A History of Fear

A History of Fear
British Apocalyptic Fiction, 1895 –2011
MARTIN HERMANN
Foreword by Adam Roberts
A History of Fear
British Apocalyptic Fiction, 1895−2011
The idea of apocalypse has a long tradition in the history of civilization.
Secularized speculations about the end of the world have been a part of public
discourse in Britain ever since the 19th century. This study investigates fiction
about the potential end of humankind, written and produced by British writers
and filmmakers from the 1890s to the beginning of the 21st century. Martin
Hermann argues that British apocalyptic fiction is deeply embedded in the
cultural context of its respective era. Applying ideas from Michel Foucault’s
The Archaeolog y of Knowledge and analyzing works by H. G. Wells, John Wyndham,
John Brunner, Stephen Baxter and other, less remembered authors of speculative
fiction, Hermann traces a history of fear in British culture, identifying the
discursive formations that have shaped the apocalyptic discourse in Britain over
the last 120 years. He contends that these formations run alongside the great
historical divides of the 20th and 21st century.
M ARTIN HER M ANN is an academic librarian at the Bavarian State Library
in Munich. He has published articles on American and Irish film. In the area
of library and information science, he is the co-founder and co-editor of the
German-language open access journal Perspektive Bibliothek and co-editor of
Bibliotheken: Innovation aus Tradition (2014).
A History of Fear
British Apocalyptic Fiction, 1895−2011
MA RT I N HE RM ANN
© 2015 Martin Hermann
Except for all images, this book is published under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0). This licence allows you to
share, copy, distribute and transmit the book; to adapt the book and to make
commercial use of the book providing attribution is made to the author (but
not in any way that suggests that he endorses you or your use of the work).
Attribution should include the following information:
Hermann, Martin (2015). A History of Fear: British Apocalyptic Fiction,
1895–2011. Berlin: epubli.
To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
by/4.0/
First published 2015.
ISBN: 978-3-7375-5774-0 DOI: 10.6094/UNIFR/10080
(Printed Version)
(Free Electronic Version)
Go directly to free electronic version:
Typesetting: Martin Hermann
Technical advice: Thomas Dienst
Cover design: Martin Hermann
Cover illustrations: Steve McGhee. The two cover images and three additional
images were commissioned by TV channel Yesterday to mark the launch of the
new series Perfect Storms.
epubli GmbH
www.epubli.co.uk
Dedicated to my parents,
Angelika and Richard Hermann.
And to my wife,
Anna.
Contents
List of illustrations
Foreword by Adam Roberts
Acknowledgements
Introduction
viii
xi
xiii
1
1 A definition of apocalyptic fiction
14
2 First age of extinction
26
3 Apocalyptic wars
50
4 Nuclear threats, Cold War
70
5 Eco-doom
105
6 Fears in transition
123
7 Apocalypse after 9/11
136
163
Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited
168
198
viii
List of illustrations
1Charles Darwin as an ape. Caricature by an unknown artist. ‘A Venerable
Orang-outang. A contribution to unnatural history’. The Hornet, 22 March
1871. Public Domain.
2Lester and Landry Baker laugh at Professor Mirzarbeau’s appearance. Fred
T. Jane, The Violet Flame, p. 70. Public Domain.
3Professor Mirzarbeau gesticulates to Landry Baker. Fred T. Jane, The Violet
Flame, p. 180. Public Domain.
4The British population is prepared for the next gas attack. Cartoon by Ernest
Howard Shepard. Punch, 24 November 1937: ‘The Blessings of Peace or Mr.
Everyman’s Ideal Home.’ Used with kind permission.
5Humanity collapses under aerial poison gas attacks. Cartoon by Bernard
Partridge. Punch, 8 April 1936: ‘The Dawn of Progress. But how am I to see
it? They’ve blinded me.’ Used with kind permission.
6Passworthy’s son and the soldiers are going to war. Things to Come (0:13:15).
Copyright 1936, London Film Productions.
7
The crowd welcomes the victorious dictator. Things to Come (0:42:26).
Copyright 1936, London Film Productions.
8The Soviet communists rule on alien planets. Cartoon by Anton. Punch, 21
July 1954. Used with kind permission.
9Nuclear bombs will cause humankind to go extinct as a species. Cartoon by
Norman Mansbridge Punch, 5 March 1958: “To-day it is everything which is
at stake – the kindliness of our natural environment, the human experience,
the genetic composition of the race, the possibilities of health and life for
future generations. Not only is this danger terrible, but it is immediate.”
(George F. Kennan, Russia, The Atom and the West) Used with kind permission.
10Londoners doubt the deployment of the atomic bomb just when it strikes.
Cartoon by Norman Mansbridge. Punch, 24 February 1960: “It’ll be just the
same as it was with the gas in the last war – they’ll never use it.” Used with
kind permission.
ix
11Khrushchev sprays the Chinese weeds with a lethal pesticide. Cartoon by
Norman Mansbridge. Punch, 23 September 1964. Used with kind permission.
12Aliens land on a poisoned and polluted planet Earth. Cartoon by Michael
Cummings/Express Newspapers. Daily Express, 10 November 1969: ‘So it
wasn’t the H-bomb that finished off the Earth people, after all!’ Used with
kind permission.
13AIDS sits on Civilization’s shoulder. Cartoon by Nicholas Garland. The
Independent, 28 January 1988: “…For within the hollow crown that rounds
the mortal temples of a king keeps death his court, and there antick sits,
scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp…” (King Richard III) Used with
kind permission.
14Jim is walking away from the missing persons poster. 28 Days Later …
(0:12:28). Copyright 2002, DNA Films/UK Film Council.
15A missing persons poster in New York after September 11, 2001. Photograph
by Mike Caine. Used with kind permission.
16The British people become targets for the US soldiers. 28 Weeks Later
(0:53:07). Copyright 2007, Fox Atomic, DNA Films, UK Film Council,
Figment Films, Sociedad General de Cine, Koan Films.
17US soldiers have massacred the Green Zone’s residents. 28 Weeks Later
(0:54:54). Copyright 2007, Fox Atomic, DNA Films, UK Film Council,
Figment Films, Sociedad General de Cine, Koan Films.
18US military personnel torture Alice. 28 Weeks Later (0:36:21). Copyright
2007, Fox Atomic, DNA Films, UK Film Council, Figment Films, Sociedad
General de Cine, Koan Films.
19US military personnel torture Alice. 28 Weeks Later (0:36:31). Copyright
2007, Fox Atomic, DNA Films, UK Film Council, Figment Films, Sociedad
General de Cine, Koan Films.
20The Earth is almost fully submerged under water in the year 2035. Image by
Malcolm and Jonathan Burke (www.calculatedearth.com). Stephen Baxter,
Flood (p. 349). Used with kind permission.
Foreword by Adam Roberts
We tend to think of ‘apocalypse’ as a time of chaos, the order of the cosmos
breaking apart, worlds ending, anarchy and disaster. It might seem paradoxical,
then, that Martin Hermann’s absorbing study of British Apocalyptic Fiction is
so scrupulous and methodical in its approach. But the paradox is only apparent.
There is more than scholarly reticence behind the cool thoroughness of this
monograph. It is, in its way, a tacit vision of apocalypse itself.
Working through an impressively wide range of examples, Hermann draws out
the larger trends and currents of this enduring mode of writing. He convincingly
demonstrates that British Apocalyptic Fiction underwent a ‘process of
internationalisation and globalisation’ across the century, from stories adopting
a merely British point of view to stories in which the whole world is the stage
of end-times and societal breakdown. The period studied reaches from the
British Imperial power to the drawn-out process of decolonisation, through two
World Wars and one Cold one to the present post 9-11 tessellation of ethnicities,
ideologies and cultures that makes up the British Isles.
In a way, the question of critical heat, or coolness, goes to the heart of the
matter. Hermann painstakingly and carefully maps out this hysterical (or, since
that word is tainted with its sexist implication that the womb is the site of human
panic and irrational, perhaps we could say gonadical ) territory. His broadly
Foucauldian, discourse-analysis approach is cogent and yields insightful results,
bringing a large number of apocalyptic disorders under a larger order. As he
notes in his opening chapter, culture texts function in part as symptoms of
broader social anxieties, such that compiling a history of ‘apocalyptic fiction’ is
in effect ‘to write a history of cultural fear communicated through discourses of
apocalypse’. As an Englishman I can confirm from my own personal experience
that fear is a much larger determinant of my national psyche than is sometimes
admitted; and that the ‘British reserve’, ‘politeness’ or ‘stiff upper lip’ of which
people sometimes speak exists in a repressive dynamic with large undercurrents
of violence and irrationality. The more polite an Englishman appears to be to
you, the ruder he is actually being. A people truly polite and deferential would
not, after all, have assembled an empire covering one third of the planet. Such
things don’t happen by accident. It makes a strange sort of sense that a people so
wedded to the drinking of tea at a certain, specified time of day should also be
drawn to the often Grand Guignol, large-scale disaster narratives that Hermann
discusses.
The heat, or coolness, with which we approach this topic is itself eloquent.
Consider two of Hermann’s contemporaries in the study of apocalyptic fiction.
Slavoj Žižek and Quentin Meillassoux. In his recent polemical account of the
xii
Foreword by Adam Roberts
apocalyptic logic of contemporary life, Living in the End Times (2010), Žižek
argues that
the global capitalist system is approaching an apocalyptic zero-point. Its ‘four riders
of the apocalypse’ are comprised by the ecological crisis, the consequences of the
biogenetic revolution, imbalances within the system itself (problems with intellectual
property; forthcoming struggles over raw materials, food and water), and the explosive
growth of social divisions and exclusions.
Žižek is a frantic sort of fellow, intellectually speaking, and his work buzzes
with an energy that is frantic and messy as often as it is focussed and perceptive.
Against this ‘explosive’ reading of apocalypse, we might set Meillassoux’s After
Finitude (2009), which describes the post-apocalyptic a ‘glacial world’: ‘a world
in which there is no longer any up or down, centre or periphery, nor anything
else that might make it a world designed for humans. For the first time, the
world manifests itself as capable of subsisting without any of those aspects that
constitute its concreteness for us.’ Speaking for myself, when I have written
apocalyptic fiction—and Hermann’s study mentions one of my novels, in
amongst the great many books by better writers—I have veered to the latter
perspective. It seems to me that Martin Hermann’s detailed, wide-ranging and
admirably cool analysis of the British Apocalyptic Novel gets to the heart of
something very important about this enduring cultural phenomenon.
Acknowledgements
This book was a part of my life for just over eight years, from its inception in
the spring of 2007 as a PhD thesis to its publication in summer 2015. At times,
reading and writing about the end with no end in sight was a trying challenge.
More than anything else, it taught me perseverance and faith, in myself and the
human race. And while the subject matter made many people believe that it was
a bleak experience, I actually enjoyed it for most of the way.
This book project would not have been possible without Professor Barbara
Korte. She encouraged me to pursue my doctoral ambitions and supported
me in obtaining funding for the first three-and-a-half years of the project’s
duration. Professor Korte also pointed me towards British apocalyptic fiction as
a topic. While I was working on my thesis, Barbara Korte was always available
for discussion and assistance, during and after my time at Freiburg University.
Her comments and suggestion were of indispensable value for arriving at the
final structure and substance of this study on apocalyptic fiction. I am grateful
for her supervision and the time I was able to spend at her chair.
I also would like to thank a number of staff and students at Freiburg
University: Dr. Jan Alber, for planting the idea of writing a PhD in my head;
Professor Michael Butter, for his willingness to serve as second assessor and for
his helpful advice on revisions for this publication. I want to thank Dr. Stefanie
Lethbridge and Dr. Marie-Luise Egbert for their contributions during Professor
Korte’s doctorial colloquium sessions and the opportunity to work with them.
Furthermore, I want to thank my fellow doctoral candidates during my time at
Chair Korte: Dr. Katja Bay, Natalie Churn, Dr. Susanne Düsterberg, Kathrin
Göb, Sarah Hollborn, Doris Lechner, Thorsten Leiendecker, Dr. Ulrike Pirker,
Sarah Schauer, and Georg Zipp. I am grateful for them sharing their ideas and
thoughts during the colloquium sessions and for their friendship which is more
valuable than any dissertation.
I should like to thank the Landesgraduiertenförderung Baden-Württemberg
for providing me with a scholarship that allowed me to focus more strongly
on my dissertation for a period of two and a half years. Moreover, the
Landesgraduiertenförderung helped me to finance a five-week research visit to
the British Library in London and made additional funds available for purchasing
copies of apocalyptic novels and films.
Moreover, I would like to thank my wife, Anna Hermann (also known as
Anna Stockitt), for proofreading each single draft version of this book and
advising me on vocabulary and style. Apart from her linguistic expertise,
I am grateful for her emotional support which lifted me up when I needed
it most over the past seven years. I know she has been looking forward to a
xiv
Acknowledgements
life without the apocalypse. I am happy to share this post-apocalyptic world
with her.
Furthermore, I would like to specially thank everybody who granted me
permission to use their work for free or merely a symbolic fee: Malcolm and
Jonathan Burke, Mike Caine, Nicholas Garland, Express Newspapers, and
UKTV. I greatly appreciated that. By contrast, PARS International asked me to
pay 880 Euros for permission and digital copies of two TIME magazine cover
titles to be included in my book. Bugger off, no thank you very much!
Finally, I also want to thank friends, relatives, and colleagues for the support
I received over the years. Their interest in my work was always a great motivation.
Besides, I am grateful to Joan and Robin Stockitt for additional proofreading,
Thomas Dienst for advising and assisting me with typesetting. A great thanks
goes to Adam Roberts for contributing the foreword. Special thanks go to the
customer in the Theresienstraße post office who gave me some of her wrapping
tape on the day when I, last minute, mailed in my dissertation.
Last but not least, I am thankful to my parents and my brother, Angelika,
Richard and Frank Hermann, who helped me to become the person I am. I hope
I have made them proud.
Introduction
This study deals with stories about the potential end of humankind, here
referred to as apocalyptic fiction. It will focus on narratives by British writers
and filmmakers from the 1890s to the present day. The study will show that,
within this time frame, British apocalyptic fiction is deeply embedded in the
cultural context of its respective era. The study is motivated by the persistence
and popularity of speculation surrounding the end of the world over the past
120 years in British public discourse.
The spectre of apocalypse permeates present-day British culture. In recent
years, newspaper reports have repeatedly confronted Britain’s public with the
idea of the end of the world as we know it. The word ‘apocalypse’ appeared more
than 300 times in British national newspapers between July and November
2011.1 British newspapers interpreted mysterious mass bird deaths in the US
state of Arkansas in 2011 and 2012 as the potential harbingers of ‘the end of the
world’2 and the ‘[f]irst sign of an apocalyptic year to come’.3 The prophecies of
US evangelical preacher Harold Camping who mistakenly announced the end of
the world twice for the year 2011 were widely reported with headlines ranging
from ‘Will the World End today?’4 before the supposed rapture to ‘Apocalypse
Not Now’5 after Camping’s prediction failed to come true. Moreover, tabloids
and broadsheets featured a number of articles discussing the potentially
imminent end of the world on 21 December 2012 in correspondence with the
end of the Mayan Calendar. The Sun, for instance, openly asked the question
whether the world will ‘REALLY end on Dec 21 2012?’6 Likewise, The Telegraph
investigated the validity of ‘[e]nd of the world speculation after new Mayan
discovery’.7
The prediction of 2012 as the year of the apocalypse reached the British public
not only in the form of newspaper reports but also through popular music,
film, and even an art exhibition. It inspired the song ‘2012 (It Ain’t the End)’ by
British rapper Jay Sean in which he calls upon his listeners to ‘party like, like it’s
the end of the world’.8 ‘2012 (It Ain’t the End)’ reached number nine in the UK
single charts in October 2010.9 The apocalyptic US blockbuster 2012 (2009) also
draws on the idea that the world will end in 2012. The film made it to the top
of the UK box office in November 2009 and was among the 15 highest grossing
films in Britain that year.10 Finally, Tate Britain art gallery exhibited the work of
John Martin under the title John Martin: Apocalypse in 2011–2012. Significantly,
Tate Britain’s display of his apocalyptic paintings was ‘the first major exhibition
dedicated to Martin’s work in over 30 years.’11 It once again reinforces the notion
that descriptions and depictions of the end of the world are popular in Britain
today.
2
British Apocalyptic Fiction
Of course, the idea of apocalypse and tales about the end of the world are not a
recent phenomenon but have a long tradition across different cultures. The oldest
known texts that describe an apocalyptic event are flood myths.12 The Sumerian
Flood Story and the Babylonian epics of Athrahasis and Gilgamesh are the first
known of these myths. Historians estimate that the original composition of
the two Babylonian epics can be traced back at least to the year 1700 BC13 and
believe that the Sumerian poem is even older.14 The best known flood tale in
Western civilization, the flood of Noah described in the Book of Genesis, dates
back at least to the 6th or 7th century BC.15 In addition, Egyptian and Hittite
culture of this period relate the event of a cataclysmic flood.16 Floods, however,
are not the only source behind the destruction of the world. The Hindu epic
Mahabharata prominently features the cataclysmic end of the world in the shape
of a variety of natural disasters at the climax of a final battle between Good and
Evil.17 By describing cataclysmic catastrophes which endanger the existence of
humankind, these earliest end-of-the-world texts share a characteristic that is
archetypical for apocalyptic literature. The actual term ‘apocalypse’, however,
derives from a specific set of texts written some time later.
A number of passages in the Old and New Testament of the Bible written
between the years 250 BC to 250 AD make up the corpus of what is known as
Judeo-Christian canonical apocalyptic literature. While there are a number of
apocalyptic texts outside of the biblical canon, namely in the Gnostic, GrecoRoman, and Persian literature of the time, these are the most prominent and
influential works in the Western tradition. The genealogy of apocalyptic writing
can be traced back to passages from the Books of Daniel (chapters 7–12), Ezekiel
(chapters 38–39) and Zechariah (chapters 12–14). They established the form and
themes of biblical apocalypse and served as role models for the apocalypses of
the New Testament.18 The most pivotal components are generally considered to
be the thirteenth chapter of Mark, the Second Epistle of Saint Peter and John of
Patmos’ Book of Revelation.19 Considered as a whole, these passages provide the
fundamental narrative for religious and secular visions of the end of the world
coming thereafter. Generally speaking, they foresee and describe in various ways
the end of the world through violent destruction, the Last Judgment and finally
God’s renewal of the world. They are marked by a narrative situation in which
a narrator figure discloses his visionary prophecy to his listeners.20 The texts’
prophetic and revelatory nature about God’s plan is why they have come to be
referred to as apocalyptic literature. In contrast to today’s common associations
of apocalypse with catastrophe and destruction, the Greek word apokalypsis in
fact means ‘an unveiling’ or ‘a revealing of truths’.21
From the advent of biblical apocalyptic literature until the end of the
18th century, Western visions of the apocalypse were defined by religious
thought, as illustrated in the following examples: The medieval epic poem
Introduction
3
Muspilli (c. 870) describes the battle between the prophet Elijah and the
Antichrist and the subsequent Day of Judgment. Johannes of Seville and
Joachim di Fiore prophesied the end of the world at the hands of God in the
12th and 13th centuries as did the theologian Melchior von Hoffmann and the
monk Michael Stifel in the 16th century. Notably, the German painter Albrecht
Dürer created The Apocalypse with Pictures (1498), a series of woodcuts which
show different scenes from the Book of Revelation, most famously The Four
Horsemen of the Apocalypse. In texts of non-Christian cultures, the end of the world
is also embedded in a religious context and is brought about by divine forces,
as for instance in the Scandinavian 13th century epic Völuspá.22 Only when the
philosophers and intellectuals of the Age of Enlightenment started questioning
traditional concepts rooted in spiritual faith did the spectrum of apocalyptic
literature widen beyond religiously motivated ends of the world.
The first modern, in the sense of secularized, versions of the apocalypse
started to appear in Western culture at the beginning of the 19th century. The
earliest known example of partially secularized apocalypse is Le Dernier Homme
(1805), a novel by French priest Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grainville. Le Dernier
Homme tells the story of Omegarus, the last fertile man in an aging and infertile
Europe. Le Dernier Homme mirrors the pessimistic mood towards the end of
the 18th century and the fear of overpopulation initiated by the publication
and popularity of Thomas Malthus’ An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798).
A revolutionary, Malthus proposed that catastrophic events needed to happen
to keep the constantly growing population in check for the Earth to be able to
sustain humanity in the long term. Le Dernier Homme takes up the secular idea of
the Malthusian catastrophe to reduce the number of people to secure survival:
‘It was essential to slow down this growth of population, to destroy men in order
to preserve the human race.’23 Grainville’s novel, therefore, combines elements
of biblical apocalypse, such as God’s angels or pronouncing the Last Judgment,
with non-metaphysical elements, as for instance humanity’s infertility. In his
analysis of Le Dernier Homme as the first case of apocalyptic fiction, Paul Alkon
concludes that Grainville ‘secularizes the Apocalypse without discarding its
theological framework.’24
After its publication in England, Grainville’s vision of The Last Man (1806)
inspired British writers to portray end-of-the-world scenarios without explicitly
referring to the ideas of the Bible. The extinction of humankind and especially
the idea of the ‘Last Man’ became particularly prominent in English poetry.
Several poems described ‘[g]loomy visions of specifically secular future’.25 Lord
Byron published the poem ‘Darkness’ (1816), both Thomas Campbell and
Thomas Hood wrote poems entitled ‘The Last Man’ (1823; 1826). The fact that
Hood’s poem is more parody than sincere involvement in the topic indicates
that the ‘Last Man’ motif enjoyed significant popularity at the time to warrant
4
British Apocalyptic Fiction
parody and that it grew increasingly distant from its religious predecessors.
Contemporary drama and magazine writing features more examples of the
‘Last Man’. George Dibdin Pitt published his play The Last Man; or, The Miser
of Eltham Green in 1833 and Thomas Love Beddoes worked on his unfinished
drama The Last Man from 1823 to 1825. Moreover, two magazine pieces written
in 1826 dealt with the extinction of mankind: ‘The Death of the World’ was
published in European Magazine and ‘The Last Man’ appeared in Blackwood’s.26
This first period of modern secularized apocalyptic literature most significantly
brought forth Mary Shelley’s The Last Man (1826). Shelley’s novel is ‘the first
English example of what we might call apocalyptic or “end-of-the-world”
fiction’.27 The Last Man describes a world-wide plague which eventually kills
all of humankind except the novel’s protagonist Lionel Vernier. Conspicuously,
Shelley’s novel shares the fear of plague and pestilence with the poems by Hood
and Campbell.28 One can read the plague as the agent of human extinction in
Shelley’s novel and the two poems in the context of circulating fears of epidemic
in Britain in the 1820s, in particular in relation to the anxiety of cholera. The
cholera epidemic that started in India in 1817 and eventually ‘jumped into
England’29 in 1831 seems to have served as an inspiration for Shelley’s plague.30
By the time The Last Man was written and published, ‘the disease had reached
China, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Egypt.’31 Contemporary British
society knew about this epidemic from reports in daily newspapers. Pechmann
notes that, between the years 1818 and 1823, there were several reports of a cholera
epidemic which had broken out in Calcutta and spread uninhibitedly in the
course of the next years.32 Therefore, ‘the news of its inexorable advance caused
widespread alarm’33 long before cholera actually appeared in Britain. However,
reading Shelley’s The Last Man simply as a representation of a fear of plague
would ignore the novel’s complexity. Critics have shown that the apocalyptic
scenario of The Last Man can also be related to colonial guilt,34 contemporary
political upheaval35 or the Romanticist ideal of the isolated artist,36 among others.
Nevertheless, what we can glean from the early examples of Le Dernier Homme
and The Last Man is that tales of apocalyptic fiction cannot be fully understood
without considering their contemporary cultural context.
