Age Man had thought life dirty and death clean, we would not be here today. I’m beginning to think that modern man is, quite literally, too dainty to live.” Despite the criticisms made of its central scientific premises, the novel is still a moving and powerful depiction of the death of the human race. According to Grant Burns’s The Atomic Papers, the novel was also rendered as a newspaper comic strip (p. 283). Remade as a TV movie, 2000. In Magill: 4, l603-07.

Siegel, Barbara and Scott. Firebrats no. 1: The Burning Land. New York: Archway, 1987. London: Teens, 1988.First novel in a series of survivalist tales aimed at young people. A teenaged boy and girl are sheltered in the basement of a community theater when nuclear war breaks out. They suffer a mild case of radiation sickness and are besieged by wild dogs. When an earthquake destroys the building over their heads a month later, they dig their way out to find themselves threatened by a gang of escaped convicts. They escape to head for California, where the hero hopes to find the rest of his family still alive. Compare with Tony Phillips: Turbo Cowboys .

___. Firebrats no. 2: Survivors. New York: Archway, 1987. London: Teens, 1988.The protagonists cross a huge river on a raft, are taken in by a kindly old survivalist who teaches them various useful techniques and helps them destroy a pack of bandits. The hero and heroine take turn’s rescuing each other from peril throughout this series.

___. Firebrats no. 3: Thunder Mountain. New York: Archway, 1987.The protagonists take shelter in a cave, where they meet three young children who have been living there. They are rescued from a lion by a friendly veterinarian who, like Noah, is trying to preserve various animal species. Huge swarms of insects created by the nuclear war sweep over the landscape, but the protagonists escape and head west again.

___. Firebrats no. 4: Shockwave. New York: Archway, 1988. London: Teens, 1988.As nuclear autumn persists the protagonists foil a band of slave-trading bikers and save Denver from flooding caused by a lake which was formed by the bombing.

Silverberg, Robert. The Election. In Elizabeth Mitchell, ed. After the Flames. New York: Baen, 1985.The radiation is dying down and the forest is returning fifteen years after the Blowup, which, along with the ensuing Anarchy, destroyed from sixty to seventy percent of the population and disintegrated the United States. An emissary of the Provisional Federal Government, centered in Kentucky, arrives in a small isolated down to prepare them to participate in a forthcoming national election; but the residents are not so sure that reviving t he federal government is a good idea. The local political boss makes instead a strong case for benign dictatorship.

___. “The Four” ( Science Fiction Stories, August l958). In Dimension Thirteen. New York: Ballantine, l969. Also in World of a Thousand Colors. New York: Arbor House, 1982. Also in Sunrise on Mercury. London: Gollancz, 1983.In an undersea domed city populated by telepathic holocaust survivors a rebellious woman joins with three others in a forbidden act: to explore mentally the world outside. They have been taught that Earth’s surface is now a lethal wasteland, but it appears lush and beautiful. Condemned to death by drowning, they use their powers to teleport themselves to land, knowing that the backwash from their escape will doom five hundred of their fellow citizens. The idyllic vision turns out to be a hoax by one of her comrades as they perish horribly in the still-radioactive landscape.

___. “Road to Nightfall” ( Fantastic Universe, July l958). In Dark Stars. New York: Ballantine, l969. Also in Parsecs and Parables: Ten Science Fiction Stories. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, l970. Also in The Best of Robert Silverberg. New York: Pocket Books, l976. Also in Hans S. Santesson, ed. The Fantastic Universe Omnibus. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, l960.When the food dole to New York City is cut off by the surviving regional government in Trenton after twenty-four years of war, the survivors resort to cannibalism. A savage, fairly effective tale.

___. The Thirteenth Immortal. New York: Ace, l957.After the Great Blast of 2062, a new dark age descends on the world. Animal and human mutants abound, and twelve immortals divide the neofeudal world between them. The hero’s quest turns into a story of self-discovery and he learns that he is the thirteenth immortal whose destiny it is to break down the walls isolating his father’s highly technological Antarctic desmene from the other, more primitive ones. “ Machines have destroyed civilization , people said. But had they? No, not the machines. It was man’s use of the machines. . . .”

___. Tom O Bedlam. New York: Donald I. Fine, 1985. London: Orbit, 1987.A story of contact with aliens, somewhat reminiscent of Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End, set in 2103 in a world contaminated by fallout from the Dust War, in which radioactive clouds were used rather than bombs. Religious cults and various forms of mysticism play a major role in the work.

___. “When We Went to See the End of the World.” In Terry Carr, ed. Universe 2. New York: Ace, 1972. Also in Unfamiliar Territory. New York: Scribner’s, 1973. Also in Earth Is the Strangest Planet. Nashville: Nelson, 1977. Also in Terry Carr, ed. The Best Science Fiction of the Year, no. 2. New York: Ballantine, 1972. Also in Lester del Rey, ed. Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year (1972). New York: Dutton, 1973. Also in Gregory Fitz Gerald & John Dillon, eds. The Late Great Future. Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett, 1976. Also in Scott Edlestein, ed. Future Pastimes. Nashville: Aurora, 1977.In a future chaotic society plagued by violence, including the use of nuclear weapons in urban riots, wealthy travelers voyage to the future to witness the end of the world, but each sees something different. The implication is that the end that matters is the dreadful present. Says a time-travel company representative, “Of course, we have to expect apocalyptic stuff to attain immense popularity in times like these.”

Simak, Clifford D. “Lobby” ( Astounding , April 1944). In Groff Conklin, ed. The Best of Science Fiction. New York: Crown, l946. New York: Bonanza, 1963. Rpt. as The Golden Age of Science Fiction. New York: Bonanza, 1980.Agents of the conventional power industry sabotage a nuclear power plant to prevent the implementation of the new energy technology, but as the story ends it is claimed that atomics will prevail and scientists rule the world. The atomic explosion which results from the plant’s sabotage earns it a place here, although it is not strictly speaking an act of war.

Simpson, George E. and Neal R. Burger. Fair Warning. New York: Delacorte, 1980. New York: Dell, 1981.A lengthy, complex thriller which concerns a plan to ship a planeload of scientists working on the atomic bomb to Japan to convince the enemy that it should surrender rather than be hit by the new weapon. A Russian spy ring operating in the Manhattan Project learns of the plan and diverts the plane, hoping to kidnap the scientists and seize the valuable papers on board. They are foiled by a heroic security agent, but the Japanese are warned too late: the bomb has already been dropped. The ending is hardly tragic, however, since the whole idea of warning the Japanese is presented in a most unsympathetic manner.

Sinclair, Andrew. The Project. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1960.

A mad scientist sets a test superweapon to hit Russia and explode all other weapons on Earth. Most of the novel is devoted to relationships among the scientists working on the project. On the last page universal annihilation seems inevitable, but has not actually yet taken place.

Sinclair, Upton. A Giant’s Strength: A Three-Act Drama of the Atomic Bomb. Girard, Kan.: Haldeman-Julius, 1947. London: Werner Laurie, 1948.An American family reacts to radio broadcasts of the bombing of Hiroshima and the surrender of Japan, and years later must flee from the impact of an atomic attack on the U.S. The two most interesting members of the family are a nuclear physicist and his faithless, frivolous wife. He has worked on the bomb, later has security problems. In the third act, mysterious sneak attacks are carried out involving nuclear bombs planted in the harbors of ten large American cities. The Oak Ridge and Hanford plants are bombed from the air. As the family flees for a cave in South Dakota, the war spreads to Europe and the USSR. The U.S. has retaliated against the latter without being certain that it was the initial aggressor. Seventy-five bombs are dropped over a period of months. The family cave is invaded by three thugs, one of whom turns out to be dangerously radioactive. The physicist’s wife leaves with them to set up a protection racket. Industry is being moved underground as the war stretches on with no end in sight. The son of the family ends the play with a passionate plea for peace. Much of the play is given over to satirizing the frivolous nature of radio programming and advertising.

___. O Shepherd, Speak! New York: Viking, 1949. London: Werner Laurie, 1950.The culminating novel in the ten-volume series of Lanny Budd novels, set during the latter part of World War II. The hero, a secret agent and art appraiser for the army, manages to be on the spot for all the high points: the Battle of the Bulge, the seizure of Nazi atomic energy secrets, the capture of Werner Heisenberg, the liberation of Dachau, the Trinity test, the Nuremberg trials, etc. Budd is depicted as a friend of Einstein, Roosevelt, Gšring, and Hitler. The danger that the Germans will develop the atomic bomb first is a theme that runs throughout the early part of the novel. Budd is briefly involved in the Manhattan Project as an observer, but hears of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from a distance. Much of the latter part of the novel is given over to socialist-pacifist preachments, as the hero tries to spend the million dollars left him by an aunt to promote peace.

Sisson, Marjorie. The Cave. Hemingway Grey: Vine Press, 1957.In the distant future, after the destruction of New York (perhaps in a nuclear war), Prof. Adamson is exploring a prehistoric cave with his little daughter Yvette when another, catastrophic war breaks out. The two stay sealed up in the cave for years, waiting for the devastation outside to abate, then emerge into a Edenic world to become the new Adam and Eve. A 20-page story bound as a volume with illustrations.

Skobolev, Eduard. Catastrophe. Orig. 1983. Trans. from Russian by Sergei Sossinsky. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1989.A ruminative philosophical novel told from shifting perspectives, set on a mythical tropical island which still suffers in the postcolonial era from imperialist domination. A varied cast of characters discusses human nature, the future of communism, and the madness of nuclear weapons. Two-thirds of the way though the novel nuclear war breaks out, a few characters find refuge in a super-shelter, but end by murdering each other. A remarkably gloomy view of humanity’s nuclear future from a Byelorussian author.

Slesar, Henry. “After: Four Fables of the Post-Bomb World” ( Playboy , July l960). In Anon, ed. From the “S” File. Chicago: Playboy, l97l.Consists of four short sketches:     “Doctor.” A memory expert finds his skills are no longer in demand in the postholocaust world, but he finds work teaching courses in how to forget.     “Lawyer.” Because there are eight hundred female survivors for every male, a murderer is condemned to marry his victim’s eighteen wives.     “Merchant.” The haberdashery business will thrive after the war since mutants will need twice as many hats.     “Chief.” Also in Judith Merril, ed. 6th Annual Edition: The Year’s Best S-F. New York: Simon & Schuster, l96l. New York: Dell, l962. Rpt. as The Best of Science Fiction. London: Mayflower, l963. Also in Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander, eds. l00 Great Science Fiction Short-Short Stories. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, l978.White scientists seeking refuge from World War III arrive on a tropical island and check the natives for radioactivity. The latter are impressed by the magical power that the whites have to cause the Geiger counter to click wildly, so they kill and eat them. They celebrate, “for now, they too were gods. The little boxes had begun to click magically for them, also.”

___. “Ersatz.” In Harlan Ellison, ed. Dangerous Visions. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, l967. New York: Signet, l975.The ultimate tale of homophobia: the threat of sex with a transvestite he meets in a bar is enough to drive a soldier back out into a nuclear battle. [62]

___. “The Old Man” ( The Diner’s Club Magazine, September l962). In Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander, eds. Microcosmic Tales: l00 Wondrous Science Fiction Short-Short Stories. New York: Taplinger, l980. Made into an episodde of The Twilight Zone , 1963, titled “The Old Man in the Cave” (season 5, episode 7).The younger postholocaust generation rebels against the unseen elder who runs their society, slays his keepers, and destroys what turns out to be a computer. Without its knowledge, they soon die.

Slonczewski, Joan. The Wall Around Eden. New York: Morrow, 1989. New York: Avon, 1990. London: The Women’s Press, 1991.Small pockets of survivors of World War III find themselves enclosed in protective domes created by benevolent aliens while the rest of the world succumbs to nuclear winter. A strongly pacifist feminist story asserting the need to abandon violence as a means of survival. Deals conscientiously with radiation-induced diseases and birth defects. Compare with Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis trilogy.

Smith, Clark Ashton. “Phoenix.” In Time to Come. New York: Farrar, Straus & Young, l954. New York: Berkley, l958. Also in Other Dimensions. Sauk City, Wis.: Arkham House, l970. Also in Richard J. Hurley, ed. Beyond Belief. New York: Scholastic Book Services, l966. Also in Isaac Asimov, Martin Harry Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh, eds. Catastrophes! New York: Fawcett, l98l.Centuries after numerous nuclear wars the sun has grown cold and the human race has retreated underground. Leftover weapons are fired into the sun to rekindle its heat, but the heroes who fly on the mission die in the process.

Smith, Cordwainer [pseud. of Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger]. The Planet Buyer (expanded from “The Boy Who Bought Old Earth,” Galaxy , April l964). New York: Pyramid, l964. London: Sphere, 1975. Most of this story and its sequel, “The Store of Heart’s Desire” ( If, May 1964) were incorporated, with other materials, in the posthumously published novel Norstrilia . New York: Ballantine, 1975.Telepathic survivors of the holocaust sell an immortality drug excreted by their mutated giant sheep.

Smith, E[dward] E[lmer]. Triplanetary (shorter version in Amazing , January, February, March, April 1934). Reading, Pa.: Fantasy, 1950. New York: Pyramid, 1965. London: Boardman, 1954.The first third of the book, added in the 1950 version, surveys Earth’s history as the battleground of the evil Eddorians and the benign Arisians. Atlantis is destroyed by an atomic missile manipulated by the Eddorians. Chapter 6 depicts a devastating atomic missile conflict, and later chapters depict the use of typical thirties-style atomic rays and bombs in space combat. This book forms the introduction to the popular “Lensman” series, but was completed last.

Smith, Evelyn. “The Last of the Spode” ( Fantasy and Science Fiction, June l953). In Groff Conklin, ed. l7 X Infinity. New York: Dell, l963. Also in Annette P. McComas, ed. The Eureka Years. New York: Bantam, 1982.A satire in which a tiny surviving remnant of the British upper class carries on with stiff upper lip despite the nuclear holocaust. They confront with courage the ultimate horror: the possibility that they may run out of tea.

Smith, George H[enry]. The Coming of the Rats. London: Pike, l96l. London: Digit, l964. Israel: Priory, n.d.A soft-core pornographic novel written in response to the “missile gap,” which it discusses. The war is called the “Blow-Up.” A Los Angeles ad agency executive provisions a cave shelter in the country on land belonging to an elderly Mexican and his sexy eighteen-year-old daughter. The latter seduces him. Learning that rats are more resistant to radiation than humans, he provides himself with cats, dogs, and ferrets to do battle with the anticipated hordes. He is also in love with an idiotic blonde who insists on keeping her virtue and who resists being rescued when the bombs fall (“Really! Atomic War! . . . Some men will do anything to get a girl to do what they want her to do,” she comments). She continues to refuse her favors and services in the cave, nagging at him insufferably. Finally he takes a trip into a nearby town and finds it almost uninhabited as a result of radiation and bacteriological warfare. He encounters a wino with fistfulls of now worthless cash, desperate for a drink. A fourteen-year-old girl whose hair is falling out from radiation disease propositions him, wanting canned food. He gives her canned dog food, which horrifies her. He takes a dog from some men planning to eat it. His first battle with rats takes place in an army-navy surplus store where he acquires a few supplies. He comes upon a gang intent on raping a woman and her fourteen-year-old daughter; although he cannot prevent the mother from being assaulted, he works his way free and kills the men. When he returns, the blonde complains that he didn’t bring the nice clothes and makeup she had wanted. The protagonist, frustrated, finally rapes the blonde; she responds enthusiastically. Three vicious teenagers kill the old Mexican and threaten to rape the women (there is good rape and bad rape in this novel: this is bad rape). The blonde sides with the hoods and must be rescued against her will as the protagonist forces them to dig their own grave and then kills them. He finally realizes that he has loved little Rosa all along, the blonde repents and together they battle an onslaught of giant rats (perhaps mutated as a result of bomb test fallout) in a scene reminiscent of the conclusion of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. The novel ends with both women, having served as draft animals in the plowing and having become pregnant as well, looking forward to a prosperous life with the protagonist. The (very mild) sex scenes are written according to the rigid but peculiar formulas of late fifties and early sixties porn in which prudery is vicious, sexual generosity admirable, and women respond enthusiastically to abuse.

___. Doomsday Wing. Derby, Conn.: Monarch, l963.In this complement to Peter George’s Red Alert, published one year after Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler’s Fail-Safe, an insane Russian general takes advantage of a new Berlin blockade to make a first strike against the U.S. in order to force his country to fight an all-out nuclear war. The complete destruction of America by short-range missiles launched from Soviet merchant vessels is narrowly avoided when the hero flies to Russia and escorts a group of experts back to Denver to inspect the Doomsday Wing he helps to command–a battery of cobalt bombs designed to kill all life on Earth. During this flight he cleverly diverts some heat-seeking missiles into burning Stalingrad. The Russians agree to what promises to be a lasting peace. This is one of the better-researched nuclear war novels, replete with references to Herman Kahn’s On Thermonuclear War (1978) and other works. It debunks the bomber and missile gaps. It also portrays a more rational Soviet Union (with the unfortunate exception of the mad general) than most. Perhaps to justify the building of a doomsday weapon, it stresses the inadequacy of our defenses against a nuclear attack: “The White House and Capitol were vaporized instantly and the Pentagon with its deeply buried War Room ceased to exist.” It also argues that the navy has been allowed to shrink dangerously. Another passage seems aimed at protesters: “Another thirty-megaton weapon devastated Holy Loch, Scotland, catching two Polaris subs and their tenders. Wiped out with them were three hundred Ban the Bomb marchers who had been picketing the base.” Communications between the two warring nations are made unnecessarily difficult by making it impossible for the two heads of state to use the hot line while they are in transit. An officious senator (the hero’s father-in-law) tries to assume command and order the doomsday weapons to be used out of sheer stupidity. The lesson to be learned is rather unclear. On the one hand, the doomsday weapons are portrayed as monstrous, and those who would use them as irresponsible. Yet it is the existence of the Doomsday Wing alone that prevents the complete destruction of the United States and brings peace. A moderately happy ending for the hero is achieved when it is discovered that his two children have survived but that his obnoxious wife has been killed, leaving him free to love a beautiful colleague.

___. “Take Me to Your Leader.” In Isaac Asimov, Martin Harry Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander, eds. Microscopic Tales: l00 Wondrous Science Fiction Short-Short Stories. New York: Taplinger, l980.A man travels from a parallel Earth to warn that the Russians have just attacked the U.S. in his home world, but the version of Earth in which he has arrived can’t use his warning: the Russians are still ruled by the czar and the U.S. is governed by a hereditary successor of Jefferson Davis.

Smith, George O. “The Answer.” Astounding , February l947.Although the United Nations has banned the production of plutonium, the dictator of an unnamed country plans to create his own bombs. He discovers, however, that all U.N. correspondence previously sent him was done on paper especially designed to become highly radioactive–even explosive–if plutonium is created anywhere in its vicinity, turning his nation’s offices into a huge bomb. Only known example of the world being saved through bureaucratic paperwork.

___. “The Undamned.” Astounding , January l947.After nuclear war was frustrated by the invention of effective defensive shields, Earth united and colonized Mars, which rebelled against the mother planet. During the Third Interplanetary War atomic bombing was resumed. The story discusses attempts to deal with a Martian telepathic bomb fuse that detonates when anyone thinks about defusing it.

Smith, L. Neil. Nagasaki Vector. New York: Ballantine, 1983.A time traveler is plunged into an alternative universe when he flies his ship through Nagasaki at the moment the atomic bomb exploded there. He winds up in an anarchist utopia where atomic bombs are used for construction and it has never occurred to anyone to use them as weapons. A comic adventure story.

Smith, Margaret Chase. “Russia’s Rebirth.” See under Collier’s.

Smith, Martin Cruz. Stallion Gate. New York: Random House, 1986.The story of the building of the atomic bomb from the point of view of Robert Oppenheimer’s Indian driver, who is set to spy on him by the paranoid head of the military intelligence unit. This well-crafted novel mixes history and fiction, dealing in equal parts with the morality of the building of the bomb, the paranoia about spies (the protagonist catches Klaus Fuchs, but his boss is more interested in Oppenheimer), and the treatment of the local Indians. At the climax, the protagonist sneaks away from his job long enough to win a prize fight that will earn him the money to buy a jazz nightclub, but he is killed in the end when he is trapped at the Trinity test site when the bomb goes off. Stallion’s Gate is the original name of the site selected for the test. Smith, better known for Gorky Park, is, according to the dustjacket, part Indian.

Smith, Red. “Moscow Olympics.” See under Collier’s.

Snow, C[harles] P[ercy]. The New Men . London: Macmillan, 1954. New York: Scribner’s, 1955.

The narrator’s brother is a nuclear physicist working on the British atomic bomb project. After an initial failure, fission is achieved. The project is interrupted by the successful American construction of a bomb. The use of the weapon at Hiroshima comes as a shock, and concern is expressed that science will be discredited because of it. Physicists are noted as being more concerned about the consequences of their actions than engineers. At the end of the story, it is discovered that British scientists have passed information to the Russians.

Snyder, Guy. Testament XXI. New York: DAW, 1973.An astronaut returns from an expedition to Bernard’s ( sic ) Star to find the Earth, 136 years after the holocaust, a wasteland divided into feudal underground kingdoms. Detroit is dominated by a ruthless priesthood which wages continuing nuclear war with Chicago.

Sohl, Jerry. Point Ultimate. New York: Rinehart, 1955. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1955. New York Bantam, 1959.In 1969 the Russians conquered the U.S. with H-bombs, having safeguarded themselves by erecting an impregnable barrier around their own country. They subdue the population by setting loose a plague virus which must be inoculated against every month. Thirty years later a young man who is immune to the virus sets off on a quest to find other rebels against their cruel dictatorship. After various captures, escapes, and near-misses, he joins a group smuggling immune women and children to Mars. One of the most fantastic of the Russian-occupation novels.

Soldati, Mario. The Emerald. Originally Lo Smeraldo . Milano: Arnoldo Mondadori, l974. Trans. from Italian by William Weaver. New York: Harcourt, l977.A bizarre fantasy in which a man of the present dreams he has entered a future in which the Earth is divided into northern and southern sectors as the result of a plot of the industrialized nations to protect themselves from the Third World. “Satellites” (it is not clear what Soldati means by this term, they seem to be missiles) have been used to create a radioactive barrier called the “Line;” but due to an error, it bisects Russia, Italy, and several other countries. The northern zone is ruled by an East-West coalition called “The United Socialist States of America Europe Asia.” Family life is discouraged, homosexuality encouraged to keep the birth rate down. Movies are prohibited, but the other arts are encouraged. The story depicts the protagonist’s journey across the Line–no longer radioactive, although most people do not know this–carrying an emerald as a gift for a woman with whom he is sexually obsessed. His quest ends in disaster, but he awakes to discover he has been writing this dream in his room. Rather well written, and unusual in depicting homosexuality and masochism sympathetically, but the novel has little bearing on the subject of nuclear war. Compare Lan Stormont’s Tan Ming.

Somtow Sucharitkul. “The Last Line of the Haiku” ( Amazing , November 1981). In Fire from the Wine Dark Sea. Norfolk, Va.: Starblaze, 1983.In the year 2022, on a dying postholocaust Earth, a philosophical whale communicates telepathically with a young Japanese woman, offering to teach humanity how to face death by radiation and plague. Whale embryos are implanted in her ovaries, to be removed and transported to another world by starship. When it is revealed that humans were the creation of ancient cetetian scientists, the Japanese realize they have been guilty of parricide in carrying on the whale hunt, and masses of them commit suicide. When her father kills himself, the young woman decides reluctantly to go on the starship to colonize a new world.

___. Starship and Haiku. New York Pocket Books, 1981.Essentially the same story as the above, told at greater length. A moving novel.

Southwell, Samuel B[eall]. If All the Rebels Die. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, l966. New York: Avon, l968.The U.S. surrenders to the Soviet Union after a nuclear exchange and is occupied by enemy troops. America is forced to disarm itself of nuclear weapons. Washington D.C., and many other cities are spared because the Russians aim at conquest rather than mere annihilation. The novel is set in Texas, where a local oil millionaire organizes aid and resistance until he is arrested and shot. The protagonist is a professor at a Texas college who overcomes his liberal scruples and those of his colleagues to become a local leader in the underground resistance struggle, coordinated nationwide into an eventually successful revolt. The Russian occupation is ruthless: everyone must register, a curfew is imposed, the young are drafted into forced-labor brigades, all business and industry is nationalized, guns are confiscated as well as second cars; deformed children and the insane are killed, birth control is prevented; censorship is imposed; the colleges are controlled; Marxist study groups are set up; exemplary killings of citizens in reprisal for attacks on Russians are carried out; a Babi Yar-style mass execution is perpetrated, and food is exported from the U.S. to Russia while Americans are fed contaminated meat and vegetables. It is pointed out unlikely the Russians will respond to a rebellion by massive bombing of the cities since too many of their own troops are stationed there.

Most of the book consists of a very detailed and fairly convincing account of the building of a resistance movement. The objections of intellectuals and ordinary citizens who find resistance distasteful are mercilessly satirized, although the novel is not simplistically one-sided. The conclusion is ambiguous: the rebellion seems to be successful, but the last scene depicts the protagonist dying in guilt and despair as he realizes that he has failed to prevent the deaths by nuclear bomb (triggered by the resistance to kill enemy troops) of thousands of teenagers left behind in the evacuated city. He is blinded by the bomb blast just before being shot. His wife is depicted as hysterically foolish, his son and daughter as heroic. Comparable in theme to C. M. Kornbluth’s much better known Not This August, but Southwell’s book is superior on several counts: it is much more sophisticated about Russia and communism (although still clearly quite biased); it explores the reactions of people to the occupation in a far more detailed, complex, and credible manner; and it takes seriously the moral ambiguities involved in a ruthless resistance struggle.

Spinrad, Norman. “The Big Flash.” In Damon Knight, ed. Orbit 5 . New York: Putnam, l969. New York: Berkley, l969. Also in Norman Spinrad. The Star-Spangled Future. New York: Ace, 1979. Also in Stephen Whaky and Stanley J. Cook, eds. Man Unwept: Visions from the Inner Eye. New York: McGraw-Hill, l974. Also in Damon Knight, ed. The Best from Orbit. New York: Berkley, l975. Also in James E. Gunn, ed. The Road to Science Fiction #3: From Heinlein to Here. New York: Signet, l979. Also in H. Bruce Franklin, ed. Countdown to Midnight: Twelve Great Stories About Nuclear War. New York: DAW, 1984. Also in Walter M. Miller, Jr., and Martin H. Greenberg, eds. Beyond Armageddon: Twenty-one Sermons to the Dead. New York: Donald I. Fine, 1985.A rock group is secretly sponsored by the military which uses it to promote the idea that the use of nuclear weapons in Southeast Asia is acceptable. They are all too successful: the idea of a nuclear holocaust as an apocalyptic solution to the world’s problems becomes popular. The result is an all-out nuclear war. [33]

___. “A Child of Mind” (Originally “Your Name Shall Be . . . Darkness,” Amazing Stories, January l964). In The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, l970. New York: Avon, l970. New York: Popular Library, l975. London: MacDonald, l97l.An explorer reluctantly uses doomsday bombs to destroy all life on a planet which produces insidiously attractive females who threaten the survival of the human race.

___. The Iron Dream. New York: Avon, l972. Boston: Gregg, 1977. New York: Jove, l978. New York: Timescape, l982.A frame narrative establishes that the bulk of the book is a novel entitled Lord of the Swastika by Adolph Hitler in an alternate history in which he remained an illustrator and writer instead of becoming fŸhrer. The nuclear war–called the “Time of Fire”–resulted in a massive mutation-screening program to preserve the pure human genotype. Feric Jaggar begins as the leader of a motorcyle gang, and battles the mutant Doms whose telepathic power controls their armies. His genocidal crusade fails to stop the launching of a devastating salvo of leftover nuclear weapons. Jaggar sterilizes everyone, plans to repopulate the world with perfect S.S. clones, and sends out ships to conquer other star systems. Like in much of Spinrad’s other fiction (for instance, The Men in the Jungle ), here he seems to deplore violence while revelling it. He provides his own criticism and self-defense in an afterword that presents a critique of Hitler’s novel as a phallic violence fantasy. See Casey Fredericks, The Future of Eternity: Mythologies of Science Fiction and Fantasy (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, l982), l02-05; Theodore Sturgeon’s introduction to the Gregg Press edition. In Magill, 3: l062-67. [

___. “Once More, With Feeling” ( Knight l969). In The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, l970. New York: Avon, l970. New York: Popular Library, l975. London: MacDonald, l97l.An American soldier on leave encounters a strange young Russian woman in a bar, a time-traveling thrill-seeker from the grim post-Big War future dominated by the victorious World Union of Soviet Socialist States. It is revealed that he too is a time-traveler–from that very war, in which he was responsible for the nuclear bombing of Moscow. She’s turned on; he’s disgusted.

