Abstract
By 1984, the year of Orwell’s atomic dystopia, it seemed to many that modern military technology was far more dangerous than the Soviet internationalism it was there to contain. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimated that, whereas in 1945 only the US possessed an atomic arsenal, in 1984 some 50,000 nuclear warheads existed around the world, a growth rate of some four warheads per day and a combined capacity equivalent to 3–7 tonnes of TNT for each member of the world’s population.1 In his preface to Einstein’s Monsters (1987), Martin Amis mounts a scathing attack on what he calls ‘the most momentous development in the history of the species’.2 Born four days before the first Soviet testing of an atomic bomb, his whole life has been spent in the age of deterrence, plagued by fear, despair, nausea and the ‘black dream of nuclear exchange’ (6). He goes on to denounce the colossal overproduction of nuclear weapons, the inevitable failure of a deterrence that can never conceivably be deployed and the likely scale of the threatened destruction. As he writes, ‘radiation, superstellar temperatures, electromagnetic pulse, thermal pulse, blast overpressure, fallout, disease, loss of immunity, cold, dark, contamination, inherited deformity, ozone depletion: with what hysterical ferocity, with what farcical disproportion, do nuclear weapons loathe human life’ (17). The supposed threat of communism seems negligible in comparison. Convinced that ‘it is the weapons themselves that are the threat’, Amis struggles to locate their political or social benefit to humanity: ‘[i]f things don’t go wrong, and continue not going wrong for the next millennium […], you get … What do you get? What are we getting?’3 He also expresses bemusement at how rarely mainstream fiction has addressed nuclear issues, although here miscalculates badly.4 In a survey published in 1990, Paul Brians’s estimate that there exists over a thousand English-language novels depicting nuclear conflict indicates the genuine extent of the literary response.5
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Notes
Mikhail A. Milshtein, ‘On the Question of Non-Resort to the First Use of Nuclear Weapons’, in Frank Blackaby, Jozef Goldblat and Sverre Lodgaard, eds, No-First-Use (London and Philadelphia: Taylor and Francis, 1984), p. 112.
Amis, ‘Introduction: Thinkability’, in Amis, Einstein’s Monsters, new edn (1987; London: Penguin, 1988), p. 5.
Ibid., pp. 11, 22. During the SALT talks, the issue of nuclear proliferation left even Kissinger dumbfounded: see John Newhouse, The Nuclear Age: From Hiroshima to Star Wars (London: Michael Joseph, 1989), p. 245.
ibid., p. 18. Like much of Amis’s preface, the point seems to be influenced by Jonathan Schell’s The Fate of the Earth (1982), which claimed that, despite ‘the immeasurable importance of nuclear weapons, the world has declined … to think about them very much’ (Schell, The Fate of the Earth, in Schell, The Fate of the Earth and The Abolition, new edn (1982, 1984; Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), pp. 3–4).
Brians, ‘Nuclear Family/Nuclear War’, PLL: Papers on Language & Literature, Vol. 26, No. 1 (1990), p. 134.
Aldrich, The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence (London: John Murray, 2001), p. 232.
Mannix, The Rhetoric of Antinuclear Fiction: Persuasive Strategies in Novels and Films (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1992), p. 54.
Quoted in Ken Ruthven, Nuclear Criticism (Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 1993), p. 50.
See Newhouse, Nuclear Age, p. 39, and H. Bruce Franklin, War Stars: The Super-weapon and the American Imagination (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 82–4.
Derrida, ‘No Apocalypse, Not Now (Full Speed Ahead, Seven Missiles, Seven Missives)’, Diacritics, Vol. 14, No. 2 (1984), pp. 23, 23, 22, 22.
Nancy Anisfield, ‘Introduction’ to Anisfield, ed., The Nightmare Considered: Critical Essays on Nuclear War Literature (Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1991), p. 2.
Gerry, ‘The Literary Crisis: The Nuclear Crisis’, Dalhousie Review, Vol. 67 (1987), p. 304.