Despite the small wave of ‘Last Man’ literature in the first decades of the
19th century, apocalyptic fiction disappeared again from literary production
written in the English language37 and only re-emerged in Britain at the end
of the 19th century when it started to flourish in the wake and as part of the
success of the scientific romance. The generic relationship between apocalyptic
fiction and the scientific romance (later more commonly labelled as science
fiction), of course, endured beyond this initial stage so that throughout the
20th century, more general developments in science fiction can often be felt in
apocalyptic fiction as well. Parodies aside,38 apocalyptic fiction is consequently
Introduction
5
best understood and described as a subgenre of science fiction, defining SF in
a broader sense as speculative fiction, ‘fiction set in an imagined world that is
different from our own in ways that are rationally explicable […] and that tend to
produce cognitive estrangement in the reader.’39 Accordingly, both The Routledge
Companion and The Science Fiction Handbook, for example, list apocalyptic fiction as
a subgenre of science fiction.40
Since the days of the scientific romance, the output of apocalyptic fiction has
steadily grown over the past 120 years. Initially, the publication of apocalyptic
novels and short stories, as far as can be seen, was limited to little more than
a handful of novels and short stories per decade. But fear-inducing historical
events such as the First World War, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, or the terrorist attacks on September 11 promoted ideas of
apocalypse. Furthermore, the TV and film and industries started to adopt and
adapt apocalyptic stories for the small and big screen, increasing its presence and
popularity in fiction beyond the written page and the reading audience. Today,
there is an average of more than twenty examples of apocalyptic novels, films,
TV films or TV series per decade in Britain alone. In turn, this number is easily
dwarfed by the American book market and film industry which, on its own,
produces a seemingly inexhaustible amount of apocalyptic fiction.41
A history of fear through apocalyptic discourse
Theory
The study of apocalyptic fiction is especially insightful due to a set of specific
functions ascribed to the genre. First of all, apocalyptic fiction serves as a ‘cheap
thrill, a form of escapism’42 and thus, at its most basic level, entertains with
its unlikely scenarios of doom, death, and devastation. Apocalyptic fiction,
however, can also be perceived as a product of its social and cultural context and
as such takes up and responds to societal developments and changes. This is an
important function of fictional texts in general as cultures observe themselves
in the texts they produce.43
Already biblical apocalyptic texts were a ‘product of their age and its political
and economic climate.’44 They were written as a direct reaction to what happened
to the Judean or Christian people and thereby fulfilled a social function for
these communities. Primarily, they ‘served as encouragement and consolation
in an age of crisis.’45 Likewise, secular fictions of the apocalypse are immediate
responses to cultural crisis.46 In these stories, writers and readers try to come
to terms with the predominant cultural anxieties of their time, be it global
pandemic, environmental devastation or nuclear catastrophe.
6
British Apocalyptic Fiction
However, despite its depiction of catastrophe and disaster, apocalyptic fiction
is often reassuring in quality. The number of narratives in which mankind is
completely and ultimately wiped out is comparatively small. In these exceptional
cases, humankind—and with it the reader/viewer—is helpless and powerless
against the global threat. In all other examples of apocalyptic fiction, the protagonist
and often a small number of survivors are empowered to survive. Warren Wagar
describes in which way these apocalyptic narratives are reassuring:
The end of the world enables us, for example, to project in our imaginations a time when
all our enemies, all the sources of our current distress and feelings of powerlessness, are
removed, and we have survived.47
Thus, the ability to overcome obstacles, to outrival the rest of humanity, and to
defy the powers of nature is a functional characteristic of apocalyptic fiction.
The feeling of empowerment also accounts to some extent for the appeal of
apocalyptic fiction: ‘[T]o survive gives [the reader/viewer] an intense feeling
of happiness.’48 This would be an additional explanation as to why apocalyptic
fiction, in spite of its bleak subject matter, has been popular for such a long
time. Apocalyptic tales give ‘assurance of racial survival despite the most
overwhelming odds’.49 In the vast majority of British apocalyptic fiction, the
end of the old world is in fact the starting point for a new world.50
Furthermore, apocalyptic fiction can be attributed with a didactic function
as it serves as a warning to its readers and viewers.51 This didactic function is
established in the attitude towards the cataclysmic disaster. Here, apocalyptic
fiction differs distinctly from its biblical ancestors. In biblical apocalyptic
literature, God is always responsible for the end of the world and thus the
millennial writings of the Bible promote the apocalyptic event as it will lead
mankind out of its misery and to the kingdom and glory of God. In contrast,
modern secularized apocalypse first and foremost regards the approaching
catastrophe as destructive52 and is concerned to avoid the cataclysm as it
would otherwise bring about the end of mankind. Hence, apocalyptic fiction
‘functions largely as a cautionary tale, positing potential means of extinction
and predicting the gloomy probabilities of such ends.’53 This is especially true
for those apocalyptic narratives which focus more strongly on the breakdown
of civilization than on the aftermath of the disaster. Their purpose is to bring
the dangers that might threaten this suddenly so fragile civilization of ours to
people’s attention, ‘to expose and warn of the dangers of contemporary political
and ethical scenarios.’54 They often do so despite the fact that people are actually
already aware of these dangers on some level. The function of secularized
apocalypses, then, is not only to make people care and think about potential
dangers but also to bring about a change in behaviour or attitude.
Introduction
7
In warning about a potential catastrophe and the possibility of an apocalypse,
stories about the end of the world not only react but also reinforce the prevailing
ideas on apocalypse. Of course, fiction in general is part of the reciprocal interplay
between literature and the extraliterary reality. It forms a cognitive force which
substantially participates in generating attitudes, discourses, ideologies, values,
patterns of thinking and perception.
By applying Foucauldian discourse analysis to the subject of apocalyptic
fiction, a history of public fear is revealed in these stories of apocalypse. In
The Archaeolog y of Knowledge (1969), Foucault emphasizes that texts do not exist in
a vacuum, they are not isolated occurrences but rather constructs of discursive
circumstances:
The frontiers of a book are never clear-cut: beyond the title, the first lines, and the last
full stop, beyond its internal configuration and its autonomous form, it is caught up in
a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences: it is a node within
a network. […] The book is not simply the object that one holds in one’s hands; and it
cannot remain within the little parallelepiped that contains it: its unity is variable and
relative. As soon as one questions that unity, it lows its self-evidence; it indicates itself,
constructs itself, only on the basis of a complex field of discourse.55
Equally, each example of apocalyptic fiction is constructed on the basis of a
complex field of discourse. As Foucault conceives discourse as regularities
which govern a particular era’s understanding and dispersion of reality, that
era’s cultural climate conditions and precipitates statements about apocalyptic
fears in fiction and in other forms:
Whenever one can describe, between a number of statements, such a system of dispersion,
whenever, between objects, types of statement, concepts, or thematic choices, one can
define a regularity (an order, correlations, positions and functionings, transformations),
we will say, for the sake of convenience, that we are dealing with a discursive formation
[…]. The conditions to which the elements of this division (objects, mode of statement,
concepts, thematic choices) are subjected we shall call the rules of formation. The
rules of formation are conditions of existence (but also of coexistence, maintenance,
modification, and disappearance) in a given discursive division.56
Accordingly, stories of the apocalypse not only indicate but also actively construct
apocalyptic fears. This study explores the attitudes towards the idea of apocalypse
from the 1890s onwards. It does so through the analysis of a culture’s body of
apocalyptic fiction and the identification of discursive formations on fears of
apocalypse. To identify discursive formations of apocalypse is to make more
general propositions about a culture’s (apocalyptic) fears at a given period.
Therefore, the goal of this study is to identify the discursive formations that
have shaped the apocalyptic discourse over the past 120 years and to unsheathe
8
British Apocalyptic Fiction
the productive relationship between apocalyptic fiction by British writers and
filmmakers and British culture. The study takes the end of the 19th century as
its chronological starting point, when both apocalyptic ideas and apocalyptic
fiction surfaced more frequently and regularly in British culture, and follows the
discourse of apocalyptic anxiety in British culture up to the present day, i.e. the
year 2011. The chronological setup of the study offers the best way to describe
the shifts in British culture and its discursive formations most adequately and
insightfully. Given the proposition that different fears dominate at different
times within a culture, an analysis of apocalyptic fiction is helpful in writing a
history of cultural fear communicated through discourses of apocalypse.
Literature review
Apocalyptic fiction has a long and fruitful tradition in Britain. It starts with
Shelley’s The Last Man and is, unlike American apocalyptic fiction, already very
productive in the 1890s and continues to be so for most of the 20th century.
This allows for an examination of cultural fears that covers more than a century
of British history. Moreover, it is a period of British history that sees Britain’s
decline from imperial global power at the end of the Victorian period to a nation
that becomes dependent on the USA by the mid-20th century. Furthermore, it
includes the First and Second World War, the Cold War, and terrorist operations
on a major scale. Nevertheless, there has not been a comprehensive study on
British apocalyptic fiction despite the great scholarly interest in the genre.
Academic interest is evident in several monographs that take a cultureunspecific look at apocalyptic fiction. Among all of these examinations, Warren
Wagar’s Terminal Visions (1982) provides the most extensive overview, looking
at over 175 years of speculative fiction about the end of the world and taking
into account fiction from different languages and cultures. In total, Wagar’s
survey includes over 300 examples from all over world. Similarly, Dieter
Wessels monograph Welt im Chaos (1974) looks at world catastrophe science
fiction in general. Wessels’ book develops a typology for apocalyptic fiction,
describes its structure and ascribes certain functions to the genre. Hans Krah’s
Weltuntergangsszenarien und Zukunftsentwürfe (2004) is interested in the ways in which
the phenomenon of the literal end of the world is portrayed and negotiated in
literature and film from 1945 to 1990. Krah’s analysis focuses mainly on German
literature but also considers US film. Apocalyptic Patterns in Twentieth-Century Fiction
by David Leigh (2008) explores different apocalyptic patterns in a selection of
20 novels and two autobiographies from a range of authors and across genres.
Leigh’s broad approach to apocalypticism becomes apparent by looking at his
selection of British authors which include C. S. Lewis, Doris Lessing, Arthur
Introduction
9
C. Clarke, and Salman Rushdie. In Visionary Fictions: Apocalyptic Writing from Blake
to the Modern Age (1996), Edward Ahearn studies nine writers from five different
countries which, according to Ahearn, constitute a tradition of the visionary and
apocalyptic. While Ahearn discusses the work of five French authors, William
Blake features as the only British writer in his study.
Moreover, there is an abundance of article collections which share a basic
interest in apocalyptic literature and thus take a broad approach on the subject.57
Some of these have a confined focus on the 20th century58 or restrict themselves
to US literature.59 Furthermore, there are some analyses with an equally general
outlook but more specific generic focus on the apocalyptic in film and/or TV.60
Scholars of English-language literature have predominantly focused their
analyses of apocalyptic fiction on American literature. This is not surprising
considering the plausible view that ‘the very idea of America in history is
apocalyptic, arising as it did out of the historicizing of apocalyptic hopes in the
Protestant Reformation.’61 Despite the rich tradition of American science fiction
in both prose and film, however, most explorations of American apocalyptic
fiction focus on canonical highbrow literature and, essentially, ignore the large
body of popular SF apocalyptic fiction in the 20th century.62 Additionally, most
of these studies do not think of apocalyptic fiction as stories depicting the literal
(near) end of humanity but understand the concept of apocalyptic literature
more metaphorically. The most notable exception from this tendency is David
Ketterer’s New Worlds for Old (1974), the first investigation into US apocalyptic
fiction which considers both ‘science-fictional and non-science-fictional or
“classic” manifestations of the apocalyptic imagination.’63 Only in recent
years have scholars showed an increasing interest in the popular SF variety of
apocalyptic literature. For example, Katerberg’s Future West: Utopia and Apocalypse
in Frontier Science Fiction (2008) examines utopian and apocalyptic qualities in
what he calls frontier science fiction. In Apocalyptic Dread: American Film at the
Turn of the Millennium (2007), Thompson focuses on 1990s and early 2000s crimehorror films which may not typically be considered apocalyptic fiction but are,
according to Thompson, consumed with social fears about global catastrophe.
And in Millennial Literatures of the Americas, 1492–2002 (2009), Thomas Beebee
compares literary treatments of the apocalyptic battle between good and evil
across the American continent since Columbus’ discovery. He covers a wide
range of genres and also includes contemporary genre fiction.
There are also two surveys on Canadian and Australian fiction dealing with
the end of the world. Like most studies on American apocalypse, Goldman’s
Rewriting Apocalypse in Canadian Fiction (2005) examines high culture novels.
Roslyn Weaver’s book Apocalypse in Australian Fiction and Film (2011), on the
other hand, takes on an approach more similar to the present study exploring
‘the enduring theme of apocalypse in Australian speculative fiction and film.’64
10
British Apocalyptic Fiction
Weaver, hence, shares a comparable interest in popular stories that describe the
literal end of the world, taking into account works like Nevil Shute’s apocalyptic
classic On the Beach (1957) or the Mad Max film series (1979–1985).
By contrast, there are hardly any comprehensive studies on apocalyptic fiction
with an exclusive focus on British cultural production, let alone investigations
into British speculative fiction about the end of the world. The few book-length
studies on British apocalyptic fiction do not even address 20th century fiction. The
articles in the collection by Patrides and Wittreich (1984) look at the apocalypse in
English Renaissance thought and literature. The study The Apocalypse in England:
Revelation Unravelling, 1700–1834 by Christopher Burdon (1997) on various forms
of responses to the Book of Revelation in England starts in 1700 and concludes
with the end of the Romantic period. Paley’s Apocalypse and Millennium in English
Romantic Poetry (1999) examines the apocalypse as a theme in English Romantic
poetry. In Approaching Apocalypse: Unveiling Revelation in Victorian Writing, Mills
(2007) traces and scrutinizes the apocalyptic discourse during the Victorian age,
brushing only briefly upon fin-de-siècle end-of-the-world fiction. Therefore,
none of these examinations deal extensively with the kind of apocalyptic fiction
that we find abundantly in British literature from the end of the 19th century
onwards. This is even more surprising considering the fact that H. G. Wells is
one of the earliest and most influential figures for end-of-the-world fiction. This
study aims to fill this gap by taking into account a comprehensive and cross
period corpus of British apocalypse in fiction, film, and TV.
Method
For the purpose of this study, approximately 150 texts—100 novels, 20 short
stories, 20 films and 10 TV films or series—were considered. To be considered
as British fiction, novels and short stories needed to be written by a British
author, who is either born British or became British before the publication of
the text in question. A film, TV film or TV series was regarded as British if
it fell into categories A or B of British films as defined by the final edition of
the British Film Institute Handbook. Category A British films are distinctly British
in setting, feature mostly British actors and are solely financed within the
UK. Category B British films feature significant British cultural content and,
despite some foreign partners, have a substantial amount of British finance and
personnel.65
In order to determine the different stages of British apocalyptic fiction over
the course of the last 120 years, the essential idea of cluster theory was taken up
and adjusted for the purpose of this study. Aldenderfer and Blashfield describe
cluster analysis in the following way: ‘[It] is the generic name for a wide variety
Introduction
11
of procedures that can be used to create a classification. These procedures
empirically form “clusters” or groups of highly similar entities.’66 In adapting
cluster theory, this study mainly focusses on the aspect of forming groups of
highly similar entities—i.e., groups of end-of-the-world texts that explicitly or
implicitly feature the same or a similar apocalyptic discourse within the same
time frame. As different periods feature different numbers of apocalyptic texts,
due to more and less intense apocalyptic fear in British culture and changes
in the British literary market and film industry, it is necessary in this context
to think of cluster sizes in terms of proportions with regard to the relevant
period. This study’s chapters on the history of British apocalyptic fiction are
arranged around the bigger clusters and their time frames. The smaller clusters
were disregarded as they seemed to represent minor, non-dominant apocalyptic
discourses.67
In order to illustrate the discursive formation of certain apocalyptic discourses
not only within fiction but also in British society at large, this study mainly
relies on cover pages, article headlines and cartoons from high circulating
newspapers and magazines such as Punch Magazine, Time Magazine, Newsweek,
National Geographic, Daily Express or The Independent. References to bestselling
books and blockbuster films as well as the inclusion of opinion polls complement
these sources.
Outline
In chapter 1, a more comprehensive definition of apocalyptic fiction as understood
by this study will be given. This definition relies on prototype theory to map out
the differences between disaster fiction, apocalyptic fiction and post-apocalyptic
fiction. In much academic research on the topic, these terms have often been
used more or less interchangeably despite some significant differences. It is one
goal of this chapter to identify apocalyptic fiction, post-apocalyptic fiction and
disaster fiction as distinct literary subgenres.
Chapters 2 to 7 represent the heart of this study by describing a history of
apocalyptic cultural fears in Britain. Each of these chapters consists of three
different sections. The first section is a survey of major cultural-historical
themes of the period in question. The second section reviews and analyses
British apocalyptic fiction created during that period. First, it gives a description
of the circumstances under which the apocalyptic texts were produced. Second,
it portrays the dominant clusters of apocalyptic discourse. The third section
either presents one or two case studies which are representative for each period
of apocalyptic fiction and which elaborate on contemporary themes in context
of apocalyptic threats and fears in more detail.
12
British Apocalyptic Fiction
The partition of chapters 2 to 7 runs along the great historical divides of the
20th and 21st century: the First World War and the Second World War, the
Cold War, the attacks of September 11. Apparently, only historical events of
the highest magnitude have the potential to evoke new or different ideas about
the end of humankind. These historical events provide the cultural conditions
fundamental to the production and reception of apocalyptic fiction.
Chapter 2 explains the emergence of apocalyptic fiction in Britain towards
the end of the 19th century and ascribes the genre’s growing popularity to
the popularization of the second law of thermodynamics and the theory of
evolution as well as Britain’s challenged role as the world’s most powerful
nation at the end of the Victorian era. H. G. Wells’ short story ‘The Star’ (1897)
emphasizes the fact that evolutionary theory and astronomical discoveries
shaped end-of-the-world fears around the turn of the century. The case study
of The Violet Flame: A Story of Armageddon and After (1899) by novelist Fred T. Jane
reveals contemporary fears of foreign invasion, emphasizing the threat of the
anarchist movement in Britain and the dangers of modern science to British
hegemony.
Chapter 3 shows that British stories of apocalyptic fiction since the First World
War and up to the end of the Second World War address deep-rooted fears of
war in British society. The analysis of Things to Come (1936), the film adaptation
of H. G. Wells’ novel The Shape of Things to Come (1933), demonstrates the Great
War’s traumatic effect on British culture and furthermore points towards British
culture’s ambiguous stance towards science and progress at the time.
Chapter 4 deals with the dangers that nuclear weapons and the East-West
conflict posed for British society in the Cold War era. The investigation
of The Kraken Wakes (1953) by John Wyndham brings to light the dangers
of Cold War mentality and paranoia. The study of Charles Eric Maine’s
The Tide Went Out (1959) addresses the dangers of nuclear weapons and explores
a changed perception of the nature of man in British apocalyptic fiction since
the Second World War.
Chapter 5 identifies fears of ecological catastrophe in 1960s and 1970s British
apocalyptic fiction as a result of the environmental movement. The case study of
John Brunner’s The Sheep Look Up (1972) alludes to several of the contemporary
ecological threats and moreover establishes a causality between capitalist
ideology and environmental doom.
Chapter 6 describes a transitional phase in British apocalyptic fiction in the
years after the end of the Cold War when it is not possible to identify a dominant
discourse in British apocalyptic fiction. Rather than a discursive formation and
master narrative, this time period is highly diverse and presents a number of
distinct micro-narratives. The humorous novel Earthdoom! (1987) by David
Langford and John Grant features most of these disparate non-dominant fears
Introduction
13
circulating in British culture at the time and thereby ridicules the genre, its
tradition and the idea of apocalypse itself.
Chapter 7 argues that, since the beginning of the new millennium, there has
been a return of dominant apocalyptic fears which are marked by globalization
and the insecurity of the post-9/11 era. On the one hand, early 21st century
apocalyptic discourse is dominated by the debate surrounding global climate
change. On the other hand, fear of global pandemic, often embedded in zombie
narratives, characterizes this new era of apocalyptic fiction in Britain. The
analysis of 28 Weeks Later (2007), directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, reveals
cultural anxieties over a viral epidemic in a distinct post 9/11 environment. The
case study of Stephen Baxter’s Flood (2008) shows that global climate change is
accepted and dreaded as a potential threat in British culture yet human impact
remains controversial.
The conclusion reviews the development and changes in apocalyptic fiction’s
most consistent themes: the role of Britain in the world, the role of war and science
and the (bad) nature of humankind. Furthermore, it contends that apocalyptic
fiction started out as a vehicle to communicate fears from a national angle but,
while retaining some of its Britishness, became increasingly international in
perspective over time. The conclusion ends with an outlook on potential future
studies related to British apocalyptic fiction as investigated here.
Ch ap ter 1
A definition of apocalyptic fiction
Biblical predecessors
Biblical apocalyptic literature lends apocalyptic fiction not only its name but
also its defining features. Therefore, in order to arrive at an adequate definition
of apocalyptic fiction, it is essential to identify the key characteristics of biblical
apocalyptic literature: the end of the world through violent destruction, the
renewal of the world with the restoration of paradise and the Last Judgment.1
These three plot strands of biblical apocalypse have been taken up by secularized
apocalyptic fiction and therefore continue to be fundamental for a definition of
apocalyptic fiction.2
In the tradition of Judeo-Christian apocalypse, one of the key plot elements
is the end of the world through violent destruction. It is especially this idea
of catastrophe on a world-wide scale which is first and foremost attributed to
apocalyptic texts. Both the apocalypses of the Old and the New Testament describe
a series of cataclysmic events which eventually bring about the end of the world.
The ‘perspective of catastrophe’3 is particularly strong in the Jewish tradition:
Sometimes this is described in terms of political action and military struggle; at other
times the conflict assumes cosmic proportions and involving mysterious happenings
on earth and in the heavens—earthquakes, famine, fearful celestial portents, and
destruction by fire.4
Examples from Daniel’s apocalyptic prophecy and the Books of Ezekiel and
Zechariah illustrate this.5
In the apocalyptic texts of the New Testament, disastrous occurrences take
place in a similar fashion. There, the catastrophic events not only describe the
ultimate end of the world through destruction but also function, in an initial
stage of the apocalyptic narrative, as harbingers of the coming end. The Book
of Revelation, for example, heralds the destruction of the world by opening
with a series of catastrophes. After the slain lamb breaks the sixth seal, the sun
appears as ‘black as a sackcloth of hair’, ‘the stars of heaven fell unto the earth’,
and ‘every mountain and island were moved out of their places’.6 Accordingly,
both Gysin and Lewis, in their summaries of apocalyptic events or moments,
state that disasters7 or ‘periodic natural disturbances, earthquakes and the like’8
start off the apocalyptic narrative.
A definition of apocalyptic fiction
15
The actual end of the world is again accompanied by sensational, cataclysmic
events. In the Book of Revelation, the world is haunted by a series of plagues
when the seven angels of God pour out their vials filled with God’s wrath. The
succession of devastating events reaches its climax after the last angel pours out
the final vial and thereby sets off the concluding catastrophe:
And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake,
such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great.
[…] And every island fled away, and the mountains were not found. And there fell upon
men a great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent.9
As with the corresponding passage in the Gospel of Mark,10 natural disasters of
epic proportions predominate in this description of the end of the world.
Next to the violent destruction of the Earth, the other crucial element of biblical
apocalypse is the renewal of the world in combination with the restoration of
paradise. Although it may not be as salient as the element of catastrophe, it plays
a significant role in the major apocalypses of Daniel and the Book of Revelation.