___. “Riding the Torch.” In Threads of Time. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1974. Also in Isaac Asimov, Martin Harry Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh, eds. The 7 Cardinal Virtues of Science Fiction. New York: Fawcett, 1981. Also in Isaac Asimov, Martin Harry Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh, eds. The Deadly Sins and Cardinal Virtues of Science Fiction. New York: Bonanza, 1982.Humanity survives only in space after the Earth has been contaminated by the Slow Motion War. The hopeless search for a new planet is maintained by “voidsuckers” who foster the myth of a future home for humanity because they are addicted to the experience of space. A filmmaker experiences space himself, learns the truth, but makes a deceptive film, continuing the lie. A fine story.

___. Songs From the Stars . New York: Simon and Schuster, l980. New York: Pocket Books, l98l.A postholocaust future rejects what is called “black” technology. A couple encounters a new generation of scientists which sends them to an orbiting space station containing tapes from a galactic civilization which will transform life on earth. A new twist on the old anti-technology theme. Muted optimism in the Heinlein vein.

___. “Technicality” ( Analog , August l966). In The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, l970. New York: Avon, l970. New York: Popular Library, l975. London: MacDonald, 1971. As “Down the Rabbit Hole.” In James Sallis, ed. The War Book. London: Hart-Davis, 1969.Earth has been overrun by fanatical green bunny rabbits who respond to H-bombs with weapons like barf gas and suicide and love rays. Directly assaulted, they passively allow themselves to be killed, for they are militant pacifists who are driven to conquer but cannot kill.

___. “World War Last.” In Elizabeth Mitchell, ed. After the Flames. New York: Baen, 1985.A complex and bizarre farce concerning drug-dealing, kidnapping, and nuclear terrorism in the Middle East. A fanatical Arab plots to get the superpowers to annihilate each other and Israel in a nuclear conflict. A plane accidentally bombs the French coastline, the Russians and the Americans both bomb the Arab, and the resulting crater is turned into a resort. The Middle Eastern oilfields are set on fire by the conflict. The Russian premier is a computer-activated corpse.

Springer, Nancy. “Serenity.” In Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1989.

Spohr, Carl W. “The Final War” ( Wonder Stories, March, April 1932).A prolonged war involving many technological innovations, including electric ones, becomes more and more lethal, until the use of atomic weapons destroys civilization and annihilates most of humanity. Years later a world government is formed by the survivors, hoping to put an end to war. Effectively portrays modern warfare as self-destructive madness. Spohr was a German artillery officer in WW I.

Stacy, Ryder. Doomsday Warrior. New York: Zebra, 1984Yet another blood-and-thunder anti-Red combat novel from Zebra. In 2089, one hundred years after a panicky Russian first strike on September 11, 1989, hero Ted “Rock” Rockson, the “ultimate American,” leads his band of resistance fighters against the evil Russian occupation forces who indulge in all manner of tortures, including the use of a laser brain-burning device. Conflict between the KGB and the Party is a prominent theme. The Earth’s axis has been tipped and 90 percent of all plant and animal species are extinct. Most of the rest have mutated. Ninety million Russians died in the attack that even more severely devastated the U.S. Russian Star Wars technology destroyed most incoming missiles; only twenty-four got through. Cities with large black populations were especially targeted, because the Soviets knew that blacks would make formidable resistance fighters. Radioactive “acid storms” wreak havoc. Contains the most stupid fallout shelter ever depicted: a vast underground city was created by trapped commuters in a highway tunnel outside Denver when it was bombed shut. The novel ends with a particle beam weapon being used to defeat a party of Russians.

___. Doomsday Warrior, No. 2: Red America. New York: Zebra, 1984.More struggles with the Russians. The laser torture device is being used in Pavlov City to reprogram American workers into zombie soldiers to fight the resistance. One scientist predicts the sheltered Russians will eventually die, whereas the Americans have become hardened to radiation by constant exposure. At one point the captured Rockson is fiendishly tortured by being injected with an aphrodisiac and strung up opposite a chained nude young woman. She manages to escape her manacles and relieve his frustration. Toward its end the novel lapses into self-parody as the rebels meet jive-talking, motorcyle-riding Indians called “the Crazy Alligators” who model themselves on beatniks.

Stacy, Rider. American Paradise (Doomsday Warrior no. 13). New York: Zebra, 1988.

___. American Rebellion (Doomsday Warrior no. 6). New York: Zebra, 1985. London: Futura, 1988.

___. America’s Last Declaration (Doomsday Warrior #5). New York: Zebra, 1985.Landing in Lake Superior, Rock kills a Plesiosaurus (a product of regressive evolution ). He battles man-eating plants, is captured by French-speaking, panther-keeping Amazons who force him to have gang sex with them. He also encounters living metal filings. In a strangely anachronistic diner the locals deny a nuclear war ever happened. He uses his psi powers to win a car in a poker game. Then he combats cannibalistic bandits.The Russians are now allied with vat-bred Nazis, and have invaded the U.S. Rock develops a network of mutant telepaths and uses them to defend Century City (built in a tunnel outside Denver) from the invaders. One of the defenders is a heroic Jew. Technicians shoot down incoming jets with particle beam rifles, but one of them succeeds in dropping a neutron bomb which severely damages Century City, but does not entirely destroy it. There is a brief reference to nuclear winter early in the novel.

___. Bloody America (Doomsday Warrior #4). New York: Zebra, 1985.A radioactive “Ocean of Death” erupts from the earth. Rock is captured by the KGB, tortured, and taken to Moscow, where rebellious starving Russians have recently been slaughtered. He sees rows of dissidents crucified along the highway into the city. He es capes, aided by members of a jazz-loving dissident underground living in the old subway system. He is recaptured, and forced to fight in the gladiatorial games with a three-armed fang-toothed black giant. Led by Rock, the prisoners defeat this and other foes and assault the spectators in the stands. They join forces with the jive-talking jazz rebels, who use ultrasonic instrument-weapons to free other prisoners. Rock destroys the missile control center, and knocks out the Soviet satellite system, then steals a MIG and flies to the U.S., parachuting down over the Great lakes.

Sequel no. 14 American Death Orbit

___. Doomsday Warrior, No. 4: Bloody America. New York: Zebra, 1985.Captured and tortured by the KGB, Rock is taken to Moscow in the midst of a violent uprising by starving Russians. The latter are slaughtered, and rows of their crucified corpses line the highway to the city. Rock escapes with the aid of the jazz-loving dissident underground which lives in the abandoned subway system. Rock and his companions are captured and set to fight in the Moscow gladiatorial games with a three-armed, fang-toothed black giant. However, the prisoners turn on the audience in the stands and join the jive-talking jazz rebels who use their ultrasonic instrument-weapons to free other prisoners. Rock destroys the Missile Control Center, steals a tank, knocks out all the satellites, and escapes in an MIG to the Great Lakes.

___. Doomsday Warrior, No. 14: American Death Orbit. New York: Zebra, 1988.

Star Blazers. See Nishizaki.

Stevens, Julie. “Miles to Go Before I Sleep” ( Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine , April 1982). In Shawna McCarthy, ed. Isaac Asimov’s Space of Her Own. New York: Dial, 1983. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1984.Country folk blame city dwellers for the Great Conflagration and the germ warfare that followed. The heroine, using borrowed methane-powered cars abandoned by other travelers balked by broken bridges, is stranded in a rural town and fails to save a young man who had tried to escape to a city. She does, however, succeed in rescuing a young crippled girl. It is revealed at the end of the story that the heroine is a city Mayor.

Stolbov, Bruce. Last Fall. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1987.A neobarbarian tribe which calls itself “the Survivors” struggles against the constant threat of starvation a generation after a nuclear winter. They annually reenact a commemoration of the holocaust. Two solutions to their problem of nutrition are offered at the end of the novel; one is hopeful an ear of corn for planting, the other ominous cannibalism. A grim and gloomy tale told with considerable art, although the tribe does seem to have developed a neobarbarian culture rather too quickly to be credible since there are still preholocaust survivors living.

Stopa, Jon. “Hot Water.” Astounding , February l958.A man uses a nuclear weapon to close the water-supply tunnel for Denver in an individual protest. The narrator suggests that this action illustrates that government tyranny can be ended by individual possession of atomic bombs. See Jack Williamson, “The Equalizer.”

Stormont, Lan. Tan Ming . New York: Exposition, l955.An amusing fantasy in which a department store window dresser falls in love with a robot mannequin and manages to conjure into its body the soul of a princess named Tan Ming from a postholocaust future. They travel through the countryside and join forces with an old farmer who detests the ranting of the apocalyptic cult to which his sister belongs. The narrator notes that the preacher’s sermon depicts scenes resembling a “world-encompassing atomic chain reaction”: “The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are there shall be burned up.” The three companions make their way into Tan Ming’s time, which is the world after the Great Blast–a fact which it takes them an inordinately long time to discover. Few people have survived, disease is rampant, the sky is overcast, looting is frequent, there is no electricity, and even the calendar has been abandoned. Explosives of all kinds have been banned, and no science except medicine is permitted. Women outnumber men, and polygamy is common (to encourage fertility in a world where many deformed babies are born). Apocalyptic religion, magic, and witchcraft flourish, however. Evil magicians prove to be the worst enemies the protagonists face in their quest to restore Tan Ming’s soul to her comatose body. Doing battle with a witch, the window dresser extemporizes the following spell: “One-zol, zig-zol-zam, / Bobtail, vinegar, tiddle-um-tam; / Nuclear fission, mushroom smoke, / Atomic blast I now invoke. . . . . Isotopes and bombs terrific, / Bloody Mary, South Pacific! / Uranium, Plutonium and Chlorophyll galore. / Pop-up toasters! Boogie Woogie! / Much worse things in store. / Alpha, Beta, Gamma ray– / You must now do as I say!” He is successful, but her final curse thrusts him back into his own time in northern Ontario. He tries in vain to warn people of the approaching nuclear war and returns in the end to the future of his beloved Tan Ming. The message of the novel is somewhat confused by the fact that this future world is actually quite attractive, including a delightful trip on a steamboat right out of Mark Twain. This story of a meek little man thrust into a world of eroticism and magic is reminiscent of the novels of Thorne Smith. The dust jacket states that “Lan Stormont” was the pseudonym of the vice-president and general manager of an important industrial firm in Westmount, QuŽbec.

Strasser, Todd. Fallout . Somerville, Massachusetts: Candlewick Press, 2013.An alternative-history young adult novel in which the Cuban Missile Crisis results in a strike on the US. The story is set in a family backyard bombshelter which various neighbors have forced their way into.

Strieber, Whitley, and James Kunetka. Warday: And the Journey Onward. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, l984. New York: Warner, 1985. Available on tape, read by Richard Lavin and Larry Brandenburg, on three cassettes. Brilliance Corporation, P. O. Box 114A Grand Haven, Mich. 49417.Despite its unremarkable style, its rudimentary plot, its political improbabilities and its shallow characters, this is by far the most thoroughly researched of all the attempts to depict nuclear war realistically. It reads almost like a collection of notes on various studies and reports. The book consists mainly of a tour of America, four years after the war, narrated in a documentary format, complete with transcripts of fictional interviews, results of public opinion surveys, and purloined secret government reports. Warday is October 28, l988, and the conflict lasts thirty-six minutes. Because of the immediate collapse of command and control networks, the war is limited after only a few targets are hit, but the results are nevertheless catastrophic. By depicting a very limited nuclear war in great detail, Strieber and Kunetka make the point that even the most strictly limited nuclear war imaginable would be self-defeating. It turns out that our allies have made secret agreements among them not to join in an East-West nuclear exchange. With the two great powers laid waste, they are free to dominate the world. The U.S. fragments into semi-autonomous areas, some dominated by the British, others by the Japanese. America is turned into a collection of underdeveloped Third World nations. Warday’ s account of the blast effects of the bombs is far more detailed than most. Civil defence plans are depicted as absurd and useless. The authors place great stress on the effects of electromagnetic pulse damage in ending industrial civilization and preventing communication in the stricken U.S., where bizarre rumors are the most common form of information. Seven million die immediately, sixty million of later causes, including plagues and famine. The ravages of radiation disease are depicted in great detail. Science fiction’s mutation myths are debunked, though a few super-bright babies are born. There are great increases in cancer, sterility, miscarriages, birth defects, and infant and childhood deaths. Victims are triaged, with the incurable ones being denied all treatment except that of “witches” practicing traditional herbal medicine. The thinning of the ozone layer is mentioned, but its effects are not depicted in any detail. Warday is heavily influenced by the Vietnam era. The narrators are able to escape a variety of hazards by using their old army skills; the nihilist “destructuralists” they encounter near Los Alamos are familiar radical sixties types, and the Chicano dream of an autonomous nation in the Southwest named “Aztlan” comes from the same period. California alone is relatively untouched by the war, and fiercely maintains a strict immigration policy which is a parody of the state’s depression-era attitude toward dust bowl refugees. Alaska has been sold to Canada. The British navy patrols the seas, tracking and destroying still-menacing nuclear submarines whose commanders are unaware that the countries they are protecting no longer exist. New York has been abandoned to packs of wild dogs because chemical wastes have made it uninhabitable, but the salvaging of its materials is a major industry. Among the more moving passages is a group of children’s essays on the fear of contaminated spring rains. Near the novel’s end a trainload of children being sent south to escape an impending famine is turned back. The novel contains numerous private jokes and references: for instance, to public radio ( Moon Over Morocco , the ZBS fantasy serial broadcast by National Public Radio, and “Lake Wobegon,” fictional home of Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion ). Science fiction author Chelsea Quinn Yarbro turns up as “Quinn Yarbro,” and other people appear under their own names. Strieber and Kunetka’s extensive research underlines strikingly how slipshod most of their predecessors have been.

Strieber, Whitley. Wolf of Shadows. New York: Knopf, 1985.A moving young adult novel in which a naturalist who studies wolves in the wild survives a nuclear winter with her daughter and with the help of the friendly leader of the wolf pack. Wolves and humans aid each other as they battle starvation, wild dogs, and attacking men. Finally they reach a southern region where the land seems to be thawing; but an afterword by the author states that the true end of the story comes when we decide, as a species to dismantle the machine and use our great intelligence on behalf of the earth that bears us, instead of against her. Strieber is the author of Wolfen and the co-author, with James Kunetka, of Warday.

Stroup, Dorothy. In the Autumn Wind. New York: Scribner’s, 1987.The saga of a Japanese woman’s attempt to protect her family and find happiness and prosperity in Hiroshima over a span of four decades, from 1945 to the present. The bomb affects the family fortunes in many ways: one son disappears immediately, a daughter dies of leukemia, another daughter whose wedding to a hibakusha is opposed because of the danger of defective offspring, marries as he is dying of stomach cancer, another son is badly injured in a student demonstration opposing the rearming of Japan, and the protagonist’s brother dies of cancer. At the end of the novel the missing son’s ashes are unearthed. The protagonist spends her last day observing the August 6 anniversary of the bombing at the Peace Park. Despite the terrible toll the bomb takes on this family, the novel is basically affirmative in mood: depicting warmly the energy and love with which the woman tries to rebuild her life and that of her family. This novel is highly unusual in that an American author has tried to depict Japanese culture from the inside, as a Japanese might view it.

Strugatsky, Arkady and Boris. Prisoners of Power. New York & London: Macmillan 1968.The adventures of a young human with superpowers who crash-lands on an alien world damaged by a devastating nuclear war. Most of the plot concerns the use of radiation transmission devices which are disguised as antiballistic missile sites but which are in actuality used to control the minds of the population by the mutant rulers. The young man becomes involved in a rebellion, but discovers that he is frustrated by a larger Galactic Security Council plan to save the planet. To my knowledge, this is the only Soviet novel in English to depict the aftermath of a nuclear war, even in an incidental way.

Stuart, Don A. See under Campbell, John W., Jr.

Sturgeon, Theodore [pseud. of Edward Hamilton Waldo]. “August Sixth l945.” Astounding , December l945.The first published fictional response to the bombing of Hiroshima. A brief sketch printed in the letters column defending science fiction’s prognosticative powers in light of the bomb. [

___. “Memorial” ( Astounding , April l946). In Without Sorcery. Philadelphia: Prime, l948. Rpt. as Not Without Sorcery. New York: Ballantine, l96l. Also in Patricia S. Warrick, Martin H. Greenberg, and Harvey A. Katz, eds. Science Fiction: Contemporary Mythology–The SFWA-SFRA Anthology. New York: Harper & Row, l978. Also in Frederik Pohl, Martin H. Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander, eds. Science Fiction of the 40’s. New York: Avon, 1978. Also in Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg, eds. The Great Science Fiction Stories: 8 (1946). New York: DAW, 1982.A scientist sets off an advanced nuclear device as a warning against war; but instead he triggers a nuclear war.

___. “Thunder and Roses” ( Astounding , November l947). In Groff Conklin, ed. A Way Home, New York: Pyramid, l956. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1955. New York: Pyramid, 1956. London: Mayflower, 1955. Also in Thunder and Roses. London: Michael Joseph, l957. Also in Anthony R. Lewis, ed. The Best of Astounding. New York: Baronet, 1978. Also in James Gunn, ed. The Road to Science Fiction #3: From Heinlein to Here. New York: Signet, l979. Also in Stanley Schmidt, ed. War and Peace: Possible Futures from Analog. New York: Dial, l983. Also in H. Bruce Franklin, ed. Countdown to Midnight: Twelve Great Stories About Nuclear War. New York: DAW, 1984.The U.S., devastated by a sneak nuclear attack, refuses to retaliate out of fear of ecocide. See Albert I. Berger, “Love, Death, and the Atomic Bomb: Sexuality and Community in Science Fiction, l935-55,” Science-Fiction Studies 8 (l981): 289-90. ___. “Unite and Conquer” ( Astounding , October l948). In Groff Conklin, ed. A Way Home . New York: Funk & Wagnalls, l955. New York: Pyramid, l956. London: Mayflower: l955. Also in Thunder and Roses. London: Michael Joseph, l957.A surprise nuclear attack on the U.S. and the arrival of mysterious satellites in orbit suggest that Earth is about to be attacked by alien invaders. It turns out both have been invented and manipulated by a scientist aiming to unite humanity by presenting it with a threat from outside. In a twist ending, the physicist’s military brother realizes that he is responsible for the weapons and summons a hired assassin; but when he hears his sibling’s full explanation, he switches clothes with him and allows himself to be killed in his place. “Unite and conquer,” writes Sturgeon, is the obverse of the slogan “Divide and rule.”

Sucharitkul, Somtow. See Somtow Suchartikul.

Sullivan, Timothy Robert. “The Comedian.” Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, June l982.A man finds himself compelled to steal children by a strange semitransparent man who continuously impersonates various film, radio, and television comedians. The stranger is an emissary from a post-World War III world seeking genetic material to revive the human race. One of the few surviving sources of knowledge of the past is a collection of comedy tapes. The police arrive just as the last child has been seized; but at that moment a nuclear bomb goes off, and they are whisked into the future.

Sully, Kathleen M. Skrine. London: Peter Davies, l960. London: Consul, l963.A violent, wandering tramp is mistakenly hailed as a miracle-working healer in a postholocaust village and made schoolteacher by its leaders. When he refuses to become a party to the village dictator’s schemes for imperial conquest, the people are turned against him and he is killed. Contains a strong critique of Christianity. Skrine, the tramp, argues that people need to learn to forgive themselves. Only very vague references to nuclear war.

Sutton, Jeff. The Atom Conspiracy (originally “The Man Who Had No Brains,” Amazing , August, September l96l). New York: Avalon, l963. New York: Ace, l966.An empire which banned atomic research was founded in l999 after the day-long Atomic War of l970. Now, in 2449, mutant telepaths are relentlessly hunted down, but they organize secretly to revive nuclear science for the good of humanity. Some of them, like Kuttner’s Baldies, are evil, and want to rule the world. The agent sent to infiltrate the conspiracy turns out to be a secret telepath himself and joins them.

___. H-Bomb Over America. New York: Ace, l967.As the U.S. and USSR near agreement on nuclear disarmament, Chinese agents manage to launch a Russian cobalt bomb into orbit, hoping to precipitate an exchange which will destroy the two superpowers, leaving them to inherit the Earth. While the Russians voluntarily allow the U.S. to bomb the launching site for the weapon the Chinese have taken over, the Americans also launch an experimental near-space vehicle which sabotages the orbiting bomb and redirects it to Peking. The resolution of this novel is somewhat ambiguous. The Chinese replace their defeated premier, and the U.S. and USSR begin serious disarmament talks–but the face of the world is not transformed, as in most nuclear political thrillers. The book suffers from a lack of tension. The plot seems promising, but is narrated in such a way that it generates very little suspense. An earlier Sutton novel with a related plot is Bombs in Orbit (New York: Ace, l959) in which orbiting Russian bombs are successfully knocked out. [

Swindells, Robert. Brother in the Land. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1984. New York: Holiday, 1985.A young boy struggles to survive in the wake of a nuclear attack on Britain. Civil defense plans collapse and the military turns renegade, setting up a brutal dictatorship, shooting wounded survivors and poisoning the mentally disturbed. The protagonist and his little brother join a resistance commune. Attempts to farm the land prove useless as radiation-damaged crops sprout worthlessly. People continue to die of radiation poisoning. A baby without a mouth is born and dies. A Swiss Red Cross helicopter arrives and denounces the resistance community as Communists, forces them to disarm. The starving colony attacks the military stronghold and conquers it. But the future is grim. The protagonist, his brother, and his heroic girlfriend are on their way to a hoped-for refuge when the little brother dies of radiation disease. Hope is slim as the novel closes. The most pessimistic of youth-oriented atomic war novels.

Szilard, Leo. “Grand Central Terminal” ( University of Chicago Magazine, June l96l). In The Voice of the Dolphins and Other Stories. New York: Simon & Schuster, l96l. London: Gollancz, 1961. London: Sphere, 1967. Also in Groff Conklin, ed. Great Science Fiction by Scientists. New York: Collier, l962. Also in Robert Pierce, ed. Science Fiction 2. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1973.Visiting aliens are puzzled by the disappearance of all life on Earth, seemingly caused by uranium explosions. One of them argues that a race which could invent pay toilets would also be capable of the unparalleled folly of intraspecies warfare.

___. “My Trial as a War Criminal” ( University of Chicago Law Review, Fall l949). In The Voice of the Dolphins and Other Stories. New York: Simon & Schuster, l96l. London: Gollancz, l96l. London: Sphere, l967. Also in Judith Merril, ed. 7th Annual Edition: The Year’s Best S-F. New York: Simon & Schuster, l962. New York: Dell, l963. As The Best of Science Fiction 2. London: Mayflower, l964.After the Russians conquer the U.S. with bacteriological warfare, all of the scientists who worked on the nuclear bomb are arrested and brought to trial under the principles enunciated at Nuremberg. Szilard’s defense is ineffectual, but the trial comes abruptly to a halt when the Russians prove not to be immune to the virus they have unleashed against America.

Tabori, Paul. The Survivors. London: World Distributors, 1964.A frivolous account of the depopulation of much of the world in a complex conflict beginning with the invasion of England by the Russians, who have temporarily rendered the British receptive by using a peace gas on them. They use nuclear rifles. The tiny state of Vignola is attacked by small nuclear bombs. Arabs hit England with more of them. Nuclear “gamma dust” is used in a U.S.-Chinese conflict and in Britain. Bacteriological warfare spreads, Russia is devastated, the monarchy is restored, earlier ways of life are resumed.

Takemishi Hiroko. “The Rite.” In Kenzaburo Oe, ed. The Crazy Iris and Other Stories of the Atomic Aftermath. Tokyo: Shiueisha Press, 1984. Trans. Eileen Kato. New York: Grove, 1985.Fantasies of her dying friend’s coming funeral blend in the imagination of the narrator with memories of the Hiroshima bombing. First published in Japanese in 1963.

Talbot, George E. Glory to Ajela! New York: Vantage, l972.A frame story set ten thousand years in the future involves a power struggle in a superstitious culture over a newly discovered manuscript detailing the truth about the ancient nuclear war that ended the previous era. Because it challenges deeply held religious beliefs about the past, an attempt is made to censor it. Most of the novel is made up of the manuscript itself, which details the adventures of six men and twenty-eight women who find themselves trapped in a New York City shelter during an atomic holocaust which eliminates almost all other life on Earth. The author focuses primarily on the gleeful plots of the women to establish a happy polygamous society. In one touching scene a sixteen-year-old weeps pitifully when she is initially rebuffed by her would-be mate. Further exploration reveals that the war was the result of a plot involving the Chinese and stupid young American revolutionaries. Isolated pockets of survivors are contacted around the world, and civilization begins again. Says one character, “Someday, Man will look to the stars again, but now we would settle for a good cup of coffee.” The author is a retired electronics technician.

Tanaka Chikao. “The Head of Mary: A Nagasaki Fantasy.” Trans. David G. Goodman. In David G. Goodman, ed. After Apocalypse: Four Japanese Plays of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1986.Various characters discuss atomic bomb disease, test fallout, and plot to steal and reassemble fragments of a statue of the Virgin Mary which was shattered by the impact of the Nagasaki bomb.

Teller, Edward. “A Concise History of the Crostic Union War.” In Edward Teller with Allen Brown. The Legacy of Hiroshima. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, l962.A sketch offered as an illustration of Teller’s thesis that a limited nuclear war can be fought successfully. When the USSR warns that U.S. firing of air-to-air missiles will result in an all-out retaliatory attack, the president calls its bluff; and since the Russians have nothing to gain by following through on their threat, they refrain. Both sides use limited nuclear weapons; America wins.

Temple, William F. “The Two Shadows” ( Startling Stories , March l95l). In E. F. Bleiler, and T. E. Dikty, eds. The Best Science-Fiction Stories l952. New York: Fell, l952. Rept. as The Best Science Fiction Stories: Third Series. London: Grayson, 1953. Also in John Carnell, ed. No Place Like Earth. London: Boardman, l952.The only survivors of the holocaust when the spaceship carrying them crashes on Mars are an intellectual struggling to preserve the knowledge and art of the past, a neanderthal survivalist type, and a sexy nurse who prefers the latter. The intellectual kills the other man for using Keats’s poems to fuel his campfire, and at the end the nurse reluctantly faces the fact that she will have to mate with the murderer if she wants the human race to continue. Meanwhile they have discovered a cache of Martian microfilm left behind by a vanished race. The story has some intellectual pretentions, but is remarkably confused.

Tenn, William [pseud. of Philip Klass]. “Eastward Ho!” ( Fantasy and Science Fiction, October l958). In The Wooden Star. New York: Ballantine, l968.      Also in Robert P. Mills, ed. The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: Ninth Series. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, l960. New York: Ace, l964. London: Gollancz, l962. London: Panther, l964. Also in Brian Aldiss, ed. Yet More Penguin Science Fiction. Harmondsworth: Penguin, l964. Also in Robert Silverberg, ed. Alpha 4. New York: Ballantine, l973. Also in Robert Hoskins, ed. Wondermakers 2. New York: Fawcett, l974. Also in Walter M. Miller, Jr. and Martin H. Greenberg, eds. Beyond Armageddon: Twenty-one Sermons to the Dead. New York: Donald I. Fine, 1985.A role-reversal satire in which Indians have taken over America after the last big war and whites petition in vain to preserve their treaty rights. Russia has similarly been overrun by Tatars. [20]

___. “Generation of Noah” (originally as “The Quick and the Bomb,” Suspense , Spring l95l). In Of All Possible Worlds. London: Michael Joseph, 1956. Also in The Wooden Star. New York: Ballantine, 1968. Also in E. F. Bleiler and T. E. Dikty, eds. The Best Science Fiction Stories: l952. New York: Fell, l952. Rpt as The Best Science Fiction Stories: Third Series. London: Grayson, 1953. Also in E. F. Bleiler and T.E. Dikty, eds. Frontiers in Space. New York: Bantam, 1955.A farmer severely disciplines his son when he fails to be sufficiently prompt during air raid drills, but when the bombs actually begin to fall and he is barely able to save the child he makes all his children promise that they and their descendants will never punish anyone again.

Tepper, Sheri S. The Gate to Women’s Country. New York: Doubleday, 1988. New York: Bantam, 1989. London: Bantam, 1989. London: Corgi, 1990.Women and peaceful men occupy the cities while male warriors live outside their walls and conduct occasional battles. As in Pamela Sargent’s The Shore of Women, which in many ways it closely resembles, a young woman falls in love with a warrior; but in this case she regrets it when she discovers he is as brutal as his comrades. It is revealed in the end that the women are carrying out a eugenic program to breed male combatitiveness out of the human race and develop mental telepathy. Centuries after the convulsion, there are still some radioactive hot spots, many animal species are extinct, humans have serious fertility problems, there are many birth defects, and technology remains at a fairly low level. The story is interwoven with a remarkably powerful ritual play called Ipheiugenia in Ilium , based loosely on Sophocles’ The Trojan Women .

