I read 5 books about nuclear holocaust from the 1950’s

First, a disclaimer: yes, these are all books written by white men from the western side of the Iron Curtain. I’d very much love to read a book on this topic from a different perspective, especially one coming from the Eastern Bloc (as that’s where I myself originate), but I couldn’t find one that was written in the 1950's and I didn’t want to go against the theme.

Books are listed in the order in which I read them.

1. On the Beach

Author: Nevil Shute

Year: 1957

In one sentence: As a radioactive cloud creeps its way across the earth, gradually wiping out all living from its face, a community of last survivors awaits their own inevitable end.

If there’s one reason you should read this book, it’s the atmosphere, heavy and smothering, but oddly comforting at the same time, like the world’s comfiest blanket, and it alone makes me wish I loved On the Beach more than I really did. 

It’s a bit of a shame that in a book whose main schtick is that you are waiting for people to die, you just don’t care much about those people. The characters in here really don’t have a lot of character to speak of (with the exception of maybe Moira, whom I quite liked), they can be solely described by their job title and the activity they choose to occupy themselves with in their last days. Regarding their inevitable fate, they approach it with either acceptance or denial and it just never causes much uproar. Nobody freaks out. Nobody digs a hole in their backyard. Nobody decides to say fuck it and go out 120 Days of Sodom-style. There are some little glimmers of hope, but their eventual quenching is met with a shrug and “oh well”. I half-expected there to be a revelation that everyone in this book is popping diazepam as a part of their balanced breakfast, however, of the only two characters who turn to substances for comfort, one ceases to do so as soon as she meets a good proper family guy and immediately decides to turn into a good proper girl herself, and the other one does so less as a service to himself and more as a refusal to let good booze go undrunk. I understand there’s such a thing as an artistic choice, but at times it feels more like a lack of imagination, or unwillingness to provoke the 1950’s reader's more pearl-clutchy instincts.

However, somewhere around Seattle the book finally clicked for me. Maybe it’s because the story finally got a much needed focus, first on the mission, then on the ending itself, but from this point onward, I was completely hooked. The last image is just beautiful and to me, fully redeemed the book’s weaker start.

1. Alas, Babylon

Author: Pat Frank

Year: 1959

In one sentence: A little town in Florida is miraculously spared the destruction of a nuclear war, but now has to deal with its aftermath. 

Ok, look, I know that the 50’s were, uh, a different time, but I’m reading this in the year of our lord 2024 and I just can’t help having some thoughts.

Out of the five books I read, Alas, Babylon seems the most like the product of its time. It’s also the most straightforward one. The prose is rather plain and never really does anything more than it has to. The nuclear apocalypse is not a metaphor, it’s not a vibe, it’s simply a thing that happened and now we need to figure out what to do next. Each of the characters exists solely to fulfil its role in the community of survivors as well as the story itself, so why bother with complex characterization when a simple archetype will do its job just as well. The leader, our main hero Randy, is of course a proper white American man with all the proper morals you’d expect (with a tinge of anti-racism just to give him some edge). The women are competent enough to run a household, but once you leave them without a man for a few days, things start immediately falling apart. Black people are in the sudden social upheaval elevated to an equal status – in theory, except they still remain largely in subservient roles, and if Frank needs to kill a character, he will of course sacrifice the black guy.

Similarly to On the Beach, there seems to be an unwillingness to provoke the reader’s sensibilities too much. There is danger outside of Randy’s little haven, coming mostly from groups of highwaymen who roam the outskirts, but things never go to quite as brutal places as us accustomed to with the violence-permeated 21st century pop-culture might expect.

But, I just can’t dislike it. Once I adjusted my expectations and accepted that I’m basically reading a fun adventure story in a post-apocalyptic setting, I ended up enjoying it quite a lot. There is action on action, the story, once the bomb drops, never stops moving along and once you see the characters in motion, you might even forget how two-dimensional they are.

1. Red Alert

Author: Peter George

Year: 1958

In one sentence: One man’s misguided attempt at bringing peace to the world starts a cascade of events that bring it to the brink of destruction.

Despite being often included among nuclear apocalypse fiction, the nuclear apocalypse in this book hasn't happened yet; instead, we are watching the immediate lead-up to one.

The perspective switches between a military base in Texas, where a single officer decides to spice things up by nuking the Soviets, the crew aboard a bomber on its way to carry out said nuking, and the Pentagon, from which the President and his cabinet try to stop it before it’s too late and the Cold War turns into a very hot one.

From the beginning, we are constantly being made aware of the passage of time. It takes precious minutes to physically reach people and places, information is transmitted with latency, there are big decisions to be made which need to be thought out – but quickly, because the clock is ticking. Time is the most valuable resource and it’s constantly running out.

When I first started reading, I was a bit annoyed at George’s insistence of describing the minutiae of every single action his characters (and primarily those aboard the Alabama Angel bomber) take, however this quirk actually reveals to be serving a purpose, so I’m not even confident in that criticism anymore. It surely makes the story drag a bit, but it also pulls you in and shows how things drag in real time.

I couldn’t write this post without mentioning that this is the book that inspired the movie Dr Strangelove. However, Red Alert is its own (much more serious) thing and it deserves to be appreciated in its own right.

1. A Canticle for Leibowitz

Author: Walter M. Miller, Jr.

Year: 1959

In one sentence: As the clock of humanity is dialled backwards by a nuclear war, a monastic order still preserves the old world’s knowledge, witnessing its rejection, rediscovery and finally readoption as centuries pass by.

This is surely the book I expected the least of – and the one I ended up loving the most. I actually ordered a physical copy somewhere midway through, but then finished the book before it managed to arrive.