In Daniel’s interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams, a row of four earthly
kingdoms come and go until God sets up ‘a kingdom, which shall never be
destroyed’.11 As a heavenly eternal order, God’s coming kingdom stands for a
new world, even though the world has merely changed and not been physically
replaced. In John’s Apocalypse in the Book of Revelation, the renewal of the
world takes place literally. After the destruction of the old world, John sees in
his vision ‘a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth
were passed away’.12 The new world, then, is the place where God and his people
‘shall reign for ever and ever’.13 For this purpose, God founds New Jerusalem
where man’s days of pain and sorrow are over and where a new glorious age
has just started. The New Jerusalem is a place where man has nothing to fear,
resembling the Garden of Eden in the Book of Genesis: ‘In this new divine order,
the end will be as the beginning and paradise will be restored.’14 Therefore, the
narrative of apocalypse represents both the end of one world and the beginning
of a new one.
Apart from these most crucial apocalyptic elements, the third important plot
element of Judeo-Christian apocalypse is God’s Last Judgment. The proceedings
of the Last Judgment are explicitly mentioned as ‘judgment’ in chapters 17 to 20
of John’s Apocalypse. In between the end of the world and the restoration of
paradise, ‘men were judged every man according to their works’.15 A selection
takes place among the people of the Earth which separates the people into
the elect—those who are to enter the new paradise—and the non-elect. This
separation of the people also features prominently in other apocalyptic texts of
the Old and New Testament.16
16
British Apocalyptic Fiction
Defining secularized apocalyptic fiction
The end of the world features prominently in Judeo-Christian apocalypse and
continues to be the most easily distinguishable and essential aspect of any piece
of apocalyptic fiction.17 However, in contrast to the biblical precursors, the world
in apocalyptic fiction is not factually destroyed and later physically replaced by
a paradisiacal new one. As a result, it is not apparent when the state of the end
of the world is reached as the literal destruction almost never takes place in
apocalyptic fiction. This dilemma has not been tackled sufficiently so far—many
scholars do not bother to elaborate on the concept of end of the world, destruction,
etc.—which has even led some to evade a precise definition completely.18 Here,
the terms world and violent destruction are explained first to define the end of the
world in context of apocalyptic fiction.
Generally, when the end of the world is discussed, we talk about the planet
Earth: ‘When we speak about the End of the World, we usually only mean
our world.’19 And even though many novels and films have taken human beings to
other planets or sometimes even universes, the concept of world is still restricted
to the Earth and its inhabitants, even in science fiction and apocalyptic fiction.
As Earth does not suffer so much damage in apocalyptic fiction so as to cease to
exist, world comes to signify ‘essentially a totality of human beings […]. Other
living beings and the entire non-living environment are secondary’20 to the lives
of the human race. In apocalyptic fiction, consequently, the end of humanity on
Earth is equivalent to the end of the world.
As with apocalyptic literature of the biblical tradition, the end of the world
in secularized apocalyptic fiction occurs through acts of—rather unexpected—
violent destruction. Often, it is an extraordinary and thrilling (series of)
event(s), ‘a violent eruption of natural and supernatural powers’.21 In many
other instances, the threat to humankind develops slowly and gradually.22 Both
types of apocalyptic fiction have in common that, in most cases, a considerable
proportion of mankind is spared. This, however, creates a conflict for the
purpose of definition. On the one hand, it is proposed that a defining feature
of apocalyptic fiction is the end of humankind. On the other hand, this end is
(almost) never arrived at in this type of fiction. Hence, a definition of apocalyptic
fiction cannot rely on the condition of unforeseen extinction of the human race
because extinction hardly ever takes place.
The question, then, is what is it exactly that makes stories apocalyptic if the
end of all human life cannot be the defining feature. It is not expedient to count
the number of victims in order to determine if something is held to be merely a
disaster or in fact an apocalypse: ‘The shapes adopted by [apocalyptic] disasters
which afflict humanity are legion. Sometimes they are presented as threats
and other times as genocidal realities.’23 Consequently, there are apocalyptic
A definition of apocalyptic fiction
17
narratives in which factually hardly anybody, respectively nobody dies. This
is the case when a global cataclysm is expected but fails to come true, as for
example in some tales of cosmic disasters.24
An effective approach is to characterize the end of the world through violent
destruction in abstract terms as the breakdown of (an) order resulting from a
threat to the whole of mankind. Actually, both Grimm and Seed regard social
breakdown as central to apocalyptic fiction in their respective introductions
to collections of essays on apocalyptic writings. For Grimm, it is the defining
characteristic: ‘Those works are called “apocalyptic” that […] imagine an order
which is in the process of continuous dissolution and is unstoppably heading
towards downfall and catastrophe.’25 Seed’s analysis of aftermath novels—
apocalyptic novels which deal not only with the destruction of the world but also
depict extensively the events after the cataclysm—comes to a similar conclusion
when he describes the initial phase of these novels as the ‘secularized destruction
of old order’.26 Facing the end, the human race starts to disregard the rules and
values on which civilization is built. This definition of a collapsing order holds
up when one looks at the general characteristics of representative examples of
apocalyptic fiction. In anticipation of the coming cataclysm, societal law and
order stop working and give way to a state of chaos and anarchy. Wagar notes:
What most [apocalyptic novels] do have in common is a thorough awareness of the
vulnerability of civilization, and the ease with which its structures disintegrate in the
face of disaster. In nearly every scenario of the end of the world […] attention centers
less on the catastrophe itself […] than on the way it succeeds in unravelling the threads
of the social order.27
In apocalyptic fiction, this breakdown of civilization and its order is marked by
several plot elements which illustrate the general atmosphere of anarchy and
chaos. These formulaic plot elements can be found in the narrative up to the
point when order is finally restored, thus either during the breakdown of order and/
or during the depiction of a world in disorder. These two stages are preoccupied
with the state of disorder and contain generic tropes of lawlessness.
One major sign of lawlessness is the devaluation of personal property which is
in many cases represented by the looting of homes and businesses. When falling
back into a state of nature, former entitlements to goods have lost their meaning
and are distributed anew. When order is still in the process of breaking down
at the beginning of the cataclysmic process or before the apocalyptic event,
valuables tend to be taken into possession by violent means. In John Brunner’s
The Sheep Look Up (1972), a riotous populace fights off the army and breaks
into buildings, ‘carrying what they can, leaving what they can’t’.28 When the number
of people has already been severely reduced by the catastrophe, practically
anything is free to be taken hold of as only few remain to watch over it. In
18
British Apocalyptic Fiction
28 Days Later (2002), for example, the main characters Jim, Selena, Frank, and
Hannah visit an abandoned supermarket to shop for food and supplies.29
Yet crossing the boundaries of law is not confined to material possessions,
the individual body has also lost its legally protected sanctity and is under threat
of harm. People are either wantonly killed in the personal struggle for survival
or their bodies are exploited for personal pleasure or societal benefits. With
regard to physical abuse, it is a generic convention that women are victimized.
During the initial breakdown, it is men who often take advantage of the lawless
situation and rape women to act out their sexual instincts and demonstrate their
(physical) power. This is especially typical of post-Second World War apocalyptic
fiction like The Death of Grass (1956) by John Christopher in which looters abduct
and rape the protagonist’s wife and daughter. In a more advanced phase of the
apocalyptic narrative, often when the human race has come down to its last
members or when (provisional) order is restored, women are held captive for
mating purposes in order to repopulate the planet. In, 28 Days Later, Major West
and his soldiers take Selena and Hannah as prisoners and mating partners to
increase the chance of long-term survival.
Another symptom of anarchic chaos is the occurrence of riots and panicstricken escapes. Riots are often the result of the beginning of disintegration of
order and society. Sometimes, they are an expression of hedonistic excesses when
people try to enjoy their last days on Earth. In The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961),
for instance, teenage kids celebrate a violent and chaotic street party on the day
before the world is supposed to end. In case the catastrophe is perceived to be
limited to a certain area, attempts are made to get away from the danger zone
which leads to frenzied scenes of escape. Essentially the entire plot of Stephen
Baxter’s The Flood (2008) is a tale of flight, first escaping from Britain, then the
Peruvian Andes, and finally off the face of the Earth.
A further frequent plot element symptomatic of a world breaking down is an
increase in suicides among the population. In anticipation of the coming end,
characters are no longer able to bear the terrible suspense and consequences
of being the last people on Earth and are anxious to get their lives over with,
overdosing on medication or turning a weapon on themselves. In Nevil Shute’s
apocalyptic classic On the Beach (1957), some of the main characters take suicide
pills before they come into contact with nuclear fallout.
In addition to signs of a disintegrating order, the stages of breakdown of order
and world in disorder are also marked by efforts to regain order and control. On
the one hand, there are those attempts which are directed at actively fighting or
preventing the disaster. In case the catastrophe is anticipated by humankind,
the people in power, politicians and scientists in most cases, will try to think
of ways to stop the apocalypse from happening. This takes place, for instance,
in the rescue mission novel The Hammer of God (1993) or Danny Boyle’s film
A definition of apocalyptic fiction
19
Sunshine (2007). If the apocalypse is already on its way, the leaders of society
attempt to stop the apocalyptic process by taking counter-measures. For
example, in The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961), the world’s governments decide
to detonate four atomic bombs in Siberia in an attempt to re-shift the Earth’s
axis and stop its movement towards the sun.
On the other hand, when there is no possibility for the human race to
prevent the cataclysm, the characters try to fight the consequences of social
disintegration. As the power of political structures and institutions collapses and
with it societal order, civilization drifts into a state of civil war. In an attempt
to preserve society, it is one generic convention that political leaders will have
the military, as the state’s peacekeeping power, step in and try to regain control
over the riotous population by force. One typical way of doing so is for the
military to shut off restricted areas of small size to regain some level of control
as, for instance, in 28 Weeks Later. In cases where political power has already
disintegrated and the established government has failed to get the situation
under control, the power vacuum is filled by a new form of government. In
general, there is a tendency in apocalyptic fiction for democratic institutions
to be replaced by less complex, more hierarchical and typically authoritarian
regimes: dictatorships, military regimes, or tribes. These new regimes often also
employ military organizations to regain control and emphasize their new status
as political leaders. Torrence in The Day of the Triffids (1951) and Major West in
28 Days Later are typical representations of this military-style non-democratic
leader in apocalyptic fiction.
Nonetheless, it is not sufficient to characterize the end of the world as a
depiction of the collapse of order alone. To distinguish apocalyptic fiction from
similar genres like disaster fiction, it is crucial to emphasize that in apocalyptic
fiction, the breakdown of order or the replacement of one order by another is
caused by a threat to the survival of the human race in its entirety. Such a threat
exists if the narrative suggests that the upcoming or already progressing disaster
has the capability of obliterating humankind if it realizes its full potential and/
or is left unchecked. For this study, this would include those tales in which
just the British population is endangered in instances in which the story never
looks outside Britain as if the rest of the world simply did not exist. This is
true, for instance, in H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1898) in which the
whole narrative takes place in London and the surrounding countryside. The
general feeling of the novel, though, is that if the Martians’ invasion brings
about the end to Britain and its people, then the rest of humankind is equally
doomed. However, this exception would not include stories in which the British
people are about to be extinct while the plot relates that the rest of the world, in
contrast, is not affected and thus does not face extinction. 28 Days Later certainly
presents a borderline case in this respect: While the film’s plot and atmosphere
20
British Apocalyptic Fiction
are essentially apocalyptic, there are hints midway through that the zombie
pandemic never spread beyond Britain.
It is essential to make the threat to humankind part of the definition of
apocalyptic fiction considering that there are other genres which share the
characteristic of an order lost (and regained). However, despite the fact that these
genres are often regarded or interpreted as apocalyptic, it is not to be mistaken
with narratives that depict the destruction of the Earth by violent means. War
fiction30 or the Elizabethan tragedy are two examples.31 Next to the description
of warfare, the former often describes the breakdown of civilization similar in
fashion to what is labelled ‘apocalyptic fiction’ here. The latter, the Elizabethan
tragedy, describes events in which an order—in more abstract terms—breaks
down and, by the end, is replaced by a new one. The difference between these
two definitions of apocalyptic is, above all, that one is about the imagined end of
the world and the other one is about a catastrophe which, while not threatening
all of mankind, is so significant that one might be willing to compare it to the
end of the world. The term ‘apocalypse’, then, mainly denotes a historical divide
between one period and another.32 In these cases, the apocalyptic event is not
equivalent to a global cataclysm but is used metaphorically and thus can refer
to any kind of traumatic experience or holocaust,33 even a personal one. This is
certainly one way of setting about the subject matter of apocalyptic fiction and
there are several studies which have adapted precisely this wider, more figurative
approach.34
This study opts for a more literal and thus restricted application of the term
‘apocalyptic fiction’. It is fiction that speculates about the end of humanity. It
roughly refers to what others have called ‘stories about the end of the world’,35
‘tales of the end of the world’36 or ‘end-of-the-world fiction’.37 To use the term
‘apocalyptic fiction’ is to indicate two things. First, it shows that modern
secularized end-of-the-world stories of the last 200 years stand in the tradition of
an old literary genre. Secondly, the label apocalyptic fiction implies, in contrast
to its rival label ‘end-of-the-world fiction’, that the vast majority of these stories
do not end with the catastrophe but are also concerned with its aftermath.
A world in disorder, the fictional guise of God’s Last Judgment, follows
the breakdown of order in apocalyptic fiction. Similar to the Last Judgment
as depicted in the apocalypses of the Bible, it is during this stage of complete
disorder that it is ultimately determined who will survive and who is to die, or,
to rephrase that in biblical terminology, who is among the elect and who is not.
Rather than a divine authority, it is at times human authorities which control
the fate of humankind. In these cases, social rank and profession are decisive
in whether somebody is part of the elect or in fact expendable. For instance,
in The Tide Went Out (1958) by Charles Eric Maine, only politicians, scientists,
high-ranked military officials, and doctors are selected by the government to
A definition of apocalyptic fiction
21
take refuge in the Arctic survival camp. In most cases, however, the division
into elect and non-elect is the result of a struggle that follows the logic of the
survival of the fittest.
Thus, the Last Judgment is an essential element of modern apocalyptic
fiction, even if it might not be as foregrounded and pronounced as in its
traditional predecessors. May and Ahearn in fact claim that the Last Judgment
is an integral part of the apocalyptic narrative. May declares that a ‘novel is
normally considered apocalyptic if […] it possesses at least two of the specific
symbolisms of apocalypse: catastrophe and judgement.’38 Ahearn points out:
‘Apocalypse of course means the violent end of the world and coming of the
Last Judgement’.39
In apocalyptic fiction, it is sometimes difficult to separate the end of the world
from the Last Judgment as they are both marked by a (growing) absence of order.
Consequently, it is not surprising that many narrative elements of the breakdown
of order also emerge during the phase of a world in disorder. To find a clear-cut
dividing line between the end of the world and the Last Judgment in apocalyptic
fiction is generally a problem when the catastrophe appears to be a process rather
than an event, for example when there is a plague, human infertility, or creeping
ecological doom. Only if the apocalypse is brought about by a comparatively
short-lived and sudden event, such as a cosmological catastrophe, nuclear war,
or natural disaster, is it possible to keep these two phases more clearly apart. The
apocalyptic event then serves as a borderline.
The stage of a world in disorder is reached by the time a state of total anarchy
is at hand. This stage compares to the ‘state of nature’ in social contract theories
of political philosophy such as Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651). In Leviathan,
Hobbes deals with how men and women behave before the state, ‘a common
power to keep them all in awe’,40 is established. Hobbes comes to characterize
this ‘state of nature’ as ‘a war of every man against every man’.41 In apocalyptic
fiction, humankind falls back into this state after the breakdown of order. This
struggle most often leads to Hobbes’ ‘war of every man against every man’
in which every other human being is a potential lethal enemy. In other cases,
humanity stays mostly united but is involved in a final battle against natural forces
or other non-human life forms, e.g. aliens, monstrous animals etc. Accordingly,
the phase of a world in disorder ends as soon as the threat to humankind—and
with it the struggle for survival—comes to a close. At this point, the human race
is finally able to reorganize itself permanently and to re-establish civilization and
thus some kind of order. From this point onwards, the narrative of apocalyptic
fiction finds itself in its last stage, order restored.
The formation of a new order, the third and final phase of the apocalyptic
narrative, corresponds with the renewal of the world in biblical apocalypse. The
survivors’ safety is secured and the remaining humans are ready to repopulate
22
British Apocalyptic Fiction
the Earth. In stories in which the apocalyptic disaster has ongoing negative
long-term effects, it might be slightly euphemistic to call this a restoration of
paradise. Then again, mankind is given another opportunity to start anew and
has got the Earth at its free disposal once again, a scenario that bears similarity
to Adam and Eve’s situation in biblical Eden on some level. As a matter of fact,
there are a number of apocalyptic stories in which humanity is reduced to one
male and one female, mirroring the set-up in biblical paradise. One such novel
is The Purple Cloud (1901) by M. P. Shiel in which the aptly named main character
Adam and the woman Leda are the only remaining human inhabitants of the
world, ready to start a new civilization. All in all, the stage ‘order restored’ is
most often present in British apocalyptic fiction in some way and thus is integral
to the genre.
The phase ‘order restored’, then, depicts a new society after the end. During
this stage, apocalyptic fiction adopts characteristics of utopian literature which
also depicts ‘alternative societies’.42 The difference is that, instead of merely
travelling in time or space, apocalyptic fiction reaches the utopian setting
primarily by destroying the old world and building a new one instead.43 In contrast
to apocalyptic literature of the Bible, which only offers the utopia of paradise,
‘a rebirth into a new and infinitely better world’,44 secularized apocalyptic fiction
also offers a dystopian version of the apocalyptic aftermath. Yet Edward James
states that ‘most [apocalyptic narratives] are bucolic or Edenic arcadias’.45 While
there is certainly a tendency in late 19th century British apocalyptic fiction to
celebrate the pastoral, 20th century fiction does less so and if it features a return
to nature, it does not necessarily do so in an idyllic fashion.
While the renewal of the world is an integral part of apocalyptic literature,
stories which relate the events after the end have often been labelled as ‘postapocalyptic’ rather than ‘apocalyptic’. Actually, several terms have been coined
for this type of fiction: ‘post-holocaust sf’,46 ‘postcatastrophe stories’,47 or ‘postapocalypse/post-apocalyptic fiction’.48 By and large, all of these terms refer
to ‘works that follow humankind after a nuclear, ecological, or cataclysmic
disaster’.49 The definitions behind the terms differ, though, with respect to how
long after the apocalyptic disaster the narrative of these works starts. Postapocalyptic fiction can range from tales ‘set in the time period directly following
some sort of world cataclysm‘50 to narratives ‘set at least a generation after whatever
disaster brought about the fall of civilization’.51 By and large, the majority of
these definitions of post-apocalyptic suggest that post-apocalyptic fiction
is about a world in disorder and eventually portrays a restoration of order,
so that their definition of post-apocalyptic fiction overlaps with this study’s
definition of apocalyptic fiction. If one were to accept these characterizations
of post-apocalyptic fiction, it would in fact make the term ‘apocalyptic fiction’
essentially redundant. Looking at the corpus of British apocalyptic fiction, there
A definition of apocalyptic fiction
23
are hardly any texts that restrict themselves to the stage breakdown of order
because apocalyptic fiction is more than just about the end of the world, more
than merely the depiction of global catastrophe.
This overlap in definition has led to some confusion. One consequence of this
confusion is that apocalyptic fiction and post-apocalyptic fiction haven been
used interchangeably. In his article ‘Post-apocalypse now’, Marc Donner first
says that he ‘will look at an example of the post-apocalyptic genre, David Brin’s
1985 novel The Postman […]’,52 only to point out later that the same novel stands
out ‘[a]mong apocalyptic fiction’.53 Another example is Newman’s introduction
to his book Apocalypse Movies (2000) in which apocalypse and post-apocalypse
are constantly used as if referring to the same thing without giving a definition
for either.54 The other consequence is that the same piece of fiction is called
‘apocalyptic’ by some, ‘post-apocalyptic’ by others. When Donner defines postapocalypse, he writes:
For our purposes, post-apocalyptic means that some cataclysmic transforming event
upsets the order of things. These stories are typically structured with preambles that
establish some linkage to the normal present as we know it, follow with the cataclysm,
and finish with a post-apocalyptic world in which characters deal in one way or another
with the change.55
Donner’s definition of post-apocalyptic not only overlaps but corresponds to
this study’s definition of apocalyptic fiction. Yet Donner gives no indication as
to why he favours the term ‘post-apocalyptic’ over ‘apocalyptic’ when in fact he
describes the narrative pattern of biblical apocalypse. The most extraordinary
example for the confusion over the apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic distinction
is John Joseph Adam’s describing Mary Shelley’s The Last Man as the ‘first
significant post-apocalyptic work’.56 However, The Last Man actually never
describes the renewal of society and the world after the apocalypse and thus
hardly qualifies as post-apocalyptic fiction. Adam appears to confuse the stages
‘world in disorder’ and ‘order restored’, a confusion that is probably due to the
fact that the apocalyptic plague in Shelley’s novel is a slow-moving process. This
potentially allows for different starting points of the post-apocalyptic, similar to
the problem of separating the end of the world from the Last Judgment.
To define apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, the end of apocalyptic and
the beginning of post-apocalyptic need to be clearly established. If one were
to take the starting point of an apocalyptic process, the beginning of the postapocalyptic narrative would then coincide with the starting point of the end
of the world, i.e., the breakdown of order, and thus make apocalyptic fiction
as a category obsolete. Any point in time between the start of the process and
the end of it can only be arbitrary as it is problematical to precisely pinpoint
this moment in the narrative. Thus, the best reference point is the end of the
24
British Apocalyptic Fiction
apocalyptic process, either when the threat to humanity has come to a halt or
when it has succeeded in eliminating the human race. This is the approach taken
by this study. The major advantage of this approach is that it works for both
types of catastrophes, cataclysmic events and cataclysmic processes.
Accordingly, post-apocalyptic fiction focuses on the time when or after
order has been restored after an apocalyptic threat to mankind. In these
stories, the catastrophe is often long forgotten or mythologized if it occurred
in the distant past. It is different from apocalyptic fiction in that it deals
(almost) exclusively with the aftermath, the final stage of apocalyptic fiction.
A description of either the breakdown of order or the world in disorder, or
both, can be part of a post-apocalyptic narrative. However, this part never
exceeds a marginal status in post-apocalyptic fiction. For example, in Richard
Jefferies’ classic post-apocalyptic novel After London (1885), only the first five
of altogether 28 chapters relate the collapse of society and the subsequent
‘Relapse into Barbarism’.57 The remaining 23 chapters describe the new
society that has arisen in the aftermath of the breakdown. Therefore, postapocalyptic fiction is indeed a subgenre of utopian literature. This view is
confirmed when searching through bibliographies of utopian literature: Major
examples of British post-apocalyptic fiction—Richard Jefferies’ After London,
Aldous Huxley’s Ape and Essence (1948) or John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids
(1955)—are all listed.58
Hence, prototypical apocalyptic fiction starts with the breakdown of order
and ends with its restoration, thus covering all three stages of the apocalyptic
narrative. Using terms from prototypicality theory, these apocalyptic stories
are the ‘clearest cases’, the ‘best examples’ or ‘prototype’ of apocalyptic
fiction.59 Non-prototype members might do without an explicit and detailed
description of either the end of the world or the restored order. John Wyndham’s
The Day of the Triffids (1951) starts in medias res with the phase ‘world in disorder’,
The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961) ends just before order is (potentially) restored.
Nevertheless, these are tales of apocalyptic fiction even though they only focus
on one or two of the three generic stages of the apocalyptic narrative.