Terman, Douglas C. Free Flight. New York: Scribner, 1980. New York: Pocket Books, 1981.The hero and his courageous black companion flee the vicious conquering Russians and their American collaborators by light plane into Canada. The nuclear war was the result of a preemptive strike by the USSR.

Thackara, James. America’s Children. London: Chatto & Windus, 1984. New York: Overlook, 2001.A fascinating, well-researched, extraordinarily detailed fictional biography of Robert Oppenheimer which seeks to pierce the enigma of the man’s motives. A detailed account of his role in the Manhattan Project, the Haakon Chevalier affair, and his security problems. Much less attention is given to the actual testing of the bomb. A brief description of the Hiroshima bombing is contained in chapter 27.

Thériault, Yves. “Akua Nuten.” Originally in Si la bombe m’était conté. Montréal: Éditions du jour, l962. Trans. Howard Roiter. In Philip Stratford, ed. Stories from Québec. New York : Van Nostrand Reinhold, l974. Also in H. Bruce Franklin, ed. Countdown to Midnight: Twelve Great Stories About the Nuclear War. New York: DAW, 1984.An Indian welcomes the extinction of the white race through nuclear war, envisioning his own people taking over the forest once more, but as he travels toward the highlands he comes down with radiation poisoning. “The wind kept on blowing from the south, warm and mild.” The volume in which this story originally appeared– Si la bombe m’ ‘ était conté– consists entirely of stories depicting the reactions of various peoples to the bomb. Compare Bradbury, “The Highway.” Also compare with two other excellent tales of simple folk encountering the bomb: B. Wongar’s “Maramara” (in The Track to Bralgu. [Boston: Little, Brown, l978]) and Dino Buzzati’s “A Siberian Shepherd’s Report of the Bomb” (in Clarence R. Decker and Charles Angoff, eds., Modern Stories from Many Lands. [New York: Many Land Books, l963]). The first is not clearly about a nuclear war, and the second concerns a bomb test.

Thomas, Lowell. “I Saw Them Chute Into the Urals.” See under Collier’s .

Thomas, Theodore L. “Day of Succession” ( Astounding , August 1959). In Damon Knight, ed. A Century of Science Fiction. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1962. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962. New York: Dell, 1963. London: Gollancz, 1963.A ruthless general insists on attacking on sight invaders reminiscent of Wells’s Martians, and proves to be right. At the story’s end, atomic bombs are about to be used to exterminate the aliens at an enormous cost in human life.

Tilley, Patrick. Blood River: The Amtrak Wars, Book IV. London: Sphere, 1988.

___. Cloud Warrior. New York: Macmillan, l984.In 2989, long after the War of a Thousand Suns, Mutes living a simple tribal life on the Earth’s surface (though some of them possess extraordinary magical powers) battle the Trackers of the technocratic Amtrak Federation who dwell in vast subterranean cities and ignorantly blame the Mutes for the ancient holocaust. The Mutes, with more justice, blame the ancestors of the Trackers and tell the story of how everyone was killed except an old man named She-Kargo and an old woman named Me-Shegun. They worship the Great Mother goddess Tamla-Motown (the novel is filled with awful jokey names). A young pilot on his first expedition is shot down by the Mutes, falls in love with one of them, and is destined to play a role in fulfilling an ancient prophecy of a messianic figure called Talisman. Tilley acknowledges feminism by creating some tough, courageous female figures, but the real stars are male. The latest example of the tradition of the high-tech-versus-low-tech-struggle story. Cloud Warrior is the first part of a projected trilogy to be called The Amtrak Wars.

___ . The First Family: The Amtrak Wars, Book II. New York: Baen, 1986. London: Sphere, 1985.The protagonist is torn between the high-tech underground world and the Mute surface culture, and becomes a double agent. He discovers that he has been lied to: the surface is not in fact still radioactive. He becomes involved with the medium-tech culture of the Japanese Iron Masters.

___ . Iron Master: The Amtrak Wars Book III. New York: Baen, 1987. London: Sphere, 1987.Depicts in great detail the “Jap” culture, portraying it in a highly stereotyped manner as cruel and ruthless. The protagonist helps the ruling Iron Masters to build rocket planes, then destroys planes and rulers together. Electricity, called the Dark Light is taboo in their culture. Chapter 2 contains a myth explaining the nuclear holocaust, which occurred in 2015, at the end of Old Time.

___ . Illustrated Guide to the Amtrak Wars. London: Sphere, 1988.

Tilton, Lois. Vampire Winter. New York Pinnacle, 1990.Vampire thriller set during nuclear winter.

Tiptree, James, Jr. [pseud. of Alice Sheldon]. “The Man Who Walked Home.” ( Amazing , May l972). In Ten Thousand Light-Years from Home. New York: Ace, l973. Also in Lester del Rey, ed. Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year (l972). New York: Dutton, l973.A powerful tale which begins with an offhand account of an accident caused by a time-travel experiment which led to an all-out nuclear war. The result is a barbaric neoprimitive culture which eventually makes a ritual out of watching the man caught in the intial accident reappear for one-half second each year, living his death stretched out over many centuries. The culture emerges and rebuilds, but ends in the mind of the tormented victim as he falls through time.

___. “The Snows Are Melted, the Snows Are Gone” ( Venture Science Fiction, November l969). In Ten Thousand Light-Years from Home . New York: Ace, l973. Also in Harry Harrison and Brian Aldiss, eds. Best S F: l969. New York: Putnam, l970. New York: Berkley, 1971?A trick-ending story in which at first it seems that an armless young young woman is being pursued by a would-be rapist. Actually, she is one of a group of deformed human survivors who pursue normal people for their chromosomes. Neobarbarian setting. Prevalence of deformities suggests a nuclear war. Title perhaps suggested by Villon’s “ Où sont les neiges d’antan? ” (“Where are the snows of yesteryear?”).

Tire, Robert. Broken Eagle. New York: Pinnacle, 1985.During a limited nuclear war six fliers are shot down in Siberia and must battle their way across the frozen wastes, fighting off the Russian Army. They begin by killing thirteen young boys who have been ordered to attack them. They feel badly about this. Only two of them make it to the shore of Alaska.

Todd, Larry S. “The Warbots” ( Galaxy, October 1968). In Joe Haldeman, Charles G. Waugh and Martin Harry Greenberg, eds. Body Armor: 2000. New York: Ace, 1986.Describes a series of increasingly formidable robot-like fighting machines, the earliest of which detonates an atomic bomb when attacked. It is used in China in the year 2000.

Tofte, Arthur. Walls Within Walls. Don Mills, Ont.: Harlequin, 1975.Mutants struggle against an evil dictatorship of normals controlled by other mutants within walled Resurrection City. The old order is destroyed and the hero finds happiness with his beloved in the idyllic world beyond the walls where mutants are accepted.

Train, Arthur and Robert Williams Wood. The Man Who Rocked the Earth. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday 1915. New York: Arno, 1974.A madman calling himself “Pax” attempts to impose an end to a cataclysmic world war by nearly wrecking the Earth with a ray which breaks down uranium, releasing its immense power. As a demonstration, he floods the Sahara, tilts the Earth’s axis, alters its orbit, and causes worldwide earthquakes. He travels around the world in a “Ring” powered by uranium rockets. He plots to punish the world for failing to make peace by tilting the planet so far over that the Northern Hemisphere becomes too cold to inhabit. He is foiled by the scientist hero, but not before his threat has ended the war and established a utopia. Indebted to Wells’s The World Set Free of a year earlier, to which it explicitly refers.

Tremblay, Michel. The Devil and the Mushroom. Trans. from French by Michael Bullock. In The Oxford Book of French Canadian Short Stories, 1983.A brief simplistic fable in which the devil introduces war into a peaceful world, leading eventually to nuclear war, symbolized by a drawing of a mushroom cloud.

Tubb, E[dwin] C[harles]. Atom-Wars on Mars. London: Panther, 1952.Unavailable for review.

___. “Fresh Guy” ( Science Fantasy , June l958). In Ten from Tomorrow. London: Hart-Davis, l966. London: Sphere, l968. Also in Judith Merril, ed. SF: The Year’s Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy: Fourth Annual Volume. New York: Dell, 1959. Rpt. as SF 59: The Year’s Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy. New York: Gnome, 1959. Also in Thomas E. Sanders, ed. Speculations: An Introduction to Literature through Fantasy and Science Fiction. Beverly Hills: Glencoe, l973.A fantasy in which all humans are dead or hidden in fallout shelters after a nuclear war. The earth is populated by vampires, ghouls, and werewolves waiting for the humans to reemerge.

Tucker, Wilson. The City in the Sea. New York: Rinehart, 1951. New York: Galaxy, 1951.Postholocaust barbarian women explore the ruins of their ancestors and meet mutants, including winged men and vicious pygmies, as well as long-lived geniuses. They happily settle down to mate with the latter. Radiation remains in the ruins.

___. The Long Loud Silence. New York: Rinehart, l952. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, l953. New York: Dell, l954. London: Bodley Head, l953. London: Guild, l953.When the eastern U.S. is subjected both to nuclear bombing and pneumonic plague, the surviving part of the country quarantines everything east of the Mississippi. The savage story of a surviving former soldier’s attempts to cross the river. Very good details on the effect of the war, outstanding treatment of biological warfare. Unfortunately the extremely unsympathetic protagonist makes the novel alienating. Note by Tuck: “At Rinehart’s request, Tucker removed implications of cannibalism from the first edition, and other U.S. editions apparently are the same; the British editions use the author’s original text . . . .” In Magill, 3: l238-4l.

___. Time Bomb. New York: Rinehart, 1955.A time traveler uses miniature atomic bombs to prevent the coming to power of a dictator. Interesting only because of its anti-Red scare bent.

Turner, George. Beloved Son. London: Faber, 1978. New York: Pocket Books, l978. Sequel Vaneglory. Astronauts sent to explore Barnard’s Star return to Australia in 2032 to find the Collapse has taken place during the Five Days, which involved massive disorders, ecological catastrophes, bacteriological warfare, and limited nuclear bombing. Russia collapsed, America has gone Communist, and England was entirely destroyed. The cities have been abandoned, and a new youth-oriented dystopia established which has killed off most of the older generation. Genetic screening weeds out mutations. Most of the novel involves the struggles of clones of one astronaut against the establishment. The novel contains a critique of common postholocaust scenarios, insisting that humanity would not revert to simple barbarism.

___. Vaneglory. London: Faber, 1981. London: Sphere, 1983. Sequel to Beloved Son. Much of England and Wales are showered with radioactive dust and there is neutron bombing in the United States and Russia. A few immortal mutants are immune to the radiation. In the second part of the novel, set in 2037, all “Gone Timers” from the past are despised as wreckers and spoilers of the Earth. The mutants are ruthlessly hunted down, gather in Glasgow, and escape just before the city is hit by ten neutron bombs. The third volume of the Beloved Son trilogy (sometimes called “The Ethical Trilogy”) is Yesterday’s Men (London: Faber, 1981; London: Sphere, 1984), which contains no references to nuclear weapons.

John Updike. Toward the End of Time. New York: Knopf, 1997.The post-holocaust setting of this novel seems to exist mainly to provide a suitably apocalyptic backdrop for the horny protagonist’s impotence following an operation for prostate cancer. The American nation has dissolved, as have most other governments in the wake of a Sino-American nuclear war. Little of the area of New England where the novel is said has been much affected, the stock market still thrives, and the rich protagonist lives on much as he always has, pursuing women whose bodies he lusts after while he otherwise despises them. Artificial lifeforms made of metal, some of them feeding on petroleum, proliferate in the wake of the war. Despite these and other science-fictional touches, the novel is in essence a prolonged wail over the end of sexuality with the End of the World serving as mere metaphor.

Vale, Rena. The Day After Doomsday. New York: Paperback Library, l970. In l979 denizens of the planet of Oom whisk a planeload of people off the Earth just in time to survive a nuclear holocaust. The aliens turn out to have been the creators of the original humans from animal ancestors, and have remained in the background, manipulating history. The hijacked humans chosen to perpetuate the species have difficulty believing what they are told–justifiably, this reader feels. Plenty of sex and violence.

Van Mierlo, H. A. By Then Mankind Ceased to Exist. Ilfracombe, North Devon: Arthur H. Stockwell, [l960].Surely one of the worst nuclear war novels ever written, this brief sketch consists mainly of tedious pseudo-technical dialogue involving absurd physics, introduced with the unhelpful disclaimer: “This work is a novel, and is not a documentary, nor it is scientific.” Inspired by the recent launching of Sputnik, Van Mierlo has the Russians send a party to the moon, partly to control their fiendish plot from a lunar base, and partly to divert the attention of the foolish West from the nuclear submarines armed with H-bombs entering its harbors. The space shot is so popular that the demand for television sets on which to view it sends electrical appliance stocks skyrocketing. (Van Mierlo likes to use the stock market as a gauge of public opinion: later, when universal extinction looms, the only stocks selling well are for funeral homes and breweries.) Russia attempts to annex the Middle East through nuclear blackmail, producing massive panic, civil war, looting, and suicides. When its demands are rejected, it destroys Europe with one bomb and the United States and part of Mexico with three others. Within days, deformed children are being born and vast areas of the Earth are lifeless. Excessive radiation threatens to spread worldwide until the lunar astronauts use special atomic batteries to produce “cosmic waves” which suck the radiation away from Earth (although at the risk of incinerating the moon and Earth together). The American president finally surrenders, but the Australians bomb the moon and Russia, and the radioactivity spreads relentlessly. It is just as well, concludes the dying narrator: the Earth was threatened by overpopulation anyway.

Van Pelt, “The Long Way Home.” In Gardner Dozois, ed. The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-First Annual Collection. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2004.

Van Vogt, A. E. “Dormant” ( Startling Stories, November l948). In Destination: Universe. New York: Pellegrini & Cudahy, l952. New York: Signet, l953. Also in Samuel Mines, ed. The Best from Startling Stories. New York: Holt, l953. Rpt. as Starling Stories. London: Cassell, l954. Also in Edmund Crispin, ed. Best SF. London: Faber, l955. Also in G. D. Doherty, ed. Aspects of Science Fiction. London: J. Murray, l959. Also in Damon Knight, ed. The Shape of Things. New York: Popular Library, l965.Scientists exploring a Pacific island discover a radioactive rock. Hit with an atom bomb, it comes to life, proving to be a trillion-year-old robot atom war machine which knocks the Earth out of its orbit, causing it to fall toward the sun.

___. “The Earth Killers” ( Super Science Stories , April 1949). In The Twisted Men. New York: Ace, 1964. Also in The Far-Out Worlds of A. E. Van Vogt. New York: Ace, 1968. Also in The Worlds of A. E. Van Vogt. New York: Ace, 1974. Also in Charles Nuetzel, ed. If This Goes On. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Book Company of America, 1965.On B-Day forty million people die in a mysterious massive atomic attack on the U.S. A pilot who observes a missile falling observes that its trajectory is vertical and that it must therefore have been launched from the moon. His story is rejected, he is arrested, escapes, and vindicates himself by discovering that the unknown aggressor was an organization of southern bigots led by a U.S. senator seeking through this drastic means to seize the power to reimpose racial segregation–in other words, the attack was an atomic version of the Civil War. Compare with Will F. Jenkins, The Murder of the U.S.A.

___. Empire of the Atom ( Astounding as “A Son Is Born,” May, l946; “Son of the Gods,” August l946 [retitled “Child of the Gods” in its book form]; “Hand of the Gods,” December l946; “Home of the Gods,” April l947; and “The Barbarian,” December l947). Chicago: Shasta, l957. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, l957. Abridged version, New York: Ace, l957; bound with Space Station No. l. New York: Macfadden, l966. London: New English Library, l975. Sequel: The Wizard of Linn. An old-fashioned space opera concerning a mutant boy in a post-war culture where radioactive elements are worshipped as gods and scientist-priests monopolize atomic power. Knowledge of the ancient war has been lost; though the boy suspects the truth. Deals mostly with his rise to power.

___. The Players of Null-A ( Astounding , October, November, December 1948, January 1949). As The Pawns of Null-A. New York: Ace, 1956. As Players . New York: Berkley, 1966. Boston: Gregg, 1977. London: Digit, 1960. Sequel to The World of Null-A. The hero battles a plot to spray Earth and Venus with a “one-year radioactive isotope.” He remembers that “the capital of Nirene had been leveled by atomic bombs, and that the entire area that had once been a city of thirty million was a radioactive desert.” Energy from an atomic pile is directed against him in an effort to destroy him, and he later dodges Venusian atomic bombs on a spaceship. The novel is peppered with quotations from Korzybski’s writings on general sematics, which supposedly is one source of the hero’s superpowers.

___. “Recruiting Station” ( Astounding , March 1942). Retitled “Masters of Time.” In Groff Conklin, ed. Omnibus of Science Fiction. New York: Crown, 1952. Also in Strange Adventures in Science Fiction. London: Grayson, 1954.Recruiters from the future seek soldiers to fight in a fantastic time war involving–among other arms–an “atomic storm” weapon.

___. “Resurrection” (originally “The Monster,” Astounding, August l948). In Isaac Asimov, Martin Harry Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh, eds. The Last Man On Earth. New York: Fawcett, l982.Aliens investigating the cause of Earth’s destruction resurrect a man who uses a nuclear device in a museum to attack them. They in turn attack him with nuclear weapons, in vain. It is suggested that the Earth was devastated ages ago by the same race. The resuscitated hero defeats the aliens and will go on to revive and immortalize humanity. Perhaps the ultimate in “Indestructible Spirit of Man” stories.

___. The Wizard of Linn ( Astounding, April, May, June l950). New York: Ace, l962. New York: Macfadden, l968. New York: Fawcett, l982. London: New English Library, l975. Sequel to Empire of the Atom. The mutant hero battles invading aliens with a superweapon which destroys their atomic bombs, although he is too late to prevent the deaths of some two million Earthlings. He then uses his newly acquired technology to force the invaders to live cooperatively with humans. [74]

___. The World of Null-A ( Astounding , August, September, October 1945). New York: Simon & Schuster, 1948. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1950. London: Dobson, 1970. Bound with The Universe Maker. New York: Ace, 1953. In Triad. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1962. Revised edition: New York: Berkley, 1977. Sequel: The Players of Null-A. The Machine–a sort of supercomputer ruling the Earth–is destroyed by atomic torpedoes fired by rebels violating the ban on atomic weapons imposed by the Galactic League. It takes several of them to blast through the outer walls of the Machine.

Vandeloo, Jos. “The Day of the Dead God.” Originally in Dutch in Jos Vandeloo. Een mannetje uit Polen. Brussels & The Hague: A. Manteau, l965. Trans. Adrienne Dixon. In Egbert Krispyn, ed. Modern Stories from Holland and Flanders: An Anthology. Boston: Twayne, l973.An antiproliferation satire. A holocaust is triggered accidentally when a small nation with one nuclear weapon, in a fit of pacifism, orders it destroyed; but the message is garbled and transformed from “Destroy bomb” into “Destroy Bonn.” Dozens of countries turn out to have secretly constructed weapons and use them. Survivors migrate to the relatively untouched Congo where they deliberate in a stadium. They continue their disputes along the same old lines until someone sets off a small nuclear device he has smuggled in. God starts over, creating man from woman’s rib and making sure there are no apple trees or snakes about this time.

Varley, John. “The Manhattan Phone Book (Abridged).” In Debbie Cross, ed. Westercon 37 ?, 1984. In Blue Champagne. Niles, Ill.: Dark Harvest, 1986.Brief sketches of various individuals, all of whom are exterminated, along with the narrator, by an atomic attack. Basically an editorial rather than a story, urging people to think of war in terms of the suffering and death of individual victims, ending with a vivid picture of the horrors awaiting the reader’s relatives after the attack. The author calls it the only true after-the-bomb story you will ever read. The following passage comments sagely on nuclear war fiction:

     Aw, c’mon, I hear you protest. Somebody will survive.     Perhaps. Possibly. Probably.     But that’s not the point. We all love after-the-bomb stories. If we didn’t, why would there be so many of them? There’s something attractive about all those people being gone, about wandering in a depopulated world, scrounging cans of Campbell’s pork and beans, defending one’s family from mauraders. Sure it’s horrible, sure we weep for all those dead people. But some secret part of us thinks it would be good to survive, to start over.     Secretly, we know we ll survive. All those other folks will die. That’s what after-the-bomb stories are all about.     All those after-the-bomb stories were lies. Lies, lies, lies.     This is the only true after-the-bomb story you will ever read.     Everybody dies. Your father and mother are decapitated and crushed by a falling building. Rats eat their severed heads. Your husband is disemboweled. Your wife is blinded, flashburned, and gropes along a street of cinders until fear-crazed dogs eat her alive. Your brother and sister are incinerated in their homes, their bodies turned into fine powdery ash by firestorms. Your children . . . ah, I m sorry, I hate to tell you this, but your children live a long time. Three eternal days. They spend those days puking their guts out, watching the flesh fall from their bodies, smelling the gangrene in their lacerated feet, and asking you why it happened. But you aren’t there to tell them. I already told you how you died.     It’s what you pay your taxes for.

___. Millenium. New York: Berkley, 1983.Fifty thousand years in the future, after nineteen wars involving nuclear and biochemical weapons, life has deteriorated drastically and the human race faces extinction. Using time travel, a colony of genetically healthy humans from the past is assembled by snatching the bodies of victims of various forms of violent death moments before their decease, substituting plausible corpses for them. The novel concentrates on such a snatch performed on a gigantic airplane crash and the error which creates an anomaly in time and threatens the whole enterprise. In the end the colonists are sent by the supercomputer which has masterminded the whole scheme a hundred million years into the future to repopulate a rehabilitated Earth.

Vinge, Joan D. “Legacy” (portions originally published as “Media Man” in Analog , October l976). In Binary Star #4 bound with Steven G. Sprull. The Janus Equation ). New York: Dell, l980. Sequel to The Outcasts of Heaven Belt. The last part of this sequel concerns a salvage expedition to a war-wasted planet in search of valuable nuclear reactor parts. See Carl Yoke, “From Alienation to Personal Triumph: The Science Fiction of Joan D. Vinge,” in Tom Staicar, ed., The Feminine Eye:Science Fiction and the Women Who Write It (New York: Ungar, l982), l03-30. The other Joan D. Vinge items listed here are also discussed in Yoke’s article.

Vinge, Joan D. Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. New York: Warner, 1985.Novelization of the 1985 Warner Brothers film, third in the Mad Max series, the only one to have an unambiguously post-nuclear war setting. Max is ambushed in the desert, struggles to the violent trading post of Bartortown, is driven out into the desert again, rescued by children who imagine that he is the fabled Captain Walker who figures largely in their myths of the Pox-Eclipse (Apocalypse), and who will rescue them. He leads the band of children back to battle the villains of Bartortown; and they then settle in their new home in the ruins of Sydney, Australia, where his story becomes a legend.

___. The Outcasts of Heaven Belt. New York: Signet, l978. Sequel: “Legacy.”A space adventure set in an asteroid belt where civilization is collapsing because of a catastrophic civil war two and a half centuries earlier. The sequel (above) makes clear that atomic weapons were used. Women are discriminated against in order to protect their precious fertility from radiation. The sterile and handicapped are especially favored as spaceship crew members. The story takes a critical view of war and combativeness in general.

___. “Phoenix in the Ashes.” In Virginia Kidd, ed. Millenial Women. New York: Delacorte, l978. New York: Dell, l978. Also in Phoenix in the Ashes. New York: Warner, 1984. New York: Bluejay, 1985.A revisionist version of the revival of learning theme. Religion bans the old technology 250 years after the Holocaust, but the peasants of North America have evolved a highly satisfactory and ecologically sound way of life. When a Brazilian mining expert exploring for salvageable minerals crashes in a farmer’s field and is badly injured, he is tended by a young woman with whom he falls in love. When the Brazilians track him down, he has married her and abandoned his old, exploitative ways for the conservationism of the natives. See note on “Legacy.”

Vinge, Vernor. “Conquest by Default” ( Analog , May l968). In Stanley Schmidt, ed. War and Peace: Possible Futures from Analog. New York: Dial, l983.Two centuries after a nuclear war has destroyed the Northern Hemisphere, aliens are colonizing Earth, competing with the rival southern human superstates of Sudamerica and Zulunder. The aliens are systematic anarchists who believe in diversity and disorganization, breaking up any structure which gets too big in their own culture, sometimes using fusion bombs to do so. However, they are unable to understand human wars. Viewing Earth’s inhabitants as unintelligent aborigines, they plot their extinction until a sympathetic alien forces humanity to become disorganized too, which causes them to be recognized as equals, but spells doom for human culture. Very unusual in emphasizing the importance of cooperation and structure. Most science fiction is highly individualistic.

Vinge, Vernor. Marooned in Real Time. New York: Bluejay, 1986. New York: Baen, 1987. London: Pan, 1987.Sequel to The Peace War.

___. The Peace War. New York: Bluejay, 1984.The Crash, a holocaust involving nuclear and biochemical weapons, was ended when the “bobble” was invented to seal off weapons and enemies. Fifty years later the tyrannical Peace Authority still wields the embobbling machine to suppress the scientific advances undertaken by the rebellious “tinkers.” Unfortunately, the older bobbles begin to decay, releasing the weapons and troops which have been frozen in time for a half century. When the tinkers develop their own bobbles and rebel, the Peace Authority plots to render the entire Earth a wasteland through nuclear bombing while embobbling itself to wait until it will be safe to emerge and rule the world once more. A rebellious insider defeats the plot, and the novel ends with a dream of future progress and the building of space colonies. A classic revival of learning novel.

Von Hoffman, Nicholas. “The Brahms Lullaby.” Harper’s , February 1982.The onset of a nuclear war from the point of view of a lawyer turned suburban housewife. Partly a satire on television’s probable treatment of the holocaust. New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago are evacuated. Suburban citizens prepare to turn back by force the urban blacks who are designated to take refuge in their town. The war begins with Russian conventional bombs being dropped on atomic reactors. At the end of the story, the protagonist is waiting at the train station for her husband to come home from work when New York is hit with what seems to be a neutron bomb.

Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. Cat’s Cradle. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, l963. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, l963. New York: Dell, l964. London: Gollancz, l963. Harmondsworth: Penguin, l965.The narrator is writing a book called The Day the World Ended about what various famous people were doing on the day Hiroshima was bombed. Chapters 4-7 deal with a letter from the son of a physicist who helped design the atomic bomb. He tells of his father receiving–and discarding–the manuscript of a science fiction novel about the end of the world caused by a superbomb. Vonnegut has someone utter Robert Oppenheimer’s famous line, “Science has now known sin,” which causes Vonnegut’s physicist to ask, “What is sin?” See Daniel L. Zins, “Rescuing Science Fiction from Technocracy: Cat’s Cradle and the Play of Apocalypse,” Science-Fiction Studies 13 (1986): 170-181.

Vonnegut, Kurt. Galápagos. New York: Delacorte, 1985. Abridged cassette version, Simon & Schuster. London: Paladin, 1990.Set in 1986, told by the ghost of the son of Kilgore Trout from a viewpoint a million years in the future when the remnants of the human race have evolved into short-lived but contented seal-like creatures in the wake of a world-wide holocaust which it is strongly suggested was a nuclear war. These survivors are all descended from a single progenitor whose mutation was caused by exposure to the radiation when Hiroshima was bombed. The story concerns a disastrous cruise to the Galá pagos islands as an international crisis builds in Latin America. Much of the story is told through references to future events, and the names of characters who about to die are marked with an asterisk. Even the narrator is dead. There are several references to nuclear war, but no unambiguous depiction of the use of atomic weapons.

Vorhies, John R. Pre-Empt. Chicago: Regnery, l967. As the result of a conspiracy hatched among a group of men involved with a Cub Scout troop, a nuclear submarine is used to blackmail all nations into turning their nuclear weapons over to a neutral international commission. The renegade sub commander drops demonstration missiles on both the U.S. and USSR to make his point. Most of the novel, however, is a highly intelligent satire on the politics of deterrence, far more sophisticated than most. An all-out war almost results from various misunderstandings and errors and from the hawkishness of the military on both sides. This is one of the few works to depict the Russians as basically rational. As usual, the Chinese are more foolhardy and launch missiles which must be shot down by Russian weapons. The story is told as a collection of newspaper articles, transcripts, speeches, etc. This documentary mode of narration isolates each participant in the action so that we are able to appreciate fully their profound misunderstanding of each other. American fanatical anticommunism is also satirized: the commander’s plan is attacked as Communist in origin until research establishes that its original source was none other than Bernard Baruch. The title refers to the first strike that his advisors keep recommending to the president: a preemptive strike.

