Imagining the Worst: Science Fiction and Nuclear War
Keywords:
Cold War, nuclear war, science fiction, fear, technology, post-war anxietyAbstract
This article analyzes the intersection of science fiction and nuclear war narratives in post-World War II America. It argues that American periodicals began depicting hypothetical nuclear attacks on the U.S. mainland shortly after the war's end, reflecting a paradoxical fear of the Bomb being turned against its creator. The paper explores how the concept of the 'Cold War' exacerbated these fears by suggesting a state of perpetual imminence without actual conflict. The author contends that science fiction provided a unique medium to engage with political issues and social criticism during this period. Key findings include the use of science fiction to literalize metaphors, such as size and power, and to question the effectiveness of nuclear shelters. This study examines how novelists like Judith Merril and Philip Wylie depicted the consequences of nuclear war, challenging domestic security narratives and exposing the futility of survivalist measures.
(The abstract and keywords were prepared retrospectively for indexing purposes using AI-assisted tools and editorial review, based on the original article. They did not appear in the original publication.)
References
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All of the narratives discussed here except those by Ray Bradbury and David Morrow are listed in
Paul Brians’ Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction which remains an invaluable guide to this
material.
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[11] A valuable anthology of stories dealing with this theme is Robert Silverberg’s Mutants ,1974.
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[13] Dick gives a spatial version of what was becoming known in the mid-1960s as the ‘credibility gap’
between official US government statements on Vietnam and the reality. One of Dick’s major
themes was the art of reality management, as exemplified in Time Out Of Joint ,1959, where fear of
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environment.
[14] Disch, Thomas M. The Dreams. 94.
[15] Frank, Pat. Alas Babylon. New York: Bantom, 1976. V.
Even when the enemy is not named it could conceivably only be the Soviet Union. However, it is
unusual for a novel like Pat Frank’s Alas, Babylon, 1959, to be written in response to the query:
‘what do you think would happen if the Russkies hit us when we weren’t looking – you know, like
Pearl Harbor?’.
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The 1969 film adaptation carries the title The Forbin Project.
[18] Wolfe drew for this on the later writings of Freud and also the works of the Freudian psychologist
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wandering in a depopulated world, scrounging cans of Campbell’s pork and beans, defined one’s
family from marauders’ (quoted in Paul Brians, Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction. A
Supplement, http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/nuclear/nh-supplement.html). The 1980s saw the
rise of post-holocaust super-warrior adventure series like Jerry Ahern’s Survivalist novels.
[23] Brackett, Leigh. The Long Tomorrow. New York: Doubleday, 1955. 173. I have discussed this and
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[24] Robinson, Kim Stanley. The Wild Shore. London: Macdonald, 1986. 102.
[25] The narrator rejects the ‘part of the story where the author winds it all up in a fine flourish that tells
what it all meant’ (The Wild Shore, p.370) because he has discovered lies about the former
American Empire and the novel closes with an expression of intent to revise the narrative from
scratch.
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[28] Miller, A Canticle. 280-1.
[29] Asimov 1982 afterword.
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[32] The novel uses a mock-picaresque narrative mode which does not prepare the reader for the surreal
interrogation of US nuclear policy which follows the outbreak of hostilities.
[33] For a discussion of this dimension to nuclear war fiction: Schwenger, Peter. Letter Bomb: Nuclear
Holocaust and the Exploding Word. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1992.