*
This study’s definition of apocalyptic fiction primarily relies on the presence
of a threat to mankind initiating a breakdown of order. The anticipation
and advancing realization of the end of the world, a phrase which must be
understood as a synonym for the end of the human race, is the starting point of
the apocalyptic narrative which consists of three stages: breakdown of order—
world in disorder—order restored. These three stages of apocalyptic fiction
A definition of apocalyptic fiction
25
correspond to the three stages of biblical apocalypse: the end of the world
through violent destruction, the Last Judgment, and the renewal of the
world with a restoration of paradise. A prototypical example of apocalyptic
fiction covers all three stages of the apocalyptic narrative. To be identified as
apocalyptic fiction at all, a narrative should at least relate the events of the first
(breakdown of order) or the second (world in disorder) of the three phases in
greater detail. The other stages can be merely sketched out or implied; in rare
cases, the stage ‘order restored’ does not take place at all. Stories which only
deal with the final phase (order restored) are not so much concerned with the
disaster and its immediate consequences but portray societies after the end.
These stories are better described as post-apocalyptic fiction: To set them apart
from representative instances of apocalyptic fiction and to emphasize the fact
that they most strongly share the characteristics of utopian literature.
Ch ap ter 2
First age of extinction
Britain during the late Victorian and
Edwardian period
In the course of the 19th century, apocalyptic discourse in Britain became
increasingly emancipated from religious ideas. Concepts of apocalypse drastically
changed after several scientific discoveries pointed towards the possibility of an
absence of divine intervention behind the existence and development of the
human race. The second law of thermodynamics and the theory of evolution were
essential in transforming ideas about the existence of humankind. Moreover, they
were the driving forces behind a secularized guise of apocalyptic imagination
as both theories disconnected the fate of humankind from heavenly powers
and a divine plan: ‘Evolutionism, and the allied powers of science, technology,
and human invention, did succeed in replacing—in important respects—God
and eternity with natural forces’.1 Earth was regarded as just another planet,
susceptible to the general principles of the universe, humankind just another
species, prone to extinction.
The second law of thermodynamics, also known by the term entropy, indicated
that irreversible physical processes would ultimately lead to the end of organic
life on Earth. It presented ‘a scientific image of the promised end, the horror of
an earth unfit for human life.’2 In 1852, it reached a wide British audience when
William Thomson’s essay ‘On a Universal Tendency in Nature to the Dissipation
of Mechanical Energy’ popularized the idea that the quality and usability of
energy continuously decreases over time so that eventually, after millions of
years, Earth, and actually the entire universe, would become uninhabitable.3
Thomson and other physicists envisaged the end of the universe to come in the
shape of a heat death.4
Therefore, the British public no longer necessarily thought of the world’s
end as a result of divine intervention. Instead, the end of the world had
been broken down to a mathematical equation: ‘Prophets through the ages
have predicted the end of the earth; Thomson gives a formula for its final
temperature’.5 In ‘On a Universal Tendency in Nature’, Thomson used ‘nontechnical language [which] suggests that he wanted to reach the widest possible
audience’6. He gave lectures on entropy and thermodynamics, talking about
First age of extinction
27
when life on Earth had begun and when it would end. A newspaper article
in The Pall Mall Gazette documents the public interest in Thomson’s work and
his ideas about the end of the world. The article entitled ‘Date of the End
of the World’ explains that the sun has existed for 20 million years and will
continue to exist for another 10 million years until its eventual heat death.7
This may not have conjured up dramatic images of apocalyptic catastrophes
in the public mind but certainly familiarized the British population with a
secularized scenario of humankind’s extinction. The theory of evolution
and its popularity further increased public awareness of the possibility of an
apocalyptic end to the human race.
Initially, it was Robert Chambers’ Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844)
which first introduced evolutionary thought to a wider English speaking public.8
Chambers believed that ‘everything in nature is progressing toward a higher
state’ 9 by way of transmutation. This seriously questioned the dominant position
of Creationism on the origin of life:
Creationism maintained that the adaptive features of each characteristic structure of
animals and plants had been purposely created by a divine intelligence. It was argued
that the order and complexity of the natural world could not be the product of natural
forces alone. Only God, it was asserted, could impose such a system of design on
nature.10
Creationism represented the scenario as described in the Book of Genesis. If,
however, nature had changed and, in fact, improved over time, then God’s
creation, according to Chamber’s conclusion, must have been somewhat flawed
in its original design. Vestiges became a bestseller in Victorian Britain and sold
over 100,000 copies in 13 editions.11
Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) and his contemporaries established
evolutionary theory in Victorian culture for good and initiated a debate about
the origins of humankind. Darwin inferred from fossil findings that terrestrial
species are not fixed but undergo changes by a mechanism he called natural
selection. Natural selection suggested that those creatures that are best adapted
to their environment have the best chances of survival and procreation.
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection ‘brought Darwin’s […] theory
to the attention of the wider scientific community and, equally significantly,
to the general public.’12 It triggered further significant works on evolution:
Thomas Henry Huxley’s Man’s Place in Nature (1863), Charles Lyell’s Antiquity of
Man (1863) and finally Darwin’s own Descent of Man (1871). These publications
focused more strongly on human evolution than Origin of Species. They implied
that ‘man had probably evolved from lower animals over long periods of
time.’13
28
British Apocalyptic Fiction
As a result of his findings, Darwin declared that man and ape shared the same
ancestry:
The Simiadae then branched off into two great stems, the New World and Old World
monkeys; and from the latter, at a remote period, Man, the wonder and glory of the
Universe, proceeded.14
This revolutionary idea quickly spread within British culture. 14,000 copies of
The Descent of Man were sold within a decade, 35,000 copies by the end of the
century.15 The ensuing popularity of Darwin’s theory is also evident in the iconic
caricature which appeared in The Hornet in 1871, the same year The Descent of Man
was published (Figure 1). It shows Darwin’s head mounted on the body of an
orang-outang. Thus, evolutionary theory brought to public attention the notion
that humankind was just one species among others. Hence, like all other species,
it was subject to natural vagaries and possible extinction: ‘Fossil evidence revealed
that there had not just been one creation: species had been made extinct, and
new ones created, over vast ages.’16 Accordingly, contemporaries were inclined to
deduce that the whole of humanity was susceptible to the processes and chances
of nature in the near or distant future.
Moreover, evolutionary thought infused Victorian culture in the shape of
Social Darwinism. In reaction to Darwin’s Origin of Species, Herbert Spencer
coined the term ‘Survival of the Fittest’ in his book Principles of Biolog y (1864).
Whereas he intended this term to be used synonymously with Darwin’s ‘Natural
Selection’, ‘Survival of the Fittest’ was subsequently often taken to mean the
active struggle for existence which implied that only the fittest organisms would
prevail. Advocates of Social Darwinism took up this misconception of Spencer’s
expression. Here, Spencer was ‘interpreted as providing a biological rationale
for society as a ruthless struggle for existence’.17 Social Darwinism, then, was
applicable to the struggle of nation states for political power and colonial
territory. Walter Bagehot, for example, promoted this perspective:
In Physics and Politics [1872], he sought to demonstrate that throughout history the
strongest nations had always dominated or conquered weaker ones. He emphasized
that the progress of civilization depended upon the operation of natural selection
applied to national groups.18
Accordingly, the most advanced societies would survive whereas weak cultures
would become extinct.
The apocalyptic implications of the second law of thermodynamics and
the theory of evolution offered a more ambivalent perspective on science. In
consequence, the hitherto mostly positive public image of science underwent a
negative turn at the end of the 19th century:
First age of extinction
29
Figure 1: Charles Darwin as an ape. Caricature by an unknown artist. ‘A Venerable Orangoutang. A contribution to unnatural history’. The Hornet, 22 March 1871.
30
British Apocalyptic Fiction
Science had long marched under the banner of progress, but now evolutionary biology
and thermodynamics taught that decay was as much a part of the order of things as
progress. These images were as central to the late nineteenth-century scene as test
tubes, microscopes, and Petri dishes.19
This more nuanced attitude extended to other fields of science beyond
evolutionary theory and thermodynamics. The public reaction to the
discovery of X-rays by Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen in 1895 serves as a good
example of divided public opinion on science. The reprint of an X-ray
photograph in several scientific journals as well as in newspapers caused
immediate and enthusiastic responses by scientists and a public audience20 so
that ‘[t]he phenomenon was rapidly assimilated into the popular culture of the
day.’ 21 However, there were also sceptical reactions. A poem in the popular
magazine Punch, for example, appealed to ‘beware’ of Roentgen and his ‘grim
and graveyard humour’. 22 The poem evokes associations of death by referring
to the morbid quality of X-ray photography that merely shows skeletal bones.
Other British periodicals also cautioned against the use of X-rays by pointing
out their harmful potential. 23
As a result of the scientific discoveries in the 19th century24 and in accordance
with people’s increasing apprehension of science and its findings, nonmetaphysical forms of disaster started to permeate the apocalyptic discourse.
The example of Herbert C. Fyfe’s article ‘How Will the World End?’, published
in 1900 in Pearson’s Magazine, shows the increasing popularity of apocalyptic
scenarios beyond the biblical. The introductory paragraphs of Fyfe’s article
signal that the implications of the theory of evolution were vital for this change
of perspective:
It is our purpose in this article […] to emphasise the lesson taught by Nature that the
individual counts for nothing in the history of the race, the race for nothing in the life
of the planet, and the planet for nothing in the duration of the Universe.25
In what follows, Fyfe refers to contemporary scientific theories to list a number
of scenarios that could cause the extinction of humankind: lack of air and
oxygen, significant decrease of solar energy and temperature, collision with a
comet, eradication by another (monstrous) species, epidemic disease, radical
change of Earth’s condition, starvation and thirst due to a shortage of food and
water for the ever increasing human population.26 This extensive list shows that
speculations about the end of the world thrived in the scientific community and
the British public at the turn of the century.
Possibly more than anything else, predictions of a comet catastrophe were
at the forefront of the apocalyptic discourse in Britain in the late 19th century
and the early 20th century. The Austrian astronomer Rudolf Falb was one of
First age of extinction
31
the most outspoken promoters of this idea. His prediction that the end of the
world would come in the year 1899 in the shape of Biela’s Comet was taken
seriously to some degree since Falb had ‘a reputation all over Europe for his
meteorological knowledge and particularly for his extraordinary familiarity with
the habits and customs of earthquakes.’27 He predicted that Biela’s comet would
‘collide with our globe; then “the fireworks” and—darkness.’28 In the build-up
to the catastrophic disaster, New York was supposed to be submerged by a tidal
wave while the geology of Florida and California would drastically change due
to suboceanic earthquakes. Several British newspapers in the 1890s featured
articles under the headline ‘The End of the World’, reporting on Falb’s scientific
prophecy.29 Fyfe’s article on the end of the world also makes reference to Falb,
stating that ‘Prof. Falb’s prophecy actually caused no little dismay among the
poorer classes of the Continental peasantry’.30
In addition to a direct comet impact, Earth’s passage through a comet’s
tail was perceived as a great threat to humankind in 1881 and 1910. In 1881,
three astronomers ‘photographed the spectrum of the comet of the year’,
thereby discovering ‘the poisonous gas cyanogen’31 in the comet’s tail. James
M. Swanustedt claimed that ‘the end of the world will be on 12th November
[…] and will be accomplished through the agency of a comet’.32 In 1908,
astronomers once again found evidence of cyanogen gas in Comet Morehouse.
When Earth was scheduled to pass through Halley’s Comet two years later
in 1910, ‘public concern mounted regarding the possibility of world-wide
poisoning’.33 Within a short period of time, cataclysmic ideas spread among
the populace as ‘newspapers fuelled fears of doom and gloom’.34 In Britain,
‘oxygen cylinders were on hand in some London homes’35 to enable survival in
the poisoned atmosphere.
Apart from these speculative predictions in contemporary British newspaper
articles on the end of the world, apocalyptic rhetoric can also be found with regard
to British foreign affairs. An article in The Illustrated London News from 1875 states
that the arms race among the Continental European nations at the time gives
the impression that ‘the world is on the eve of the Battle of Armageddon’.36 The
writer of the article voices his concerns that the seemingly stable Continental
peace might come to an end sooner than one would have hoped for. An article in
The Reynold’s Newspaper reports on a clergyman, Reverend Baxter, who describes
the downfall of Britain at the hands of France in an apocalyptic scenario as
found in the Book of Revelation. According to Baxter, the ‘Antichrist would be
a Napoleon’.37 Baxter further foresees that France will conquer Germany, annex
Luxemburg, Belgium and the Prussian Rhine provinces. In addition, ‘England
would be more or less subjugated by [France]’.38 For the outcome, Baxter predicts
that Christ will come down to Earth to destroy the French Antichrist so that the
Millennium can begin.
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The apocalyptic rhetoric with regard to foreign affairs can be read in context
of British fears of national decline. In the closing decades of the 19th century,
Britain’s status as the world’s sole power was increasingly challenged by other
nations. The declining economic situation was especially worrying:
During the 1880s and 1890s, English society came under pressure from a number of
urgent problems. A faltering economy, rising unemployment, revelations of shocking
poverty and widespread labour unrest caused intellectuals grave concern.39
This prompted an expansionist policy to guarantee the seemingly threatened
existence of the Empire40 and to preserve Britain’s status as the most powerful
nation on Earth. However, this foreign policy proved to be problematic too
because Britain’s competitors in the quest for political power—the United
States, Germany, and France—pursued the same strategy. The ensuing New
Imperialism, a competition for colonies all over the world, was an expression
of the social Darwinist struggle for world hegemony and ‘seemed to presage
Britain’s imminent eclipse’.41
The anxiety about Britain’s decline was additionally fuelled by the fact
that Britain’s ascendancy in science and technology was a thing of the past.
Instead, ‘[s]everal European nations (notably, Germany, France, and Belgium),
the United States, and, to a more modest degree, Japan were rivalling Great
Britain in scientific accomplishments and equalling or surpassing her
technologically.’42 Thus, towards the end of the 19th century, Britain was on
the verge of falling behind Germany and the United States in the realms of
science and technology.43 French and German scientists made the milestone
discoveries of the time: Pasteur, Becquerel, and the Curies were French; Koch
and Roentgen were German. This was the result of a shortage of professionalism
and a lack of institutionalisation and public funding in Britain. Especially in
comparison to Germany and the United States, there were few universities
of technology, practically no laboratories and only few research institutions
outside universities.44 British scientists without ample means of their own could
neither afford proper research facilities, expeditions, or scientific equipment
nor were they able to make enough money in a career in the natural sciences.45
This new state of affairs left its mark on Britain’s collective self-consciousness:
‘The impression that late Victorian Britain had fallen behind comparable
countries […] in scientific and technical achievements as well as in economic
efficiency also contributed to a general loss in confidence’.46 Britain’s failure
to expand and modernize its scientific capacities seemingly posed a threat to
the nation.
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Apocalyptic fiction 1895–1913
The rise of apocalyptic fiction in Britain
Up to the mid-1890s, none of the few British stories with generic traces of
apocalyptic fiction are prototypical examples. The environmental catastrophe
in Richard Jefferies’ After London (1885) serves rather as exposition for the main
story, a typical adventure tale set in post-catastrophe England, which makes
After London post-apocalyptic fiction. Jefferies’ short story ‘The Great Snow’
(c. 1875), not published at the time, William Deslisle Hay’s novella The Doom of the
Great City (1880), and Robert Barr’s short story ‘The Doom of London’ (1894) all
feature natural disasters which bring disorder and death. However, the impact
of the cataclysm is restricted to London,47 which makes them representatives
of the London disaster story that is especially popular around the turn of the
century.48
The Crack of Doom (1886) by William Minto more closely resembles prototypical
apocalyptic fiction. Parts of the British population come to believe that ‘the
world was to be destroyed by a comet’.49 Minto’s novel features a fictional comet
threat that causes social unrest, a new scenario for British fiction. Even though
the comet never realizes its destructive potential, several passages, in accordance
with genre expectations, describe the unsettling effect the approaching comet
has on the public: ‘There was in fact at that moment a spectacle in the heavens
startling enough to strike any crowd of men with awe’.50 However, the global
threat merely sets the scene for several melodramatic plot lines and serves more
as a backdrop to the, mostly romantic, entanglements.
Yet with the advent of science fiction in the 1890s, examples of prototypical
apocalyptic fiction surface in substantial numbers in Britain. More than half
a dozen apocalyptic short stories and novels are published over the period of
just a few years. According to Roger Luckhurst, four conditions favoured the
increasing production and popularity of science fiction in the last decade of the
nineteenth century:
(1) the extension of literacy and primary education to the majority of the population
of England and America, including the working classes (2) the displacement of the
older forms of mass literature […] with new cheap magazine formats that force formal
innovation, and drive the invention of modern genre categories like detective or
spy fiction as well as SF; (3) the arrival of scientific and technical institutions that
provide a training for a lower-middle-class generation as scientific workers, teachers
and engineers, (4) the context of a culture visibly transformed by technological and
scientific innovations.51
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British Apocalyptic Fiction
Science fiction, in speculating about the future on the grounds of current or
future scientific facts and ideas, provided a perfect literary arena for end-of-theworld fiction. This is evident when looking at a selection of main characters in
apocalyptic fiction at the turn of the 19th century.
Scientists and their discoveries or inventions play a significant role in detecting
or causing the catastrophe in contemporary British apocalyptic fiction. Most
often, the scientist figure is the protagonist or one of the main characters in
the story. Their field of expertise varies greatly and includes astronomers,
mathematicians, biologists, chemists and physicists. The astronomer character
foresees the catastrophe in William Minto’s The Crack of Doom (1885), George
Griffith’s ‘The Great Crellin Comet’ (1899) and The World Peril of 1910 (1907),
George C. Wallis’ ‘The Great Sacrifice. A Scientific Romance’ (1903), Owen
Oliver’s ‘The Long Night: A Story of the Next Decade’ (1906), and J. S.
Fletcher’s ‘The New Sun’ (1913). In H. G. Wells’ ‘The Star’ (1897), the only
individualized character is a mathematician. The protagonist of Cromie’s
The Crack of Doom (1895) is a physicist; one of the main characters in Fred T. Jane’s
The Violet Flame (1898) is a physical chemist. Finally, the scientist in W. L. Alden’s
‘The Purple Death’, A. Lincoln Green’s The End of an Epoch (1901) and Arthur
Conan Doyle’s The Poison Belt (1913) is a biologist.
The other outstanding apocalyptic narratives around the turn of the century,
H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1898) and M. P. Shiel’s The Purple Cloud (1901),
even though they do not feature scientists prominently, can be related to scientific
ideas and findings of the time. Astronomer Percival Lowell’s Mars (1895)
popularized the idea that the planet Mars was inhabited by intelligent forms
of life: ‘He claimed “positive proof” of a Martian atmosphere, evidence of an
“astonishingly mild” climate, the likelihood of little in the way of winds, storms,
or mountains.’52 The public awareness of Lowell’s assertions certainly increased
the credibility of Wells’ story of a Martian race of people. The devastatingly
toxic purple cloud in The Purple Cloud carries a chemical compound, a deadly ‘gas
which was either cyanogen, or some product of cyanogen’.53 Cyanogen, by that
time, was known to be poisonous. These and the previous examples combined
indicate that the rise of apocalyptic fiction was closely tied to the advent of
science fiction.
Evolution and entropy
Evolution and entropy feature prominently in stories about the end of the world
at the turn of the century. The most widely known example is probably H. G.
Wells’ The Time Machine (1895), which is permeated with evolutionary thought54
and depicts a world that has arrived at the end of its time:
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The darkness grew apace; a cold wind began to blow in freshening gusts from the east,
and the showering white flakes in the air increased in number. From the edge of the sea
came a ripple and whisper. Beyond these lifeless sounds the world was silent. Silent?
It would be hard to convey the stillness of it. All the sounds of man, the bleating of
sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects, the stir that makes the background of our
lives—all that was over.55
The novel attributes the end of time to the processes of entropy, as our solar
system seems to have lost all energy: The Earth has ‘come to rest with one face
to the sun’ and the dying sun displays a mere ‘dull heat’.56 However, the end
of the world in The Time Machine is only a short episode that lacks many of the
characteristic features of apocalyptic fiction. The slow and long-lasting processes
of evolution function predominantly as contextual ideas, not as actual threats as
in other contemporary stories of the end of the world. Another example of the
presence of evolutionary thought in apocalyptic fiction is Lincoln A. Green’s
The End of an Epoch (1901): The last man on Earth, Adam, states he survived
even though he did not have ‘any special fitness to survive’,57 echoing Herbert
Spencer’s phrase ‘Survival of the Fittest’.
The best example of the significance of evolutionary thought in late 19th century
apocalyptic fiction is H. G. Wells’ other classic The War of the Worlds (1898).
Martians invade the planet Earth to make it their new habitat because ‘[t]he
secular cooling that must some day overtake our planet [Earth] has already
gone far indeed with our neighbour.’58 Again, ideas of entropy resonate in this
quote. Evolutionary theory and social Darwinist ideology are alluded to even
more strongly. The narrator early on in the novel claims that ‘life is an incessant
struggle for existence’.59 Ultimately, the apocalyptic battle between Martians and
humankind is indeed decided by the effects of the evolutionary process when the
Martians and their native red weed plant die of terrestrial microbial infection:
In the end, the red weed succumbed almost as quickly as it had spread. A cankering
disease, due, it is believed, to the action of certain bacteria, presently seized upon it.
Now, by the action of natural selection, all terrestrial plants have acquired a resisting
power against bacterial diseases – they never succumb without a severe struggle, but
the red weed rotted like a thing already dead.60
Comets and cosmic threats
Comets are the ultimate agents of apocalypse in late Victorian and Edwardian
British fiction. Even apocalyptic stories that do not feature a comet threat show
an awareness of them. For example, in Robert Cromie’s The Crack of Doom (1895),
when a member of the Cui Bono Society announces that they want to bring an
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British Apocalyptic Fiction
end to this world, the narrator Arthur Marcel mockingly assumes that ‘you will
accomplish this triviality by means of Huxley’s comet’.61 Likewise, The End of
an Epoch (1901) refers to ‘periodic scares about the destruction of the world by
collision with a wandering comet.’62
George Griffith’s ‘The Great Crellin Comet’ (1899) and its novel-length
adaptation The World Peril of 1910 (1907) anticipate or directly respond to
contemporary fears of a comet collision.63 The astronomer Arthur Lennox, who is
madly in love with the millionaire Crellin’s daughter Auriola, detects a comet that
threatens life on Earth, either by direct comet impact or by changing the Earth’s
atmosphere. Only thirteen months remain before the cataclysm. In consideration
of what entropy has taught her, Auriola is appalled: ‘I always thought that we had
a few million years of life to look forward to before this old world of ours gets
worn out.’64 Lennox believes he can save the world by shooting explosives at the
comet. His plan works and the world is saved. Remarkably, that makes Lennox a
rare positive scientist figure in contemporary apocalyptic fiction.
In Owen Oliver’s ‘The Long Night: A Story of the Next Decade’ (1906), the
proximity of a comet slows down Earth’s rotation until it comes to a standstill,
with the British Isles on the side averted from the sun. This part of the world
is expected to be ‘ice-bound and uninhabitable’,65 the other side of the world
will suffer under eternal daylight. As another result of Earth’s slowed rotation,
the moon crashes down, making people think that ‘it was the dissolution of the
world’.66 When the comet eventually passes, Earth’s rotation recommences and
humankind survives, the only difference being that an individual day is now
much longer, lasting for more than 28 hours.
A supposedly dangerous comet has similarly mild consequences in H. G. Wells’
In the Days of the Comet (1906). Instead of death and devastation, the green-white
comet’s encounter with our world brings merely a ‘great Change’ to humanity,
fostering ‘peace on earth and good will to all men’.67 Even though the idea of
apocalypse is not foregrounded in The Days of the Comet, the novel at some point
nevertheless makes reference to contemporary beliefs of catastrophic comet
collisions: A preacher ‘link[s] the comet with the end of the world’, associating
the appearance of the comet ‘with international politics and prophecies from the
Book of Daniel.’68
Even though Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Poison Belt (1913) does not feature a
dangerous comet, the comet scare of 1910 evidently resonates in the novella’s
plot. As the solar system of the Earth travels through the universe, a belt of
poisonous ether has entered the atmosphere. Professor Challenger expects the
poison belt to kill all of mankind: ‘Our planet has swum into the poison belt
of ether, and is now flying deeper into it at the rate of some millions of miles
a minute […]. It is, in my opinion, the end of the world.’69 Having foreseen the
event, Challenger has invited a few friends to bring oxygen cylinders to his house
First age of extinction
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to prolong the inevitable end.70 When the poison belt surprisingly withdraws,
Challenger, his wife and his three friends appear to be among the few survivors.