Wagar, W. Warren. A Short History of the Future: Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1989. Revised second edition: 1992. Revised third edition: 1999.This detailed outline of a future world history resembles H. G. Wells’ The Shape of Things to Come. Despite its two revisions, it remains mostly a set of failed prophecies, useful mainly to illustrate how differently the future looked before 2001 (the author died in 2004). Instead of the burgeoning terrorist-led activities that dominate modern conflicts, traditional big-power spheres of influence proliferate, consolidate and lead to catastrophe. Chapter 2, “Ruling Circles,” contains a brief description of a conflict triggered by a Pakistani invasion of India, which triggers the launching by India of two nuclear-tipped missles against the invaders. A nominally UN-led force intervenes and forces nuclear disarmament on India and Pakistan. After the UN has evolved into a sort of world government, rebellion leads to a many-sided nuclear war (Chapter Five: “The Catastrophe of 2044”) which destroys 7.2 billion people and leads to the eventual setting up of two flawed utopias: one Marxist, the other inspired by anarchist ideals of local self-government (compare with Wells’ The World Set Free). Cooling caused by dust in the atmosphere does not eventuate in a full-fledged nuclear winter, but leads to a temporary crop failure which in its turn causes widespread famine. The frenzied and chaotic fighting that takes place during World War III also destroys most environments located in space. See “Political Predictions They Got Wrong (no 32): A short History of the Future by W. Warren Wagar,” by Matthew Ashton. Dr. Matthew Ashton’s Politics Blog: http://drmatthewashton.com/2012/07/17/political-predictions-they-got-wrong-no32-a-short-history-of-the-future-by-w-warren-wagar/. Wagar was also the author of H. G. Wells and The World State , H. G. Wells: Traversing Time, and Terminal Visions: The Literature of Last Things .

Waldo, Edward Hamilton. See Sturgeon, Theodore.

Waldrop, F. N., and Poul Anderson. See under Anderson.

Waldrop, Howard. Them Bones. New York: Ace, 1984.A group of young men is sent back in time after a nuclear war in order to try to prevent it from occurring. They are sent too far back: most of them die in an Indian massacre, and the one survivor settles down to live with the Indians of an alternative past. Cleverly told, but with little relevance to the theme of nuclear war.

Waldrop, Howard and Jake Saunders. See Saunders.

Wallace, Doreen. Forty Years On. London: Collins, l958.One of the few cases in which a utopia is created as the result of nuclear warfare. Liberals in Europe who insisted on their countries being cleared of U.S. missiles bear the responsibility of a devastating surprise attack. The Isle of Ely is cut off from the rest of Great Britain ruled over by the previously established Council of Church and City for the Preservation of Civilization. Martial law suppresses looting with executions and enforces rationing. Many of the elderly die of “Old Folks’ Rage,” simply because they cannot accept change. The most valuable people in the new order are the farmers and the members of the educated middle class. “[It’s] essential that some people who know about goodness and education and the arts should live, and should have power. These creatures who are going round raiding the farms, they don’t care about preserving religion or schools or a health service, they only want to eat more than their rations. They must be kept down by force, while the ammo holds out.” The local bishop leads the way in creating a moneyless cooperative society along apostolic lines. Non-food possessions are forcibly but equitably distributed to all. Fortuitously, when the ammunition has run out, the new system is firmly in place and popular with the general public. The second half of the novel depicts the wanderings of the sixty-year-old narrator on the mainland of Great Britain as he encounters less fortunate communities, including a band of wild boys called “Crocketts,” after the Disney film, who kill their members at age sixty and raid neighboring tribes for women. Their folk music consists of old American pop tunes. Everywhere the narrator goes he hears tales of the disasters created by the urban refugees, variously referred to as “locusts” and “lemmings,” and made up principally of the ignorant laboring class. Wallace is obsessed with overpopulation. Those areas where postwar plagues killed the vast majority of inhabitants are depicted as the most fortunate. The good folk of Ely, lacking contraceptives, gladly practice continence as their only form of birth control. Much of England, including Oxford and Cambridge (where classical education is still being carried on), has reverted to a medieval way of life, flatteringly depicted. The narrator also encounters a savage gang of former laborers ignorant of agriculture who practice infanticide, deliberately choosing extinction. They also eat one of his horses. When he comes to more densely populated areas near the coast the scene is nightmarish: the perpetually starving people practice cannibalism and keep down the population by segregating most men in the army and encouraging homosexuality. The narrator learns that although many refugees left for America after the war, neither that country nor the Soviet Union sent help later; both nations regarded England as too “liberal.” The book is pervaded by a snobbish Fabian socialism, but it contains several effective scenes and is by far the most detailed postbomb utopia.

Warren, George. Dominant Species. Norfolk, Va.: Starblaze, 1979. New York: Ace, 1979.

Evil worm-creatures invade a backward planet of the decaying galactic empire using, among other weapons, atomic bombs.

Watkins, Peter. The War Game. London: Deutsch, l967. London: Sphere, l967. New York: Avon, l967.A book adaptation with stills and dialogue of Watkins’s documentary-style film depicting the effects of a nuclear attack on Britain. Provides a detailed dramatization of blast effects, firestorm, and radiation disease. Riots and looting are widespread. This powerful and effective film was produced for BBC television but never aired, although it is widely shown on college campuses.

Watson, Ian. The Embedding . New York: Scribner’s, 1975. New York: Bantam, 1977.Humanity proves its viciousness in this novel by using small nuclear weapons to destroy the vessels of visiting aliens interested in trading technology for human linguistic knowledge. A small nuclear bomb is also used to destroy an Amazon Basin dam.

Watson, Ian. “Returning Home.” Omni , December l982.An extrapolation of the idea of the neutron bomb. The Americans destroy all life in the Soviet Union with their super-bomb, and the Russians destroy all property in the U.S. (including clothes). The Americans who migrate to the depopulated USSR find themselves taken over by the spirits of the former inhabitants and begin to adopt the Russian language and culture.

Watson, Ian. “When Idaho Dived.” In Janet Morris, ed. Afterwar. New York: Baen, 1985.A fantasy set a century after the holocaust among surviving desert-dwellers. Seven formerly buried nuclear subs are uncovered by the wind. One is activated and burrows through the sand down to a richly stocked fallout shelter. The protagonist dreams of sailing the sub to the stars, but knows that this will never happen. His cannibalistic tribe instead will eat “my brain and my heart and my liver. But first of all you will eat my tongue, which spoke to you, saying all these things.”

Weaver, Michael D. Mercedes Nights. New York: St. Martin’s, 1987.A cyberpunk novel about the criminal cloning of a popular video star set some time after World War III, with the ozone layer destroyed by pollution. During the course of the novel, war breaks out again with the Soviet Union, and a tactical nuclear bomb is used against Paris; but the nuclear war theme is relegated to the deep background.

___. My Father Immortal. New York: St. Martin’s, 1989.A hard-driving woman scientist tries to ensure that her offspring will survive the imminent nuclear war by launching them into space in suspended animation, to return after the Earth is restored to health. They encounter almost indestructible artificial mutants also created by her and engage in bloody combat until they can be reconciled. More thoughtful about nuclear war than most of its kind.

Weinbaum, Stanley G. The Black Flame (as “The Black Flame,” Startling Stories, January 1939 and “Dawn of Flame”, Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1939). Reading, Pa: Fantasy Press, 1948.In the era after the destruction of civilization through gas and germ warfare, atomic power is rediscovered. Atomic-powered ray weapons are developed.

Wells, H[erbert] G[eorge]. The World Set Free. London: Macmillan, l9l4. London & Glasgow: Collins, l956. London: Corgi, l976. Norwalk, Conn.: Leisure Books, l97l.One of the first novels depicting an atomic war. The conflict ends with the establishment of a committee of strong men who impose a world government with a monopoly on atomic weapons. See P.K.: “When H. G.Wells Split the Atom: A 1914 Preview of 1945,” The Nation (august 18, 1945): 154; Patrick Parrinder: “Edwardian Awakenings: H. G. Wells’s Apocalyptic Romances (1898-1915),” in Imagining Apocalypse: Studies in Cultural Crisis , ed. David Seed. London: Macmillan, 2000, pp. 62-74.

West, Wallace. “Eddie for Short” ( Amazing, January l954). In Isaac Asimov, Martin Harry Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh, eds. The Last Man On Earth. New York: Fawcett, l982.The sole fertile survivor of a war which grew out of a small Asian conflict (Korea?) is a young torch singer mysteriously spared by the Hell bombs which spread radioactive gas. Inspired by Sophocles, she names her infant “Oedipus” and looks forward to mating with him.

Westcott, C. T. Eagleheart 1: Silver Wings and Leather Jackets. New York: Dell, 1989.

Westcott, C. T. Eagleheart 2: Broadsides and Brass. New York: Dell, 1989.

Westcott, C. T. Eagleheart 3: Blood and Bones. New York: Dell, 1989.

Weston, Susan B. Children of the Light. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985.The nineteen-year-old son of an activist mother finds himself mysteriously transported into a period long after a nuclear holocaust called “the time of the light.” A few descendants of survivors struggle on in isolated communities, producing mentally and physically handicapped offspring. He struggles to redevelop certain aspects of technology with limited success, but his main contribution to the community is as a fertile male in a world where such men are rare, begetting offspring on an eager group of young women. Mentions EMP, cannibalism. The novel is considerably more thoughtful than most, developing in some detail the protagonist’s reluctance to become a mere stud, reflecting on the difficulties of rebuilding civilization once it has been destroyed, and reflecting an awareness of the contemporary vogue for nuclear war fiction. In the first chapter there occurs the following insightful paragraph: Welling up beneath responsible national debate was a flood of fantasy books and science-fiction stories set in post-holocaust landscapes. Now, this happened to suit Jeremy’s taste in recreational literature: He actually liked reading about heroes who rode forth on genetic mutations of the horse to do battle with evil monsters called leemutes or gamma gorts. But he was also capable of intuitive leaps, and he knew why these books were so popular. It was the domestication of a society’s worst nightmare. Nuclear war as a return to frontier innocence, with an irradiated Huck Finn lighting out for the territories. Wipe the polluted, industrialized slate clean and start over, because it was unimaginable that there wouldn’t be somebody to start over. As if, Jeremy thought, to that ultimate horror there might be an arcadian solution, a simplicity, a return to clear moral distinctions. The remainder of the novel is designed to demonstrate how simplistic is this popular view of life after nuclear war.

Wheeler, Harvey and Eugene Burdick. See Burdick.

White, E. B. “The Morning of the Day They Did It” ( New Yorker , February 25, l950). In Anthony Boucher, ed. A Treasury of Great Science Fiction, vol. 2 . Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, l959. Also in Isabel Gordon & Sophie Sorkin, eds. The Armchair Science Reader. New York: Simon & Schuster, l959. Also in Gregory Fitz Gerald and Jack C. Wolfe, eds. Past, Present, and Future Perfect . Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett, l973. Illustrated with a small sketch by James Thurber.A whimsical satire on pollution, television, and the arms race. Orbiting military men find that weightlessness has deprived them of normal human feelings, including their sense of loyalty; they launch their missiles against the U.S., triggering a war which destroys the Earth. The narrator and the rest of humanity now live on another planet.

White, James. “Christmas Treason” ( Fantasy and Science Fiction, January l962). In Judith Merril, ed. 8th Annual Edition: The Year’s Best S-F. New York: Simon & Schuster l963. New York: Dell, l964. Rpt. as The Best of Science Fiction 4. London: Mayflower, l965. Also in Richard Davis, ed. Space l. London: Abelard-Schuman, l973.A group of children with psychic powers seeks Santa Claus and concludes that its presents are supposed to be delivered by missiles; but a plot is keeping them from being launched. They launch the missiles themselves, loaded with toys rather than bombs. The result is international disarmament. Cute.

___. Second Ending ( Fantastic , June, July l96l). Bound with Samuel R. Delany’s The Jewels of Aptor. New York: Ace, l962.The hero awakes after a prolonged period of suspended animation to find Earth devastated by an accidental nuclear war. Automatic machinery had continued to create and launch nuclear weapons until the entire planet was absolutely sterilized. With the aid of a host of highly intelligent robots the hero first tries to re-evolve life on Earth from a few grass seeds and then outsleeps the death of the solar system to awake on another, distant planet with humanoid life to which the robots have transported him. An author’s note points out that he wished to write a last man on Earth story with an “up-beat ending.”

Whitmore, Charles. Winter’s Daughter: The Saying of Signe Raghnhilds-datter. New York: Timescape, 1984.The adventures of a courageous and independent woman born of white parents in Tanzania who wanders to America and Norway in the wake of a nuclear war which devastates the Northern Hemisphere. Written in the style of a Norse saga. Myths tell how the sun was obscured for three days by the war. Radiation disease, miscarriages, mutations, and cancer followed in its wake. The southern nations colonize North America, and Africa imposes an interdict forbidding travel to and trade with Northern Europe. Old feudal ways are reborn; superstition revives. Much of the latter part of the novel deals with a chain of tragedies brought about by religious bigotry.

Wiley, Ray H. On the Trail of l960: A Utopian Novel. New York: Exposition, l950.An eccentric utopia created in the wake of a l952 nuclear war: “It finally took a war of atom bombs, pestilence, and famine to wake the people up, that is, the half that survived.” Such plot as there is concerns the successful suppression of a counterrevolutionary movement which uses “cosmic bombs” left over from the holocaust. The remaining weapons will be disassembled and used for peaceful purposes.

Williams, Nick Boddie. The Atom Curtain. Bound with Gordon Dickson. Alien from Arcturus. New York: Ace, l956. A bizarre parable of the cold war. In 2230 the Americas have been cut off from the rest of the world for l70 years by a defensive curtain of deadly radioactivity created when Russia was devastated by American rockets. A pilot who accidentally manages to penetrate it finds that high levels of radioactivity have forced most of the inhabitants of America to de-evolve into neanderthals, with the few superior types being selected out by a cruel, three-century-old dictator who uses supertechnology periodically to dissolve the rest and flush them into Yellowstone Park: the nation’s toilet. The dictator still has missiles aimed at the world outside and also could spread the curtain around the world. He is defeated and dies, but the hero decides–following the tradition of science fiction that technology is never evil in itself–that the ancient knowledge must be adapted to solve the problems of world hunger and disease. The love affair in this book is right out of magazine cartoons: he falls in love with a naked cave woman who becomes sexually aroused and submissive only when clubbed over the head. Absurd in its details, the novel is nevertheless remarkable for being a self-conscious critique of the destructive nature of the isolation which America’s fears created during the height of the cold war. The author’s preface states explicitly that the notion of a radioactive curtain around America was suggested by the image of the iron curtain around the Communist world.

Williams, Paul O. [Pelbar Cycle #1] The Breaking of Northwall. New York: Ballantine, l98l. Book I of the Pelbar Cycle.Set in the distant future in a neobarbarian U.S., depicting the union of previously warring tribes against a common foe. Although Williams stresses the need for eliminating conflict, the novel seems like a fairly typical war story. Stresses intermarriage as a form of alliance-building.

___. [Pelbar Cycle #2] The Ends of the Circle. New York: Ballantine, l98l.This novel is the best of the series. A husband and wife quest story dealing more with sex roles than war. Like the first volume, asserts the value of diplomacy over violence, but more convincingly. Each member of the pair encounters a series of tribes with varying ideas on male-female roles. The lesson they learn is that equality is best. Contains a good scene dealing with a would-be rapist.

___. [Pelbar Cycle #3] The Dome in the Forest. New York: Ballantine, l98l. Book III of the Pelbar Cycle.It is revealed that the nuclear war which destroyed the old civilization was an accident triggered by a meteor shower. The barbarians uncover a self-sustaining subterranean shelter which has preserved life for eleven hundred years. The inhabitants have lost all contact with the outside (reminiscent of the generation starship in Heinlein’s “Universe” and similar stories), refusing to emerge because they have been fooled by an anomalously high radioactivity reading just outside the shelter. An interesting and complex treatment, avoiding generalizations and simplifications, of the relationship between the rather coldly intellectual shelter inhabitants and the emotional barbarians. The novel, like others in this series, includes a minimum of violence, which it depicts as unnecessary and senseless. [76-77]

___. [Pelbar Cycle #4] The Fall of the Shell. New York: Ballantine, l982.Concerns the overthrow of a female-dominated dictatorship. The theme is still the reduction of tension between tribes, but the plot hinges mainly on violence. Little relationship to the theme of nuclear war.

___. [Pelbar Cycle #5] An Ambush of Shadows. New York: Ballantine, l983.A fairly conventional war story in which the chemistry learned from the inhabitants of the Dome in The Dome in the Forest is applied to create weapons. Rocketry has been reinvented, along with chemical warfare. People worship a radioactive statue which must be destroyed; in the long tradition of fiction depicting barbaric religions in nuclear war fiction.

___. [Pelbar Cycle #6] The Song of the Axe. New York: Ballantine, 1984.Exploration to the northeast reveals the existence of a huge ice sheet, the product of climatic changes from the Time of Fire. The emphasis of the novel is, as usual, on overcoming antagonism between differing tribes. Hang gliders and hot-air balloons are reinvented. Book VII, The Sword of Forbearance, was published in 1985.

___. [Pelbar Cycle #7] The Sword of Forbearance. New York: Del Rey, 1985.The Heart River Federation struggles against the marauding Innanigani, who uncover five unexploded nuclear weapons. One bomb is disconnected from its timer by the Federation, but another is set off. EMP ruins radio equipment. A peace is negotiated out of fear of the weapons, and the remaining bombs are buried in concrete. Passersby ceremonially add to the pile of rocks over the weapons.

Williams, Robert Moore. The Day They H-Bombed Los Angeles. New York: Ace, l961.When a mutated protein molecule “goes mad”–perhaps under the influence of atomic bomb testing–a monstrous entity is created which, washed up in the form of sea scum, creates a race of vicious zombies in Los Angeles. The government, attempting to prevent the spread of the monsters, drops nuclear bombs on the city. The story depicts the struggle to survive in the quarantined area of a motley group of citizens, including a faded movie star who once made an A-bomb movie called Doomsday Eve (the title of Williams’s other nuclear war novel; see below). A brilliant scientist among them comes up with a vaccine which promises to halt the plague, and the surviving protagonists are rescued by a U. S. marine helicopter. The opening pages are striking, as the protagonist does a lot of acting and thinking between the moment of the flash and the moment of the shock wave. The behavior of the random crowd gathered in a scantily provisioned fallout shelter is fairly realistically depicted; but after the opening chapters, the novel turns into a routine monster tale. Sex gets plenty of attention: a beautiful young woman is blown into the protagonist’s arms by the blast, and the actress insists on stripping off her rain-drenched clothes and displaying her “body beautiful.” As in most earlier novels, the resourceful characters are male; the women are either silly or terrified. Takes place in l970.

___. Doomsday Eve. Bound with Eric Frank Russell. Three to Conquer . New York: Ace, l957.In 2020, a nuclear war of the Asian Federation against the U.S. has been raging for eleven years when mutated humans with superpowers and immunity to radiation emerge, determine to allow the war to run its course so that humanity may learn the folly of armed combat. When the fighting is over, the New People will emerge and teach the others the new way. They use defensive weapons such as a fear generator and sleep gas. In the course of the conflict, America has lost its freedom through internal restrictions and then practically ceased to exist as a nation. When Asians launch a superbomb which will devastate life in much of what territory is left, the hero has himself projected into the missile and sets it to detonate prematurely. The superbeings are casual about nudity and there is the usual love subplot. Includes the idea common in the forties and fifties that industry should be decentralized to make it less vulnerable. Unusual emphasis on pacifism and world unity for the date.

___. “The Incredible Slingshot Bombs.” Amazing , May l942. An absurd pre-Hiroshima tale of miniature atomic bombs from the future singled out by Russian critics as symbolizing the American attitude toward atomic weapons.

Williams, Walter Jon. Voice of the Whirlwind. New York: Tor, 1987.An interplanetary soldier struggles to establish his identity against the background of a nuclear war on a distant planet. Humans fight viciously for possession of the technology left behind by an alien race.

Williamson, J. N. The House of Life. In John Maclay, ed. Nukes: Four Horror Writers on the Ultimate Horror. Baltimore: Maclay, 1986Three unconnected narratives set in the wake of a nuclear war. A young woman abandoned by her survivalist boyfriend gives birth to an extremely deformed infant in a fallout shelter and bleeds to death. A dog roams the landscape, looking for something familiar, and dies. An elderly couple, after futilely trying to aid survivors, commits suicide by confronting a black gang, shouting “niggler” to infuriate them into killing them.

Williamson, Jack. “The Equalizer” ( Astounding , March l947). In The Pandora Effect. New York: Ace, l969. Also in The Best of Jack Williamson. New York: Ballantine, 1978.The atomic bomb abolished equality and brought about a dictatorship called the “Directorate,” which in its turn is abolished by the invention of a cheap, compact weapon called the “Equalizer.”

___. The Humanoids (originally as “. . . And Searching Mind,” Astounding, March, April, May 1948). New York: Simon & Schuster, 1949. New York: Grossett & Dunlap, 1950. New York: Galaxy, 1954. New York: Lancer, 1963. New York: Avon, 1976. Boston: Gregg, 1980. Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Ultramarine, 1980. London: Museum, 1953. London: Sphere, 1977. Sequel to “With Folded Hands . . . .”A cataclysmic war impends as super-atomic weapons have been planted on a planet by its enemy. The humanoids arrive, imposing peace through slavery. It is explained that the humanoids were originally built on Wing IV after it was ruined by an atomic war. The power used by the Humanoids–rhodomagnetism–is clearly based on atomic energy. In Magill 2, 981-85.

___. The Legion of Time ( Astounding , May, June, July 1938). Reading, Pa.: Fantasy Press, 1952. Bound with After World’s End. New York: PermaBooks, 1963. New York: Pyramid, 1967. London: Digit, 1961.A battle between two alternative futures involving atomic-powered time travel and an atomic ray weapon.

___. “The Man from Outside” ( Astounding , March l95l). In The Trial of Terra. New York: Ace, l962. Also in People Machines. New York: Ace, l97l. Also in August Derleth, ed. Beachheads In Space. New York: Pellegrini & Cudahy, l952. Also in Milton Lesser [pseud. of Stephen Marlowe], ed. Looking Forward. New York: Beechhurst Press, l953. Also in August Derleth, ed. From Other Worlds. London: FSB, l964.A race living on the moon detects the first atomic bomb blast, then others, but has a policy of strict noninterference. An idealistic young agent interferes in a Russian plot to use a thermonuclear bomb; learns that all races must be allowed to discover for themselves whether they can handle nuclear weapons.

___. “With Folded Hands. . . .” ( Astounding , July 1947). In The Pandora Effect. New York: Ace, 1969. Also in The Best of Jack Williamson. New York: Ballantine, 1978. Also in Groff Conklin, ed. A Treasury of Science Fiction. New York: Crown, 1948. New York: Berkley, 1957. Also in Sam Moskowitz, ed. Modern Masterpieces of Science Fiction. New York: World, 1965. Also in Roger Elwood, ed. Invasion of the Robots. New York: Paperback Library, 1965. Also in Sam Moskowitz, ed. Doorway Into Time. New York: Macfadden-Bartell, 1966. Also in Robert Silverberg, ed. Men and Machines: Ten Stories oi Science Fiction. Des Moines, Iowa,: Meredith, 1968. Also in James E. Gunn, ed. The Road to Science Fiction #2. New York: Mentor, 1979. Also in Stanley Schmidt, ed. Analog: Writers’ Choice (Anthology #5). New York: Dial, 1983. New York: Davis, 1983. Also in Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg, eds. The Great Science Fiction Stories: 9 (1947). New York: DAW, 1983. Sequel: The Humanoids. From the distant planet of Wing IV come the rhodomagnetic robots known as the Humanoids, whose sole purpose is to serve and protect mankind, ending the danger of war. They do so by depriving them of almost all their freedom. In the sequel it is revealed that the Humanoids were invented in the wake of a devastating atomic war on Wing IV.

Willson, Harry. A World for the Meek. Albuquerque, New Mexico: Amador, 1987.An amateurish fantasy involving an elderly man who emerges from a meditative trance inside a Pueblo kiva to find that a war has killed everyone else except himself and a strange Indian baby which matures at an unnatural rate, then dies half way through the novel. The weapons used killed all living flesh without damaging anything else. During the second half of the novel he grows younger as his life span is enormously prolonged. After two million years, he consorts and cavorts with newly-evolved intelligent octopuses and dolphins. Finally they locate a beautiful woman for him to mate with, and he heads off to meet her and found a better human race.

Wilson, Angus. The Old Men at the Zoo. London: Secker & Warburg, 1961. New York: Viking, 1961.A bizarre allegory of international conflict. In 1970 the London Zoo is beset with difficulties as a giraffe tramples a keeper to death, and the older generation of zookeepers is pitted against the younger as they confront a variety of issues. At the end of this novel of office politics, a nuclear war breaks out, destroying most of England and severely damaging the zoo. The politics of the war are unclear, but a neofacist pan-European coalition is involved. Pressures mount to kill the animals in the collection to feed the starving populace of London; and a mob attacks, killing one of the keepers in the process. The fleeing secretary-narrator uses his expertise in studying badgers to trap and kill them for food. Conquered England becomes a grim place, dotted with concentration camps. A vaguely depicted liberation overthrows the new regime. The zoo, when reopened, panders to debased tastes: a bear-baiting pit is to symbolize disdain for the Russians and an eagle, symbolizing America, is torn to pieces. By the author of Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (1978).

Wilson, Mitchell. Live With Lightning. Boston: Little, Brown, 1949. London: W. H. Allen, 1950.

An unusually intelligent and sensitive novel depicting the career of a young nuclear physicist in the thirties and forties. He becomes involved in secret atomic energy research as part of the Manhattan Project, but does not work directly on the bomb, although he witnesses the Trinity Test. Postwar security obsessions are criticized, as well as the concentration of all atomic research on weapons rather than energy.

Wilson, Richard. “Mother to the World.” In Damon Knight, ed. Orbit 3. New York: Putnam, l968. New York: Berkley, l968. Also in Poul Anderson, ed. Nebula Award Stories no. 4. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, l969. Also in Damon Knight, ed. The Best from Orbit. New York: Berkley, l975. Also in Arthur C. Clarke, ed. The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. 3. New York: Avon, 1982.A postholocaust Adam and Eve story in which the only remaining man, 42, is paired with a retarded woman, 28. The U.S. began the war with nuclear weapons, but the Chinese retaliated with a biochemical weapon which killed all humans save these two, hidden in a self-contained shelter. The hero has to deal with feral dogs and liberates most animals from the Bronx Zoo (shooting only the big cats); but most of the story deals with his reluctance to become the lover of the young woman who presents the only hope for a future for the human race. Thoughtful, detailed depiction of his struggles. He finally overcomes his scruples and repugnance and mates with her, producing both a boy and a girl he hopes will carry on the race. Toward the end tells his son the facts of life, which includes the necessity for incest, perhaps even with his own mother. This theme has seldom been treated as anything other than a joke, but Wilson takes it seriously, giving the story a surprisingly simple optimistic ending.

Wilson, Steve. The Lost Traveller. London: Macmillan, l976. London: Pan, l977. New York: St. Martin’s Press, l976.The l993 atomic holocaust known as BLAM, supplemented by poisons and drugs, left Hell’s Angels among the most fitted to survive. A group of them is sent to fetch a captive scientist who will help to revive agriculture. The basic idea is a pretty straightforward imitation of Roger Zelazny’s Damnation Alley. The bikers ally themselves with Lakota Indians. The climax of the novel depicts an all-out battle between the Angels and the army. Lots of sex and violence.

Winchell, Walter. “Walter Winchell in Moscow.” See under Collier’s.

Winslow, Pauline Glen. I, Martha Adams. London: Arlington, 1982. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984. New York: Baen, 1986.The American failure to build the MX missile in its mobile basing mode leads to a successful preemptory nuclear strike by the USSR from Cuba and Panama, culminating in the surrender of the government and a ruthless occupation by the Russians. The newly subjected nation is run through the U.N., where the strike and occupation were planned. But the U.S. has an ace in the hole, a secret weapon known to only a few scientists and leaders: the MY or Magnaminity missile, a new sort of cobalt bomb designed by Israeli scientists and built secretly in South Africa at the orders of the late President Reagan (unfortunately assassinated with Vice President Bush by a terrorist bomb) who financed it with billions of dollars supposedly appropriated for water projects. The Russians have been hampered in their particle beam and laser weapon research by the success of a KGB-inspired peace movement in the U.S. which halted American research the Russians wanted to steal. The invasion follows the classic Red Menace scenario: food rationing is immediately instituted for no very clear reason, millions are killed or imprisoned, the ghettos are cleared, and Jews are targeted for extermination. Chinese-Americans are targeted when China is suspected of harboring the new super-weapon. A band of resistance fighters is wiped out by atomic bombing. Russia launches a preemptive strike against China and is devastated in its turn by the surprisingly well-armed Chinese. EMP disrupts Russian communications. The head of the KGB kills his army rival and assumes absolute power in the U.S. shortly before the heroine and her son seize the hidden MY missile and blackmail the Reds into leaving.