As somebody who grew up as an atheist in a largely atheistic society, my knowledge about the Christian mythology is pretty limited, so there are definitely a lot of themes that I missed. Still, the book just completely engulfed me. The world beyond the monastery walls feels large, desolate and cruel, but inside is a safe haven populated by a set of rotating, but still memorable characters (praise the lord and sing hallelujah, we get actual characters this time). And despite its overall bleakness, it’s also by far the funniest book here.

The book itself consists of three separate stories, all taking place at the monastery of the Order of Saint Leibowitz but set around six centuries apart. The clock is reset and humanity is forced to repeat the last two thousand years of its existence; equipped only with some spiced-up genomes and the power of knowledge of how it all went down previously, which could save it this time… or not.

I was quite surprised to learn that Miller was Catholic because Canticle seems pretty balanced in its views. Sure, a lot of this story is told from the perspective of the Order, but it’s also occasionally shown to be a bit misguided (to a pretty humorous effect) and the last story presents a dilemma in which I found it quite hard to side with the monks (but again, a Catholic might see this differently – I don’t have a Catholic at hand to discuss this with though). The book also seems to suggest a certain caution with regards to science, but as a scientist myself, it’s not something I necessarily disagree with. You can both love science and worry about its application. The Church’s purpose for a quite long stretch of the book is the preservation of knowledge and blatant anti-intellectualism is a view expressed by barbaric hordes that Miller definitely doesn’t want us agreeing with.

1. The Chrysalids

Author: John Wyndham

Year: 1955

In one sentence: In a religious society that fears mutation and all that’s different, a young boy discovers his hidden gift that, if discovered, might cost him his life.

Despite being the oldest one, The Chrysalids felt in a way as the most recent one out of the bunch. In large part, it’s because it falls into the YA dystopia genre, which I have sorta associated with the 2010s, but also the prose feels quite fresh – simple, but efficient. There are a couple of signs, however, that betray its year of origin.

I’ll start with the good things. Wyndham builds an interesting world, its rules are clear and make sense, the atmosphere is quite grim, just how I like it. The characters’ motivations are clear, shaped by their inhospitable environment. There is always a tangible danger hanging over David’s (and other “deviant” characters’) head and the lead up to his eventual discovery was by far the best part of the book.

However, I just feel that the worldbuilding offered more potential which Wyndham just didn’t feel like exploring. Except for the telepathy that David and friends possess, there is a total absence of any other “invisible” disability. Including those, and showing the zealous society shun it as well, might have been even more effective in showing the danger that our main character is in. David’s group also don’t really do anything with their telepathic powers, for the most part they just use it as a mental group chat to keep up with each other’s lives. There is a section, in which Michael, the de-facto leader of the telepaths, relays information that he learned at school, but the others don’t really do anything with it (except maybe helping him get better grades). I get that they need to conceal their abilities, but the potential perks of telepathy are never really explored, at least not until we get to the chase part.

Once again, I had a bit of an issue with the characters. There are a couple of really nicely drawn side-characters, but the telepathic group is largely interchangeable. These should be the characters closest to David and since the story is described through his eyes, I would prefer if they were a bit more distinct. Wyndham is also apparently unable to imagine that a woman might be motivated by anything other than motherly or romantic love, which is most apparent in his treatment of Sophie.

My biggest issue, however, lies in the ending. I’m spoiling stuff quite heavily from this point onward, so proceed at your own discretion. 

I was still really invested in the story, when David’s group is finally discovered and he needs to flee, accompanied by his fellow telepaths: cousin-lover Rosalind and little sister Petra. There were a lot of ways the story could go, so it’s a real shame that Wyndham chose the least interesting option. Nothing that happens after Petra makes contact with the New New Zealanders really matters. David and his group are taken prisoner by the mutant Fringe people, but we know it’s just a matter of time before they are rescued, essentially everything from that point onward is just a prolonged wait for the inevitable deus ex machina.

There are seeds of ambivalence regarding the New Zealanders sprinkled between the lines, but I could never tell if they are purposeful or purely incidental. I kinda wish there was a second part to this story, in which Wyndham explored the new society’s darker aspects (give it the Mockingjay treatment, if you will), but he just seemed ready to be done with it, much sooner than I was.

Endnotes:

• Despite me being overall quite critical, I actually liked all of these books in the end. Each one offers a different perspective on the topic of nuclear apocalypse and they all have their merits.
• By really narrowing the range of books I allowed myself to read, I ended up reading books I would not have reached for otherwise. I found this to be a great experiment and will probably do stuff like this again in the future.
• I found it quite interesting that despite being all written by Western Bloc authors, in neither of these books do the Soviets attack first. I did lowkey expect to encounter a Bondesque Soviet villain, but there was no such thing. In both Alas, Babylon and Red Alert, it’s the Americans who accidentally trigger the war, in On the Beach it’s the third unaffiliated countries that start it, in A Canticle for Leibowitz we get an entire biblical apocryph and in The Chrysalids, there is really no backstory. These choices generally fit their respective books (in Red Alert it’s literally the main plot), the only explanation I had a bit of an issue with, was the one in On The Beach and it’s solely because it feels unnecessary and quite shoe-horned.

My ranking:

1. A Canticle for Leibowitz
2. Red Alert
3. On the Beach
4. The Chrysalids
5. Alas, Babylon

Recommended reading order to get that full nuclear apocalypse experience:

1. Red Alert
2. Alas, Babylon
3. On the Beach
4. The Chrysalids
5. A Canticle for Leibowitz