It turns out, though, that the ether merely put people in a temporary state of
catalepsy so that humankind reawakens in the course of the next day. In this
way, The Poison Belt not only takes up contemporary fears of apocalyptic comets
but also suggests that these fears are somewhat exaggerated.
There are two other stories that, while they are not about an apocalyptic
comet, fit into the category of cosmic catastrophe. The apocalyptic menace in
‘The Great Sacrifice: A Scientific Romance’ (1903) by George C. Wallis comes
in the shape of a cloud of meteors which, upon hitting the sun, would emanate
so much heat as to make life on Earth impossible. Having detected this threat,
the alien inhabitants of Mars send messages to Earth to warn mankind. The
short story’s main character, the astronomer Harrison, is able to decipher the
Martian communication: ‘[T]his is a warning of world-peril, so far as I can see, a
sentence of death for all humanity.’ 71 The Martians, however, prevent the disaster
by building a hydrogen shield, sacrificing the planets Neptune, Uranus, Saturn
and Jupiter and in the end even their own home planet Mars in the process. As
a result, ‘the earth is now the largest planet of the Solar System’.72 While ‘The
Great Sacrifice’ shows an awareness of the insignificance and unpredictability of
human existence in the face of universal chaos, it also regards the Earth and its
inhabitants as exceptional and worthy of sacrifice. Moreover, with Earth ending
up as the largest planet in our solar system, the short story restores the belief
that humanity has its place at the top of the order of life.
In J. S. Fletcher’s ‘The New Sun’ (1913), it is a solar system body that threatens
to bring doom to the world. The astronomer Dan discovers a new star that
is rushing towards the Earth, causing a mysterious yellow fog, a remarkable
increase in temperature and eventually a cyclone. London descends into chaos
as ‘half the people are dead, and the other half mad.’ 73 As the star is about
to hit Earth, a stroke of fortune saves humankind: ‘[T]he great star which we
saw rushing upon us, was suddenly arrested, split into fragments, when that
darkness fell, and that we were saved.’ 74 The fortuitous ending of ‘The New Sun’
once more calls attention to the late Victorians’ insight that human survival is
not part of a design but the result of random good fortune.
Dangerous scientists
A number of stories, which revolve around a scientist and his terrifying invention
or discovery, also leave a mark on British apocalyptic fiction before 1914. The
scientist’s fatal role is not surprising as the image of scientists in the Victorian
novel became increasingly bleak. The discoveries of geology and astronomy
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British Apocalyptic Fiction
and the popularising of evolutionary theory, especially in its distorted form of
Social Darwinism, produced a prevailing image of a cold, unemotional, and,
by extension, amoral scientist.75 In apocalyptic fiction, these mad scientists
purposefully create a lethal weapon that they intend to unleash on humankind.
Representing science, they are manifestations of the contemporary fear that
science may turn against the human race.
The scientist in The Crack of Doom (1895), Herbert Brande, is capable of
disintegrating the atom, which gives him the power to create massive explosions.
Convinced that humankind’s material existence is a magnificent failure, Brande
and the obscure Cui Bono Society plan to ‘release the vast stores of etheric
energy locked up in the huge atomic warehouse of this planet’ 76 to destroy
Earth and restore the universe to its original etheric state. The Englishman
Arthur Marcel befriends Brande and learns about his terrible scheme. In order
to save the world, Marcel secretly changes Brande’s prescription formula for the
cataclysmic bomb. When Brande wants to celebrate that ‘the suffering of the
centuries is over’,77 the bomb in fact causes only a minor earthquake. Sciencesavy Marcel, because of his ability to make the necessary changes to the formula,
saves the world.
In the short story ‘The Purple Death’ (1895) by W. L. Alden, it is the
bacteriologist Professor Schwartz who creates a terrible microscopic disease
of apocalyptic potential. Schwartz crosses several microbes to invent the
Purple Death, a microbic poison which could quickly wipe out Europe’s entire
population: ‘It kills in less than thirty minutes, and there is no remedy which
has the slightest effect upon it.’ 78 Schwartz develops this disease to cure Europe
from overpopulation, an allusion to Malthusian ideas, but dies from illness
before he can execute his plan. He is buried with the lethal tube containing the
Purple Death in his hand which will continue to pose a threat if ever broken
open.
A. Lincoln Green’s The End of an Epoch: Being the Personal Narrative of Adam
Godwin, The Survivor (1901) features mad bacteriologist Azrael Falk. Falk
creates a terrible microscopic disease that brings humankind to the brink of
annihilation. He cross-breeds several foreign germs to develop a vicious brain
fever called ‘Bacillus paradoxus’. With the exception of the elderly, this fever
kills everybody upon infection within the next 36 hours. When the bacillus is
accidentally allowed to spread, the world appears to be doomed. Within weeks,
‘London was left without a single human inhabitant.’ 79 Only the young British
bacteriologist Adam and his love interest Evelyn manage to survive. The novel is
more ambivalent in its judgement of science than other contemporary examples.
Falk, on the one hand, creates the disaster. Yet it is Adam’s scientific knowledge,
on the other hand, that saves Evelyn when he expertly uses the last remaining
syringe of antitoxin.
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Fear of the foreign
Remarkably, apocalyptic fiction around the turn of the century links fear of
science and the scientist to fears of foreign influence and domination. In all
three examples in which the scientist wilfully creates an apocalyptic threat, he
is a foreigner, alien and harmful to English society. This can be read in context
of contemporary fears of invasion as can be found in The War of the Worlds as
well.80
In ‘The Purple Death’ (1895), the first person narrator calls the character of
the German scientist ‘Professor Schwartz’ despite the fact that ‘it was not his
name’.81 ‘Schwartz’ is derived from ‘Schwarz’—the German word for black—
and is thus easily associated with Germany. The character of Schwartz can also
be linked to death as the colour black, for which he stands, can be read as
a colour of mourning. Moreover, Professor Schwartz’s outward appearance is
compared to the portraits of German military officer Helmuth von Moltke. This
makes him not only purely German but also a potentially aggressive dangerous
enemy.
The association between the character’s name, fears of the foreign, and death
is even more obvious with scientist Azrael Falk in A. Lincoln Green’s novel
The End of an Epoch (1901). ‘Azrael’ is the English spelling for the Arabic name
‘Azra’il’. Azra’il, in turn, is the Islamic archangel of death and, in addition, a
name that is traditionally ascribed to the angel of death in some Hebrew lore.82
His name not only identifies Azrael Falk as a foreigner but it also carries negative
connotations connected to death and destruction. Further marks of otherness are
Falk’s German accent and that he resembles a ‘stranded cuttlefish’,83 a creature
outside its usual environment.
By contrast, Herbert Brande in The Crack of Doom is not as easily distinguished
as being different in appearance. However, the first description of Brande
puts him in stark contrast with the English homodiegetic narrator. Arthur
Marcel is described as ‘an active, athletic Englishman’ whereas Brande has a
‘pale, intellectual face’.84 If we take Marcel as the prototype for an Englishman,
something that the novel implicitly suggests, then Brande is certainly marked as
negatively different.
Case study: ‘The Star’
By describing the close and almost fatal encounter between a wandering
planet and Earth, H. G. Wells’ short story ‘The Star’ (1897) not only reflects
upon contemporary fears of a cosmic catastrophe but also comments on the
enlightening role of science and the triviality of human existence. At the
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British Apocalyptic Fiction
beginning of the story, the planet movement becomes erratic when a star from
far away approaches and enters Neptune’s orbit. Under the eyes of a number
of astronomers and an increasingly interested public, the star collides with
Neptune and the two now joint solar bodies continue their journey through our
solar system. On Earth, people’s initial excitement and fear of the approaching
star soon gives way to indifference again. However, the story’s main character,
a master mathematician, calculates that the star will also collide with Earth,
causing the end of the world. As a result of the master mathematician’s warning,
some people desperately start praying to God. The others still go about their
normal life, laughing off the gloomy prophecies. After the star’s path is changed
and momentarily slowed down by Jupiter, it heads directly for Earth. Floods
submerge massive parts of the land and earthquakes erupt all over the world.
Just when the world appears to be doomed, events take a fortunate turn. Rather
than colliding with Earth, the star just misses it and travels towards the sun.
On Earth, the earthquakes persist for some more months, the star’s heat has
melted most of the polar caps but humanity has survived and order is eventually
restored. On Mars, Martian astronomers have observed the whole series of
events. They find it amazing that the star’s damage to Earth, from their point
of view, is so negligible.
The account of the build-up and the eventual catastrophe mirror and strengthen
late Victorian anxieties over the devastating effects of a comet collision. In
fact, both the master mathematician’s initial prophecy and the effects of the
star passing by at close proximity resemble Professor Falb’s predictions from
the 1890s. Like Falb, the master mathematician anticipates ‘[e]arthquakes’
and ‘floods’.85 These expectations are eventually met when the star is about to
collide with Earth. There are repeated descriptions of a ‘growing tidal wave’,
‘devastating floods’,86 and ‘seething floods’.87 In addition, Earth’s devastation
includes ‘earthquakes’88 and ‘earthquake shocks’.89
Moreover, the public reaction to the master mathematician’s prophecy of the
end of the world in ‘The Star’ bears a resemblance to the announcement of
apocalyptic comets in the 1890s. As in the case of Professor Falb, the master
mathematician’s prediction of the end of the world, while causing anxiety in some,
is mostly met with disbelief: ‘The master mathematician’s grim warnings were
treated by many as so much as mere elaborate self-advertisement.’90 Moreover,
‘the laughter’ 91 with which the master mathematician is ridiculed evokes the
hostile undertones of contemporary newspaper articles on Falb’s announcement
of the end of the world.92
In telling the story about the approaching comet and the potential end of
the world, ‘The Star’ makes a distinction between educated men of science and
unsophisticated people. The short story values the knowledge of the educated
and scorns the ignorance of the uneducated. When the star first appears, it only
First age of extinction
41
attracts the interest of scientific people who ‘found the intelligence remarkable
enough’.93 As a man of science, the master mathematician is the first to realize the
great threat the star poses. By contrast, there are a number of African characters
who believe the star to be a happy appearance rather than a dangerous one. A
newly wedded African man is delighted that ‘even the skies have illuminated’ 94
for his wedding celebrations. Two African lovers feel comforted by the star’s
appearance, referring to it as ‘our star’.95 As the star is indeed dangerous, the
story appears to disapprove or even look down on these ignorant characters.
It also seems to disrespect the non-secular notions of ‘[s]turdy Boers, dusky
Hottentots, Gold Coast negroes, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Portuguese’ who still
view bright stars in the sky as harbingers of ‘war’ and ‘pestilence’.96 Evidently,
as the catastrophe shows hardly any traces of religious thought,97 ‘The Star’
welcomes the secularization of ideas and the progress of science.
The secularized world view of ‘The Star’ is also perceptible in its outlook on
human existence. Wells’ short story leaves no doubt that Earth is only a small,
insignificant planet in the vast universe:
The sun with its specks of planets, its dust of planetoids, and its impalpable comets,
swims in a vacant immensity that almost defeats imagination. Beyond the orbit of
Neptune there is a space, vacant so far as human observation has penetrated, without
warmth or light or sound, blank emptiness, for twenty million times a million miles.98
The insignificance of Earth is even more pronounced at the tale’s end when it
switches to the Martian’s perspective. First, the existence of another species on
Mars, which apparently is not so much different from the human species, shows
that human existence is not as unique as Christian belief makes it to be. Second,
in view of the great devastation to the planet and the near downfall of mankind,
the Martians’ assessment that the star only caused ‘little damage’99 appears
unjustified. Yet the story’s heterodiegetic narrator explains the Martians’ view,
pointing out that the story of the star ‘shows how small the vastest of human
catastrophes may seem, at a distance of a few million miles.’100 On the grandest
of scales, the survival of humankind is reduced to a triviality.
H. G. Wells’ ‘The Star’ displays the change in perspective on human existence
and apocalypse. As a result of the scientific discoveries of the 19th century,
humanity is no longer the undisputed centre of God’s creation, is vulnerable
to the moods of nature, its existence relegated to pettiness. The secularized
world view and the secularized take on the end of the world is evident in the
threatening star. Just as comets and stars used to be thought of as agents of
God’s will, so are they now manifestations of nature’s accidental ways. Hence,
chance has the star on a collision course with Earth, and chance, in the end,
spares humanity.
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Case study: The Violet Flame
Fred T. Jane’s The Violet Flame: A Story of Armageddon and After (1899) depicts
contemporary views and anxieties about science, anarchists and foreign
domination. The mad scientist in The Violet Flame, French professor Mirzarbeau,
is the embodiment of all these fears. In an attempt to forge ahead the anarchist
society Finis Mundi, Mirzarbeau promises its members the end of the world in
order to cure humankind. He says he is capable of bringing about the world’s end
with the help of one of his machines. He claims that this machine is able to set off a
comet on a collision course with Earth. Mirzarbeau publicly indulges in fantasies
of omnipotence and is thereupon ridiculed at a lecture, which prompts him to
demonstrate his power using a second one of his machines. With this machine,
he is able to turn people and things into stone miniatures. Mirzarbeau himself is
immune to the powers of his machine as he carries a mysterious protective green
disc. He employs this second machine to blackmail the British government into
handing him over the Empire and subsequently rules cruelly over the British
people, even though only for a short time. An American millionairess, Landry
Baker, ostensibly befriends Mirzarbeau but only to steal his protective green disc.
She hands it to the narrator character Lester who, together with government
official Bentham, storms Mirzarbeau’s laboratory. They use his second machine
to turn Mirzarbeau into a pebble. Lester and Bentham then decide to destroy all
of Mirzarbeau’s machines, accidentally setting off the movement of the comet
towards Earth and starting the breakdown of order. Tidal waves and earthquakes
start threatening humankind and chaos breaks out. At first, London survives but
later is struck by the comet which turns everything into grey stone except for the
only two people with a green disc, Lester and Landry (to whom Mirzarbeau had
given another one of the green discs at a time when he thought she was a genuine
friend to him). Lester and Landry end up as the only survivors of the cataclysm
and become the solitary inhabitants of a new but stony Eden.
The nature of Professor Mirzarbeau’s scientific activities is clearly influenced
by the scientific discoveries of the 1890s in the realms of physics and chemistry.
Most prominent is Mirzarbeau’s use of violet rays that, so the novel indicates,
are identical to Roentgen’s X-rays. When operating his machine, Mirzarbeau
‘project[s] a ray of violet into the atmosphere’101 which, when reflected back to
Earth, turns everything into stone. It is explained that violet is ‘the colour of
the almost supernatural x rays’,102 thus making the violet ray and the X-ray one
and the same thing. Apart from the reference to X-rays, The Violet Flame also
refers to the discovery of argon. It is the ‘gaseous envelope of argon surrounding
every body’103 which, when hit by the rebounding violet ray, leads to the petrified
miniature bodies and eventually to a world of stone.
First age of extinction
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The foreigner’s knowledge and the Englishman’s ignorance of science are to
blame for the apocalypse in The Violet Flame. On the one hand, the Frenchman
Mirzarbeau’s supreme knowledge of science gives him the opportunity to
construct a machine that controls the fate of a comet in outer space. With that
machine, Mirzarbeau could ‘hit the earth and burn it up!’104 One could say that
the disaster has its origins with him. However, while Professor Mirzarbeau is
willing to abuse this power, he does not actually intend or cause the apocalyptic
event to happen that kills almost all of humankind. It is two of the English
characters who make the catastrophe irrevocable. In their desperate attempts
to stop Mirzarbeau’s rule, they destroy Mirzarbeau’s scientific apparatus. They,
along with the rest of England, believe that this achievement is for the best
of mankind. Lester is even praised by the public ‘as the man who had saved
the world’.105 However, in fact, Lester’s and Bentham’s actions have disastrous
consequences. Dornton points out to Lester:
I presume you know that when you and Bentham smashed up the machine in the
underground laboratory you set free the comet which is now rushing to destroy the
world. That machine kept it back!106
Unfortunately, Lester and Bentham are not aware of this although Lester,
upon an invitation by Mirzarbeau, had the opportunity to inspect the scientific
machine closely. Therefore, the two Englishmen’s ignorance of science proves
to be disastrous for the human race. The inference is twofold: On the one hand,
humankind is not mature enough to cope with the powers of science. This is
exemplified through the character of the mad scientist. It is Mirzarbeau’s lack of
moral consciousness that triggers the fatal events. On the other hand, it is the
British lack of knowledge in the field of science that might lead to the world’s
end and Britain’s downfall.
Although science and the British lack of knowledge in science share the
blame, it is the immoral and power hungry scientist who is shown to be most
guilty of causing the apocalypse in The Violet Flame. Professor Mirzarbeau,
described as ‘a man of science’,107 exploits his expertise to further his mad
ambition for world domination instead of using it for the good of mankind.
At one of the Finis Mundi society meetings early in the novel, he announces:
‘I am the man you want […]. I can destroy the whole earth’.108 Following
that meeting, he increasingly realizes what he can achieve with the kind of
power that is at his disposal. Consequently, destroying the world no longer
presents a real option for him. Instead, it serves as a credible threat of force
with which he blackmails Britain and the world into making him ‘its supreme
ruler’.109 To implement his plans, Mirzarbeau does not refrain from killing
people nor does he experience any pangs of conscience. He merely calls it ‘a
44
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demonstration’110 of his power when he turns a crowd of people into stone
during the lecture at the Albert Hall. As is shown through his constant threats
and acts of annihilation, Mirzarbeau will do whatever is necessary in order to
become the sole ruler of the world. After his first experiment with the violet
ray at Waterloo Station, he announces in a poster that he will ‘destroy all the
earth unless my power be recognized.’111 His fellow human beings simply do
not mean anything to him.112 Mirzarbeau’s knowledge of science turns him
into personified evil.
The idea that Mirzarbeau represents an evil power is further stressed through
a number of religious allusions, in particular to the Book of Revelation. When
Mirzarbeau starts to use science to accomplish his plans of ruling the world,
Lester recognizes him as ‘the devil’113 and the ‘embodiment of diabolical power’.114
Mirzarbeau’s status as the devil is reinforced through explicit references to the
Beast in the Book of Revelation. In The Violet Flame, Dornton, a shady character,
identifies Mirzarbeau as the Beast during the meeting at the Finis Mundi society
to a disbelieving audience. He supports his theory by drawing attention to
Mirzarbeau’s name. He places the Greek numerical equivalent next to each
character and adds up the numbers so that it amounts to 666. He points out to
Lester that ‘666 is the number of the Beast as given in the Book of Revelation.’115
When Mirzarbeau learns about his new nickname, he does not disapprove but
quickly adopts it: ‘I am the Beast’.116 For him, the name symbolizes the power of
‘ruling all the world’.117 In the following, the parallels between Mirzarbeau and
the Beast are emphasized. Of course, both stand for the temporary reign of evil.
Moreover, both the biblical text and the novel prominently feature the powerful
mark of the Beast. In the Book of Revelation, ‘no one could buy or sell unless he
had the mark’ which he received ‘on his right hand or on his forehead’.118 To have
received the mark is, then, essential for survival. The same is true for the green
discs, ‘the Mark of the Beast’119 in the The Violet Flame. These parallels between
the biblical Beast and the Beast Mirzarbeau and the consequential inference
that Mirzarbeau is a secularized version of the Beast clearly identify him as
society’s enemy. As such, he is marked as an outsider, an alien to (British) society
throughout.
Mirzarbeau’s status as an unwelcome intruder into society is also apparent by
his socially unacceptable appearance and national origin. It is evident from the
beginning of the novel that Mirzarbeau’s outward appearance does not allow
him to be an accepted popular member of society. The presumably English
narrator, Lester, uses exclusively negative and derogatory adjectives to describe
him. When he encounters Mirzarbeau for the first time, Lester describes him
as ‘the untidiest and most disreputable-looking man I have ever set eyes on’.120
Mirzarbeau is more than once identified as the ‘the fat little professor’.121 He is
also called an ‘untidy, little man’122 and a ‘ridiculous figure’.123 There is a strategy
First age of extinction
45
to make Mirzarbeau small and disorderly. Not even his movements are properly
human as he is described as waddling rather than walking.124 Fred T. Jane’s
illustrations further underscore the negative characterisation of Mirzarbeau. He
is not only depicted as the ‘fat little professor’ but is indeed shown to be repulsive.
His head is almost bald with protruding ears, which makes him resemble a pig
(Figure 2). In addition, his big round glasses hide his eyes so that it seems as if
Figure 2: Lester and Landry Baker laugh at Professor Mirzarbeau’s appearance. Fred T. Jane,
The Violet Flame, p. 70.
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British Apocalyptic Fiction
he has two white holes in his head, giving him an almost inhuman appearance
(Figure 3).
Furthermore, Mirzarbeau’s identification with anarchists puts him even
more strongly at the margins of British society. Mirzarbeau’s speech before the
members of Finis Mundi identifies him as a sympathizer of anarchist ideas. In
fact, Mirzarbeau is initially even united with the anarchists in their common
objective to bring an end to the world. It underlines his status as social outcast
because the Finis Mundi anarchists are also clearly characterized as anti-British.
In one of the meetings of Finis Mundi, a speaker describes the British flag as
‘bestial and so foul’125 and is ‘tearing at the flag, stamping on it, spitting on it’126
before he attempts to burn it. In accordance with their role as social outsiders,
the narrator depicts the Finis Mundi anarchists and their society in completely
negative terms. They are ridiculed as ‘hysterical’127 and described to be behaving
like ‘maniacs’.128 Furthermore, their physical appearance is repulsive and marks
them as half-witted: ‘Every man and woman of them—a full half were women—
had curiously dilated eye-pupils which gave them a strange, half-idiotic, halfintelligent expression.’129 This kind of characterization of anarchists was common
in British popular fiction of the time.130 Anarchists were described as having
distorted asymmetrical features and generally an unkempt appearance and were
thus dehumanized and excluded from society as amoral, irrational beings.
Although Mirzarbeau soon pursues his own goals and not those of Finis Mundi,
his terrorist methods and his ambition to rule the world nevertheless conjure
up contemporary anxieties of the anarchist threat. In the course of the novel,
he attacks British society twice. He makes Waterloo Station disappear131 and
turns those attending his public speech into stone. In both instances, the loss
of human life leaves him emotionally unaffected. In this way, he corresponds
to the public’s image of the anarchist as a bomb-throwing, randomly killing
criminal or beast132 even though historical evidence does not support this
biased opinion.133 Shpayer-Makov points out: ‘The only person killed by an
anarchist weapon in Britain was the French anarchist Martial Bourdin, who
died while mishandling a bomb in Greenwich Park in 1894.’134 Nevertheless,
the portrayal of Mirzarbeau as an anarchist supporter is in accordance to the
stereotypical late Victorian ‘notion of anarchists as a danger to humanity’.135
Fictional representations of anarchists made the public believe that the socialist
agenda, for which the anarchists stood, was just a subterfuge to hide their real
intentions: ‘Motivated by envy and self-advancement, they want neither equality
nor freedom for society, but aim at fulfilling their own selfish ambition of ruling
Britain, Europe or all of civilization.’136 The Violet Flame is just another example
of this tendency in late 19th century popular British fiction.137
Mirzarbeau is, furthermore, characterised as a social outsider in The
Violet Flame through his French identity. At the beginning, he is described as
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47
Figure 3: Professor Mirzarbeau gesticulates to Landry Baker. Fred T. Jane, The Violet Flame,
p. 180.