Wolfe, Bernard. Limbo . New York: Random House, l952. New York: Ace, l952. As Limbo 90. London: Secker & Warburg, l953. Harmondsworth: Penguin, l96l.The world responds to an abortive nuclear war caused by computers by adopting voluntary amputation as a means of literal disarmament. The book is heavily Freudian. A philosophical treatise more than a novel, condemning pacifism as self-destructive. Terrifically misogynistic. According to Schuyler Miller in his “Reference Library” column in Analog (May l964, p. 90), Limbo was intended as a parody of science fiction themes which Wolfe was amazed to find taken seriously. See David N. Samuelson, “Limbo: The Great American Dystopia,” Extrapolation l9 (l977): 76-87. In Magill, 3: l22l-25.

Wood, Robert Williams, and Arthur Train. See Train.

Wouk, Herman. The Lomokome Papers ( Collier’s , February l7, l956). New York: Pocket Books, l968.A visitor to the moon learns that two races with opposing philosophies have been using nuclear weapons in a series of wars with each other since 347 A.D. The discovery of a silicon device capable of dissolving the Earth makes further uncontrolled war impossible; and a prophet lays down regulations for “Reasonable War,” governed by a “College of Judges.” The strength of each side is determined by the number of people who volunteer to die in a throat-cutting ceremony. An antiwar parable.

Wren, M. K. A Gift Upon the Shore. New York: Ballantine, 1990. New York: Ballantine, 1991. London: Penguin, 1991.Two women struggle to keep knowledge alive in Oregon in the wake of a general collapse climaxed by a nuclear war (“the End”) and an ensuing nuclear winter and plague. Electromagnetic pulse effects destroy electronics, and damage to the ozone layer leads to widespread blindness in both humans and animals. After a period during which roving bandits pose the main threat, the greatest obstacle to the survival of civilization is the flourishing of bigoted Christian fundamentalism among the few survivors left. More sensitive and intelligent than most such stories. A list of the books chosen by the main characters to perpetuate human culture is printed on the inside of the dust jacket.

Wyatt, Patrick. Irish Rose . London: Michael Joseph, l975.The story of a beautiful young woman struggling for freedom and romance in a brutally misogynistic, homosexual culture founded when the side effects of birth control pills sterilized all white women and set off a series of conflicts known as the “Pill Wars.” The only hint that nuclear weapons were involved is the existence of radioactive hotspots, including “Aldermaston Lake,” haunted by Atom ghosts called Ogey-Bogies, Comic in tone, the story is a typical revolt against repressive postholocaust orthodoxy except that in the end it turns into a serious endorsement of the development of latent telepathic powers, not–for once–the result of radiation-induced mutation. Compare Suzy McKee Charnas, Walk to the End of the World .

Wylie, Philip. The Answer ( Saturday Evening Post , May 7, l955). New York: Rinehart, l965. New York: Paperback Library, l963. London: Muller, l956. Also in The Post Reader of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, l964.Both the Americans and the Russians kill an angel during an H-bomb test. The Russians fear that their atheism and belief in communism is threatened and determine to obliterate the angel’s body with a second explosion. The Americans discover a golden book brought by their angel which contains the same short message written in many languages: “Love one another.” The story was originally published with testimonials from Bernard Baruch, Milton Eisenhower, Eleanor Roosevelt, Norman Vincent Peale, and Carl Sandburg.

___. “Blunder” ( Collier’s, January l2, l946). In August Derleth, ed. Strange Ports of Call. New York: Pellegrini & Cudahy, l948.Set in approximately l974. New England and Central Europe have been destroyed in a limited nuclear war called the “short war” which began when the U.S. was hit by a sneak attack on Christmas Eve. The cold war continues, but seems quite irrelevant to the major event of the story: the destruction of the Earth by accident. Norwegian scientists, attempting to use a “bismuth fission” bomb to generate a natural atomic energy pile in a volcanic formation instead set off a chain reaction which in “slightly less than one nineteenth of a second” spreads throughout the globe, splits the planet open so that the magma gushes out and Earth is transformed into a small sun which swallows the moon. Wylie notes that the creation of this new sun must be gratifying to the Martians, if any there be. A striking departure from Wylie’s usually realistic depiction of this theme, although a few Manhattan Project scientists had speculated about the possibility of such a worldwide chain reaction with the first atomic bomb (but these speculations would hardly have been known to Wylie in l946).

___. “Jungle Journey” ( Jack London’s Adventure Magazine, December l958). In Sam Moskowitz, ed. Masterpieces of Science Fiction. New York: World, l966.An expedition led by a beautiful socialite in Southeast Asia discovers, among carnivorous plants, an ancient spaceship abandoned by explorers from another world. They learn from manuscripts left behind that the aliens plan to return this very year to determine whether humanity has abandoned its violent ways. If it has not, and has the technology to threaten other worlds, it will be exterminated. The world, alarmed, hastens to reform itself before the aliens arrive. According to Wylie’s agents, Harold Ober Associates, the author’s original title for this story was “Strange Language.”

___. “The Paradise Crater.” Blue Book, October l945. [Incorrectly identified in Contento’s Index as an alternate title for “Jungle Journey.”]The first nuclear war story published after Hiroshima, but written before that event. An editor’s note at the beginning of this story says, “May the atomic bomb sometime be turned against us? This remarkable novel of the brave new world of l965 foresees such an event. The story was completed several months ago, but because of very needful censorship restrictions, publication has been withheld until now.” The future contains domed cities, robot waiters, transparent helicopters, various cheap energy sources, and obnoxious television commercials. The hero–a former Olympic track star who speaks seven languages–explains to the heroine–a beautiful 23-year-old Ph.D. who can cook–the danger posed by weapons made from U-237: “A cupful of it, if you knew how to blow it, would take a corner off Los Angeles.” Sabotage and murder at a desalinization project lead the couple on the trail of a conspiracy of former Nazi refugees who have formed the Einfuhralles [sic] Society, aiming at world rule through atomic terror. The hero sneaks into the villains’ subterranean mountain stronghold to discover that their scientists have willingly exposed themselves to lethal doses of radioactivity in their fanatical drive to build atomic bombs. Posing as one of these heroic figures, he sabotages their cache, causing an impressive explosion: flames shoot 40,000 feet in the air, a quake wreaks havoc throughout much of the western United States and Canada, a tidal wave roars west from the shores of California and inundates thousands of “Japanese savages on distant Nippon.” In place of the mountain where the bombs were built there is now a crater two miles deep and thirty across. The heroine, despite her having abjured the brazen ways of sixties women, proposes; but it’s all right: l965 is a leap year. [

___. “Philadelphia Phase.” See under Collier’s.

___. The Smuggled Atom Bomb ( Saturday Evening Post, August 4, ll, l8, 25, September l, l95l). New York: Avon, l95l. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, l965. New York: Lancer, l967. Also in Three To Be Read. New York: Rinehart, l95l.A bright young man discovers Russian agents smuggling atom bombs piecemeal into the U.S.

___. Tomorrow! New York: Rinehart, l954. New York: Popular Library, l956.Contrasts two towns: one with good civil defense preparations, the other with poor ones, but the fate of both is so awful that the lesson being proffered is somewhat muted. The U.S. ends the war by using a superbomb to destroy the USSR. Writes Wylie: “The last great obstacles to freedom had been removed from the human path.” Contains a detailed, gruesome account of the actual attack and its immediate consequences. Wylie creates a large cast of characters most of whom are killed off, but the most sympathetic ones survive or even benefit, including his heroine, a young civil defense worker, “the prettiest girl in two states.” The novel ends on a cheerful, upbeat note, for a better world will emerge from the ashes. The war is presented as a kind of drastic slum clearance project. A one-hour radio dramatization narrated by Orson Welles was broadcast October 17, 1956.

___. Triumph . Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, l963. New York: Fawcett, l964.The war begins with a Russian invasion of Jugoslavia, which has recently voted to become a Western ally. When the Russians attack the U.S., a wealthy industrialist invites his guests and fleeing passersby to join him in his enormous, lavishly appointed fallout shelter. As in Tomorrow! a detailed description of the effects of an atomic bomb blast is given (in chapter 5). Wylie makes it clear that people in shelters immediately under ground zero will suffocate or bake. A first strike destroys 65 percent of American missiles, but the rest are used to retaliate against Russia. Then America is attacked by one thousand Russian weapons which destroy all major cities. Writes Wylie: “What, fundamentally, the free-world leaders–military and political–had never understood was that the Russian Communist leaders had always been willing to pay any price whatever to conquer the world, so long as some of the Soviet elite survived to be its rulers” (chapter 5). China, England, and France are also hit. The only voice on the air comes from a manned weather space station which was in a position to observe the war. It then transpires that the coasts have been mined with bombs in order to spread radioactive sodium inland, rendering the entire North American continent a deadly wasteland; but the fate of the USSR is no better. Enough of the enemy survive, however, to carpet the U.S. with a second wave of bombs, topped by a cobalt superbomb designed to press the fallout back onto the surface, providing a striking illustration of the term “overkill.” A year later, surviving submarines on both sides destroy the last remnants of each others’ military power, ending the threat that the Russians will emerge to attempt to rule the Southern Hemisphere through nuclear blackmail. “So, within hours, the last effective adherent of communism and its last effective instrument of force vanished. The doctrines of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Khruschev, Merov, and Grovsky [two fictional post-Khruschev premiers] were finally undone . . . at the cost of half a world and of the vast majority of people who once called themselves free and civilized” (chapter l4). In chapter l5 nuclear war is said to be a form of mutual suicide, essentially unwinnable. A Central American television broadcast displays views of the aftermath of the war in chapter l0. Park Avenue is a river of molten glass. In contrast to the relative optimism of Tomorrow! civil defense precautions are depicted as failures; but in this sort of war, no feasible measures could have been adequate. (It is estimated near the novel’s end that a really secure system of shelters would have cost approximately ten million dollars per person.) Many people who had access to shelters fled them to avoid being trapped by buildings collapsing on top of them. In the shelter an oddly assorted group of survivors works out its racial and sexual differences with impressive ease. The racial theme is treated in great detail, but there is fortunately only one bigot in the group: a passing meter reader who happens to get swept up into the shelter but later dies a hero. Even more attention is given to the characters’ sex lives, with emphasis being placed on the need for open-mindedness and the acceptance of nonmarital sex. The pairing off of the characters is facilitated by the fact that all of the women are beautiful. The one who threatens at the book’s beginning to be an alcoholic harridan like the mother in Heinlein’s Farnham’s Freehold reforms and becomes the most admirable of all. A truly excessive amount of space is devoted to discussions of sex; so much so that Wylie felt obliged to include passages in which his characters comment on their excessive concern with the subject. In the end, the shelter-dwellers–seemingly the only surviving Americans–are rescued by heroic Australians. A world government is being formed in the Southern Hemisphere, aimed at banishing war. The novel exemplifies to an extreme degree the tendency to emphasize survival. Although the world outside is devastated, the shelter-dwellers almost all survive; and many are even improved by their stay below ground. Triumph is in part an answer to other nuclear war fiction. In chapter 9 Wylie writes: “There were lots of prophetic books and movies about total war in the atomic age, and all of them were practically as mistaken as plain people and politicians and the Pentagon planners. In all of them that I recall, except for one, we Americans took dreadful punishment and then rose from the ground like those Greek-legend–Jason’s men–and defeated the Soviets and set the world free. That one, which came closer to reality so far as the Northern Hemisphere is concerned, showed how everybody on earth died. ” The reference is clearly to Nevil Shute’s On the Beach, whose main thesis–that radioactive fallout carried by winds would cross the equator and destroy the Southern Hemisphere–is denied by Wylie in chapter 7. On all Wylie’s science fiction, see Clifford P. Bendan. Still Worlds Collide: Philip Wylie and the End of the American Dream. San Bernardino, Calif.: Borgo, 1980.

Wyndham, John [pseud. of John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Benyon Harris]. The Chrysalids. London: Michael Joseph, l955. Harmondsworth: Penguin, l958. London: Hutchinson, l964. As Re-Birth. New York: Ballantine, l955. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, l959. Also in Anthony Boucher, ed. A Treasury of Great Science Fiction, vol. 2. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, l959.An excellent story of an emerging race with ESP, hunted by “normals” trying to hang on to traditional values, ruthlessly exterminating all deviation. A moving portrait, richer than most, of the fate of mutants. Mutations are caused, of course, by a long-past nuclear war. Rescuers come from New Zealand, homeland of Poul Anderson’s Maurai and of the protagonist of Aldous Huxley’s Ape and Essence. The Chrysalids is the source for the song “Crown of Creation” by the rock group Jefferson Airplane, which draws on the following passage: “In loyalty to their kind they cannot tolerate our rise [changed to ‘minds’ in the song]; in loyalty to our kind, we cannot tolerate their obstruction.” Wyndham’s novel also contributes the title of both the song and the album on which it appears: “They are the crown of creation, they are ambition fulfilled, they have nowhere more to go.” The cover of Crown of Creation depicts a nuclear explosion, labelled in the notes as being from Hiroshima, courtesy of the United States Air Force. In a recent interview ( Heavy Metal magazine, August l984), Airplane lyricist Paul Kantner comments that he noted down the lines from The Chrysalids years before he used them to express the revolutionary attitude of the group. The novel is an appropriate source for a youth revolt song, because it depicts the newly enlightened race struggling to survive in the oppressive culture of its parents. Like Edgar Pangborn’s Davy , Leigh Brackett’s The Long Tomorrow , and Edmund Cooper’s The Cloud Walker , the young protagonists are designed to engage the sympathies of rebellious youngsters. The Chrysalids is more than a youth revolt novel, however. It is also a cogent argument for tolerance and was probably intended by its author more as a brief against racism and other familiar forms of bigotry. In Magill as Re-Birth, 4: 1755-58.

___. The Kraken Wakes (originally as “The Things From the Deep” in Everybody’s ). London: Michael Joseph, l953. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, l955. Harmondsworth: Penguin, l955. Abridged by G. C. Thornley. London: Longmans Green, l959. Abridged by S. S. Moody. London: Longmans Green, 1961. As Out of the Deeps. New York: Ballantine, l953. Also in The John Wyndham Omnibus. London: Michael Joseph, l958.Tentacled monsters from space land in the ocean deeps and begin to sink ships and melt the polar ice. The first part of the novel seems like a satire on cold-war fears as the beasts are attacked with atomic bombs before any attempt has been made to determine whether or not they are hostile; but they prove villainous enough, nearly annihilating the human race, and must be destroyed by a new ultrasonic beam weapon.

___. Web . London: Michael Joseph, l979.Would-be utopians battle mutated spiders which are the result of atomic bomb testing on a remote South Pacific island. Wyndham avoids the usual gigantism and makes his spiders deadly through their cooperation. They are finally destroyed by an H-bomb.

Yates, W. R. Diasporah. New York: Baen, 1985.In 1997 the Arab countries and Iran launch a surprise nuclear attack against Israel, which retaliates. More such nuclear conflicts lead to a world government headed by the United Nations, which monopolizes atomic weapons, and attacks both New York and Moscow with them when they break the peace. Jews surviving in space colonies build what seems at first to be a super weapon, but what turns out to be an interstellar ship capable of taking them to a new home.

Youd, Christopher Samuel. See Christopher, John.

Young, Alfred Michael. The Aster Disaster: A Tale of Two Planets. Ilfracombe, North Devon: Arthur H. Stockwell, l958.A very old-fashioned fantasy in which atomic bombs exploded during a senseless war on the planet Aster destroyed it entirely ten million years ago, creating the asteroid belt we know today. A young couple escapes to Earth and lingers just long enough to bury the manuscript containing this narrative before being translated to a higher realm in the company of their deceased friends and relatives, sent by God in answer to their prayers. Aster is strikingly similar to Earth except that its physics operates in a peculiar manner: the explosion of an atomic bomb causes the rocks themselves to explode in a chain reaction. The foolish Asterians create atomic landmines and atomic hand-grenades. The scientists shrug off a warning that their experiments may end in disaster, but ultimately the military is held responsible for the catastrophe. It is evident that the author is either very ignorant about physics or indifferent to it, or both. Also portrays a foolish hysteria over suspected spies. Compare Newton, The Forgotten Race.

Young, Robert F. “Grown-up People’s Feet” ( Fantastic Universe, April 1953). In A Glass of Stars. Jacksonville, Ill.: Harris-Wolfe, 1968.A brief sketch about a girl who has just learned how to read, but who must grow up in a desolate postholocaust world where illiteracy reigns.

Zagat Arthur Leo. “Slaves of the Lamp.” Astounding , August, September 1946.After the War of the Cities, city-states are isolated to enforce international peace, but a secret military organization uses missiles involving “total atom-disruption,” among other weapons–to begin a new war. Catastrophe is narrowly avoided.

Zelazny, Roger. Damnation Alley (shorter version originally Galaxy , October 1967. Rpt. in The Last Defender of Camelot . New York: Timescape, 1980. Santa Cruz, Calif.: Underwood/Miller, 1981). New York: Berkley, l969.The world’s last Hell’s Angel embarks, as an alternative to life imprisonment, on a perilous mission by armored vehicle from Los Angeles to Boston through the wasted heartland of America, carrying plague antiserum. In some areas, survivors of the war have blamed all professors for the war and massacred them. A violent adventure tale, it manages more than a touch of humanity, despite its focus on incredible one-man battles against biker gangs and giant bats and gila monsters. Made into a film in l977 (the film is very unfaithful to the novel in both its general spirit and in particular details) and probably the inspiration for the Judge Dredd comic strip adventure The Cursed Earth (see Pat Mills). For a discussion of Damnation Alley and the other items listed below, see Thomas J. Morrissey, “Zelazny: Mythmaker of Nuclear War.” Science-Fiction Studies 13 (1986): 182-192.

___ . “Exeunt Omnes.” In After the Fall , ed. Robert Sheckley. New York: Ace, 1980.A brief sketch in an anthology of “upbeat end-of-the-world stories” in which Prospero’s final soliloquy triggers a world-ending nuclear war, leaving behind only the characters from The Tempest.

___ . “For a Breath I Tarry” ( New Worlds , March 1966). In The Last Defender of Camelot . New York: Timescape, 1980. Santa Cruz, Calif.: Underwood/Miller, 1981. Also in Robert Silverberg, ed. Alpha 1 . New York: Ballantine, 1970. Also in Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr, eds. World’s Best Science Fiction , 1967. New York: Ace, 1967. Also in Michael Moorcock, ed. The Best SF Stories from New Worlds No. 2 . London: Panther, 1968. Also in Leonard Jenkin and Robert Perrault, eds. Survival Printout . New York: Random House, 1973. Also in Norman Spinrad, ed. Modern Science Fiction . Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1974. Also in Fred D. Miller and Nicholas D. Smith, eds. Thought Probes: Philosophy Through Science Fiction . Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1981. Also in Eric S. Rabkin, ed. Science Fiction: A Historical Anthology . New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1983.Long after a nuclear war has exterminated the human race, a supercomputer struggles to recreate it.

___ . This Immortal (originally as “And Call Me Conrad,” Fantasy and Science Fiction , October, November l965). New York: Ace, l966. New York: Garland, l975. London: Panther, l968.The ruined Earth is filled with radioactivity-induced mutant life forms including satyrs, and has become a tourist attraction for aliens from Vega. In Magill, 2: 2260-3.

Zelazny, Roger and Philip K. Dick. See under Dick.

Zettel, Sarah. Playing God. New York Aspect/Warner, 1998.Humans struggle to help warlike aliens who have almost destroyed their own planet, partly through nuclear warfare.

Selected sources

I have drawn on these books and articles in creating these notes. However, this is far from being a comprehensive bibliography of scholarship on The Satanic Verses, nor is it intended to be a list of the best sources. Rather it consists primarily of sources which provided assistance in tracking down allusions in the novel. Many fine interpretive articles and books are not listed.

Unfortunately I cannot cite some of my most useful sources, since they involved personal communication with persons who did not wish to be cited by name. However, out of many others I am happy to thank Massud Alemi , Martine Dutheil, Paul Harmer, Azfar Hussain,  Suzanne Keene , Joel Kuortti, Sudhakar Chandrasekhara,  Ina Westphal , Mel Wiebe,  David Windsor and James Woolley for identifying various references.

Special thanks are due to Salman Rushdie, who kindly answered some particularly knotty questions and made a number of helpful suggestions about this project. His contributions are marked “personal communication from Salman Rushdie.” This statement should not, however, be taken to imply his endorsement of this site either in its entirety or in detail.

Ahsan, M. M. “ The Satanic Verses and the Orientalists,” Hamdard Islamicus 5:1 (1982), repr. rev. in Sacrilege versus Civility: Muslim Perspectives on The Satanic Verses Affair, eds. M.M. Ahsan & A.R. Kidwai (Leicester: Islamic Foundation, 1993 (1991). Al-‘Azm, Sadik Jalal. “The Importance of Being Earnest About Salman Rushdie.” in M. D. Fletcher, ed . Reading Rushdie: Perspectives on the Fiction of Salman Rushdie. Amsterdam: Rodopi B. V., 1994, pp. 255-292.

Albertazzi, Silvia. “In the Skin of a Whale: Salman Rushdie’s Responsibility for the Story” Commonwealth Essays and Studies 12.1 (1989): 11-18.

Al-Kalbi, Hisham Ibn . The Book of Idols: Being a Translation from the Arabic of the Kitab Al- Asnam by Hisham Ibn-Al-Kalbi. Translated Nabih Amin Faris. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1952. al-Kisa’i. The Tales of the Prophets of al-Kisa’i, translated from the Arabic with Notes by W. M. Thackston, Jr. G. K. Hall: Twayne Publishers, 1978.

Ali, Agha Shahid. “ The Satanic Verses: A Secular Muslim’s Response ,” The Yale Journal of Crticism 4.1 (1990/1991): 295-300.

[Apuleius, Lucius.] The Transformations of Lucius, Otherwise Known as The Golden Ass, by Lucius Apuleius, trans. Robert Graves (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1955).

Aravamudan, Srinivas. “Being God’s Postman is No Fun, Yaar’: Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses .” Diacritics 19.2 (1989): 3-20.

Aravamudan, Srinivas. “Novels of Salman Rushdie, The: Mediated Reality as Fantasy.” World Literature Today 63.1 (1989): 42-45.

Bader, Rudolf. “ The Satanic Verses: An Intercultural Experiment by Salman Rushdie,” International Fiction Review 19 (Summer 1992): 65-75.

Armstrong, Karen (1991) Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet. London: Victor Gollancz, 1991.

Balderston, Daniel. “The Art of Pastiche: Argentina in The Satanic Verses ,” Revista de Estudos Hispanicos (Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico) 17-18 (1990-1991): 301-308.

Bashier, Zakaria. The Makkan Crucible rev.ed. Leicester: Islamic Foundation 1991 (1975).

Barràs, Maria Llüisa. Picabia. New York: Rizzoli, 1985.

Radha Balasubramanian, “The Similarities between Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita and Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses ” in The International Fiction Review 22 (1995): 37-.

Beckett, Samuel. The Complete Dramatic Works. London: Faber and Faber, 1986.

Bevan, David, ed. Literature and Exile. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990.

Bond, Edward. Lear . New York: Hill and Wang, 1972.

Booker, M. Keith. “ Finnegan’s Wake and The Satanic Verses : Two Modern Myths of the Fall.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 32.3 (1991): 190-207.

Brennan, Timothy. Salman Rushdie and the Third World: Myths of the Nation. New York:St. Martin Press, 1989.

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Comerford, R. V.: “Ireland Under the Union, II, 1870-1921,” in W. E. Vaughan, ed. A New History of Ireland, Vol. VI. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 26-52.

Cornwell, Neil. “Rushdie,” in The Literary Fantastic (Brighton & New York: Harvester, 1990): 184-197.

Dashti, Ali. Twenty Three Years: A Study of the Prophetic Career of Mohammad, trans. F. R. C. Bagley. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1985.) (Originally published anonymously as Bist o Seh Sal, 1974?)

della Femina, Jerry. From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor: Front-Line Dispatches from the Advertising War. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970.

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Dimmitt, Richard Bertrand. A Title Guide to the Talkies: A Comprehensive Listing of 16,000 Feature-Length Films From October, 1927, Until December, 1963. New York: The Scarecrow Press, 1965.

Donoso, José. The Obscene Bird of Night, trans. Hardie St. Martin and Leonard Mades (Alfred A. Knopf, 1973; reprint, Boston: David R. Godine, 1979). Originally in Spanish as El obsceno pájaro de la noche (Barcelona: Editorial Seix Barral, S. A., 1970).

Dutheil de la Rochère, Martine Hennard. Origin and Originality in Rushdie’s Fiction. Bern: Peter Lang, 1999.

Easterman, Daniel. “What is Fundamental to Islam?” in New Jerusalems: Reflections on Islam, Fundamentalism, and the Rushdie Affair. London: Grafton, 1992, pp. 29-44.

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Engblom, Philip. “A Multitude of Voices: Carnivalization and Dialogicality in the Novels of Salman Rushdie,” in D. Fletcher, ed. Reading Rushdie: Perspectives on the Fiction of Salman Rushdie. Amsterdam: Rodopi B. V., 1994, pp. 293-304.

Fargnoli, A. Nicholas and Michael Patrick Gillespie. James Joyce A to Z: The Essential Reference to the Life and Work. New York: Facts on File, 1995.

Faris, Nabih. Introduction to (1952) al-Kabli: The Book of Idols. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952. Fehilly, Carole B., S. M. Willadsen & Elizabeth M. Tucker: “Interspecific Chimaerism Between Sheep and Goat,” Nature, 307:5952 (February 16-22, 1984), pp. 634-636.

Fischer, Michael M. & Mehdi Abedi. “Bombay Talkies, the Word and the World: Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, ” Cultural Anthropology 5.2 (1990): 107-159. Reprinted in Michael M.J. Fischer and Mehdi Abedi: Debating Muslims: Cultural Dialogues in Postmodernity and Tradition. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990.

Fraser, Antonia. Royal Charles: Charles II and the Restauration. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979.

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Glasser, Alfred. “Carmen.” The Lyric Opera Companion: The History, Lore and Stories of the World’s Greatest Operas. Kansas City: Andrews and McMeel, 1991, p. 67.

Gooneratne, Yasmine. “Images of Indian Exile in Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s Three Continents. ” In David Bevan, ed. Literature and Exile. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990, pp. 7-21.

Götje, Helmut: The Qur’an and Its Exegesis: Selected Texts with Classical and Modern Muslim Interpretations, tr. Alford T. Welch. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976.

Gurewich, David. “Piccadilly’s Scheherazade.” The New Criterion 7.7 (1989): 68-72.

Gramsci, Antonio. “State and Civil Society,” in Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, ed. & trans. Quentin Hoare & Geoffrey Nowell Smith. New York: International Publishers, 1971.

Hamilton, Ian. “The First Life of Salman Rushdie,” The New Yorker, December 25, 1995/January 1, 1996, pp. 90, 92-97, 99-102, 104-108, 110, 112-113.

Hanne, Michael. “Salman Rushdie: ‘The Satanic Verses’ (1988)” in The Power of the Story: Fiction and Political Change. Providence: Berghahn Books, 1994, pp. 192-243.

Haykal, Muhammad Husayn. The Life of Muhammad, 8th ed., trans. Isma’il Ragi A. al Faruqi (N.p.: North American Trust Publications, 1976). Orig. Hayat Muhammad (1935).

Ibn Ishaq. The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ishaq’s Sirat rasul Allah, ed. Abdu’l-Malik, Ibn Hisham, trans. A[lfred] Guillaume. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1990 (1955).

Iqbal, Anwar , “I Borrowed my Expressions from the East,” (interview with Rushdie), The Muslim Magazine, Nov. 1983.

Jiwa, Salim. The Death of Air India Flight 182. London: W. H. Allen, 1986.

“Judge Defends Racial Slurs,” in Facts on File World News Digest, January 13, 1978, p. 18, D1.

Jussawalla, Feroza. “Rushdie’s Dastan-e-Dilruba: The Satanic Verses as Rushdie’s Love Letter to Islam,” in Diacritics 26 (Spring 1996): 50-73.

