Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction
Nuclear Holocausts Bibliography: D
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P
R S T U V W Y Z
Table of Contents
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, 1964
As 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, 1977
When
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, 1983
Saboteurs
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.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P
R S T U V W Y Z
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