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British Apocalyptic Fiction
an ‘Anglo-French scientist’.138 The French aspect of his personality, however,
seems to dominate. First of all, his Frenchness is highlighted by his foreign
name ‘Fleuris Mirzarbeau’.139 Mirzarbeau repeatedly uses a number of French
words such as ‘voilà’, ‘sacré’, ‘peste’, ‘parbleu’, and ‘pardieu’.140 His use of a
foreign language noticeably sets him apart from all the other characters who
only speak English.141 In addition, Mirzarbeau seems to be an exemplary
representative of France. When talking about Mirzarbeau’s attraction to Landry,
Dornton remarks: ‘Being a Frenchman, he is naturally susceptible to feminine
charms’142 and indeed Mirzarbeau does fall for Landry. Mirzarbeau’s distinct
French identity in relationship to his actions is revealing when considering the
historical context. The fact that it is a foreigner, a Frenchman in particular, who
designs the apparatus that brings about the end of the world, can be related to
contemporary British fears of loss of power in Europe and the world.
To a minor degree, economic rivalry also plays a role in The Violet Flame.
In one of the expository chapters of the novel, England is described as ‘still
the centre of many financial operations and the home of wealth’143. However,
the London Stock Exchange, ‘the world’s premier financial centre’144 at the
time—functioning in the novel as a pars pro toto for the whole of British
commerce—is challenged by new markets. The Esdraelon Stock Exchange,
the bourse of the Euphrates Valley and Syria market, resists British plans to
have a single gold currency and succeeds in establishing a second, silver one at
‘the Battle of Esdraelon’, which leads to ‘bimetallism’.145 English commerce is,
thus, apparently portrayed to be no longer uncontested and the new contenders
are from the Orient of all places. This echoes the historical situation when the
international market was more and more in non-British hands.146 The prospect
of a rising, foreign stock market receives an even more frightful connotation
through its connection to the discourse of the apocalypse. Dornton, in his reply
to Mirzarbeau’s speech at the Finis Mundi society, claims that ‘Armageddon has
been fought upon the Esdraelon Stock Exchange’.147 In consequence, one can
imagine that the Esdraelon Stock Exchange might prevail over the London
Stock Exchange, which then would shrink to insignificance.
The Violet Flame, as an example of mad-scientist apocalyptic fiction in late
Victorian Britain, mirrors the contemporary anxieties of political overthrow,
either from within or without. The mad scientist, in his roles as foreigner and
anarchist, represents these fears. As a foreigner, he symbolizes the rise of foreign
powers, in this specific case France, and their challenge to British hegemony in
the time of the New Imperialism. His superior scientific knowledge with which
he threatens British society and the world mirrors the end of British superiority.
Thus, science carries negative connotations in The Violet Flame, working to
the disadvantage of Britain in fighting off foreign rivals. Hence, apocalyptic
fiction serves as a vehicle to mirror fears of foreign invasion or domination and
First age of extinction
49
the decline of Britain and its Empire. Identified as a member of an anarchist
group, Mirzarbeau stands for the domestic threat Britain feared at the time. The
anarchists, armed with terrible scientific machines and stigmatized as violent
terrorists, are depicted as enemies of British society and thus as threats to its
stability.
*
Advances in the sciences, namely the discovery of the second law of
thermodynamics and the formulation of evolutionary theory, paved the way
for secularized discourse about the apocalypse and were the prerequisite for
the advent and ensuing popularity of a new (sub-)genre of fiction in the 1890s
and beyond. Stories of cosmic catastrophe and comet collision illustrated a new
perspective on the existence of mankind. In these tales, mankind’s ordinariness
and insignificance, at least from the perspective of evolution and in context
of the size of the solar system, is contrasted with the massive dimension and
destructive power of the comet, one of the predominant agents of catastrophe
during this era. Yet, these early instances of secularized British apocalyptic
fiction still betray a close affinity with biblical apocalypse, more so than later
generations. The wonders of science, however, are not only a precondition for
early apocalyptic fiction, science also emerges as one of the major themes of
British apocalyptic fiction; it is scrutinized and its nature evaluated in many
of the short stories and novels. In the majority of cases, science is viewed
ambivalently if not outright negatively. The dangerous, potentially mad scientist
is the personification of a suspicious pessimistic attitude towards science. As
this character is recurrently a foreigner, British apocalyptic fiction takes on a
more pronounced British perspective, juxtaposing the fear of the foreign with
fear of scientific discovery (or fear of British backwardness in the sciences) to
reflect upon Britain’s declining role in international politics. The literal fictional
end of the world serves here as a metaphor for the end of British domination in
the world.
Ch ap ter 3
Apocalyptic wars
Britain during the interwar period
For the period between the First and the Second World Wars, the discourse on
apocalypse forms predominantly around war. The First World War proved to
be a devastating and traumatic experience for the British people. ‘The war that
will end war’, H. G. Wells’ famous slogan which captured the euphoria with
which the British public at first welcomed the Great War, brought destruction
and misery unlike any other war before and exposed war as a monstrosity. An
unprecedented number of British soldiers died and were wounded during the
conflict.1 Moreover, the Spanish influenza epidemic, which emerged towards
the end of the war, brought about an additional number of victims and further
lowered British spirits: ‘The emotional fallout of the war was compounded by
the flu epidemic that swept into Britain in the last months of it, dealing the warweary populace a cruel blow.’2 The flu’s death toll increasingly measured up to
the number of war victims as ‘Great Britain suffered perhaps 250,000 losses,
one-third of the numbers killed during the war. The newspaper columns listing
the numbers of dead from flu began to rival and even outpace those listing the
numbers of dead from the war.’3
It was not only the magnitude of the war and its aftermath in sheer numbers
that proved to be so upsetting but also the means by which the Great War
was fought. The introduction of modern warfare was truly traumatic, not only
for soldiers but also for the people at home. Military airplanes, for example,
were used for the first time and proved to be frightfully daunting: ‘Raids over
London by German aircraft in the autumn of 1917 caused great destruction
and produced deep-seated fear among the civilian population.’4 Next to war
airplanes and the introduction of tanks and armoured cars, it was especially the
utilization of poison gas which left a shocking impression in British society. Vera
Brittain, a nurse in the First World War, commented on the gruesome effects
of gas poisoning on the soldiers: ‘[G]reat mustard-coloured suppurating blisters,
with blind eyes – sometimes temporally, sometimes permanently – all sticky and
stuck together, always fighting for breath, with voices a mere whisper, saying
that their throats are closing and they know they will choke.’5 Such graphic
detailed descriptions haunted the public’s imagination so that, in consequence,
the gas mask became ‘a vivid symbol of the horror of war’.6 Political cartoons
Apocalyptic wars
51
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from Punch like ‘The Blessings of Peace or Mr Everyman’s Ideal Home’ give
evidence of public fears of poison gas attacks in reaction to the First World
War (Figure 4): An Englishman and his pets have all put on gas masks for
protection in reaction to the Air Raid Precautions Act of 1937 coming into
effect.7 Therefore, ‘despite the irrefutable statistical evidence that gas had caused
fewer deaths than conventional weapons during the Great War’, such depictions
reinforced the Britsh public’s attitude ‘to regard gas as anything other than the
ultimate obscenity in the god of war’s armoury’.8
Figure 4: The British population is prepared for the next gas attack. Cartoon by Ernest Howard
Shepard. Punch, 24 November 1937: ‘The Blessings of Peace or Mr. Everyman’s Ideal Home.’
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British Apocalyptic Fiction
As a consequence, the role of science and technology9 in society was reevaluated as they had played a vital part in the new, brutal dimension of the
Great War. Up to that point, the attitude towards science was ambivalent. On
the one hand, science was a promoter of development and advancement, on the
other hand, it appeared to have the capacity to bring misfortune. The experience
of the First World War ‘meant the end of the traditional idea of progress’.10 The
example of poison gas had compellingly illustrated the devastating consequences
of science when put to use in the realm of warfare. Poison gas ‘came to symbolise
the power and the misuse of science’11 and stood representatively for the dangers
of war throughout the interwar period. This intensified scepticism towards
science is conspicuously demonstrated in the Punch cartoon ‘The Dawn of
Progress’ (Figure 5). It shows a human figure blinded by poison gas and several
other people crouching down in misery. Aeroplanes seem to have dropped
the poison to attack those on the ground. Apart from alluding to a fear of air
raids, the cartoon points towards science’s fatal role in the future of humanity,
underlined by the cartoon’s ironic title. Consequently, the figure of the scientist
was reassessed in negative terms, too: ‘Scientists, since they invented infallible
means of destroying the world, [became] the bogeymen rather than saviours of
humanity.’12
Yet the public discussion about science in Britain was not as one-sided as it might
first appear. People in Britain were aware of the ‘possibility that technology can
be used beneficially.’13 During the Great War, it had become undeniable, more
than ever before, that superior armoury based on advanced technology would
be essential to victory. Initially, this had a positive effect on the recognition
of science: ‘The straight demand for mighty weapons of offence and defence
inevitably gave a great prestige to science and a stimulus to technological, if
not scientific, research.’14 Accordingly, the public discussion did not revolve
around the question of whether science and technology should be completely
abandoned. The issue was rather to what ends they should be employed: ‘Rather
than undermining national enthusiasm for technology, then, the Great War
deepened political conflicts about the appropriate uses of innovation.’15 It was
apparent that ‘[s]cience could provide the means of satisfying people’s desires,
but it assumed no responsibility for distinguishing between good and bad
desires.’16 The events of the First World War had sharpened the question of
whether scientists bore some kind of responsibility for the consequences of their
research.
As a consequence of the devastating experience of the Great War, the British
people adopted a pacifist attitude that reached its climax in the 1930s. War,
which for a long time was valued in terms of ‘necessity, patriotism, glory,
heroism and the nobility of sacrifice’, was now often characterized ‘as futile,
brutal and horrible’.17 In the years just after the war, a broad public reaction
Apocalyptic wars
53
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to that realization was ‘to close the door of memory on the years of conflict’.18
In order to cope with the trauma of the Great War, there was a tendency to
simply ignore it. The British public was not immediately ready for a critical
examination of the war, as indicated by ‘the general election of 1918 [when]
Figure 5: Humanity collapses under aerial poison gas attacks. Cartoon by Bernard Partridge.
Punch, 8 April 1936: ‘The Dawn of Progress. But how am I to see it? They’ve blinded me.’
54
British Apocalyptic Fiction
even the mildest criticism of the war effort was met by defeat at the polls.’19
With time, a pacifist movement emerged in Britain which won more and more
support over the years: ‘From the mid-1920s until 1937 there was a vague
feeling that it was vital to avoid war’.20 Anxieties concerning another European
war towards the end of the 1920s and early 1930s helped to generate a pacifist
public opinion: ‘By the 1930s, there was a widespread pacifist sentiment
throughout the country’.21
However, Britain’s all-pacifist attitude slowly altered when international
relations once more became hostile and threatening. The League of Nations,
an organization whose agenda was to encourage disarmament and to prevent
war, showed itself incapable of stopping international hostilities: ‘The League
of Nations, vainly trying to operate a policy of collective security (joint action to
keep the peace), but lacking strong support, failed to curb the aggressors.’ 22
German dictator Adolf Hitler openly pursued his plans of rearmament, a
development that ‘thoroughly alarmed British opinion’ 23 and stoked fears
about another war. Fears of an air raid were particularly great after ‘Hitler’s
claim in March 1935 that the Luftwaffe had already attained parity with
the RAF’. 24 As a consequence, the voices calling for rearmament became
stronger: ‘From 1934 on, a growing chorus in Fleet Street and Parliament
lobbied the Government to counter the threat emerging from the Third
Reich’. 25 Political supporters of rearmament, among them Conservative Prime
Minister Stanley Baldwin, stressed the defensive motives behind national
rearmament, ‘responding to external pressures for the sake of the nation rather
than instigating international competition’ 26 in order to defend the change in
foreign policy against pacifist public opinion. Eventually, Britain abandoned
its policy of appeasement and declared war on Germany after the Germans
invaded Poland in 1939.
Apocalyptic fiction 1922–1940
From the end of the Great War to the beginning of a new war
In the first decade after the First World War, there is a dearth of apocalyptic
fiction. The explanation for this arguably lies in the traumatic experience of
the Great War. The devastating events of the Great War muted the wish for
fantastic stories in which mankind is at the mercy of natural or cosmic powers.
Appropriately, the last of such cosmic catastrophe stories, at least for quite some
time, were written before the start of the First World War in 1913.27 Moreover, the
public’s rejection of almost any kind of literature related to war in the aftermath
Apocalyptic wars
55
of the First World War was responsible for the small number of apocalyptic war
fiction in the immediate years after 1918. One could have expected a great output
in future war fiction after the unprecedented horrors of the Great War, with one
or the other story ‘so extreme in its predictions as to acquire an apocalyptic
tone.’28 Yet the only examples of apocalyptic war fiction, if one disregards a
number of post-apocalyptic novels which look back on war as the starting point
for the collapse of civilization,29 are Cicely Hamilton’s Theodore Savage (1922) and,
with reservations, Martin Hussingtree’s Konyetz (1924).
In Theodore Savage, the eponymous hero experiences an international war that
is fought with the most lethal applications of modern science, most notably
‘machine gun[s]’ and ‘gas’.30 As a result of the war, all of humanity falls back into
a primitive state of savagery. To avoid a repetition of the dreadful events, efforts
are undertaken to ban all knowledge of science, mechanics and engineering.
Without actually pointing towards the end of all mankind, Theodore Savage borders
on the genre of apocalyptic fiction in describing ‘the process of disintegration’
that leads to ‘the ending of civilization’,31 a state that is almost beyond recovery
in the novel.
In Martin Hussingtree’s Konyetz, the end of the world comes in the shape of
a religious apocalypse. The references to the biblical text are most evident at
the novel’s end: ‘The wicked returned to start the journey once again: the good
lived […] The Light came, and with it a new world.’32 Up to that point, a global
war dominates the novel’s plot and functions as the harbinger of the apocalypse,
emphasized through continuous allusions to the apocalyptic horseman of
war. Europe, with the exception of Britain, is taken over by a military alliance
consisting of Soviets, Germans, and Turks; Japan has conquered Australia. The
eventual invasion of London brings about the Day of Judgment, presumably
saving the faithful and for the most part peaceful British population and
punishing the forces of war.
Leaving these two examples aside, the horrors of the Great War proved to
have a lasting distressing effect on British society so that ‘no one wanted to be
reminded of the war’.33 Hence, for the first decade after the ending of the War,
‘there was little public demand for literary or other cultural reconstructions of
the war experience because such reminders were simply too painful.’34 Adult
fiction of future war, especially in the vein of the tradition of British invasion
literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, seemed entirely out of place
as ‘it proved inconceivable for any writer ever again to dwell on “the pride,
pomp and circumstance of glorious war”.’35 Even novels which sought to reexamine the First World War in critical terms were rarely published. The public
reception of Cicely Hamilton’s Theodore Savage (1922) illustrates the hostility
towards war-related fiction in the aftermath of the First World War. In her
foreword to the reissue of Theodore Savage as Lest Ye Die, Hamilton gives an
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British Apocalyptic Fiction
explanation of why her original publication could not attract a wider audience
in Britain or elsewhere:
Six years ago – in 1922 – we were in full reaction against any and everything that dealt
with war; hence Theodore Savage found no American publisher, and even in England,
where the Press received it well, its circulation was less than I had hoped for.36
It is apparent that, despite its acknowledged literary merits and its pacifist message,
the novel’s public reception suffered from the British (and in fact international)
inability to come to terms with the events of the First World War.
Futuristic fiction on the whole was unpopular due to its influential role in
the build-up to the Great War. H. G. Wells’ The World Set Free (1914), which
promoted a conclusive, almost apocalyptic war, had helped to manipulate the
public into believing that a final war was necessary to induce a lasting era of
peace. The public’s disillusionment as a consequence of the Great War ‘created
a climate of thought that was distinctly hostile to futuristic fiction, because that
kind of fiction had been one of the chief vehicles of the mythology that a world
war would be “the war to end war”’.37
Consistently, apocalyptic fiction, closely connected to disaster and to
futuristic fiction, would not be very productive in the decade following the end
of the First World War. By describing scenarios of destruction, death and decay,
apocalyptic fiction was far too reminiscent of the war experience. Accordingly,
J. J. Connington’s Nordenholt’s Million (1923), one of the few apocalyptic texts
written just after the First World War, attaches great importance to the
successful yet costly reconstruction of a collapsed Britain: Nitrifying and
denitrifying bacteria, cultivated by the scientist Wotherspoon are accidentally
allowed to spread, all vegetation, void of nitrogen, turns to sand and a global
famine breaks out. The industrialist Nordenholt establishes a community that
serves as a nucleus for a new society. The reconstruction of Britain is realized
in the shape of Nordenholt’s utopian city Alsgard: ‘Others may plan; others
may build fairer cities in the sun: but I have given my best; and Asgard almost
consoles for the loss of that Fata Morgana which I shall never see.’38 The novel
thereby feeds the contemporary ‘desperate demand for a national narrative of
wholeness’.39
In Hugh Kingsmill’s short story ‘The End of the World’ (1924), the two main
characters Polmont and Glayde merely anticipate the apocalypse in the shape
of a comet which appears to be on a collision course with Earth. In the end,
the apocalypse does not even occur and primarily serves as a backdrop for
the characters’ philosophical-political debates.40 Nevertheless, it is possible to
read the threatening comet as a metaphor for the Great War. Kingsmill’s story
continuously refers to the First World War, Glayde is a veteran who might have a
Apocalyptic wars
57
‘war-neurosis’,41 and the comet’s impending strike is described as an ‘execution’.42
Based on these references, the non-violent passing of the comet in ‘The End of
the World’ might indicate that humanity was fortunate to survive the Great War
and seems to have been given another chance.
Stories of secular apocalypse reappeared in stronger numbers after the
publication of war-condemning texts written by First World War veterans
towards the end of the 1920s. Ten years after the end of the Great War,43 veteran
writers like Siegfried Sassoon or Robert Graves published their major, wellreceived prose works, representative of many veterans who had ‘come to believe
that the war had been a futile massacre of young innocents.’44 Hamilton’s preface
to Lest Ye Die demonstrates the change in attitude in British society towards warrelated fiction. When American and British publishers (re-)issued Lest Ye Die in
1928, the same year when ‘veterans, male and female alike, produced narratives
in a spate of poetry, war novels, and memoirs’,45 she hopes
that the public, on both sides of the Atlantic, has ceased to turn its head from books
dealing with war and its issues; and that therefore a story of hostilities to come has
a better chance of being widely read and pondered than it had in the days of warweariness.46
Apart from the new edition of Hamilton’s novel, the outpouring of works
reproaching war initially did not have any effect on apocalyptic fiction. The
apocalyptic texts of the closing 1920s, William Gerhardie’s Jazz and Jasper (1928),
Sydney Fowler Wright’s Deluge (1927) and ‘Automata’ (1929), do not refer
directly to war but focus, with the exception of Deluge, on the devastating role
of science for the future of humankind. Considering the negative reputation
of science in Britain as a result of its role in the First World War, these stories
might nevertheless have been written and perceived as a critique and warning
of war.
Apocalyptic fiction turned to war when the international crisis intensified in
the early 1930s.47 Some of the stories then published turned out to be classics,
namely Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men (1930) and H. G. Wells’ The Shape of
Things to Come (1933) as well as its film adaptation Things to Come (1936). As these
texts display a critical attitude towards war and fall ‘into the category of anti-war
moralism’,48 they reflect the atmosphere of early 1930s British society and ‘shed
light on attitudes to war, and especially on public fears and expectations about
the nature of an impending World War’.49 Throughout the rest of the 1930s,
fears of war continued to be consistently represented in British apocalyptic
fiction. Only when the threat and devastation of the Second World War reached
the British shores did British people lose interest in writing and reading about
apocalyptic wars.
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War
Much of apocalyptic fiction from the late 1920s up to the end of the Second
World War focuses on war as the starting point of civilization’s downfall.
Post-First World War apocalyptic fiction is characterized by its realistic
vision and perspective and hardly bears resemblance to the sensational
scientific romances of the period leading up to the Great War. Some of
the novels take the scenario of apocalyptic war to the extreme so that
warfare (almost) brings about the end of all humankind. Interestingly, the
authors of apocalyptic war fiction look back to the experience of the First
World War rather than speculating on new terrors of weaponry. This is true
despite the fact that these apocalyptic wars are mostly set in the future and
are explicitly presented as wars after the First World War. One would have
thought that writers of apocalyptic fiction would portray a technologically
more evolved kind of warfare like other writers of future war fiction before
them. 50 However, it appears that the weapons used in the War were held
to be devastating enough for apocalyptic scenarios: ‘Futuristic speculation
in 1920s Britain was dominated by the notion that weapons of war were
already available which […] would almost certainly result in the destruction
of civilization.’ 51 Hence, military weapons already introduced during the
First World War such as tanks, military airplanes and, above all, poison gas
predominate in interwar apocalyptic fiction.
In Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future (1930),
which tells the history of our and future generations of mankind, the collapse
and near extinction of the Homo Sapiens ‘First Men’ is initially triggered by
a series of wars. As in many other apocalyptic novels of the time, poison gas
attacks play a vital role:
The whole West of Russia was flooded with the latest and deadliest poison gas, so
that, not only was all animal and vegetable life destroyed, but also the soil between the
Black Sea and the Baltic was rendered infertile and uninhabitable for many years. […]
The poison spread across the Continent in huge blown tresses, broad as principalities,
swinging with each change of wind. And wherever it strayed, young eyes, throats, and
lungs were blighted like the leaves.52
While it takes another 100,000 years for the ‘First Men’ to be ultimately extinct,
it is significant that the starting point of this generation’s downfall is a poison
gas war.
H. G. Wells’ The Shape of Things to Come tells the story of a utopian state that
arises out of the ashes of war. The first, apocalyptic part of the novel restages
the experience of the Great War. Wells’ narrator points out that it ‘was a “gasminded world” in the forties’,53 the time when the apocalyptic war starts. In
Apocalyptic wars
59
addition, ‘the great pestilence’54 breaks out after the end of this particular war,
paralleling the events of the First World War. Significantly, The Shape of Things
to Come amplifies the threat of war to apocalyptic proportions by suggesting that
it ‘came near to destroying mankind’.55
Considering the time of its publication, The Twenty-Fifth Hour (1940) by Herbert
Best not only comes to terms with the experience of the First World War but
necessarily also addresses the ongoing Second World War. Appropriate with
regard to both events, The Twenty-Fifth Hour presents Europe as the cradle of
apocalyptic war, a ‘savage Europe where men must kill or be killed until at least
the land should be all but rid of them’.56 It implies that Europe’s war, which
has wiped out 90 per cent of Europe’s population and led to a breakdown of
civilization, can have devastating consequences for the rest of the world, which
is terribly affected by germ warfare in The Twenty-Fifth Hour. By telling the story
of a British commander and an American nurse who, as the last representatives
of the Western hemisphere, try to rebuild society, the novel builds its hopes for
a new world on a US-British alliance, anticipating the special relationship that
would dominate British foreign politics after 1945.