Jussawalla, Feroza. “Post-Joycean/Sub-Joycean: The Reverses of Mr. Rushdie’s Tricks in The Satanic Verses, ” in Viney Kripal, ed. The New Indian Novel in English: A Study of the 1980s. New Delhi: Allied Publishers Ltd., 1990, pp. 227-337.

Jussawalla, Feroza. “Resurrecting the Prophet: The Case of Salman, the Otherwise.” Public Culture 2.1 (1989): 106-17.

Kuortti, Joel. Place of the Sacred: The Rhetoric of the Satanic Verses Affair. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1997.

Lawson, Mark. “Fishing for Salman,” The Independent Magazine, September 10, 1988, pp 58-62.

Loomis, Carol J. “As the World Turns–On Madison Avenue,” Fortune 78 (Dec. 1968), 114-117.

Matthiessen, F. O. The James Family: Including Selections from the Writings of Henry James, Senior, William, Henry & Alice James. N.Y.: Knopf, 1947.

Mojtabai, A. G. “Magical Mystery Pilgrimage,” New York Times Book Review Jan. 29 1989, pp. 3, 37.

Moorhouse, Geoffrey. India Britannica. London: Harvill Press, 1983.

Muir, William. The Life of Mohammad from Original Sources, rev ed., ed. T.H. Weir (New York: AMS Press Inc., 1975 (1923).

Nazareth, Peter. “Rushdie’s Wo/manichean Novel.” The Iowa Review 20.1 (Winter 1990): 168-174.

Netton, Ian Richard. A Popular Dictionary of Islam. London: Curzon Press/Atlantic Highlands, 1992.

Netton, Ian Richard. Text and Trauma: An East-West Primer. Richmond: Curzon Press, 1996.

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Petersson, Margareta. Unending Metamorphoses: Myth, Satire and Religion in Salman Rushdie’s Novels. Lund, Sweden: Lund University Press, 1996.

Pipes, Daniel. The Rushdie Affair: The Ayatollah, the Novelist and the West. NY: Birch Lane Press, 1990.

Robbins, Rossell Hope. “Matthew Hopkins,” in The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology. New York: Crown, 1970.

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Rushdie, Salman. “The Book Burning,” The New York Review of Books, March 2, 1989, p. 26.

Rushdie, Salman. “Choice between Light and Dark,” The Observer, January 22, 1989, p.11.

Rushdie, Salman. “The Empire Writes Back with a Vengeance,” (London) Times July 3, 1982, p. 8.

Rushdie, Salman. “Homage to Satyajit Ray,” The London Review of Books, March 8, 1990, p. 9.

Rushdie, Salman. “How News Becomes Opinion, And Opinion Off-Limits,” The Nation, June 24, 1996, pp.18-20.

Rushdie, Salman. “In God We Trust,” in Imaginary Homelands (London: Granta, 1991): 376-432. An earlier version was written in 1985.

Rushdie, Salman. “In Good Faith,” in Imaginary Homelands (London: Granta, 1991): 393-414. Originally published 1990.

Rushdie, Salman. “Imaginative Maps” (Interview with Una Chaudhuri), in Turnstile 2:1 (1990): 36-47.

Rushdie, Salman. “Is Nothing Sacred?” Granta 31 (1990): 97-110.

Ruthven, Malise. A Satanic Affair: Salman Rushdie and the Rage of Islam. London: Chatto & Windus, 1990.

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Rushdie, Salman. “Minority Literatures in a Multi-Cultural Society,” in Displaced Persons, ed. Kirsten Holst Peterson and Anna Rutherford (Mundelstrup: Dangaroo Press, 1988).

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Table of Contents

Margot Dijkgraaf’s interview with Rushdie about James Joyce

Every year there is in the Netherlands a special week, called the Week of the Book, in which– to promote the new titles– anyone spending more than $10 in a book store receives an extra book, which is specially written for the occasion. In 2001 it was Salman Rushdie who was invited to write the book, and his Woede (i.e. Fury in English) became the year’s present. He was also invited to the Gala of authors with which the Week of the Book started. This year the party was held in a wing of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.) It was here that Margot Dijkgraaf, literary critic of the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad, interviewed Salman Rushdie for the series The Crucial Book, in which writers expound their views on the book that has most influenced their ideas. [K.G.]

THE CRUCIAL BOOK OF: SALMAN RUSHDIE

“Joyce built a whole universe out of a grain of sand”

Salman Rushdie, the author of the “Week of the Book” present, was carried along by James Joyce’s Ulysses as though the book was rocket fuel.

The wing of the Rijksmuseum looks like a fort. His bodyguards (beside his own there are three other of the city of Amsterdam) have left for a cup of coffee, and the one walking along Salman Rushdie watches me with a slightly disturbed and slightly concerned expression. Many images must haunt the head of the man who wrote this year’s “Week of the Book” present: frightening images, images of the future, images of old myths and modern internet legends. Somewhere in that hyperactive brain also roams the spirit of the Irish-born writer James Joyce (1882-1941). Rushdie: “Joyce is always in my mind, I carry him everywhere with me”.

Who it was who called his attention to Ulysses (published in Paris in 1922) Rushdie does not remember, but he knows that it was in the first year of his study of history.. “Everyone said that it was such a sealed book, hard to penetrate, but I did not think so at all. You never hear people say that there is so much humor in the book, that the characters are so lively or that the theme – Stephen Daedalus in search of his lost father and Bloom looking for his lost child – is so moving. People talk about the cleverness of Ulysses and about the literary innovation. To me it was moving, in the first place”

Stephen and Bloom, those were the characters which touched him immediately. He quotes from memory: “Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls”. Those were the first lines of the second chapter. “I am myself disgusted by that kind of organs”, he grinned. “There are still so many little things I always have to smile about when I think of them. That commercial, for example: “What is home/without Plumtree’s Potted Meat?/ Incomplete”. That is still funny. Joyce used many stylistic means which were novel in his time, newspaper headlines for instance. Is it not moving that he makes Ulysses happen on the day that he met his wife! He kept that newspaper, carried it always with him and used all of its details, including the names of the horses in the races. In short, he built a universe out of a grain of sand. That was a revelation to me: so that is the way one could also write! To somebody who wanted to be a writer, like me, it was so perfect, so inspiring, that it made one need to recover. I have thought for some time: I quit writing, I become a lawyer. Later I thought that there may be some little things still worth doing.”

Such as in the field of linguistic innovation? “Joyce spoke against the politisizing of literature, but his language is a purposeful attempt to create an English which was just not a property of the English. He employs a lot of borrowed words from other European languages and creates an un-English kind of English”. Was that not also the goal of Rushdie himself? “Certainly. The Irish did it, so did the American and the Caribian writers. While English traveled around like that, the people felt the need to innovate it. So I did. But the Joycean innovation was the greatest of all. It is an example that deserves to be followed”.

And what about Joyce’s famous monologue intérieur ? “That stream of consciousness was not an invention of Joyce, but he used it more subtly than anyone else. Bloom’s inner voices were about very common things, about a hungry feeling or so. Joyce demonstrates that the material of daily life can be as majestic as any great epic. The lives of ordinary people are also worthy of great art. One can create grandeur out of banality. That was precisely the criticism Virgina Woolf had on Joyce. Woolf was a bit too snobbish for it”.

As the best example of the stream of consciousness Rushdie “of course” considers Molly Blooms monologue at the end of the book. “In the past I could recite whole parts of it: “and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.” That conclusion is absolutely rocket fuel at the end. You have a book behind you in which the behavior of people is not strictly transparent and then suddenly you feel not only the skin of that woman, but her whole body, all her flesh and blood, that is a baffling climax. Of course also very erotic, although as yet the novel was not erotic at all. At that time literature did not extend to erotics, to the sexual fantasies of women. Impossible to imagine Virginia Woolf doing something like that”.

Ulysses is in fact a national epic about Ireland. “It is a grand homage to the country that has never understood him” says Rushdie. “He was regarded there as a pornographer and blasphemer. Now he is viewed as Ireland’s national monument. Well, that’s easy. I do understand how Joyce felt. I am close to him. I feel a kinship, not so much between our types of authorship, but rather between his eye and ear, his mind and mine. The way one looks at things”.

Nevertheless, they would not have become friends, he believes. “Joyce was not very good at friendship. There is a story about his put-down of Samuel Beckett, who adored him and often came along his place. He plainly told him that he only loved two people in the world: the first being his wife, the second his daughter. His only encounter with Proust was also very comical. Joyce and Proust met each other when leaving a party. Proust had his coach standing at the door and was wrapped up fom head to foot, afraid as he was to catch a cold. Joyce jumps into the coach uninvitedly, lights a cigar and opens the window widely. Proust says nothing, neither does Joyce. It is like a silent movie. Two masters of the word, who say nothing to each other and yet disclose themselves. Fantastic!”

In Portrait of the artist as a young man Joyce mentions the weapons with which a writer can defend himself against the outer world: silence, exile, and cunning. Are those the weapons Rushdie recognizes? “Well, that was a very good stratagem in the time of Joyce. Like Voltaire, Joyce believed that a writer should live near a border, so that he could leave immediately if problems arose. At present that does not work anymore: I have experienced it personally. And silence is an overrated artform, which people now too often impose upon you”.

But are writers not regarded more and more as intellectuals and are they not continually asked for an opinion? “I believe that worldwide there are more and more efforts to impose silence upon writers – and that not only applies to me. It is easy to point to the Arab world, or to China, but even in the United States there are people who want to ban Harry Potter books from schools, because they contain something about witchcraft. Even something harmless like that provokes an attack. We live in a time with an increasing urge to censorship. Various interest groups–including antiracist or feminist movements– demand it. When Kurt Vonnegut is banned from public libraries and not everywhere it is allowed to teach about Huckleberry Finn, then you just cannot assume straight-away that there is something like freedom. Against silence it is that now we have to fight. And exile does not work. Therefore, cunning is the only thing that remains”.

Translated by K. Gwan Go, reproduced by permission of Margot Dijkgraaf.

Back to Chapter 3 notes

Back to Table of Contents

The Unity of The Satanic Verses

The Satanic Verses has been attacked by many critics as incoherent, as a disorganized mixture of plots, themes, and characters. Even a cursory survey of the preceding notes reveals that Rushdie has sought to knit together the various threads of his novel by introducing a host of cross-references, repeating the names of characters, catch phrases, and images in a complex network of allusions and echoes. Yet these might be viewed as desperate attempts to give a surface appearance of unity to a basically chaotic work.

I am persuaded that The Satanic Verses is indeed unified by a related set of topics, all of them widely acknowledged in earlier criticism, but perhaps not arrayed in the way I do here. This is my personal understanding of what holds the various plots of the novel together in a way that articulates a consistent world view.

Rushdie says that novels do not lay down rules, but ask questions. In fact he claims that by asking questions, good fiction can help to create a changed world. Novels like The Satanic Verses don’t settle debates: they articulate the terms of debate and ask hard questions of the opposing sides, thereby helping to usher “newness” into the world. One of the unifying themes of The Satanic Verses is newness, or change. It attacks rigid, self-righteous orthodoxies and celebrates doubt, questioning, disruption, innovation. This much is obvious.

But Rushdie is focussing on a particular set of issues relating to rigidity and change: those identified with what is sometimes called “identity politics.” It is unfortunate that this term is primarily associated with the opponents of such politics because it so aptly sums up what feminism, Afrocentrism, gay pride, national liberation movements and a host of other causes have in common.

People who find themselves excluded or suppressed by dominant groups try by various means to find an effective voice and tools for action to create power and authority for themselves. It is these struggles that are the basic underlying matter of Rushdie’s novel. The question that is asked throughout this novel is “What kind of an idea are you?” In other words, on what ideas, experiences, and relationships do you base your definition of yourself–your identity?

People who find themselves identified as “foreigners” or “aliens” often find unwelcome hostile identities imposed upon them. The common catch-phrase in literary theory these days is “demonization,” and it is this term that Rushdie makes concrete in his novel by turning Saladin, the immigrant who is most determined to identify with the English, literally into a demon. (Of course he is also able to earn his living only by taking on the guise of a space alien.) The other immigrants who assume horns later in the novel express the same satirical view of English bigotry. But this is only the beginning of Rushdie’s exploration of the theme of identity.

In the distant past, European observers writing about people in colonized nations often distinguished between “unspoiled natives” who dwelled in childlike, ignorant innocence which was part of their charm, and others who had been “spoiled” by contact with a European civilization they could mimic but never truly master. This formula not only justified the colonial domination of colonized “children” as a form of parental concern, even charity (“the white man’s burden”), but rationalized measures taken to prevent inhabitants of the colonies from gaining the education and jobs they would have needed to rule themselves in the modern world.

Less obviously vicious but still prejudicial was a later formula according to which writing about what is now called “postcolonial” literature emphasized the position of writers from the “third world” writing in English as exiles, uprooted and stranded in alien, often hostile cultures far from home, working in a language that may not have been their own. Immigrants were called “exiles” whether they had actually been driven from their homeland or–as was much more common–they had sought increased opportunity by voluntarily moving abroad. “Exile” is a weak image, and Rushdie rejects it. His immigrants are sources of energy and creativity, busily redefining the culture of their adopted homelands.

In a more recent period, the standard formula has referred to the “center” and the “periphery.” Europe and the U.S. constitute the center, writers from nations like Nigeria, Jamaica, and India belong to the periphery. Their voices are said to have been “marginalised,” thrust from the center, forced into the margins. People using this language do so with more or less irony; but all too often it becomes just another way of saying that we should pay attention to our less fortunate fellows. The challenge of “marginalised” voices is to find the center, or shift it to themselves, seize the podium, and speak their piece.

What Rushdie does in The Satanic Verses is to reverse these terms. He challenges the English/European/white sense of identity. He rejects its claims to centrality. London is changed into an exotic land where people follow strange customs (wiping themselves “with paper only” and eating bony fish). People of traditional Anglo-Saxon stock are almost entirely absent from the London of The Satanic Verses . Instead the city swarms with immigrants: Indians, Bengalis, Pakistanis, Jamaicans, German Jews, etc. He reminds the English that they too were colonized, by the Romans and the Normans.

The only major character with a traditional English heritage is Pamela, who is striving mightily to escape that very heritage and mistakes Saladin for an exotic “alien” who can link her to India, when the main reason he is drawn to her is that she represents escape from the Indianness he is trying to flee. (This same sort of cross-purposes Indian-European relationship is also dealt with in a Raja Rao’s remarkable 1960 novel The Serpent and the Rope. ) Rosa Diamond is an Englishwoman yearning to become Latin American or to be conquered by invading Normans. The bigots who beat Chamcha in the police van are all–as he notes–no more English in their heritage than he, but his color and identity as a postcolonial immigrant allows them to treat him as a complete alien.

Minor Anglo-Saxon characters are venal (Hal Valance), bigoted (the punks who spit on the food in the Shaandaar Café), tyrannical (Margaret Thatcher), or stupid (Eugene Dumsday). Rushdie has turned the tables on Anglo-Americans. Their travel writers have for generations dwelt on the failings of the benighted natives of far-off lands: it is now their turn to become a set of cartoons, to provide the background for the thoughts, feelings, and actions of the really important characters.

But Rushdie does not engage in this sort of caricature to privilege his immigrants as somehow morally superior. They are all morally flawed as well, though treated in a more complex manner. He is not saying that being from a former colony of Britain grants one any particular virtue; it is only that he is interested in focussing on such people. Of course he is perfectly aware that by doing so he is disorienting his “mainstream” English and American readers, giving them a taste of what it feels like to be bit players in a drama which is not essentially about them.

Further, he is not asking how immigrants can become “English” (in the way that Otto Cone strove to become English); he is instead asking how immigrants can create an identity for themselves in England which is richer, newer, more interesting than the traditional stereotypes associated with the old center of empire.

One traditional strategy of oppressed or marginalised groups is to try to create a sense of identity by dwelling on their shared history. Sometimes this takes the form of referring back to a historical period of suffering, as in the case of African-Americans finding a common ground in their heritage of slavery. This can be a powerful move when one belongs to a minority with a commonly recognized shared past of suffering. But this strategy has some often-noted unfortunate by-products. For one thing, it relies for its effectiveness on the hope that members of the majority group will accept the responsibility for their ancestors’ deeds. Even when majorities acknowledge the injustices of the past, guilt is not an emotion that can often motivate action to atone for those injustices. The Hindu miners in the Titlipur story who hark back to their suffering under Islamic rule to justify their attacks on the Muslim pilgrims illustrate the all too common phenomenon of historical grievances being used by one group to justify atrocities against another. Another instance in the novel is the group of Sikh terrorists who blow up the plane at the beginning. During the riot, whites emblazon their apartment houses with references to nineteenth-century wars in South Africa, posing as beleaguered English South African settlers surrounded by hostile Zulus (461). In our time Northern Ireland and the Balkans have provided vivid European examples of the deadly effects of this sort of thing.

The politics of shared grievance also focus attention on the past rather than on the future. Rushdie wants people to remember that Union Carbide’s neglect cost the lives and health of thousands of Indians in the Bhopal disaster (and he clearly wants the company held responsible), but he does not want the very identity of India to be defined only by a chain of misfortunes. The most important aspect of the Indian cultural heritage for him is its rich, creative variety. Its history is more than a mere list of the crimes committed against it by others; and he is prepared to add the crimes committed by Indians against each other to its portrait as well.

Another approach to identity politics is to hark back to a positive historical heritage instead of to a time of suffering. Thus the black Caribbean immigrants in the novel seek to emphasize an African heritage which is actually very distant from their lived experience. Chamcha mentally mocks them for singing the “African National Anthem.” The black leader originally named “Sylvester Roberts” has chosen the absurd name “Uhuru Simba” in an attempt to “Africanize” his identity. It seems clear that Rushdie shares at least some of Chamcha’s reservations about Afrocentrism in the scene of the defense rally for the arrested Dr. Simba (413-416). Choosing Chamcha as his point of view character allows him to critique the limits of such ideas even as he acknowledges the justness of their cause.

In the first chapter of the book, George Miranda and Bhupen Gandhi match Zeeny’s proud references to Indian accomplishments and her list of crimes against Indians with their own examples of atrocities committed by Indians (54-57). Bhupen ends his tirade against modern India (56-57) by asking the emblematic question, “Who do we think we [are]?”

Rushdie seems to be trying to say that Indians, like all human beings, are both victims and criminals, both creators and destroyers. He is not proposing a sort of bland homogenized theory of original sin according to which all people are equally guilty and none specifically to blame: clearly he cares passionately that wrongs be righted and criminals identified and punished. Rather he rejects both martyrdom and triumphant nationalism as inadequate foundations for a satisfactory self-identity.

Another common source of identity is, of course, religion. Who would have thought that in the latter part of the twentieth century, so many conflicts would come to be defined in religious terms? Israeli Jews vs. Palestinians, Sikhs vs. Hindus, Hindus vs. Muslims, Serbs vs. Croatians, Irish Catholics vs. Irish Protestants–we seem to be embroiled in a new age of Wars of Religion. For Rushdie, orthodox religion signifies intolerance, repressiveness, rigidity. Dumsday represents the know-nothing Christian right and the Imam fanatical Muslim extremism. The Imam’s hatred of the former Shah of Iran and SAVAK is no doubt shared by Rushdie; but his alternative is even more monstrous: a giant insatiable maw devouring the people it claims to save. It is one of the more poignant ironies of “the Rushdie affair” that Khomeni evidently died without ever realizing that the novel he had denounced contained a devastating portrait of him.

If Rushdie had only denounced such fanaticism, few in the Muslim world would have endorsed Khomeni’s fatwa. But Rushdie goes on to call into question the credibility and beneficence of orthodox, traditional Islam. Gibreel’s dreams challenge the Qur’an’s claims to infallibility, accuse Islam of the repression of women, call into question the probity and honesty of the Prophet himself.

Rushdie does not create these dreams out of a simple desire to blaspheme for blasphemy’s sake. He is following in the footsteps of the great eighteenth-century Enlightenment critics of religion like Voltaire who sought to undermine the authoritarian power structures of their day by challenging their religious underpinnings. So long as the Church endorsed slavery, the divine right of kings, and censorship, the sort of liberating changes the rationalists yearned for could not come to pass, unless the Church’s authority could be called into question. Similarly, Rushdie sees modern societies like Iran and Pakistan as cursed by religious convictions that bring out the worst qualities in their believers. (In The Moor’s Last Sigh he challenges Hindu fanaticism as well.)

The entire novel strives to break down absolutes, to blur easy dichotomies, to question traditional assumptions of all kinds. There are to be no simple answers to the query, “What kind of an idea are we?” Demons can behave like angels and vice versa. High ideals can lead people to commit terrible crimes. Love can be mixed with jealous hate. Exalted faith can lead to tragedy. Just as Rushdie strives to destroy the distinction between center and periphery, so he challenges easy distinctions between good and evil.

At the end of the novel, Saladin returns to India, finally to reconcile himself with his father. But this is no simple return to his roots. The father with whom he is reconciled is a changed man. Saladin could not have loved him until he had become the enfeebled, benign shadow of his former self on his deathbed. Part of his heritage–the lamp–proves deadly. His inheritance does not include the home he grew up in. Zeeny, who elsewhere warmly urges his Indian roots on him, has little use for sentimental attachment to Peristan. Let it make way for the new, she says. Saladin seems finally to agree. He is ready to put aside not only the “fairy-tales” of religion but his personal history as well. In the end he opts for newness, for “If the old refused to die, the new could not be born” (547).

In the end, despite the postmodern trappings of Rushdie’s narrative, the values of the novel seem remarkably traditional: belief in individual liberty and tolerance, freedom of expression, skepticism about dogma, and belief in the redemptive power of love. Lest we too quickly claim triumphantly that these are distinctively European values, Rushdie reminds us of the remarkably intelligent and innovative Mughal ruler of India, Akbar, who challenged the orthodoxies of his time and brought more than his share of newness into the world (190).

One could derive from the book a sort of existentialist morality: there are no absolutes, but we are responsible for the choices we make, the alliances we forge, the relationships we enter into. Our choices define us. We cannot shift the responsibility for our actions to God or history. “What kind of an idea are you?” is a question addressed not only to immigrants, but to all of us.

Created by Paul Brians

Table of contents http://brians.wsu.edu/2017/02/08/table-of-contents/

Chapter IX: The Wonderful Lamp

Plot outline for chapter ix.

A year and a half later, Saladin flies home to be with his dying father. He has heard that Gibreel is now making films based on the “dreams” which have alternated with the present-day plot throughout the novel. On the plane he reads of various scandals and disasters taking place in India: clearly it is no utopia. Whereas Saladin resents the former maidservant who has married his father and taken on his mother’s identity, his lover/friend Zeeny Vakil immediately sympathizes with her. After years of hostility to his father, Saladin finds no support in those surrounding him for his attitude. As he sits by his father’s bedside the two are finally reconciled. Saladin has inherited his father’s estate and is now rich. Meanwhile a dispute over a film on Indian sectarianism has become the center of a censorship controversy in a way that ominously forshadows the treatment which Rushdie’s Satanic Verses was to receive upon publication.

Gibreel has also returned to Bombay, depressed and suicidal. The movie he tries to make is a “satanic” inversion of the traditional tale from the Ramayana, reflecting his disillusionment with love after having been rejected by Allie. Ultimately he goes entirely mad, kills Sisodia and Allie (hurling the latter symbolically from the same skyscraper from which Rekha Merchant had flung herself). Visiting Saladin, he confesses, then draws a revolver from the “magic” lamp Saladin had inherited from his father, and shoots himself. Zeeny Vakil’s final words to Saladin, “Let’s get the hell out of here,” may be ambiguous: they could mean only “Let’s leave,” but she may also be inviting him to leave the the realm of the Satanic in which he has been living for so long.

Notes for Chapter IX

A Wonderful Lamp Alludes to the Arabian Nights tale, “ Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp .”

GP General practitioner (doctor).

Khalistan zealot Sikh separatist, many of whom have been involved in terrorist acts, including the assassination of Indira Gandhi.

pooja See note above on p. 68 [69].

Solan The ancestral home of Rushdie’s family is in Solan, called the “Anees Villa Estate.” When the Rushdies moved to Pakistan, it was declared “evacuee property” and seized by the state and converted into the office of the district education officer, then made a magistrate’s residence. After a lengthy legal battle, the family regained title to the house. See J. N. Sadhu, pp. 20-23. (Joel Kuortti)

islands in the stream The title of a novel by Ernest Hemingway.

Shiva lingam The lingam, or phallic stone associated with Shiva, is one of the most commonly venerated objects in Hinduism (Sanskrit).

bride suicide Murder reported as suicide; see above, p. 250 [258].

Gaffer Hexam See above, p. 422 [436].

armaments scandal Refers to the Bofors scandal in which leading Indian politicians (including Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi) were accused of receiving bribes from Swedish arms manufacturer AB Bofors.

massacre of Muslims In late May of 1987 a number of Muslims were massacred at Meerut, purportedly by police forces. (David Windsor)

once-popular Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah. There was a riot against him in Kashmir in 1987 during the Eid celebrations (which took place on May 29).

HISTORY SHEETERS Indian English for people with a criminal record.

Juma Masjid in Old Delhi The largest mosque in India, built in the 17th century, more often spelled “ Jami Masjid .” The walled city of Old Delhi is a Muslim stronghold, as opposed to Hindu-dominated New Delhi.

Bandh General strike used as a political protest (Hindi).

member of the mile high . . . club According to modern legend, anyone who has successfully performed intercourse in an airplane in flight.

sugar . . . brown “Brown sugar” is heroin, but these can also be read as racist slogans (see above, p. 261 [269]). The phrase was popularized in a song by that title by the Rolling Stones on their album “Sticky Fingers.” “Brown sugar” can also refer to sex with women of color.

Why do you think Rushdie has chosen to tell the story of Saladin’s father’s death in this final chapter? How does it relate to the rest of the novel? What functions does it serve at the end of the book?

perhaps in the parallel universes of quantum theory Some scientists have speculated that at each and every moment in which one thing rather than another might have happened, both do in fact happen, reality forking at that point into separate universes. Many “parallel” universes would then coexist simultaneously differing more or less from each other. The idea has been a commonplace in science fiction stories for decades.

this pharmaceutical Tamburlane London theater critic Kenneth Tyanan concluded his 1960 review of an Oxford University Dramatic Society production of Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great (directed by John Duncan) with this whimsical parody, which he introduced as follows: “The supporting cast, studded as it is with constantly repeated names like Usumcasane, Theridamas, Mycetes, Celebinus and Callipine, got blurred in my mind, rather as if they were a horde of pills and wonder drugs bent on decimating one another” (Tynan 26).

[540] Eek, bhaak, thoo Noises indicating something distasteful being spit out, also used as an expression of disgust (Hindi).

Abba Father (Urdu).

The Devil damn thee black, thou cream-fac’d loon A casually racist rebuke uttered by the besieged Macbeth to his servant in Act V, scene 3 , line 11.

Finnegan’s wake James Joyce’s novel, Finnegan’s Wake, is based on a popular Irish ballad about a man who loved to drink so much he refused to stay inert at his own wake.

achkan jackets Long formal jacket associated with turn-of-the-century Muslim nobility, now rapidly disappearing (Urdu, Hindi).

allsorts Assorted hard candies.

the lamp See above, p. 509 [523].

Urdu The language most commonly spoken by Muslim Indians.

the world, somebody wrote, is the place we prove real by dying in it The “somebody” is Edward Bond, a British playwright. The last paragraph of the “Author’s Preface” to his play Lear reads as follows: “Act One shows a world dominated by myth. Act Two shows the clash between myth and reality, between superstitious men and the autonomous world. Act Three shows a resolution of this, in the world we prove real by dying in it” (p. xiv).

Claridge’s Hotel London’s most famous and luxurious hotel.

Page 534 [549]

How has Saladin changed after his father’s death?

Childhood’s End Probably a sly reference to the title of Arthur C. Clarke’s science fiction novel. Clarke has lived for some years in Sri Lanka.

George Miranda Perhaps alluding to the character in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. See above, p. 53 [49].

Dhobi Talao Boozer A tavern in the Dhobi Talao district of Bombay.

Shah Bano A 1985 Indian legal case that gained widespread attention.

Fundamentalists of both religions had instantly sought injunctions Rushdie’s earlier novel Shame was banned in Pakistan, and Midnight’s Children condemned in India.

Gateway of India An impressive arch built near the harbor to commemorate the visit of King George V and Queen Mary in 1911.

Shiv Sena See note above, on p. 55.

Foras Road Road in Kamathipura, Mumbai’s red-light district.

dadas Literally “brothers,” but here, pimps (Hindi).

All-India Radio The official government radio network.

“language press” Newspapers and magazines in the many languages of India other than English.

Why do you think the novel ends with Gibreel’s suicide?

Chapter VIII: The Parting of the Arabian Sea

Plot outline for chapter viii.