See Paul Brians, Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction, 1895–1984 (Kent OH: Kent State University Press, 1987), p. vii; Dowling, Fictions of Nuclear Disaster, p. 14; Peter Schwenger, Letter Bomb: Nuclear Holocaust and the Exploding Word (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), p. 5; and Peter Schwenger, ‘Circling Ground Zero’, PMLA, Vol. 106 (1991), p. 260.
Enright, Memoirs of a Mendicant Professor (London: Chatto and Windus, 1969), p. 19. For more critical approaches to the bombing, see Johnson, Survival of the Fittest, pp. 324–5; Linklater, Year of Space, p. 154; and Weldon, Leader of the Band, p. 105.
Wyndham and Parkes, The Outward Urge, new edn (1959; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962), p. 96. After 1953, Wyndham associated nuclear weapons with ‘race suicide’, with ‘disaster of cosmic proportions’ and with a mirroring of ‘the ability of God to annihilate Himself’ (ibid., p. 49; Wyndham, ‘Random Quest’, in Wyndham, Consider Her Ways and Others, new edn (1961; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965), p. 150; Wyndham, Web, new edn (1979; London: Penguin, 1980), p. 17). Even before thermonuclear testing, his work reflected on the possibility of human self-extinction: see Wyndham, ‘No Place Like Earth’ (1951), in Wyndham, Exiles on Asperus, new edn (1933, 1951, 1932; London: Coronet Books, 1979), p. 69.
Snow, The New Men (London: Macmillan, 1954), pp. 84, 34. On the competitiveness of nuclear physicists, see Brian Easlea, Fathering the Unthinkable: Masculinity, Scientists and the Nuclear Arms Race (London: Pluto Press, 1983), p. 69.
Snow, Two Cultures and A Second Look, revised edn (1959; London: Cambridge University Press, 1964), p. 5.
See Russell, ‘Dean Acheson’s Nightmare’, in Russell, Nightmares of Eminent Persons and Other Stories, new edn (1954; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962), pp. 66–70. Russell’s stories were often at odds with his belief that nuclear war with the Soviet Union ‘would be worthwhile [since] communism must be wiped out and world government must be established’ (quoted in Easlea, Fathering the Unthinkable, p. 121).
Jeff Hughes, ‘The Strath Report: Britain Confronts the H-Bomb, 1954–5’, History and Technology, Vol. 19, No. 3 (2003), p. 258.
Ballards, The Drought, new edn (1965; London: Flamingo, 1993), p. 132; Ballard, Hello America, new edn (1981; London: Vintage, 1994), p. 91; Ballard, Day of Creation, p. 17.
Ballard, Empire of the Sun, new edn (1984; London: Panther Books, 1985), p. 267.
Ibid., p. 332. For the author’s comments on the US involvement in Japan, see Ballard, Miracles, p. 90, and Ballard, Atrocity Exhibition, p. 52.
Ballard, The Drowned World, new edn (1962; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965), p. 23.
Ibid., pp. 8, 8, 7, 72.
Bainbridge, Quiet Life, p. 95; Powell, Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant, p. 7; Larkin, Jill, new edn (1946; London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1975), p. 215.
Macaulay, World My Wilderness, p. 152. See also the descriptions of war in William Golding, Darkness Visible, new edn (1979; London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1980), p. 15; Jameson, Short Interval, p. 196; H.E. Bates, The Purple Plain, new edn (1948; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1956), p. 5; Barnes, Staring at the Sun, p. 95; and Farrell, Singapore Grip, p. 218.
Sillitoe, William Posters, pp. 62, 62; Frayn, End of the Morning, p. 5; John Braine, The Vodi, new edn (1959; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962), p. 160; Storey, Temporary Life, p. 10; Meredith, Shifts, p. 191.
See Dunn, Talking to Women, new edn (1965; London: Pan Books, 1966), pp. 176, 12; Amis, ‘Short Stories, From Scratch’, in Amis, Visiting Mrs Nabokov, pp. 199–200.