Published at the same time as The Twenty-Fifth Hour, Alfred Noyes’ The Last
Man (1940) also reflects upon past, present and future when it criticises and
warns of the devastating possibilities of warfare by depicting an apocalyptic war
fought with futuristic weaponry. The narrator points out that humanity, once
it started the arms race, went on an unstoppable path towards self-destruction:
‘[F]rom flint to steel, from steel to gun-powder, from gun-powder to poisongases; from poison-gases to disease germs; from disease germs to the “last
resort”.’57 The ‘last resort’ is the employment of a lethal death-ray for attack
and defence in international conflict without distinguishing between friend and
foe. It annihilates almost all of humankind. In this way, Noyes’ novel foresees
the destructive capabilities of the nuclear bomb, demonstrated only a few
years later. The only future and the only way out of the arms race dilemma, as
presented by The Last Man, is to gear towards religious values and to renounce
science and machinery. Therefore, the novel’s main characters Mark Adams and
Evelyn Hamilton—at the same time the last and, as Adam and Eve, the first
man and woman of the human race to repopulate the planet—choose to join a
community of Franciscan monks so that they ‘would never again be caught in
the mechanical wheels of the industrial system’.58
Finally, The Hopkins Manuscript (1939) by R. C. Sherriff is a curious case because
it presents two catastrophic dangers. First, the moon threatens to collide with
Earth, threatening to wipe out all human existence. When the hollow (!) moon
falls into the Atlantic Ocean and breaks apart so that it evenly fills up the seabed
of the ocean, the disaster seems averted. Yet, a war fought among all European
nations and the USA over the moon’s precious resources ensues. It ends with
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the ‘collapse of the “Western Civilisation”’.59 It is remarkable that war, and not
the moon collision as cosmic catastrophe beyond human influence, leads to the
downfall of the West in Sherriff’s novel. One can convincingly argue that the
plot of The Hopkins Manuscript implies that the dangers for human society are not
the fantastic fictions of pre-First World War times as they are presented in Wells’
‘The Star’ or Shiel’s The Purple Cloud. Rather, the experience of the Great War is
taken as a lesson that the greatest danger lies within mankind itself.
Savagery
In its portrayal of life-ending war, apocalyptic war fiction often describes
humanity in debased and dehumanised terms. In Theodore Savage, the family
name of the eponymous (anti-)hero becomes the attribute for the entire war
generation. The war described in Theodore Savage leads to a ‘sudden lapse into
primitive conditions’60 from which humanity is unable to recover. It deprives
mankind of its human qualities by turning them into ‘unhuman creatures’ or
‘wolfish men and women’.61
The characterisation of an angry mob of people desperately searching for food
in The Machine Stops (1936) also reveals the degeneration of mankind. They are
described as ‘wild beasts at feeding-time’, as ‘shrieking demons’, and as ‘fiends
from hell’.62 The theme of man turning into savage already makes an appearance
in earlier non-war apocalyptic fiction of the interwar period as well. It is taken
to extremes in Nordenholt’s Million when starving people in London, the centre of
British civilization, turn to cannibalism to feed themselves.63
Science and machinery
The fear of poison gas in apocalyptic (war) fiction is representative of a general
scepticism towards science, technology and machinery. These texts take a critical
stance towards chemical warfare and war machinery in particular: ‘In marked
contrast to the optimistic view of science which prevailed before 1914, many
novelists now saw it as essentially dangerous.’64 Specifically the use of toxic gas is
prominent in several apocalyptic texts: Theodore Savage (1922)/Lest Ye Die (1928),
Last and First Men (1930), The Shape of Things to Come (1933), The World Ends (1937),
and The Last Man Alive (1938).65
In Theodore Savage, the characters are traumatized by the experience of the gas
attacks from the apocalyptic war. This is illustrated best when Theodore has a
philosophical discussion with an old dying man about the nature of humanity.
Somehow alarmed, the old man immediately screams out: ‘It’s gas—it must
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61
be gas!’,66 thereby underlining the notion that the gas attacks have had a longlasting effect upon his mental constitution.
In Last and First Men, machinery combined with irresponsible human behaviour
causes the eventual fall of the First Men. Rebellious proletarians take over a
nuclear power plant to protest against the ruling class’ oppression. Consequently,
‘after a bout of insane monkeying with the machinery, the mischief-makers [the
proletarians] inadvertently got things into such a state that at last the awful
djin of physical energy was able to wrench off his fetters and rage over the
planet.’67 The negative assessment of machinery and science is emphasized by
the metaphorical comparison of ‘physical energy’ to a ‘djin’, a demon or evil
spirit. The catastrophe annihilates almost all of humankind with the exception
of only 35 people who survive near the North Pole to repopulate the planet.
William Lamb’s The World Ends (1937) and A. S. Neill’s The Last Man Alive (1938)
both address the danger of poisonous gas. In The World Ends, the breakdown of
order is actually caused by a giant earthquake but one of the characters predicts
apocalyptic devastation if poison gas is used: ‘Poison gas and incendiary bombs,
spread about Europe, will create such misery that we shan’t recover.’68 A more
metaphorical instance of war poison gas can be found in The Last Man Alive.
In this apocalyptic novel, exceptional for the 1930s in that it is clearly aimed at
a juvenile readership, a green, ‘Aryan cloud’69 releases a gas which in turn kills
almost the whole population of the Earth, juxtaposing the danger of gas with
the threat that Hitler’s Nazis pose.
Besides the threat of poison gas, there are also a number of apocalyptic texts
in which technological progress in general is regarded with suspicion and fear.
Hamilton’s Theodore Savage serves as a good example: ‘Enlightenment that ended
as science applied to destruction and progress that has led—to this [apocalyptic
disaster].’ 70 Unambiguously, advanced science is held responsible for the downfall
of humankind. In Sidney Fowler Wright’s short story ‘Automata’ (1929), man’s
dependence and submission to machinery has irreversible consequences.
Here, humankind is gradually replaced by ‘a race of automata’.71 Ever since the
industrial revolution, ‘the number of men employed in every factory decreases
as its machines become more numerous.’ 72 This is because mankind values
machines as more reliable, easier to attend, and longer lasting. In the end, the
last human being is led away from his workstation because of his insufficient
working performance. The last man gives way to another machine.
Finally, Victor Bayley’s The Machine Stops (1936) gives a voice to those fearing
that Britain has become too dependent on machines as a result of modernization.
When all metal for no apparent reason starts to disintegrate so that all machinery
and iron constructions break down, one of the characters wonders whether that
is ‘the smash-up of everything? Civilization. The Human Race.’ 73 Humanity’s
dependence on machines, evident in the idea that ‘England is being fed by a
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great Machine’, makes it vulnerable in the eventuality that the ‘Machine is going
to stop.’ 74 The English population is thrown back to the Stone Age and, due
to the sudden lack of resources, fights and kills over food in order to survive.
All the same, this particular novel does not condemn machinery in general.
There are attempts to rebuild Britain as ‘Merrie England’, a pastoral idyll that
is without the ‘dismal puffing and clanking’ 75 of machinery. Yet, this dream
of a new England is bound to fail when Buddie Jones, a tribal leader, ‘take[s]
advantage of the helpless conditions of England’ 76 and starts to terrorize the
peaceful communities in the countryside. In consequence, a new, stronger metal
is created to ‘arm ourselves on modern lines’ 77 and fight off the threat Buddie
Jones represents.
Clearly, this novel is to be seen in the context of European rearmament in
the mid-1930s. In the face of potential aggression from the Continent, the
novel calls for proper measures to be able to defend the nation. Only ‘Tommy’,
which is the nickname of the inventor of the new metal in The Machine Stops
and at the same time the conventional nickname name for the ordinary British
soldier,78 ‘will build [England] anew.’ 79 In accordance, science and machinery
are welcome as long as they serve this purpose. This modified attitude towards
science and weaponry is indicative of a ‘shift from moralizing about the longerterm consequences for mankind of failure to disarm to worrying about the
imminent threat of war’80 in mid-1930s British fiction and in this particular
case of apocalyptic fiction. Therefore, The Machine Stops is a rare instance of an
apocalyptic novel in the period from the First to the Second World War in that
it does not argue against the use of science for military weapons.
Case study: Things to Come
In describing the history of the fictitious city Everytown from 1940 to 2036,
Things to Come (1936),81 directed by William Cameron Menzies and written by H.
G. Wells, refers to contemporary anxieties of an upcoming war and discusses
the future role of science and technology. The film opens on Christmas 1940
when the world is on the brink of war. While most people initially choose to
ignore the threat of an attack, an air raid by an unknown enemy lays waste to
Everytown and makes war a reality. The epic war that ensues lasts until 1966
when the combatants’ resources are, for the most part, exhausted by the war
effort. In a final desperate attempt, the defeated enemy use their last remaining
aeroplanes to drop germ bombs, spreading a lethal epidemic over the area
around Everytown.
Eventually, the epidemic comes to an end, enabling the people of Everytown
to start rebuilding their city which has fallen back into a quasi-medieval state.
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The Boss (Ralph Richardson), a warlord, has taken over the leadership of
Everytown. He has plans to strengthen his and the community’s position by
putting warplanes back into the air and thus possibly expanding his territory.
Unexpectedly, old John Cabal (Raymond Massey) arrives to inform and convince
the community of Everytown to establish a world state headed by the airmen of
Wings over the World. The Boss takes Cabal prisoner but Cabal makes friends
with the Boss’ mechanic Gordon (Derrick De Marney). Together, they repair
one of the old aeroplanes and Gordon flies off to inform Wings over the World
about Cabal’s imprisonment. Using an anaesthetic gas, the airmen of Wings over
the World conquer Everytown and free Cabal. The Boss, on the other hand,
inexplicably dies during the attack.
In the following years, Everytown undergoes great changes as the result of
technological progress and modernization so that in 2036, it is a spectacular
underground city. Under the leadership of Oswald Cabal (Raymond Massey), the
great grandson of John Cabal, Everytown is geared towards the exploration of
space. However, the sculptor Theotocopulos (Cedric Hardwicke) questions the
sense of continuous progress and incites a rebellion with the aim of destroying
the newly developed space gun. Just in time, the first two astronauts are sent into
space. With the space project an eventual success, Cabal muses over the future
of humankind and comes to the conclusion that, if man is a different animal, he
must pursue advancement or he might as well die.
In depicting a disastrous war, the first part of the film is a warning of war and
a commitment to pacifism. Thus, the film reflects the ‘mainstream of [nineteen]
thirties thinking’82 in Britain. As the setting is kept abstract by naming the city
Everytown and the enemy remains anonymous throughout, the film on the
surface level does not condemn or warn of a specific warmonger but represents
a universal ‘hatred of war’.83 The young John Cabal puts the apocalyptic threat
of war in a nutshell: ‘If we don’t end war, war will end us.’ 84 The rejection of
war is furthermore stressed in the futile loss of human life. The pointlessness
of the war is emphasized through the fact that it is never explained why the war
that kills half the human race is started in the first place. In the face of this,
young John Cabal aptly asks: ‘God, why do we have to murder each other.’85 It is
coherent with the film’s pacifist approach that this question remains unanswered.
Accordingly, the national bulletin’s statement ‘VICTORY IS COMING’86 that
is released when the war draws to an end is painfully ironic. The war and its
combatants do not achieve anything except that an extraordinary number of
lives are taken and that the world is thrown back to a pre-industrial state. An
additional example of the absurdity of war is the scene in which John Cabal
tries to help an enemy aeroplane pilot after having shot him down. The enemy
pilot, whose objective was to spread poison gas, refuses to put on a gas mask
when gas clouds start to surround him. Instead, he insists on giving the mask
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to a little girl to save her even though he might have ‘killed her father and
mother’87 with the gas before he was shot down. Hence, this act of mercy as
a result of personal interaction with an individual from the enemy side stands
in total contradiction to his actions as a soldier, for whom the enemy is an
anonymous mass entity.
To communicate its pacifist agenda, the film draws on contemporary fears of
an upcoming war. The beginning of the war through an air raid in Things to Come
mirrors anxieties about a war in the future as ‘[v]irtually everyone expected the
next war to involve large-scale air-raids on the civilian population, exceeding to
horrors of the Great War’.88 Apart from the initial air attack, the film furthermore
shows aeroplanes swarming the sky and aerial combat between Cabal and the
enemy pilot.
Other elements of the future war in Things to Come mirror fears that go back
to the experience of the First World War. Most notably, this is demonstrated
by the employment of modern war technology introduced in the Great War.
For example, Things to Come prominently features tanks and aeroplanes as major
components to fight war. Moreover, preparations for gas attacks are depicted
in both the opening assault on Everytown as well as in the following acts of
war. As the Great War ended only 18 years before the release of Things to Come,
it was ‘that familiarity with the events of the First World War which very much
coloured people’s perceptions of either what the Second World War would entail
or how much it should be avoided.’89
Apart from the technological aspect of the war, the emergence of a great
pestilence subsequent to the war also corresponds to the events of the First
World War. Even though the ‘wandering sickness’ in Things to Come is man-made
and thus distinctively different from the 1918 influenza pandemic, the sequence
of events—the pandemic strikes just as the end to war is near—is remarkable
in its similarity to the occurrence of the First World War. Furthermore, old
John Cabal, when talking to the Boss about the possibilities of war to ‘end war’,
mentions that he ‘seemed to have heard that phrase before when I was a young
man.’ 90 While it remains ambiguous whether Cabal, at this point, refers to the
First World War or the fictional war of the film, the phrase ‘war to end war’ is
an obvious reference to the build-up of the Great War.
Moreover, the representation of the attitude by Cabal’s friend Pippa Passworthy
(Edward Chapman) and his son towards an approaching war also relies on the
memory of the Great War rather than a 1930s perspective. While Passworthy
neither believes in nor hopes for a coming war, he nevertheless welcomes it as
‘it stimulates progress.’ 91 When war is eventually announced, both Passworthy
and his son display a juvenile enthusiasm to go to war, happily marching into it.
The Passworthys’ optimistic attitude towards war is not exclusive. In one shot,
Passworthy’s son serves a pars pro toto for all soldiers going to war which shows
Apocalyptic wars
65
Passworthy junior in front of a silhouette of marching soldiers (Figure 6). The
circumstances are reminiscent of the enthusiasm with which the British entered
the war to end all war in 1914. In both cases, the outcome is fatal. After the
Great War, Britain mourned a ‘lost generation’ 92 and Passworthy’s son is among
the first casualties of the future war in Things to Come, soon to be followed by
his father, so the film implies.93 By restaging the events of the First World War,
the film brings back the memory of a devastating experience people seemed to
have forgotten. Passworthy’s comments that ‘the last war wasn’t as bad as they
make out’ and that ‘we [are] exaggerating the horrors of war’ 94 convey such an
attitude.
Additionally, Things to Come implicitly warns Britain of the dangers from fascist
European countries. Everytown, even though Wells’ script betrays a different
intention,95 stands synonymously for Britain in the film. Even though the setting
is concealed by its name Everytown, the city in fact looks very much like London.
Particularly the iconic dome of Everytown resembles the dome of St Paul’s
Cathedral. For the aggressor, the film, on the one hand, strongly suggests
Germany. In particular, the aerial threat at the beginning of the film resonates
with public worries about Germany’s air power at the time. This prompts the
radio newsreader to comment that ‘there can be little doubt of [the planes’] place
Figure 6: Passworthy’s son and the soldiers going to war. Menzies, Things to Come, 0:13:15.
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of origin’ 96 when he reports on a preliminary air raid on the waterworks near
Everytown. In addition, the Boss’ questioning of the usefulness of books—
‘Who wants books to muddle their thoughts and their ideas’ 97—recalls the book
burnings by the Nazis.
On the other hand, Things to Come not only warns of Nazi Germany but of
fascism in general by also alluding to fascist Italy. The Boss is a parody of Benito
Mussolini in appearance and behaviour.98 As a fascist dictator, he naturally
claims to be ‘the law’ 99 for Everytown. Moreover, he is hailed with the Hitler
salute by one of his guards after a victorious campaign against the neighbouring
hill people.100 When he returns from that battle, the people’s euphoric exultation
evokes images of cheering crowds in fascist Germany or Italy (Figure 7).
Throughout the second part of the film, which depicts the time after the
downfall when the people of Everytown attempt to rebuild civilization, the
Boss stands for the continuation of war and thus the threat of a relapse into
primitive conditions. Harding points out the fatal consequences if the Boss’
regime of war was to grip mankind once more: ‘You and your sort are driving
us straight back to eternal barbarism.’101 The Boss, however, is indifferent to
such consequences. He is a megalomaniac driven towards power. To this end,
he keeps up a state of war. And so, in order to be able to fight off his immediate
Figure 7: The crowd welcomes the victorious dictator. Menzies, Things to Come, 0:42:26.
Apocalyptic wars
67
adversaries, the hill people, he wants Gordon to reclaim the sky with aeroplanes
and Harding to provide him with poison gas. As the personified threat of war,
it is metaphorically coherent then that the Boss is killed by ‘the new gas of
peace’102 in the course of the Wings over the World invasion even though that
gas is merely a narcotic.
The film’s attitude towards war, however, is not as straight-forwardly pacifist
as it seems at first sight. Accordingly, Jeffrey Richards’ statement that ‘the
pacifist science fiction films reached their peak in 1936 with Things to Come’103
needs to be qualified. In Things to Come, there is a distinction made between a
futile bad war and a necessary good war which is, therefore, justified. While the
future war that lasts from 1940 to 1966 is heavily criticized, the film seems to
approve of the war between the Boss’ sovereign state and the global institution
Wings over the World, an organisation Cabal calls the government of ‘common
sense’,104 founded to uphold ‘order and trade.’105 The initial future war is a lethal,
merciless battle. In contrast, the war campaign carried out by Wings over the
World, with their shiny aeroplanes and their ‘gas of peace’, resembles a clean
operation that succeeds in removing the one evil—the Boss—while everybody
else is fortunately left alive. Moreover, the distinction between the two wars
is indicated by the musical score. The march heard during the initial war has
‘menacing undertones’106 while the music that starts with the liberation of old
John Cabal is gloriously triumphant.
The wars are furthermore distinguished by the values for which the Boss
and Cabal stand. The Boss stands for the downfall of humanity as a result of
war. This links him to the British experience of the Great War, emphasized in
his statement that, rather than to make war, he wants to ‘End war! End war!
I want to make victorious peace!’107 Cabal, on the other side, represents ‘law and
sanity.’108 Because Wings over the World defends and promotes these positive
values, the film depitcts their war against the Boss as justified. Their war is
perceived as a good war as it ends the reign of the Boss.
Yet, ironically, Wings over the World actually pursue the same authoritarian
ideology as the Boss. The Boss accepts nobody else but himself as the law
in Everytown. Likewise, Wings over the World does not accept any other
government and beliefs but their own and is willing to do whatever is necessary
to enforce their regime:
Cabal: We don’t approve of independent sovereign states.
The Boss: That’s war!
Cabal: If you will.109
We see another example of Cabal’s authoritarian regime in 2036. Oswald
Cabal, the president of Everytown’s council, is fully opinionated when it comes
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to his ideology of progress. As a result, he decides to ignore the people’s call
for ‘the last day of the scientific age’110 and starts the space gun despite their
protest. Therefore, the perspective of the airmen standing for a ‘benevolent
dictatorship’111 is rather subjective.
The idea of a good and a bad war is also evident in the characters’ reflections
upon progress. Whereas young John Cabal of 1940 fears that war can ‘stop
progress’,112 old John Cabal believes that the war against the Boss enables the
beginning of ‘a new world’.113 This new world is a celebration of progress,
emphasized by a five-minute montage sequence during which Everytown
transforms from a ruined city into a modern underground metropolis. Hence,
the war started by the airmen in this instance has proven to be a catalyst of
progress, ironically an echo of Pippa Passworthy’s fallacious assessment on the
eve of the war of 1940.
Therefore, the evaluation of science and progress in Things to Come is similarly
ambivalent. In condemning modern war, the film initially doubts whether
humankind benefits from science and progress. The scene in which John Cabal,
Grandfather Cabal (Alan Jeayes), and Pippa Passworthy discuss the subject matter
of progress illustrates this best as it points to the destructive role of science in the
production of modern weapons of war. Grandfather Cabal picks up one of the
military toys with which the children around them play and wonders whether
‘perhaps all these new toys aren’t a bit too much for them.’114 Incidentally,
the children play with a modern soldier’s helmet as well as miniature tanks,
aeroplanes and artillery canons and thus with the kind of modern weapons that
are used in the war to come. Therefore, it turns out that these toys, when they
are real-size and lethal, indeed are too much to cope and bring humankind to
the brink of annihilation. This is due to their technological—or ‘complex’ as
the Grandfather puts it with respect to the toys—character which distinguishes
them from the old ‘simpler’ ways of fighting war. He gives the example of the
‘wooden soldier’,115 which, in contrast to the other toys, stands for an outmoded,
less devastating and more human war. The Boss’ ambition to produce flying
aeroplanes and poison gas in order to fight off the hill people, and probably any
other enemy, further underlines the negative aspects of science.
By contrast, science employed by Cabal and his airmen is viewed positively.
This is the case despite the fact that they use some of the same scientific weapons
that were used in the war of 1940: aeroplanes and gas. Yet, despite the horrors
that these weapons prompt in the inhabitants of Everytown who must relive
the war trauma, the airmen’s gas is named ‘the gas of peace’. Undoubtedly, this
new gas is less harmful in comparison to the old gas. Nevertheless, its purpose
stands in opposition to democratic ideals as it is used to subdue the people of
Everytown. Apart from the attack by Wings over the World, this is demonstrated
when Oswald Cabal contemplates using it in order to break up the revolt set off
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by Theotocopulos. In both cases, however, the film embraces the (ab)use of
military modern science for a seemingly higher good, the defeat of the Boss and
the advancement of mankind.
The double standard towards war proposed by Things to Come can be better
understood by considering the British change in attitude towards war in the
mid-1930s. As the Nazi threat from Germany became increasingly palpable, the
will to rearm grew stronger in order to be able to defend the British nation but
also to ensure peace. Pacifist ideals were suspended to guarantee the safety of
the nation and stop fascist warmongers from disrupting peace in Continental
Europe. Things to Come mirrors this situation: Wings over the World is committed
to fighting a dictatorial warlord because this becomes a necessity in their efforts
towards peace. Thus, Things to Come is characteristic for apocalyptic fiction of
the time116 as well as the British popular debate in its attempt to come to terms
with the challenge from Continental Europe while trying to uphold its pacifist
creed.
*
The traumatic effects of the experience of the First World War are evident in the
paradigm shift of the apocalyptic discourse during the 1920s and 1930s. In much
of British apocalyptic fiction, war becomes the ultimate agent of misery and
catastrophe. As the geographical scope of the apocalyptic war and its ruin often
extends beyond British borders, apocalyptic fiction in most cases no longer serves
as a vehicle for xenophobic sentiments as it did during the New Imperialism.
Rather, Britain and the nations of continental Europe are often shown to be
equally responsible for the cataclysm. In the absence of a moral compass, the
people of the Western world reveal themselves as savages, independent of origin.
End-of-the-world stories of the interwar period not only have a tendency to be
bleaker in tone than their pre-Great War predecessors, they are more or less
fully secularized. The apocalypse is in most cases a man-made disaster devoid of
any hint or implication of divine intervention or plan. Since technical progress
and scientific inventions elevated the atrocities to unprecedented quantiative
levels, the public’s pacifist attitude in reaction to the First World War extends to
a scepticism if not outright condemnation of science and machinery in many of
the stories. This reinforces and amplifies existing suspiciousness against science
in British culture before 1914. This luddite attitude is merely softened in some
examples of the 1930s when Britain was on the verge of rearmament. At this
time, the perspective on the phenomenon of war in apocalyptic fiction becomes
more complex as the possibility of a good or just war enters the discourse.
Ch ap ter 4
Nuclear threats, Cold War
Britain and the Cold War
For the time after the Second World War until the beginnings of the Soviet Union’s
eventual collapse, the discourse of apocalypse in Britain is dominated by nuclear
threats and the Cold War, only interrupted by the years of détente which lasted
from the mid-1960s to the end of the 1970s. The end of the Second World War
did not bring permanent peace and international stability but proved to be a
short intermezzo to a new conflict, the Cold War. The cooperation between
the Allied Powers, more specifically between the Soviet Union and the USA,
ended with the defeat of Nazi Germany and its allies. In the following, the US
developed a double strategy of containment and liberation to fight the spread of
communism. The Soviets feared imperialistic ambitions by the Americans and
formed a bloc with Eastern European countries to defend itself against Western
influence and aggression. The conflict between East and West rapidly intensified
with the first Berlin crisis and the Korean War, prompting other nations to take
sides with either one of the superpowers. The formation of two political blocs
eventually found its military correspondence in NATO and the Warsaw Pact.