It is important to know that the events in this chapter are based on a real occurrence. In 1983 thirty-eight fanatical Shi’ites walked into Hawkes Bay in Karachi (the site of the Rushdie family home in Pakistan). Their leader had persuaded them that a path through the sea would miraculously open, enabling them to walk to the holy city of Kerbala in Iraq ( Ruthven 44-45).

The story of the mystical Ayesha from the end of Chapter IV resumes. One disaster after another assails the pilgrims following Ayesha in her march to the sea; but she insists on continuing, as does Mishal, Mirza Saeed’s wife, despite his repeated attempts to dissuade her. He tries to persuade Ayesha to accept airplane tickets to complete the pilgrimage to Mecca (which is in fact the most common way for pilgrims to make the hajj today); but she refuses. Her fanaticism makes her more and more ruthless, unmoved even by the deaths of fifteen thousand miners nearby. She behaves like the evil Ayesha of the Desh plot when an Imam announces that an abandoned baby is a “Devil’s Child,” and allows the congregation of the mosque to stone it to death. Finally, the horrified Mirza Saeed watches as his wife and others walk into the sea and are drowned; though all other witnesses claim that the sea did miraculously open as Ayesha had expected and the group crossed safely. Mirza Saeed returns home and starves himself to death, in his dying moments joining his wife and Ayesha in their pilgrimage to Mecca, though probably only in his mind.

Notes to Chapter VIII

[484] The Parting of the Arabian Sea See above, pp. 236 [243], 468 [483].

sanyasi A devout Hindu who has sworn to relinquish the things of this world and wander the world in poverty, living off what he can beg (Sanskrit, Hindi).

looking like a mango-stone had got stuck in his throat Most uncomfortable since mangoes have very large, sharp-edged seeds.

potato burtha Spicy mashed potatoes (Hindi).

parathas Flat bread fried in ghee, often stuffed with spiced peas or potatoes. Recipes .

arré deo Hey, you! (Hindi)

Family Planning dolls Explained on p. 224-225 [231].

mausi A respectful term for one’s mother’s sister (Hindi).

RSS Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (“National Self-Service” Organization); a fanatically Hindu political organization with close ties to the Bhartiya Janata Party. The assassin of Mahatma Gandhi was a member. The RSS home page .

Vishwa Hindu Parishad Vishwa Hindu Parishad (“World Hindu Council”), another Hindu fundamentalist organization which often works closely with the RSS.

C ommunal In Indian usage, this term refers to sectarianism, and is often used in phrases such as “communal violence,” refering to violence between Hindus and Muslims.

Hindu-Muslim bhai-bhai Hindus and Muslims are brothers. A slogan made famous by Jawaharlal Nehru (Jussawalla, “Dastan” 57)

shakti The divine power or energy often personified as female, for example Kali, Durga, Lakshmi (Sanskrit). Mirza Saeed is arguing that that they are merely metaphors for a purely spiritual reality.

Sarpanch See above, note on p. 225 [232].

windscreen British for windshield.

pugri Turban (Hindi, Urdu).

biri An Indian cigarillo, contains tobacco wrapped in a leaf of another plant (Hindi).

her silver hair was streaked with gold The reverse of the usual process.

Bibiji See above, p. 217 [223].

butterfly clouds still trailed off her like glory Alluding to William Wordsworth’s poem: ” Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood :

But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy. (stanza 5, lines 7-9)

lemmings According to (inaccurate) legend, lemmings periodically stampede suicidally into the sea.

Circe See above, p. 24.

pipe-player The Pied Piper of Hamelin.

Devil’s verses More Satanic verses.

a choice . . . between the devil and the deep blue sea Formerly a common expression for a situation with no good choices, here made literal. Mirza Saeed is probably quoting the refrain of of Harold Arlen’s popular song, “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” (lyrics by Ted Koehler).

refused to sleep beside him This may not be merely a personal reaction, since when a Moslem man disavows Islam or becomes a heretic, it is incumbent upon his wife to refrain from sexual intercourse with him (Massud Alemi).

banghis Literally “sweepers,” but more generally, untouchables, low-caste people (Hindi).

The entire discussion about love at the bottom of this page is conducted in clichés.

all for love Title of John Dryden’s (1677) play based on Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra.

Love . . . is a many-splendoured thing.” A popular song from the 1955 movie of the same name.

The next two commonplaces are immigrants, translations from foreign languages:

Makes the world go round Originally a line from an old French folk song.

Love conquers all Translation of Vergil’s Eclogue no. 2, line 68: “Omnia vincit amor.”

isn’t it? Isn’t that so? See above, p. 310 [320].

What is the point of the pamphlets being handed out by extremist Hindus?

Y atris Travelers, pilgrims (Sanskrit, Hindi).

hoardings Billboards.

Venetian scene of devastation Although the streets and squares of Venice are often flooded in modern times during high tides, this more likely refers to the fact that the city is threaded with numerous canals: any city whose streets are filled with water could be called a Venice.

The water had an odd, reddish tint that made the sodden populace imagine that the street was flowing with blood. Another version of Enoch Powell’s vision come true; see note on p. 186 [192].

Page 493 [507]

mining disaster Mining is a dangerous occupation, but the fantastic scale of this disaster makes clear that it is miraculous punishment for the miners’ opposition to the march (see above, pp. 489 [503], 492 [505]).

kauri Hindi for cowrie shells, which were used as currency throughout much of Asia and Africa in ancient times. There is a common phrase, “kana kauri,” which refers to a coin of such a small denomination as to be virtually valueless (Hussain).

dam “Value,” used in both the monetary and philosophical senses (Hindi). But also punning on the English expression “Not worth a damn,” which may in fact have been derived from the Indian word (Windsor).

The Imam The recurrence of the title here reminds us of the ruthless Imam of the Desh plot, and shows us how Ayesha’s idealism has turned to evil. It is as if the cruelty of the earlier Ayesha and the fanaticism of the earlier Imam have now joined forces. Yet another Imam, in Delhi, is depicted on p. 519 [533].

stoned the baby to death According to Srinivas Aravamudan, this scene recalls “the bloody and unsuccessful campaign conducted after Muhammad’s death by his favourite wife, Ayesha, against the fourth Khalifa, . . . Ali–a historical reference often cited by fundamentalists . . . as a proof that women should not enter public life” (13).

dholki Traditional Indian hand drum.

filmi ganas Popular film tunes: the staple of popular music in India (Hindi). A history of filmi music .

nautch-girl Indian secular dancer in a tradition going back to the Mughal courts (from Sanskrit-Hindi naach: dance). A Brief History of Classical Dance from South India .

‘Ho ji!’ A vaguely celebratory exclamation meaning something like “Hurray!” (Hindi). A common refrain in popular songs.

In this plot, Mirza Saeed plays the role of the doubting tempter which was played by Salman in the Jahilia plot. Compare the two in terms of how sympathetically they are portrayed: their motives, attitudes, and deeds.

Shangri-La See note on p. 295 [305].

thela A four-wheeled cart used by street vendors (Hindi).

Partition was quite a disaster here on land. The 1947 partition of the former British colony into India and Pakistan was marked by violent riots, looting, and enormous bloodshed.

[517] dancing on a fire Walking on hot coals is a traditional practice of certain Hindu mystics called “firewalkers.”

kiss of life Mouth-to-mouth artificial respiration.

CID man Plainclothes detective from the Criminal Investigation Department. The acronym is often jokingly said to stand for “cop in disguise.”

punkahs See above, p. 231 [237].

What evidence is there that the seas really parted and spared the pilgrims? What evidence is there that they simply drowned? What is Rushdie trying to convey by presenting this conflict evidence?

What is the significance of the destruction of the tree in the garden?

Next chapter Back to Table of Contents

Chapter VII: The Angel Azraeel

Plot summary for chapter vii.

This is by far the most eventful chapter in the novel, and the one in which readers are most likely to get lost. The Saladin/Gibreel plot resumes as the former meditates on his two unrequited loves: for London and for Pamela, both of whom have betrayed him. He calls on his wife, now pregnant by Jumpy Joshi, and says he wants to move back into his home, although he seems to have fallen out of love with her. Back in his room at the Shaandaar Cafe, he watches television and muses on various forms of transformation and hybridism which relate to his own transmutation and fantasizes about the sexy teenaged Mishal Sufyan. The first-person demonic narrator of the novel makes one of his brief appearances at the bottom of p. 408 [top of 423]. The guilty Jumpy coerces Pamela into taking Saladin home. The pair is involved in protests against the arrest of Uhuru Simba for the Granny Ripper Murders. Saladin goes with them to a protest meeting where an encounter with Mishal makes him feel doomed. Jumpy mentions Gibreel to him. After hearing evangelist Eugene Dumsday denounce evolution on the radio, he realizes that his personal evolution is not finished.

A heat wave has hit London. At a bizarre party hosted by film maker S. S. Sisodia, Saladin meets Gibreel again. He starts out to attack him, furious at the latter’s having abandoned him back when the police came to Rosa Diamond’s house; but enraged by the beautiful Alleluia Cone, he more effectively avenges himself accidentally by blurting out the news of his wife’s unfaithfulness, unaware of the effect this will have on Gibreel, who is extremely prone to jealousy. Gibreel insanely assaults Jumpy Joshi, whom he fears is lusting after Allie.

Allie, driven to distraction by Gibreel’s jealousy, invites Saladin to stay with her and the sedated Gibreel in Scotland. The two lovers are bound in an intensely sexual but destructive relationship which makes Saladin more than ever determined to take his revenge on Gibreel, whom he takes to the Shaandaar Café, where they encounter drunken racists. On the way back to Allie’s flat Saladin plants the seeds of his campaign against Gibreel’s sanity by telling him of the jealous Strindberg. He begins to use his talent for imitating many voices to make obscene and threatening phone calls to both Allie and Gibreel, and he succeeds in breaking the couple up.

Gibreel, now driven completely insane, is suffering under the delusion that he is the destroyer angel Azraeel, whose job is to blow the Last Trumpet and end the world. A riot involving both Blacks and Asians breaks out when–after Uhuru Simba dies in police custody–it is made clear that he was not the Granny Ripper. Gibreel is in his element in this apocalyptic uprising. It is not always clear in what follows how much is Gibreel’s insanity and how much is fantastic reality: but he experiences himself as capable of blowing streams of fire out of his trumpet to incinerate various people, including a group of pimps whom he associates with the inhabitants of the Jahilian brothel in his dream. On a realistic level, the ensuing fires are probably just the result of the rioting that has broken out around him. Jumpy Joshi and Pamela die when the Brickhall Community Relations Council building is torched either by Saladin, or by the police. When Saladin returns to the Shaandaar Café he finds it ablaze as well, and plunges in to try to rescue the Sufyan family, but instead he is rescued by Gibreel. As an ambulance takes the two men away, Gibreel lapses back into madness and dreams the next chapter.

Notes for Chapter VII

Azraeel Azraeel, or more commonly “Izra’il” is the principal angel of death in Islam (Netton: Text, p. 35).

love, the refractory bird of Meilhac and Halévy’s libretto for Carmen The first lines of the Habañera in Act I of Georges Bizet’s 1857 opera Carmen are “L’amour est un oiseau rebelle / Que nulle ne peut apprivoiser” (“Love is a rebellious bird which nothing can tame”). The libretto was written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novel by Prosper Mérimée. Rushdie’s erudition let him down here, however; for the words to the Habañera were in fact written by Bizet himself ( The Lyric Opera Companion , 67).

Khayyám FitzGerald’s adjectiveless Bird of Time (which has but a little way to fly, and lo! is on the Wing) Edward Fitzgerald’s very loose “translation” of the Rubáiyát by Persian poet Omar Khayyam is a classic of English romantic poetry, and contains these lines in its seventh stanza:

The Bird of Time has but a little way To flutter–and the Bird is on the wing.

a letter written by Henry James, Sr, to his sons The passage here quoted comes in fact from Henry James, Sr.’s book, Substance and Shadow (1866), p. 75. It is quoted in William James’ introduction to his father’s writings, collected in the volume entitled The Literary Remains of the Late Henry James (1884) but is not presented by him as a letter. The passage is most readily available in Matthiessen (156). David Windsor points out that Rushdie evidently encountered the passage as the epigraph to José Donoso’s novel, The Obscene Bird of Night where the quotation is (mis-) attributed thus: “Henry James Sr., writing to his sons Henry and William.” This isn’t the only mistake Donoso makes: a comma gets misplaced, and a number of elisions are made as well of the quote that William James uses. But William himself is misquoting his father: in Substance and Shadow the sentences are in a different order, and there’s a bit that William puts in that isn’t there in the original. So Rushdie has to be quoting the misquote (Donoso’s) of the misquote (of William’s) of Henry James. Donoso’s novel tells of a horribly deformed son (called “Boy”) born to an important politician, who sets him up on a remote family estate where, but for one person, all of the people will be “freaks of nature,” so that he will never grow up feeling abnormal. The one “undeformed person” (who is also writing the story of “Boy”) is thus the one “freak” that will further reinforce Boy’s “normality.”

Bright Elusive Butterfly Bob Lind’s recording of his song “Elusive Butterfly,” was an international hit in 1966. The last line of each stanza is “I chased the bright elusive butterfly of love.”

Skinnerian-android From B. F. Skinner (b.1904), developer of experimental behavioral psychology, which focusses on responses to stimuli. The B. F. Skinner Foundation .

Othello . . . Shylock Two Shakespeare characters; the first the Black protagonist of the play by the same name, the second the villainous Jew in The Merchant of Venice . The reference to Othello being worth the entire output of the rest of dramatic literature is a likely nod to Thomas Babington Macaulay’s famous quote that “a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.”

the Bengali writer, Nirad Chaudhuri Bengali by birth, writes in English; author of a genial travel book based on his broadcasts for the BBC entitled A Passage to England.

Civis Britannicus sum I am a British citizen, in Latin to suggest the colonial’s allegiance to the empire.

the Golden Bough Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough , first published in 1890, grew through many editions into a massive survey of world mythologies intended to demonstrate an underlying pattern which he first discerned in the legend of the Priest of Diana at the temple of Nemi, who could only gain that post by slaying his predecessor.

Goan Goa is a former Portuguese colony on the southwest coast of India. Indian claimed it from the Portuguese in 1961. Information about Goa .

hospitality . . . the Buster Keaton movie of that name Keaton’s 1923 comedy is actually called Our Hospitality . The hapless Keaton finds he is the guest of a family which has carried on a deadly feud with his own family for generations. As good southerners, their sense of hospitality forbids them from killing him while he is actually in their home, so much of the film consists of their efforts to get him to leave and his frantic efforts to prolong his stay.

Ho Chi Minh to cook in its hotel kitchens? The future Vietnamese leader did in his youth in fact work in the Carlton Hotel as a dishwasher and cake maker.

huddled-masses Allusion to the Emma Lazarus verses (entitled “The New Colossus”) on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Text of the poem and background information about it.

are-you-now-have-you-ever-been Applicants for immigration, among others, are frequently asked to sign forms asking whether they are now or have ever been members of the Nazi or Communist Parties.

Ho Chi Minh Leader of the communist National Liberation Front during the Vietnam War. The Ho Chi Minh Reference Archive ?

McCarran-Walter Act A law which for decades forbid those with radical political views entry into the United States.

Karl Marx Marx lived and worked for many years in London.

NatWest tower Also known as Tower 42, opened 1981 and was then the tallest building in London. From the air the roof looks like the logo of NatWest bank. It has since been overshadowed by a raft of high-rise developments in the City of London.

Zindabad Long live (Urdu & Farsi), meaning the same thing as “Viva.”

Briefly summarize what Saladin admires about England and what Pamela objects to about it.

Niccolò Machiavelli Author of Il Principe ( The Prince, 1513), a pragmatic and ruthless guide for the Medici, who ruled Florence during the Renaissance. The revisionist view that The Prince is a satire rather than a set of serious proposals has become fashionable in recent years. The Discorsi are The Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius (1513-21). The text of The Prince .

Labyrinth 1986 film directed by Jim Henson and involving Muppet characters of his creation. More information about the film.

Legend A 1985 film directed by Ridley Scott in which demons seek to annihilate unicorns. More information about the film.

Howard the Duck A 1986 satire on superheroes which cost millions because of its special effects but was a spectacular flop at the box office. More information about the film.

Not since Dr. Strangelove. The mad scientist in the film by that name (played by Peter Sellers) has an unruly arm which keeps giving the Nazi salute, and which ends by strangling him. The character is a satire on the way in which the U.S. Army adopted a number of scientists who had worked for the Nazis in developing German rockets so that they could help develop the American missile program. More information on the film .

Stephen Potter’s amusing little books Potter popularized the concept of One-upmanship in his best-selling book by that title (London: Hart-Davis, 1952) and in several sequels. When one has gained an advantage over someone else one is said to be “one up.” To be at a disadvantage, hence, is to be “one down.”

denied him at least thrice Alluding to the Apostle Peter’s three-fold denial of Christ (Matthew 26:69-75).

entine, Milligan, and Sellers Michael Bentine, Spike Milligan, and Peter Sellers were the stars of the long-running BBC radio comedy series, The Goon Show . See below, p. 406 [417], “the Goons.”

a short-story Rushdie claims to have made this story up himself.

Sunt lacrimae rerum They are tears for misfortune. From Virgil’s Aeneid, Book 1, line 462 (Latin). (See Verstraete 333.) The John Dryden translation of the Aeneid .

P rocrustean bed In Greek mythology Procrustes laid out travelers on his bed, stretching them until they fit (if they were too short) or cutting off the parts that extended (if they were too tall).

Mutilasians Pun on mutant (mutilated?) Asians; alluding to the tendency of popular culture to create Asian villains.

lycanthropy Werewolves.

‘I Sing the Body Eclectic’ Punning on the title of a poem by Walt Whitman: “I Sing the Body Electric.” Text of Whitman’s poem.

What is the common theme running through this paragraph and the following one?

chimera See above, note to p. 301 [311]. All the following examples are to some extent artificial blends which Saladin judges failures.

the names of the two trees According to p. 299 [309], they were laburnum and broom.

Esperanto-like vacuity of much modern art Esperanto is an artificial language designed to be an easy-to-learn international communications medium. Aside from the fact that its roots are entirely European, it has never been very widely adopted and is therefore a failure at communicating, as is much modern art. More about Esperanto.

Coca-Colonization An expression which uses the spread of Coca-Cola to almost all the corners of the earth as a symbol of the exportation of cheap and tasteless American (or Western) culture.

‘the Goons’ See Bentine, Milligan, and Sellers above, on p. 403 [421].

Shree 420 See note on p. 5 on “My shoes are Japanese.” This film contains some of the most popular of Indian film songs.

Parker-Knoll The British firm of Parker Knoll makes luxurious modern furniture.

Why does Saladin’s agent compare him to Dracula?

crazed homosexual Irishmen stuffing babies’ mouths with earth Perhaps alluding to the scandal surrounding the mass grave of babies borne by unwed mothers at the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home. Although the full extent of the scandal didn’t emerge until 2014, the first bodies were discovered in 1975. For details, see the Wikipedia article .

‘Why demons, when man himself is a demon?’ the Nobel laureate Singer’s ‘last demon’ asked from his attic in Tishevitz In Isaac Bashevis’ story “The Last Demon,” he portrays a demon who has been sent to plague an obscure Polish town inhabited entirely by Jews. He finds himself stranded there for eternity when the Nazis destroy the entire population in the Holocaust. Information about Singer at the Nobel Prize site .

man is angelic . . . the Leonardo Cartoon The Leonardo da Vinci cartoon is a large, elaborate drawing he made for a never completed painting of the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus with St. Anne and the infant John the Baptist. Though the children have cherubic smiles, neither one is literally an angel. A reproduction of the cartoon .

Mughlai In the north Indian Muslim tradition.

pack it in Shut up.

Discuss Pamela and Jumpy’s differing reactions to Saladin.

Why do you think Jumpy has the same dream that Saladin used to have? (See above, p. 400 [414].)

[426] Ascot Scene of a famous horse race called “the Royal Meeting ” attended each June by royalty and nobility, decked out in high fashion.

[427] T he black man who changed his name to Mr X and sued the News of the World for libel London tabloids like the sensational News of the World are prone to label someone involved in a scandal and whom they hesitate to name in person “Mr. X” because British libel law restricts publishers much more than it does in the U.S. Black Muslims used to substitute “X” for the family names which their ancestors inherited from their slavemasters. See note above on Bilal X, p. 207 [213].

Brickhall Friends Meeting House The “Religious Society of Friends,” popularly referred to as “Quakers,” have “meeting houses” instead of churches.

[428] the young Stokeley Carmichael Radical leader of the the U.S. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, later of the Black Power movement; born in Trinidad–another immigrant.

Walcott Roberts Perhaps named in tribute to the famous Black Caribbean Nobel-Prize-winning poet Derek Walcott.

the World Service The BBC’s foreign broadcasting service , whose announcers are famed for their cultivated “proper” accents.

Leviathan Biblical name for a whale or mythical sea monster, associated with apocalyptic prophecies (see, for instance, Isaiah 27:1).

we shall ourselves be changed . . .We have been made again . Phrases with vaguely religious connotations, the first perhaps alluding to Paul’s comment on resurrection, “We shall all be changed” (I Corinthians 15:51-52) and the second to the Christian concept of being “born again” (that is, saved).

hewers of the dead wood and the gardeners of the new Reversing the connotations of the phrase “hewers of wood and drawers of water,” which refers in the Bible to slaves (See Joshua 9:21)

Nkosi sikelel’ i Afrika ” God Bless Africa,” Xhosa hymn, used by the Transkei and some other African countries as a national anthem. The first verse was written by Enoch Sontonga in 1897. Often sung at rallies to support South African blacks. Text and recordings of the hymn.

What is it that Saladin objects to about this rally at the end of the full paragraph on this page? What do you think of his objection?

I Pity the Poor Immigrant This Bob Dylan song contains such lines as “that man who with his fingers cheats and who lies with every breath” and “who falls in love with wealth itself and turns his back on me.” Complete lyrics. More information about Bob Dylan.

a blazing fire in the center of her forehead Forecasting the disastrous fire on p. 466 [481].

bun in the oven Britishism for “pregnant.”

Mephisto Brilliant Hungarian film (1981) based on a novel by Klaus Mann.

–Who art thou, then? –Part of that Power, not understood, Which always wills the Bad, and always works the Good.

The demonic Mephistopheles offers this definition of his role to Faust in Goethe’s play (Part I, lines 1345, 1348-1349), arguing the ambiguity of good and evil. It is also the epigraph of Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel, The Master and Margarita, which Rushdie has identified as an important inspiration for The Satanic Verses (see below, p. 457 [472], Petersson 288).

Gondwanaland . . . Laurasia Names assigned by paleogeologists to the early protocontinents which, according to the theory of continental drift, broke apart millions of years to form today’s continents. The theory given here of the origin of the Himalayas is widely accepted. Note that in a sense India itself is an immigrant to South Asia. More information on the theory .

Fair Winds This punning store name alludes to the saying “’tis an ill wind wind that blows nobody good.” Rushdie is not the first to link this saying to wind instruments. It is a common joke among musicians that the oboe is an “ill wind that nobody blows good.”

Ave atque vale “Hail and farewell;” from Catullus’ Ode 101, line 10. The text of the poem .

phoney peace Reversing the phrase “phony war” used to label the long pause in the winter of 1939-1940 between Hitler’s conquest of Poland and his invasion of France. Many observers felt that a war which would spread widely was unlikely, and denigrated what they viewed as war hysteria with this term.

Friend! Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend. The title satirizes the tendency of musicals to shorten the titles of literary works, so that, for instance, the musical version of Dickens’ Oliver Twist became simply Oliver!

Jeremy Bentham The name of an English pragmatic philosopher (1748-1832), not usually associated with entertainment.

the Stucconia of the Veneerings The Veneerings are a pretentious newly wealthy couple in Our Mutual Friend. Their name suggests a veneer of elegance above a crass reality. Stucconia is their mansion, whose name suggests a structure built of cheap stucco rather than noble stone.

Gaffer Hexam A ghoulish figure in the novel who makes his living dragging drowned bodies from the Thames and robbing them.

dry-ice pea-souper When coal was widely used in London, the city was plagued with notoriously thick smogs which were said to be “as thick as pea soup.” Such a fog is here recreated for the stage with dry ice.

London Bridge Which Is Of Stone The first paragraph of Our Mutual Friend introduces Gaffer Hexam as follows:

In these times of ours, though concerning the exact year there is no need to be precise, a boat of dirty and disreputable appearance, with two figures in it, floated on the Thames between Southwark Bridge, which is of iron, and London Bridge, which is of stone, as an autumn evening was closing in.

Icequeen Cone The pun on “icecream cone” must have been in Rushdie’s mind much earlier, when he first began referring to her as the “ice queen.”

a Curiosity Shop Alludes to the title of a Dickens novel: The Old Curiosity Shop.

Ours is a Copious Language These lines are a verse arrangement of a passage from Our Mutual Friend. Martine Dutheil notes that in the original context “the fatuous Podsnap condescends to a Frenchman who is at pains to make sense of the conversation. Instead of engaging with his questions, Podsnap keeps correcting his pronunciation: : ‘”Our language,’ said Mr. Podsnap, with a gracious consciousness of always being right, “is Difficult. Ours is a Copious language, and Trying to Strangers. I will not Pursue my Questions.”‘” Clearly Rushdie is plucking a passage about British insularity in regard to foreigners out of this very English novel (Dutheil 77).

Rex-Harrisonian speech-song The brilliant actor Rex Harrison was no singer, but he developed his own manner of talking his way through songs when he starred as Professor Higgins in the musical My Fair Lady.

mongoose to her cobra Mongeese are valued in India for their ability to attack and kill deadly cobras unscathed.

What follows is tragedy. Margareta Petersson suggests that this passage echoes a similar passage in Apuleius’ Golden Ass: “Readers are warned that what follows is tragedy not comedy, and that they must read it in a suitably grave frame of mind” (Apuleius 239, Petersson 334).

in which clowns re-enact what was first done by heroes and by kings Alludes to the opening lines of ” The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte ” by Karl Marx: “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.”

mutton dressed as lamb An older woman dressed to look younger.

neo-Procrustean See above, note on Procrustean bed , for p. 405 [419].

altered states Allusion to the title of the 1980 film in which the main character is transmuted into a violent beast.

intentionalist fallacy In literary criticism, the phrase “intentional fallacy” refers to the view that a work’s meaning should be judged by its author’s intentions. A short definition .

[443] I follow him to serve my turn upon him A quotation from the villainous Iago in Act I, Scene 1 , line 42 of Shakespeare’s Othello, explaining that the former serves the latter only so he can work his revenge upon him.

Fury-haunted The bird-women who punished those who commmitted certain crimes; their most noted victim was Orestes.

Oresteian imagination Orestes returned from exile to kill his mother and her lover for betraying and murdering his father, dramatized in Aeschylus’ The Eumenides. A translation of the play.

quixotic Like that of the very vulnerable would-be knight, Cervantes’ Don Quixote .

Shabash, mubarak Well done, congratulations (Urdu & Persian).

That is no lady Variation on the old joke: “Who was that lady I saw you with last night?” “That was no lady; that was my wife!”

What effect does Saladin’s revelation about his wife’s pregnancy have on Gibreel?

that bridge Which Is Of Iron See note, above, on p. 422 [437] on London Bridge Which Is Of Stone.

Hadrian’s Wall A wall built to defend Roman Britain from invading northern tribes.

the old elopers’ haven Gretna Green Gretna Green used to be famous throughout England as the first town across the border in Scotland in which one could be married without the delays required elsewhere; hence it was a popular destination for eloping couples.

Lockerbie Scottish town, seemingly mentioned at random, but by coincidence the site several months after the novel was published of the Pan Am 103 explosion (see above, p. 4).

character isn’t destiny any more The saying “character is destiny” is attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus.

Discuss the disagreement between Allie and her mother over modern history.

Persepolis The ancient capital of Persia (modern Iran). Black and white photographs of Persepolis .

woz ear Cockney version of “was here.”

bas Hindi for “enough” used as a command or exclamation.

some rakshasa kind of demon The Rakashas (Sanskrit), ruled over by Ravana, have the power to change their shape into those of animals and monsters.

bilkul Completely (Hindi).

Captain Ahab The obsessed captain who hunts Moby Dick in Herman Melville’s novel and is ultimately destroyed by the great white whale. The text of the novel .

trimmer Ishmael Ishmael is the narrator of Moby Dick, and is the sole survivor of the shipwreck which ends Ahab’s quest. A “trimmer” is one who refuses to take sides, who trims his sails to suit the winds of popular opinion.

the Grand Panjandrum A pompous official, from a 1755 story by Samuel Foote.

bhai-bhai! Brother and brother (Hindi).

a Crusoe-city marooned on the island of its past, and trying, with the help of a Man-Friday underclasss, to keep up appearances In Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe the shipwrecked mariner tries to recreate his civilization in miniature, using as his servant the marooned native he calls “Friday.” The British are now marooned on their own island home, and the natives of their former colonies have come to live and work, often at menial jobs. The Defoe novel is a favorite object of allusions by postcolonial anglophone writers. The text of the novel .