Keith Waterhouse, There Is a Happy Land, new edn (1962; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964), pp. 52, 115; John Wain, The Smaller Sky, new edn (1967; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969), pp. 57–8, 141; Winterson, Oranges, pp. 111–12; Sillitoe, A Start in Life, new edn (1970; London: Star, 1978), p. 12.
Sillitoe, ‘The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner’, in Sillitoe, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, new edn (1959; London: Pan Books, 1961), pp. 15, 14.
The depiction of apocalyptic landscapes is common in Sillitoe’s work: see Sillitoe, The General, new edn (1960; London: Grafton Books, 1986), p. 8; Sillitoe, William Posters, pp. 45, 47; Sillitoe, Saturday Night, p. 121; and Sillitoe, Tree on Fire, pp. 123–4, 128–9.
George, Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (London: Transworld Publishers, 1963), pp. 78, 6, 143, 144.
Ibid., p. 116.
See Robert Jay Lifton, Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima, new edn (1968; Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), p. 500. The satirical approach was also taken by two earlier novels: in The Mouse That Roared (1955) by English educated and temporary British resident Leonard Wibberley, the comedy alternates with earnest polemics in favour of a nuclear governing body of small nations; in Brigid Brophy’s Hackenfeller’s Ape (1953), the parody of right-wing nuclearism foreshadows the absudism of Dr Strangelove (see Wibberley, Mouse That Roared, pp. 169–70; Brophy, Hackenfeller’s Ape, new edn (1953; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), p. 64).
Philip A.G. Sabin, The Third World War Scare in Britain: A Critical Analysis (Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1986), p. 1.
Lessing, The Memoirs of a Survivor, new edn (1974; London: Picador, 1976), p. 122.
Ibid., pp. 72, 98.
Carter, Heroes and Villains, new edn (1969; London: Penguin, 2011), p. 87.
Ibid., p. 20.
Kavan, Ice, new edn (1967; London: Peter Owen, 2006), p. 123.
Lessing, Four-Gated City, p. 569; Iris Murdoch, The Nice and the Good, new edn (1968; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969), p. 117; Lively, Road to Lichfield, p. 50; Banks, End to Running, p. 14.
See Paul Byrne, ‘Pressure Groups and Popular Campaigns’, in Paul Johnson, ed., Twentieth-Century Britain: Economic, Social and Cultural Change (London and New York: Longman, 1994), p. 455.
Bradbury, Cuts, p. 90; Coe, Touch of Love, pp. 9–10; Winterson, Sexing the Cherry, new edn (1989; London: Vintage, 1990), p. 122.
Ballard, Hello America, p. 187; Amis, ‘Insight at Flame Lake’, in Amis, Einstein’s Monsters, p. 54; McEwan, The Child in Time, new edn (1987; London: Vintage, 1997), pp. 163, 163.
Weldon, Darcy’s Utopia, new edn (1990; London: Flamingo, 1991), p. 198; Weldon, The President’s Child, new edn (1982; London: Coronet Books, 1983), p. 31; Weldon, Shrapnel Academy, p. 202. See also Weldon, The Rules of Life, new edn (1987; London: Arrow Books, 1988), p. 22; Weldon, Heart of the Country, pp. 160–1; Weldon, Shrapnel Academy, p. 136; Weldon, ‘Geoffrey and the Eskimo Child’, in Weldon, Watching Me, pp. 182, 186; Weldon, ‘Threnody’, in Weldon, Watching Me, p. 113.
