En Kötü Senaryoyu Hayal Etmek: Bilim Kurgu ve Nükleer Savaş
Anahtar Kelimeler:
Soğuk Savaş- nükleer savaş- bilimkurgu- korku- teknoloji- savaş sonrası panikÖz
Bu makale, II. Dünya Savaşı sonrası Amerika'da bilim kurgu ve nükleer savaş anlatılarının kesişim noktasını incelemektedir. Makale, savaştan hemen sonra ABD'nin ana karasını nükleer saldırılara maruz bırakma fikirleriyle başlayan dergilerdeki yazıları analiz ederken, Bombanın yaratıcısına karşı döndürülebileceği endişesini vurgular. Bu çalışma, 'Soğuk Savaş' kavramının sürekli bir bekleyiş haline girilmesi ve gerçek çatışmanın olmaması fikrini beslediğini tartışmaktadır. Yazar, bilim kurgu'nun siyasi konularla ve sosyal eleştiriyle başa çıkmak için benzersiz bir araç olduğunu savunur. Ana bulgular arasında, boyut ve güç gibi metaforların somutlaştırılması ve nükleer sığınakların etkisizlik sorunu yer almaktadır. Bu çalışma, Judith Merril ve Philip Wylie gibi yazarların nükleer savaşın sonuçlarını nasıl tasvir ettiğini inceleyerek, ev güvenliği anlatılarını sorgulamış ve hayatta kalma önlemlerinin boşluğunu ortaya koymuşlardır.
(Türkçe özet ve anahtar kelimeler, özgün makaleye dayanılarak dizinleme amacıyla yapay zekâ destekli araçlar ve editör gözetiminde geriye dönük olarak hazırlanmıştır. Bu unsurlar özgün yayında yer almamaktadır.)
Referanslar
“ The 36 - Hour War . ” Life 19 Nov. 1945.
[2] Jordan, Killian, ed. “Decades of the 20th Century.” Life. Des Moines: Life, 1999: 106.
[3] Solberg, Carl. Riding High: America in the Cold War. New York: Mason and Lipscomb, 1973. 105.
-------- . The Best of Faulkner. London: Chatto and Windus, 1955. 1.
[4] Davenport, Basil, ed. The Science Fiction Novel: Imagination and Social Criticism. Chicago:
Advent, 1959. 41.
[5] Disch, Thomas, M. The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made of. New York: Free Pres, 1998. 12.
[6] Brians, Paul. Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction 1895-1984. Kent OH: Kent State UP,
1987.
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.
[7] Gerstell, Richard. How to Survive an Atomic Bomb. Washington DC: Combat Forces, 1950. 121 - 2.
[8] Merril was compelled by her editors at Doubleday to write in a happy ending with the husband
arriving home. The 1966 Compact edition restored the original more open ending.
[9] Wylie, Philip. Triumph. New York: Doubleday, 1963. 40.
[10] Heinlein, Robert. Farnham’s Freehold. London: Dobson, 1964. 315.
[11] A valuable anthology of stories dealing with this theme is Robert Silverberg’s Mutants ,1974.
[12] Wyndham, John. The Chrysalids. Harmondsworth : Penguin, 1969. 18.
[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
a nuclear holocaust is used by the government to authorise the construction of a whole simulated
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?’.
[16] Roshwald, Mordecai. Level 7. New York: Lawrence Hill, 1989. 118.
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
Edmund Bergler.
[19] Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. London: Flamingo, 1993. 90.
[20] Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. London: Flamingo, 1993. 153.
[21] Owen, Dean. End of the World. New York: Ace, 1962. I.
Headed as The Days after Doomsday. Novel version of film with the title Panic in Year Zero of the
same year.
[22] John Varley’s The Manhattan Phone Book Abr, 1984. sardonically points to the appeal of ‘afterthe-bomb stories’: ‘There’s something attractive about all those people being gone, about
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
other novels cited in this essay in American Science Fiction and the Cold War. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh UP, 1999.
[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.
[26] Miller,Walter M, Jr. A Canticle for Leibowitz. London: Black Swan, 1984. 22, 23.
[27] Miller, A Canticle. 258.
[28] Miller, A Canticle. 280-1.
[29] Asimov 1982 afterword.
[30] George, Peter. Dr. Strangelove Or, How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Boston:
Gregg Press, 1979. 145.
[31]Heinlein, Robert. Expanded Universe. New York: Ace, 1982. 148.
[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.