Covent Garden Formerly a famous outdoor produce market, now specializing in handicrafts and souvenirs. History of Covent Garden.

yoni Vagina (Sanskrit). The traditional female counterpart to the male lingam (see below, p. 517 [531]).

Potemkin Sergei Eisenstein’s revolutionary 1925 film, The Battleship Potemkin about the 1905 Russian revolution, highly innovative and widely admired.

Kane Orson Welles ‘ Citizen Kane (1941), also much admired for its innovative camera techniques.

Otto e Mezzo The original Italian title of 8 1/2 , the autobiographical film by Federico Fellini (1863). More about the film.

The Seven Samurai Akira Kurosawa’s influential 1954 film.

Alphaville See above, p. 4.

El Angel Exterminador Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel (1962). Note that each of these films was made by a director from a different country.

Mother India A spectacular 1957 film about rural poverty directed by Mehboob Khan. Rushdie says of the film that it was

the big attempt to make a kind of Gone With the Wind myth of the nation, and took the biggest movie star in India at the time, Nargis, and asked her, basically, to impersonate the nation. And the nation was invented a village woman who triumphed over horrible hardships. At the beginning of the film, she has two children, and her husband is working in the fields and a boulder rolls down the hillside and crushes his hands. And she is required, therefore, to take over the male role, to run the family, to work in the fields and so on, and there is the usual run of wicked land owners. She has a good son and a bad son. There is quite an interestingly suppressed incest theme. Some of this crops up in The Moor’s Last Sigh. Anyway, the point about Mother India is that it had a success on a scale that is almost unimaginable. It became a sort of gigantic event in the history of the country, and it did become a kind of nation-building.

Rushdie goes on to comment on Nargis’ later career:

. . . after she played Mother India it’s as if she couldn’t get rid of the part. She had been so stamped with that part that not only was it difficult for other people to see her differently, it became difficult for her to see herself differently. So she started pontificating, and there’s an extraordinary passage which is recorded in the biography of Satyajit Ray, in which Nargis lays into him and says that his films are terrible, because they are anti-nationalist. And the reason they are anti-nationalist is because they show “negative aspects” of India. Whereas she, in her films, always tried to concentrate on the positive aspects. I think this passage is very illuminating. It indicates how Ray was never really popular in India, and the way in which the people who had been involved in Bombay cinema’s sentimentalisation of the national ideal were actually quite hostile to that kind of art cinema–they thought it was negative.

Rushdie: “Interview,” pp. 53-54.

Mr India A science-fictional 1987 thriller directed by Shekhar Kapoor, starring Anil Kapoor, Sridevi and Amrish Puri.

Shree Charsawbees Shree 420 (Hindi). See note on p. 5 on “My shoes are Japanese.”

Ray Satyajit Ray, director of The World of Apu and other fine Indian films not widely appreciated in his homeland. See Rushdie’s “Homage to Satyajit Ray.” Information on Satyajit Ray.

Mrinal Sen A Bengali filmmaker whose 1969 feature Bhuvan Shome was widely viewed as harbinger of a “new cinema movement,” featuring low-budget, serious films.

Aravindan Art film director from Kerala.

Ghatak Ritwik Ghatak is a distinguished Bengali director.

aubergines Eggplants.

sikh kababs Skewered roasted meat.

seth Member of a subcaste of businessmen stereotyped as greedy.

Strindberg August Strindberg, Swedish playwright (1849-1912). More on Strindberg.

Page 442 Harriet Bosse Married to the notoriously jealous and misogynistic Strindberg 1901-1904.

Dream Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Cliff Richard Hugely popular British pop star of English ancestry, but born in India. See Nazareth, p. 170.

How does the anonymous caller know the intimate details of Allie’s body and preferences in lovemaking?

something demonic Suggesting that these, too, are Satanic verses.

Knickernacker “Knickers” are panties and a “knacker” is a person who slaughters worn-out horses to sell them for dog food; so this invented word has an aggressive sexual connotation.

[462] Glory of the Coming of the Lord Allusion to the apocalyptic opening line of Julia Ward Howe’s Battle Hymn of the Republic: “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord./He has trampled out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.” (These lines allude to a passage at the beginning of Isaiah 5 in which God’s coming judgment is compared to the crushing of grapes.)

Fleet-Street diarists Popular newspaper columnists. Most London newspapers used to have their offices on Fleet Street.

trumpet Azraeel The legendary trumpet to be blown by the archangel Gabriel at the end of the world.

It appeared that Dr Simba . . . This account satirizes the tradition of police murdering radical captives in prison, then claiming they died either through highly improbable accidents or by committing suicide.

Why do you suppose that Rushdie has chosen to have Gibreel go on his apocalytpic mission just as the reaction to this incident breaks out? How are the two actions connected with each other?

John Kingsley Read Leader of the neo-Fascist National Party, Read was tried in 1978 under the 1965 race relations act for incitement to racial hatred when he reacted to the murder of a young Southall Asian boy by saying “one down, a million to go.” A sensation was created when the judge at his trial instructed the jury to find him innocent. A motion calling for the judge’s removal from the bench was signed by 100 Labor Party members (See “Judge Defends Racial Slurs”). Rushdie first referred in print to this episode in his essay ” The New Empire within Britain ” in 1982.

rainbow press Red refers to the red color of many tabloid papers’ mastheads (hence called “redtops”), yellow for “yellow journalism,” blue alluding to “blue movies” (dated slang for pornographic films, and thus to the papers’ emphasis on sex scandals. Green, jealousy perhaps, or maybe referring to green as synonymous with being ill.

Qazhafi One of several possible spellings in English of the name of Libya’s former ruler, Muammar Khaddafi.

Khomeni The Ayatollah is here alluded to by name, a fact ignored by most of those who have discussed the Rushdie controversy. See “ Freethought Traditions in the Islamic World ” for a discussion of this topic.

Louis Farrakhan The vituperative Black supremacist American leader. All three of these figures are the sort of extremists that the “moderate” press would call on a radical to repudiate.

Inspector Kinch The name is probably an allusion to the nickname of Stephen Dedalus in James Joyce ‘s Ulysses . On p. 455 [470] we learn that his first name is Stephen.

Crowds began to gather The riots which follow are based on the black riots in several British cities in 1980-1981 and 1985. See Solomos, pp. 175-233.

testudo A military formation invented by the ancient Romans, in which a mass of men covered themselves with their shields to form a solid roof, resembling a turtle (Latin testudo ).

pint Pint of bitters=beer.

not by a long chalk Americans say instead, “not by a long shot.”

Billy the Kid, Ned Kelly See note for p. 262 [272]. All of the outlaws mentioned in this passage had something of a reputation as popular heroes.

Butch Cassidy Founder with Harry Longbaugh (“the Sundance Kid”) of the Wild Bunch, which robbed banks and trains in the 1890s in the Rocky Mountains. More on Butch Cassidy. More on the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

James brothers Jesse and Frank James robbed banks, stagecoaches, and trains in the decades following the Civil War. More about Jesse James.

Captain Moonlight In the nineteenth century this term referred to rural gangs that often robbed and burned English farms in Ireland. They were popularly regarded as resistance fighters, and thus this reference is much more closely related to anticolonialism than the others. “Captain Moonlight” is also included by James Joyce in the “Cyclops” chapter of Ulysses in a long list of famous heroes and heroines (Comerford, p. 45).

Kelly gang The gang led by Australian Ned Kelly (see above, p. 263 [272]).

Gibreel who walks down the streets of London, trying to understand the will of god. Rushdie provides his own comment on the scene which follows:

It should . . . be said that the two books that were most influential on the shape this novel took do not include the Qur’an. One was William Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell, the classic meditation on the interpenetration of good and evil; the other The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, the great Russian lyrical and comical novel, in which the Devil descends upon Moscow and wreaks havoc upon the corrupt, materialist, decadent inhabitants and turns out, by the end, not to be such a bad chap after all.”

(“In Good Faith” 403). See Radha Balasubramanian, “The Similarities between Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita and Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses.”

what is to be done? Title of a number of important Russian works, most famously a 1902 pamphlet by Lenin about the organization of revolution. Like Lenin, Gibreel is contemplating his own violent plan for redemption (Kuortti).

twinkling Irish host Most likely Terry Wogan, avery popular talk show host in UK in 1980s-90s.

Airstrip One The name George Orwell gave England in his nightmarish novel, Nineteen-Eighty-Four. Information about George Orwell .

Mahagonny Brecht and Weill’s decadent American city, see above, p. 3.

Babylondon Babylon crossed with London; see above, p. 4.

Queen Boudicca Queen of the English tribe the Iceni; led a revolt against the Romans in Britain and sacked several cities, including London. More often spelled Boadicea . Refers to the legend that Boudicca lies buried beneath the platforms of King’s Cross station.

Goodsway King’s Cross in the 1980s was a well-known red light area area (since cleaned up considerably).

pussies-galore Prostitutes, but alluding to character of that name played by Honor Blackman in the James Bond film Goldfinger .

Who do you say that I am? Jesus’ query to his disciples in Mark 8:29. Compare with the refrain, “What kind of an idea are you?”

genie of the lamp The spirit that inhabited Aladdin’s lamp in The Thousand and One Nights.

the Roc See above, note on p. 117 [119].

‘Isandhlwana’, ‘Rorke’s Drift’ On January 22, 1879, the Zulus attacked and annihilated a British force in the South African village of Isandhlwana inflicting one of the greatest defeats on Britain in modern history. Later that same day, 4,000 Zulus who had failed to arrive in time for the first battle turned on the nearby mission station of Rorke’s Drift and assailed it in waves in a battle that lasted for many hours. The heroic defense of the station by a handful of British troops is celebrated in the 1964 film Zulu (featuring, among others, Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi as his own ancestor), which probably brought the battle to Rushdie’s attention. The film is interesting as a post-colonial document since it portrays the Zulus (definitely “worthy enemies”) as almost unimaginably brave and extremely intelligent, their defeat being made possible only by the fact that they had few rifles. But Rushdie’s white residents have chosen these names for their apartment buildings as symbols of white resistance to black encroachment. The 1979 film Zulu Dawn depicts the battle of Isandhlwana. Compare with American “Remember the Alamo!” Account of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift . Anglo Zulu War Historical Society

Mandela Nelson Mandela , long-imprisoned member of the African National Party of South Africa, symbol of resistance to apartheid. Mandela’s freedom and election to the presidency occurred after the publication of the novel.

Toussaint l’Ouverture Black leader of the successful Haitian revolution during the French Revolution. More information about Toussaint l’Ouverture.

chimeras See above, p. 406 [420].

a river the colour of blood Fulfilling Enoch Powell’s prophecy, cited earlier, Chapter 3, p. 462 [477].

there he blows! The traditional cry of the whaler upon spotting a spouting whale–“There she blows!” is here punningly used to refer to the blowing of the apocalyptic last trumpet. Gayatri Spivak notes that Gibreel’s patronymic, Ismail Najmuddin, contains a reference to the Biblical figure called “Ishamel,” which is also the name of the narrator of Moby Dick (47).

‘most horrid, malicious, bloody flames’ From Samuel Pepys’ description of the Great Fire of London, September 2, 1666: “When we could endure no more upon the water, we to a little alehouse on the Bankside over against the Three Cranes, and there stayed till it was dark almost and saw the fire grow; and as it grow darker, appered more and more, and in Corners and upon steeples and between churches and houses, as far as we could see up the hill of the City, in a most horrid malicious bloody flame, not like the fine flame of an ordinary fire” (Pepys).

Why is the style of the Communications Relations Council significant?

own goal In soccer (English “football”), when a player inadvertantly puts the ball into his own team’s goal. The police are suggesting that the victims have blown themselves up by accident in trying to carry out a terrorist bombing.

What do the narrator’s questions imply about the fire at the CRC?

‘I look down towards his feet,’ Othello said of Iago, ‘but that’s a fable.’ Shakespeare: Othello V:ii:286 . Othello says this just after learning that he has been tricked into jealously killing his wife by the villainous Iago. He means that he thinks Iago must be a devil, so he looks at his feet to see whether he has demonic cloven hooves. But he dismisses this test for a grimmer one when in the next line he says “If that thou be’st a devil, I cannot kill thee,” and stabs him shortly before killing himself.

like the red sea See above, p. 236 [242], and the next chapter, “The Parting of the Arabian Sea.”

fire . . . smoke The fleeing Hebrews were led by a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud by day (Exodus 13: 21-22). Compare to the Hijab in the preceeding chapter. See note above, on p. 376 [388].

The Ten Commandments The 1956 film uses spectacular special effects to depict the flight of the Hebrews from Egypt, including the parting of the Red Sea and the death of all the first-born Egyptian children. Gibreel is beginning the dream constituted by the next chapter.

Chapter VI: Return to Jahilia

Plot summary for chapter vi.

This chapter, the most controversial in the novel, returns us to Jahilia, from which Mahound had fled (historically this corresponds to the Prophet Muhammad’s flight from Mecca to Medina). Mahound is returning to his home city, having gained many followers while he was away. The monstrous Hind, miraculously unaged, continues her reign of terror over the city. The cynical Poet Baal encounters Salman, now disillusioned with Mahound. He says that in Yathrib the prophet has become obsessed with laying down various restrictive laws, some of which parallel parts of the Sharia , traditional Islamic law. This passage has been widely attacked by Muslim scholars as inaccurate and blasphemous, but clearly Rushdie was not attempting a scholarly discourse on Islamic law. It is, however, a satire on restrictive moral codes. He also describes what he takes to be the origins of the religion’s restrictions on women.

Salman, noting that the revelations Mahound received were very convenient for the Prophet himself, has begun to test him by altering the revelations given to Mahound when they are dictated. He has realized that Mahound is far from infallible; and, terrified that his changes to the sacred text will be discovered, he has fled to Jahilia. Muslims who see this as a satire on the dictation of the Qur’an find it highly offensive, for the sacred scripture of Muslims is held to be the exact and perfectly preserved word of God in the most literal sense.

The aged Abu Simbel converts to the new faith and surrenders the city of Mahound. At first Hind resists, but after the House the Black Stone is cleansed of pagan idols (as the Ka’ba was similarly cleansed by Muhammad), she submits and embraces the new faith as well. Bilal manages to save Salman from execution; but Baal flees, hiding in a brothel named Hijab. The prostitutes there have blasphemously taken on the names of the Prophet’s various wives. No scene in the novel has been more ferociously attacked, though as Rushdie points out it is quite inaccurate to say that the author has made the Prophet’s wives into whores. Rather the scene is a commentary on the tendency of the profane to infiltrate the sacred. Nevertheless, the imagery and language of this section has offended readers mightily. Baal becomes a sort of pseudo-Mahound, by making love to each of the prostitutes in turn. Salman visits Baal and tells him a story that implies the real Ayesha may have been unfaithful to Mahound.

The brothel is raided, Baal sings serenades to the imprisoned whores and is himself arrested and condemned to death. Hind, meanwhile, retreats to her study, evidently practicing witchcraft. It is revealed that her “conversion” was a ruse to divert Mahound’s attention while she trained herself in the magical powers necessary to defeat him. Ultimately she sends the goddess Al-Lat to destroy the Prophet who, with his dying breath thanks her for killing him.

Notes for Chapter 6

House of the Black Stone See above, note on p. 94 [97].

How has Jahilia changed?

bulls Official pronouncements of the Pope.

four hundred and eighty-one pairs of ruby slippers While the number of slippers is doubtless meant to recall the huge shoe collection of the infamous Imelda Marcos, wife of the deposed dictator of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos, their color is an allusion to Dorothy’s magic shoes in the film version of The Wizard of Oz.

old women were being raped and ritually slaughtered As in London by the “Granny Ripper.”

the Manticorps Pun on “manticore,” a mythical Indian beast with the head of a man, body of a tiger or lion, and feet and tail of a scorpion or of a dragon; from Persian mandchora: “man-eater.”

hashashin The word “assassin” is derived from this Arabic term meaning “eater of hashish,” based on tales of such drugged men carrying out murders.

The Persian. Sulaiman. Salman is being treated as an immigrant, like Salman Rushdie. The Arabic “Sulaiman” is the same as English “Solomon,” the wise king of ancient Israel. But Salman points out that his name, like other words containing “slm” like “Islam” and “Muslim” connotes “peaceful” in Arabic.

sexual positions Clearly intended for humor. Islam actually has no rules on allowable sexual positions, eating seafood or itching (sodomy is debatable but generally frowned upon). The description of halal animal slaughter is correct however.

What do the laws proclaimed by Mahound tell us about his attitudes and character? Why do you think Rushdie chose to relate these particular laws?

Salman had persuaded the Prophet to have a huge trench dug See above, note on p. 101 [103]. The telling of the story given here seems to question the high reputation for cleverness which Salman’s tactic earned him.

Oh, such a practical angel Joel Kuortti presents the most plausible parallel in Muhammad’s career: “A similar tradition is recorded, where Muhammad employed ‘Abd-Allah Ibn Abi Sarh as his scribe; but the latter began to make changes in the recitation and finally lost his faith as these verses were accepted by Muhammad. Later ‘Abd-Allah was sentenced to death and pardoned in the same way as Salman Farsi. The most notable difference between Salman and ‘Abd-Allah in this is that Salman makes the changes without Mahound’s consent, or knowing about it” (Dashti 98, Muir xv & 410, Watt Bell’s Introduction 37-38). See also Armstrong, pp. 244-245. Saadi A. Simawe notes that Salman’s suspicions of the genuineness of Mahound’s revelations may also be inspired by certain criticisms made by his wife Ayesha of the historical Muhammad: “When the Qur’an allowed Muhammad to marry as many women as he wished, she protested with cynicism, “Allah always responds immediately to your needs . . .” (185). See also Armstrong, p. 196.

Present arguments for and against the proposition that the story of Salman’s distortion of the texts dictated to him by Mahound is an attack on the infallibility of the Qur’an.

What kind of idea . . . does Submission seem today Refers back to p. 335 [345]: “WHAT KIND OF AN IDEA ARE YOU?” One of the major motifs of the novel, dealing as it does with the problem of self-definition.

chimeras See note on p. 301 [311].

balcony scene Alluding to the famous scene in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Act II, scene ii .

Dajjal Literally “hypocrite,” “liar,” but referring to an anti-messianic figure in Islamic tradition comparable to the Christian Antichrist who is predicted to mislead many at the end of time by disseminating lies and half-truths. Also spelled Dadjdjal (Arabic).

Exalted Birds The three false goddesses, also known as the “banat al-Llah.” In Arabic, the Qur’an calls them “gharaniq.” See Karen Armstrong’s comment on this point (p. 114).

colossus of Hubal Al-Kalbi in his Book of Idols describes this statue depicting Hubal (Biblical Abel) as being made of as a red agate (Faris 23). See Al-Kalbi, p. 23.

How does Khalid’s slaying of Uzza symbolize the triumph of the new faith? Note the traditional Islamic title given to the “Most High” (God).

All who Submit are spared. According to tradition, Muhammad forgave the historical Hind for her mutilation of his uncle (Haykal 411).

takht Throne (Farsi).

Why is Mahound so angry with Khalid when he asks what is to be done to Baal?

The Curtain, Hijab Literally “veil,” (Arabic) as in the facial covering worn by many Muslim women; but also the curtain behind which Muhammad’s wives retreated from public view. At first the institution of the hijab was applied to Muhammad’s wives only; but later it was adopted by many women. Karen Armstrong argues that veiling and the seclusion of women in general are not Qur’anic, but influenced by earlier Persian and Byzantine customs (197). In sufi metaphysics the term refers to the veil separating the divine and human realms. This episode has called down more wrathful denunciation than any other, with many Muslim critics stating that it portrays the wives of Muhammad as whores. Defenders of Rushdie point out that these are only whores pretending to be his wives, which is true, but somewhat beside the point, since the effect is almost equally blasphemous to a believer. Rushdie himself explains his intentions in creating this episode:

If you can remember, Jahilia is presented as being this debauched zone of licentiousness into which this new idea, which had all kinds of notions of purity and abstinence and so on, had just been introduced. So it’s the first clash between those two very, very incompatible ways of looking at the world. The old debauched world creates for itself a kind of debauched image of the thing that’s just arrived, and that image is eventually destroyed. That is simply my way of concentrating the reader’s mind on what was really happening here and reminding them that after all the harem is also a place where women have been bought and sold. So it may not be a place where they are plying their sexual favours . . . but certainly the harem is a place to which women have been sent for reasons other than desire, so that there are two kinds of ways of locking up women, if you like. One for the pleasure of one man and the political good of many other men, whose families they came from. In the other case you lock up women in order to, as it were, make them available for the pleasure of many men. The two worlds just seem like strange positive-negative echoes of each other and a way of showing that was to make them physically mirror each other. The same number of women, this little degraded fellow, this poet, in one world and the Prophet in the other. That’s why I thought of it. I suppose I underestimated its explosive content.

Rushdie: “Interview,” p. 64.

Circassian eunuchs Circassians, inhabitants of the northern Caucasus on the border between the former Soviet Union and Turkey, were much prized as slaves in ancient times. Slaves used as harem guards were castrated to protect the women they guarded. Information on Circassians.

thirty-nine stone urns Of course, in Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves there was someone in each jar. See Tchu Tché Tchin Tchow. above, p. 327 [337].

butcher Ibrahim Rushdie may have given this name to his butcher because the Qur’anic Ibrahim (Biblical “Abraham”) slew a ram after having been prevented from slaying his son.

great temple of Al-Lat at Taif An object of pilgrimage, like Mecca, in pre-Islamic Arabia. The other goddesses also had their temples, Uzzah at Naklah, and Manat at Qudayd. All of them were overthrown by Muhammad. (Armstrong 64-65)

His Nib’s British slang for any pompous male authority figure.

Solomon’s-horses Muhammad’s favorite wife, A’isha (Ayesha) was still a child when he married her. According to tradition, when he asked her what her the toys were that she was playing with, she answered “Solomon’s Horses” (Watt 323 & Armstrong 157).

sweet wine made with uncrushed grapes This alludes to a wine-growing technique developed by Arabs in Andalusia (personal communication from Salman Rushdie).

Salman’s story This story of a potential scandal concerning Ayesha is retold by Haykal, emphasizing her innocence (332-332). More details are provided in Armstrong (pp. 200-201).

a dead woman When the Ayesha of H. Rider Haggard’s She died, she similarly aged all at once after having miraculously preserved her youth for centuries. Information on Haggard.

Umar Probably alluding to the name of one of Muhammad’s followers who became the second of the Caliphs who ruled after his death: ‘Umar b. al-Khattab (c. 591-644) (Netton 35).

[405] the La-ilaha The qalmah (Arabic). See note above, on p. 105 [108].

Pages 393-394

the death of Mahound This account closely follows the biographies of Muhammad. Mahound lies with his head on the lap of his favourite wife, Ayesha. In Islamic tradition, the words she utters at the end of the chapter are ascribed to Abu Bakr, Muhammad’s bosom friend and Ayesha’s father, who consoled the mourning believers with them after Muhammad’s death. See Ibn Ishaq, p. 683. (Joel Kuortti) See also Armstrong, pp. 255-256.

Azraeel In Islam, the angel of death who will blow the last horn at the end of the world. In addition, when someone is fated to die, God causes a leaf inscribed with his or her name to fall from the lote tree beside the divine throne, and forty days later Azraeel must separate his soul from his body. His Arabic name is more commonly rendered Izra’il (Gibb “Izra’il”).

100 HARBORVIEW DR UNIT 911

Listed By O'Conor, Mooney & Fitzgerald , Susan M Colandrea

100 HARBORVIEW DR UNIT 911 BALTIMORE, MD 21230

1,129 Sq Ft

Status Active

MLS# MDBA2129774

Spectacular AWESOME city and water views!! Sunlit bright condo offers open LR/kitchen floor plan looking over the Inner Harbor skyline! 2 balconies! One off the LR/Main BR and the other private balcony off the den. Highlights include 1,129 sf of living space, gourmet kitchen with stainless appliances, lots of counter top cupboard and pantry. This home has lots of decorative recessed lighting. Main Suite offers walk-in closet, private bath with dual bowl sinks, shower, Jacuzzi tub. Den offers French door entry with lots of privacy. This condo includes 2 gated garage parking spaces in tandem and an array of building amenities... extensive fitness center with steam, sauna, pools, hot tub. Outdoor grill area! Luxury full service building! 24/7 front desk concierge and valet, billiards, dining rooms, lobby social lounge with Internet access, conference rooms, guest suites, business center. Harborview Marina & Yacht Club grounds are beautifully landscaped with walking/jogging paths, seasonal flowers, water fountains. On-site gourmet deli, patio dining, banking, security staff, and plenty of guest parking! Close to night life, shops, stadiums, business district, free public transportation, MARC train and 10 miles to the Airport!

Details for 100 HARBORVIEW DR UNIT 911

Built in 1992

$244 / Sq Ft

2 parking spaces

$247.15 monthly HOA Fee

Central A/C

90% Forced Air

3 Days on website

Built-In Microwave, Dishwasher, Disposal, Dryer - Electric, Microwave, Refrigerator, Oven/Range - Electric, Stainless Steel Appliances, Washer, Washer/Dryer Stacked

Bathrooms Full

Bathrooms Half

Bathrooms Total

Bedrooms Total

Wood, Carpet

Interior Features

Bar, Built-Ins, Carpet, Combination Dining/Living, Elevator, Floor Plan - Open, Kitchen - Gourmet, Primary Bedroom - Bay Front, Pantry, Recessed Lighting, Sauna, Sprinkler System, Walk-in Closet(s), WhirlPool/HotTub, Wood Floors

Living Area

1,129 SqFt.

HOA Features

Association Amenities

Bank / Banking On-site, Bar/Lounge, Bike Trail, Billiard Room, Common Grounds, Concierge, Dining Rooms, Elevator, Extra Storage, Exercise Room, Fax/Copying, Fitness Center, Guest Suites, Hot Tub, Jog/Walk Path, Library, Marina/Marina Club, Meeting Room, Newspaper Service, Party Room, Picnic Area, Pier/Dock, Pool - Indoor, Pool - Outdoor, Reserved/Assigned Parking, Sauna, Security

Association Fee

Association Fee Frequency

Association Fee Includes

Alarm System, Common Area Maintenance, Ext Bldg Maint, Health Club, Management, Parking Fee, Pier/Dock Maintenance, Pool(s), Recreation Facility, Road Maintenance, Sauna, Security Gate, Sewer, Snow Removal, Trash, Water

Association Name

HARBORVIEW MARINA & YACHT CLUB

Building And Construction

Accessibility Features

Elevator, Entry Slope <1', Level Entry - Main, Ramp - Main Level, Vehicle Transfer Area

Building Name

Door Features

French, Six Panel, Sliding Glass

Number Of Units Total

Property Sub Type

Condominium

Property Type

Residential

Security Features

24 Hour Security, Desk In Lobby, Exterior Cameras, Intercom, Fire Detection System, Main Entrance Lock, Doorman, Monitored, Security Gate, Security System, Smoke Detector, Sprinkler System - Indoor, Surveillance Sys

Window Features

Exterior And Lot

Exterior Features

BBQ Grill, Exterior Lighting, Hot Tub, Lawn Sprinkler, Play Area, Secure Storage, Sidewalks, Street Lights, Water Fountains

Garage Features

Covered Parking, Garage Door Opener, Inside Access

Garage Spaces

Lot Features

Landscaping, Private

Parking Features

Assigned, Attendant, Lighted Parking, Parking Space Conveys

Parking Total

Patio And Porch Features

Balconies- Multiple, Patio(s), Terrace

Yes - Community

Spa Features

Heated, Indoor, Private

Water Body Type

Waterfront Features

Private Dock Site

Cooling Fuel

Heating Fuel

60+ Gallon Tank

Area And Schools

County Or Parish

BALTIMORE CITY

Location Type

School District

BALTIMORE CITY PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Subdivision Name

Financial Info

Acceptable Financing

Bank Portfolio, Conventional

Buyer Agency Compensation *

* The listing broker's offer of compensation is made only to participants of the MLS where the listing is filed.

Other Fees Frequency

Tax Annual Amount

Tax Total Finished S Q F T

Additional Info

Municipality

Baltimore City

Total Below Grade S Q F T

Total S Q F T

Area Information for 100 HARBORVIEW DR UNIT 911

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CJL Engineering  is proud to be a part of three team 𝗔𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗪𝗶𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀 for the  Master Builders’​ Association of Western Pennsylvania, Inc.

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