Lively, Next to Nature, Art (London: Heinemann, 1982), p. 185; Lively, Judgement Day, p. 27. Martin Amis’s work offered the most sustained focus on nuclearism: see Amis, Other People, pp. 56, 58; Amis, The Rachel Papers, new edn (1973; London: Penguin, 1984), p. 73; Amis, London Fields, new edn (1989; London: Penguin, 1990), pp. 64, 118, 127, 445; Amis, ‘Introduction and Acknowledgments’, in Amis, The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America, new edn (1986; New York: Viking, 1987), p. xi; and Amis, ‘Nuclear City: The Megadeath Intellectuals’, in Amis, Visiting Mrs Nabokov, pp. 13–33. Another interesting example is Ian McEwan, who often reflected on the masculinism of nuclear policy and on the consequences of nuclear policy for the general population: see McEwan, ‘Introduction’ to McEwan, Move Abroad, p. 5; McEwan, Or Shall We Die?, in McEwan, Move Abroad, p. 23; and McEwan, Child in Time, pp. 34–6. McEwan’s involvement in the anti-nuclear movement led to a visit to Moscow with the European Nuclear Disarmament in 1987 (see Peter Childs, ‘No Different to You: The Innocent (1990)’, in Childs, ed., The Fiction of Ian McEwan (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 83–4).
See D.J. Enright, Academic Year, new edn (1955; Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 151; Buchi Emecheta, The Rape of Shavi (London and Nigeria: Ogwugwu Afor, 1983), pp. 29–31; Angus Wilson, ‘South Africa — A Visit to My Mother’s Land’, in Wilson, Reflections in a Writer’s Eye, new edn (1986; London: Paladin Grafton Books, 1988), pp. 55–6; Banks, Defy the Wilderness, pp. 79, 267; Wyndham and Parkes, Outward Urge, p. 99; and Hanley, Journey Homeward, p. 270.
See Nicholas J. White, Decolonisation: The British Experience since 1945 (London and New York: Longman, 1999), p. 12; and Ruthven, Nuclear Criticism, p. 51.
Harris, Black Marsden (London: Faber and Faber, 1972), p. 31.
Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions (London: The Women’s Press, 1988), p. 93; Randhawa, A Wicked Old Woman (London: The Women’s Press, 1987), p. 77; Selvon, Those Who Eat the Cascadura (London: Davis-Poynter, 1972), p. 93; Salkey, The Late Emancipation of Jerry Stover (London: Hutchinson, 1968), p. 216. The worldwide fear of nuclear calamity makes a mockery of Chatwin’s childhood dream of finding ‘somewhere to live when the rest of the world blew up’ (Chatwin, In Patagonia, new edn (1977; London: Vintage, 2008), p. 7).
For example, see Emma Tennant, The Crack, new edn (1973; London: Faber and Faber, 1985), pp. 23, 103–4, 134–42; and Emma Tennant, A Wedding of Cousins, new edn (1988; London: Penguin, 1989), pp. 104–11.
Tennant, Queen of Stones, new edn (1982; London: Picador, 1983), pp. 15, 16, 16, 16, 17.
For Gee’s treatment of nuclear anxiety, nuclear waste, nukespeak and radiation, see Gee, Dying, In Other Words, new edn (1981; London: Flamingo, 1994), pp. 156, 186; and Gee, Grace, new edn (1988; London: Abacus, 1989), pp. 13, 54–5, 135, 168–9.
Zuckerman, Nuclear Illusion and Reality (London: Collins, 1982), pp. 41–2.
Jameson, Short Interval, p. 58; Scott, Bender, p. 171; Nancy Mitford, Don’t Tell Alfred, new edn (1960; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963), p. 128.
Orton, Head to Toe, p. 123; Ackroyd, First Light, new edn (1989; London: Penguin, 1993), p. 217. For further examples, see Weldon, President’s Child, p. 51; Lynne Reid Banks, Two Is Lonely, new edn (1974; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976), p. 126; Banks, Defy the Wilderness, p. 79.
Anisfield, ‘Introduction’ to Anisfield, ed., Nightmare Considered, p. 1; Gee, The Ice People, new edn (1998; London: Richard Cohen Books, 1999), p. 208; Ballard, Rushing to Paradise (London: Flamingo, 1994), p. 186; McEwan, On Chesil Beach, new edn (2007; London: Vintage, 2008), p. 117.
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© 2013 Andrew Hammond
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Hammond, A. (2013). The Nuclear Debate. In: British Fiction and the Cold War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137274854_3
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