As a result, the world became virtually divided in half between the Western
democracies and the Eastern communist countries.
The British involvement in the Cold War was negligible since Britain lost
its position as world power and major political influence early on in the Cold
War. Initially, Britain emerged from the Second World War as one of the
‘Big Three’, along with the US and the Soviet Union, which designed the postwar order in Continental Europe. However, it could not be concealed that
‘the decline of Britain to secondary status’1 was an inevitability. The nation
was financially exhausted from the war efforts and economically ‘unable to
match continental growth rates’2 in its aftermath. Moreover, the end of the
war marked the starting point of a decolonisation process which began with
the independence of India in 1947. This became most apparent during the
Suez crisis in 1956. The intervention of the United States, which ended British
ambitions to reconquer the Suez channel, ‘illustrated vividly that Britain was no
longer an imperial power and was, in fact, a client state of the United States’.3
As a result, from ‘the mid-1950s onwards, the Cold War was predominantly a
Soviet-American affair’.4
Nuclear threats, Cold War
71
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During the Cold War, the British shared the American perspective that the
Soviet Union posed a threat to Western democracies. Like the American political
leaders, ‘British decision-makers were in general agreement that communism
and collectivism posed the most serious danger to both Western security and
civilisation’.5 Fears of an international communist conspiracy seemed to be
confirmed in 1950 when two scientists, both involved in atomic research in
Britain, turned out to be communist sympathizers. German-born Klaus Fuchs
was convicted of spying for the Soviets while Italian-born Bruno Pontecorvo
defected to the USSR. The idea of Western societies subverted by communists
was encouraged by rumours that communists had the ability to brainwash
their enemies, that ‘the “Reds” had cracked the problem of controlling human
behaviour’.6 In view of that and Soviet efforts to conquer space, it seemed
plausible, a Punch cartoon humorously suggests, that not only humans but also
extra-terrestrials had been brainwashed or won over by the Soviet Union and its
communist ideology (Figure 8).7 Therefore, Britain’s role in the Cold War was
that of an American military ally, a partnership which became institutionalized
with the foundation of NATO to be able to avert a dreaded Soviet invasion.
Britain continued to be dependent on the United States for military support
until the end of the Cold War.
Figure 8: The Soviet communists rule on alien planets. Cartoon by Anton. Punch, 21 July 1954.
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British Apocalyptic Fiction
It was the development of nuclear weapons by the United States and the
Soviet Union and the ensuing armament race that gave the Cold War conflict
an increasing potential for disaster. Initially, it was only the United States which
was in possession of the atomic bomb. The US had demonstrated the power of
the bomb at the end of the Second World War in the bombings of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. Soviet military power, on the other hand, was at first based on
conventional weapons. Yet already in 1949, the Soviet Union tested its first atomic
bomb and thus changed the nature of the Cold War: ‘The 1949 Soviet nuclear test
(“Joe One”) raised the stakes further, shifting government policy “from the goal
of control to the goal of superiority”’.8 In their attempts to surpass the enemy, the
development of the more devastating hydrogen bomb, successfully tested for the
first time by the Americans in 1952 and by the Soviets in 1954, marked the next
step on the escalation ladder and reawakened public concern. Since the hydrogen
bomb ‘was developed by both East and West during a period of extreme tension
highlighted by the ongoing Korean War and by the appointment of [the aggressive
anti-communist] John Foster Dulles to the post of U.S. secretary of state’,9 it
was conceivable that nuclear bombs in general and the hydrogen bomb in
particular would be put to use. Dulles soon underlined the American intention
to use nuclear weapons in his doctrine of massive retaliation. The prospects of
a potential nuclear war were extremely worrying because ‘it was understood by
1955 that an atomic exchange in Europe would devastate the continent’.10
Besides, the mere testing of nuclear bombs, which increased to a great extent in
the mid-1950s, proved to be unsafe. The H-bomb tests in the Bikini atoll in 1954
accidentally ‘doused at least three hundred people with high levels of radiation’11
and left a Japanese sailor dead. This incident further demonstrated that ‘even
when one was not exposed to the direct effects of the bomb, its fallout could be
deadly.’12 It caused ‘growing apprehension over the effects of nuclear weapons
testing’.13 Hence, with nuclear bombs becoming bigger and more devastating,
the dangers of a nuclear fallout became more prominent.
Anxieties over a nuclear holocaust were additionally intensified in 1957 when
‘Russia stunned the West by launching an Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile
(ICBM) and the first space satellite, “Sputnik”’.14 The event’s implication was
that, ‘if the USSR had rockets good enough to place a satellite in orbit, they were a
serious threat to [US] security.’15 Instead of a space satellite, the ICBM might just
as well have carried nuclear warheads to hit long-range targets. Eventually, the
increasing potential for nuclear disaster led to a temporary testing moratorium
declared in 1958. However, after only three years, all nuclear powers resumed
testing with even greater intensity.
Consequently, anxieties surrounding the nuclear bomb heightened to a level
that the bomb was perceived as the ultimate agent of apocalypse in the collective
consciousness. Contemporary sociologist Edward Shils explains that ‘the atomic
Nuclear threats, Cold War
73
bomb was a bridge over which the [apocalyptic] phantasies […] entered the
larger society which was facing an unprecedented threat to its continuance.’16 By
examining the weekly political cartoon in Punch, it also becomes clear that the
bomb was explicitly linked to the discourse of apocalypse, especially after the
Soviets launched the Sputnik satellite. A two-page cartoon in Punch (Figure 9) is
particularly evocative and noteworthy in this respect.17 It depicts armed dinosaurs
in a nuclear war. Here, the fact that it is dinosaurs—a species whose fate is
infamously connected to sudden extinction—that wage a nuclear war already
anticipates the catastrophic outcome of that war. Moreover, the cartoon features
a quote from Russia, the Atom and the West (1958), a book by former political
advisor George F. Kennan, which emphasizes the apocalyptic dimension of the
nuclear confrontation between the USA and the Soviet Union:
To-day it is everything which is at stake—the kindliness of our natural environment,
the human experience, the genetic composition of the race, the possibilities of health
and life for future generations. Not only is this danger terrible, but it is immediate.
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Another political cartoon signals the paradigm shift from poison gas as part of
the apocalyptic discourse in the interwar period up to the end of the Second
Figure 9: Nuclear bombs will cause humankind to go extinct as a species. Cartoon by Norman
Mansbridge. Punch, 5 March 1958: ‘To-day it is everything which is at stake – the kindliness
of our natural environment, the human experience, the genetic composition of the race, the
possibilities of health and life for future generations. Not only is this danger terrible, but it is
immediate.’ (George F. Kennan, Russia, The Atom and the West)
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British Apocalyptic Fiction
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World War to nuclear weapons thereafter (Figure 10). The two characters in the
cartoon discuss the possibility of a nuclear attack and believe it to be unlikely.
They base their reasoning on the memory that gas bombs were never used in
the Second World War despite all the severe warnings. Ironically, the iconic
mushroom cloud in the background instantly undermines this assessment.
Figure 10: Londoners doubt the deployment of the atomic bomb just when it strikes. Cartoon by
Norman Mansbridge. Punch, 24 February 1960: ‘It’ll be just the same as it was with the gas in the
last war – they’ll never use it.’
Nuclear threats, Cold War
75
The detonation of the nuclear bomb in the cartoon points towards the realistic
possibility of a nuclear attack at the time, at least in the perception of cartoonist
Norman Mansbridge and the Punch readers.
Eventually, the perceived danger of nuclear weapons decreased considerably
when relations between the United States and the Soviet Union eased off in
the course of the 1960s. The nuclear war angst had culminated in 1962 when
American intelligence discovered Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. On the brink
of nuclear war, the two governments instead opted for a political resolution of
the conflict. This course of action heralded a phase of détente between East
and West. The Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963, which prohibited nuclear testing
above ground, was testament to this new period and ‘represented the first major
breakthrough in the negotiations between the nuclear powers to move towards
disarmament […]. [T]here is no doubt that the impact of this agreement upon
public opinion, in Britain as in the USA, was considerable’.18 Further efforts
towards disarmament, for example SALT I (Strategic Arms Limitation Talk I),
followed.
A second Cold War, and with it fears of a nuclear holocaust in Britain and
elsewhere, erupted in the 1980s when new tensions between the United States
and the Soviet Union resulted in military measures. Two events in December
1979 were crucial for this development. First, NATO rebuilt the state of mutual
assured destruction when it decided to install Pershing II and cruise missiles
in Western Europe to meet the challenge from the SS-20 missiles set up by
the Soviets in Eastern European countries. This decision ‘led Soviet political
and military leaders to conclude that the West was preparing to launch a
nuclear surprise attack.’19 Secondly, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan to support
Afghanistan’s Communist government against the Islamist Mujahideen
Resistance, which was financially and militarily supported by the United States,
the United Kingdom and others. The election of Ronald Reagan as US president
in 1980, moreover, proved to be problematic for East-West relations. Reagan,
because of his efforts to increase military spending and his aggressive Cold
War rhetoric towards the ‘Evil Empire’20 Soviet Union, was viewed by a great
number of people in Britain, Benelux, Germany and Scandinavia as ‘dangerous
and irresponsible’.21 A nuclear confrontation seemed to be a definite possibility
as ‘neither superpower nor the independent nuclear powers in Europe had
any will to initiate serious efforts at disarmament or nuclear disengagement’.22
Public opinion polls were indicative of growing anxiety among the British
population as ‘the percentage of people expecting a nuclear war within the next
decade rose from 13 to 39 percent’23 between 1977 and 1980. The consequences
of a nuclear exchange were expected to be truly apocalyptic. This, at least, was
the conclusion which scientists drew at the Pugwash Conference on Science
and World Affairs in 1980: ‘Never before has mankind been in such grave peril.
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British Apocalyptic Fiction
A major nuclear war would mean the end of civilization and could lead to the
extinction of the human race.’24
From the mid-1980s onwards, however, the Cold War came slowly to a close.
The Soviet Union, which could no longer financially afford to uphold the arms
race, was oriented towards détente. This, for example, became evident in the
INF Treaty (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty) of 1987, ‘the most
significant disarmament agreement for over 50 years, legislating for the removal
of US Cruise and Pershing missiles and Soviet IRBMs’.25 Two years later, after
the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Communist regimes in several
Eastern European countries, several European leaders including Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher urged US President George H. Bush to meet with the Soviet
General Secretary Gorbachev to discuss the future of Europe. Thereupon, Bush
and Gorbachev met at the Malta Summit where they issued public statements
which implied the end of the Cold War.
Public anxieties about nuclear weapons and nuclear war in both the first
phase and the second phase of the Cold War are reflected in the success of the
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). The CND, founded in 1958, became
the major mouthpiece for anti-nuclear protests. The CND’s main objective
was ‘to press for a British initiative to reduce the nuclear peril and to stop the
armaments race.’26 Therefore, the CND was not ‘a full-scale pacifist rejection
of the immorality of war per se’ like the Peace Pledge Union but focused more
specifically ‘on moral outrage at nuclear weapons’.27 The writer J. B. Priestley, one
of the CND’s founding members, even made the link between nuclear arms and
‘universal catastrophe and apocalypse’ explicit.28 At the end of the 1950s, ‘the
CND became a national Movement’29 in Britain, gaining most prominence from
the demonstrations it organized. The CND protest marches from Aldermaston,
the location of the Atomic Weapons Establishment, to London attracted most
public support and attention. Starting out as a small protest rally with merely
4,000 people in 1958, the demonstration increasingly grew in numbers until
approximately 150,000 people participated in the march in 1962.30 Eventually,
the decline of the CND coincided with decreasing public anxiety about nuclear
issues from 1962 onwards. Especially the diplomatic resolution of the Cuba
missile crisis resulted in ‘a crucial downturn in activism’31 so that by 1964, the
CND had faded from national prominence.
When the phase of détente ended at the end of the 1970s, the CND regained
strength and general public support. This is evident in the development of CND
membership: ‘CND’s national membership soared from 9,000 in 1980 to over
100,000 by early 1985’.32 Putting that number in perspective, that meant that
the ‘CND had attained the largest membership of any political organization
in Britain’33 apart from the Conservative Party. The favourable conditions for
nuclear protest in the UK are also illustrated in the success of the Greenham
Nuclear threats, Cold War
77
Common Women’s Peace Camp34, the fact that the European Nuclear
Disarmament movement (END), founded in 1980, originated in Britain35 and
the popularity of other British nuclear disarmament organizations.36
Apocalyptic fiction 1946–1966, 1979–1986
From Hiroshima to the end of the bipolar world
The atomic bombing of Hiroshima had an immediate impact on apocalyptic
fiction. Within a year, The Maniac’s Dream: A Novel of the Atomic Bomb (1946), a
mad-scientist tale by F. Horace Rose, was published. In the opening chapter,
the novel explicitly refers to ‘August 6th, 1945, the day on which the first
Atomic Bomb exploded on a dazed, stunned and horrified world, which had
not known that the Mighty Atom of the Universe had been harnessed to the
will of Man.’37 Of course, the atomic bomb as a means of annihilation was not
entirely new in apocalyptic fiction. For instance, Robert Cromie in The Crack
of Doom (1895) had explored this idea before.38 But the public’s perspective on
the atomic bomb had changed: ‘Science-fiction movies and literature had for
a generation toyed creatively with the idea of a nuclear world, without really
being taken seriously. Suddenly, with Hiroshima, the future seemed to have
come to the present; fantasy was reality’.39 The catastrophic power of the atomic
bomb bound the genres of nuclear and apocalyptic fiction together for the
years to come.
Then again, despite the real threat and potentially devastating consequences
of the atomic bomb, it did not instantaneously generate multitudes of nuclear
apocalyptic fiction. In his vast survey of nuclear holocaust fiction, Paul Brians
shares this analysis when he states that ‘few novels depicting nuclear war either
outside or inside of science fiction were published before 1950. Those that were
[were] not well known or not widely reviewed or sold.’40 Actually, there is only
one more British apocalyptic novel, J. Jefferson Farjeon’s Death of a World (1948),
which came into print in the immediate years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Apart from stereotypical mad scientists and fictitious insane warmongering
politicians like Thara Menechu and Chen Koo Sin, the mischief-makers in The
Maniac’s Dream and Death of a World, writers did not utilise the atomic bomb as a
harbinger of the catastrophic destruction of the world. Possibly, this is because
‘the threat posed by the [atomic bomb] had been somewhat obscured by its role
in ending World War II’.41
Only at the beginning of the 1950s did (nuclear) apocalyptic fiction increase
in number and popularity. This coincided with the boom of science fiction in
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British Apocalyptic Fiction
general. Melvin Matthews, in his discussion of American science fiction films,
gives a number of reasons why science fiction flourished at the time:
World War II and the advent of the atomic bomb; a change in the public’s attitude
towards scientists, which elevated such figures as Werner von Braun and Albert
Einstein to celebrity status; the Cold War between East and West, and Soviet and
American competition in rocket technology; anxiety over nuclear war and paranoia
over communist subversion; and the ‘flying saucer’ scare.42
Even though Matthews relates these reasons to the rise of the American SF film
in particular, there can be no doubt that some of them were also influential for
the increasing popularity of science fiction in Britain, be it on the screen or in
book form. In addition, the same reasons help to explain why there is much
more apocalyptic fiction in the 1950s than in the preceding years. As tensions
between the United States and the Soviet Union intensified, all aspects of nuclear
power—the bomb, nuclear testing, and the arms race in general—gained a
more threatening and thus potentially apocalyptic dimension. The communists
themselves started to represent a threat and apocalyptic fiction served as a vehicle
for Cold War propaganda. Interest in hard science fiction was further encouraged
by changes in the British education system. Ultimately, ‘the beginning of mass
education was creating a new public of mainly young readers with more than a
sprinkling of scientific background’.43 Moreover, there was a greater output of
texts because the production of SF novels was less tedious and less expensive
than in the past. British science fiction writers started ‘publishing straight into
paperback, rather than emerging from the magazines.’44
Interestingly, it was not the menace of nuclear war but tales of invasion that
dominated apocalyptic fiction in the first half of the 1950s. This is apparent in
the face of the ’enormous popularity of [ John] Wyndham, especially for his first
two post-war novels of disaster’45 The Day of the Triffids (1951) and The Kraken
Wakes (1953). Significantly, The Day of the Triffids ‘stands as one of the most
successful science fiction novels of the twentieth century’.46 On the screen, the
BBC series The Quatermass Experiment (1953) and its film adaptation The Quatermass
Xperiment (1955) were similarly successful. The serial version was ‘event television,
emptying the streets and pubs for the six weeks of its duration’47 and the film
‘broke box-office records on both sides of the Atlantic’.48 TV series and film
were soon followed by apocalyptic sequels, the BBC series Quatermass II (1955)
and its cinema adaptation Quatermass 2 (1957). These invasion tales hit the heart
of Cold War paranoia by taking up communist invasion anxieties in combination
with a general ‘critique of Cold War science’.49
Stories with more explicit references to the dangerous consequences of
nuclear testing and nuclear war took over from invasion tales in the late 1950s.
The focus in British apocalyptic fiction clearly shifted from anti-communist
Nuclear threats, Cold War
79
propaganda to warnings of nuclear armament: ‘Whereas 1950s sf film often
mingled fear of the bomb with anticommunism, it is striking that by the end
of the decade nuclear disaster was blamed more frequently on science, accident
and human frailty than on the Russians’.50 The reception of Nevil Shute’s On
the Beach (1957) was influential in this development. Shute’s story about nuclear
contamination, which in particular responded to ‘widespread concern about
fallout from testing’,51 was a bestseller. As the bleak ending of On the Beach leaves
nobody alive on Earth, it popularised the idea of extinction through nuclear
catastrophe like no other fictional work before: ‘The book was serialized in
more than forty newspapers in 1957, and by the 1980s the paperback edition had
sold over four million copies, the highest sales of any novel centered on nuclear
energy.’52 As a result, shortly afterwards, a significant number of apocalyptic
novels were published in which nuclear testing or nuclear war was responsible for
the cataclysm: Charles Eric Maine’s The Tide Went Out (1958), Tyrone Barr’s The
Last 14 (1959) and Edmund Cooper’s Seed of Light (1959). Moreover, the success
of the film version On the Beach (1959), an acclaimed Hollywood adaptation
starring Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner, showed ‘that there was a market for
big-budget serious science fiction.’53 This insight had a considerable impact
on British apocalyptic film. Two successful films, The Day the Earth Caught Fire
(1961) directed by Val Guest and Stanley Kubrick’s classic Dr. Strangelove or: How
I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) were produced. In addition,
the BBC production The War Game (1965) received a limited theatrical release in
British cinemas in 1966 after the film was deemed to be ‘too horrifying for the
medium of broadcasting’.54
Notwithstanding some of the examples from the mid-1960s, it is evident
that nuclear apocalyptic fiction petered out when the period of détente started
following the diplomatic resolution of the Cuban missile crisis and the signing
of the Partial Test Ban Treaty. Similarly to when increasing tensions between
the United States and the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1950s inspired
a sizeable amount of invasion tales, so did political détente bring a temporary
end to the output of nuclear apocalyptic fiction. The interest in nuclear war
and the dangers of nuclear weapons in general declined after 1962. Searching
for references to nuclear weapons, Spencer Weart analysed ‘bibliographies of
magazines, indexes of newspaper articles, catalogues of nonfiction books and
novels, and lists of films’ around the world and detects that ‘all these measures
plunged by the late 1960s to a quarter or less of their former numbers.’55 For
narrative texts, this trend continued throughout the 1970s as ‘the last half of the
seventies marked a low point in the creation of nuclear war fiction. In absolute
numbers, never had so little been published since 1945.’56 In British apocalyptic
fiction, The Furies (1966) by Keith Roberts became the last apocalyptic novel for
almost a decade and a half that addressed the nuclear threat.
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Consistently, nuclear apocalyptic fiction re-emerged at the time of the second
Cold War from 1979 to the mid-1980s. While David Graham’s novel Down to
a Sunless Sea (1979) is the first example in this context, the reintroduction of
the Cold War into British apocalyptic fiction is indicated most pronouncedly
by the broadcast of the BBC TV series The Day of the Triffids (1981), based on
Wyndham’s classic Cold War apocalyptic text. The fact that the producers chose
to adapt the novel most faithfully shows that the dominant themes of the 1950s
were perceived to be relevant again.
Overall, however, the fear of communism played an inferior role in 1980s
nuclear apocalyptic fiction. If texts discussed the confrontation between
the Soviet Union and the United States in greater detail, East and West
were usually depicted as equally mad in fighting the enemy. Trevor Hoyle’s
The Last Gasp (1983), whilst not a nuclear fiction novel, exemplifies the
absurd logic of Cold War thinking. Instead, the emphasis was rather on refamiliarising a wider public with the possibility and the dangers of nuclear
war. This helps to explain why stories of global nuclear catastrophe became
part of young adult literature during this phase. Robert Swindell’s Brother
in the Land came out in 1984 and Louise Lawrence published Children of the
Dust in 1985. These books served to educate a young readership that had not
experienced the first Cold War and thus were ignorant of the nuclear threat.
A related attitude is apparent in the documentary style of the BBC TV film
Threads (1984). In Threads, ‘[g]raphic on-screen depictions of the actual effects
of nuclear war’57 were used to confront the viewers with how gruesome the
worst-case scenario would be. This way of thinking towards nuclear fiction
on the screen also paved the way for a TV broadcast of The War Game in July
1985.58 Ultimately, however, the easing of tension between the United States
and the Soviet Union marked the beginning of the end of nuclear apocalypse.
Interestingly, the last two examples of nuclear apocalyptic fiction, the films
Whoops Apocalypse (1986) and When the Wind Blows (1986), were adaptations of
early 1980s works, the TV series Whoops Apocalypse (1982) and the graphic novel
When the Wind Blows (1982). Original stories of nuclear apocalypse disappeared
as the Cold War came to a conclusion.
Nuclear threats
Apocalyptic fiction of the Cold War period is dominated by the warning of
nuclear threats of various kinds. The development of the atomic bomb had
introduced a new dimension to humankind’s capability for harm and destruction.
The apocalypse could no longer be merely taken as a figment of a writer’s
imagination but seemed an all too realistic prospect. As a consequence, there
Nuclear threats, Cold War
81
are a vast number of examples which call attention to the dangers of apocalyptic
war, nuclear testing catastrophes and nuclear armament.
Stories of apocalyptic nuclear war show that using nuclear weapons in
battle is not merely the continuation of war with other means but elevates
conflict effortlessly to apocalyptic heights. J. Jefferson Farjeon’s novel Death of
a World (1948) is the earliest instance of atomic war in British apocalyptic fiction
after 1945. The novel relates the events of a Third World War which is most
efficiently fought with atomic bombs that ‘could account for, not one hundred
and fifty thousand lives, but a million’, relegating the atomic bombs dropped on
Japan to ‘museum pieces’.59 Written only three years after the atomic bombings
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the direct references are indicative of the bombings’
profound impact on ideas of apocalypse. This is underlined by the fact that the
novel ends with the extinction of the entire human race when Gregory, one
of the characters, goes mad and opens all emergency exits of a subterranean
shelter that initially keeps a small number of human survivors alive in the
aftermath of the war. Gregory’s madness appears to be representative of the
madness that has befallen mankind in creating a doomsday device like the
atomic bomb.
Nevil Shute’s On the Beach (1957) is set in the aftermath of a nuclear war in
which ‘about four thousand seven hundred [nuclear bombs]’60 had been dropped.
The novel’s setting, Australia, and other places in the far south of the globe, on
the whole remain unharmed at first as the war, a confrontation between the
NATO states and the Soviet Union, had taken place in the Northern hemisphere.
However, as nuclear fallout spreads to the Southern hemisphere, mankind is
doomed all the same. As in Death of a World, the characters in On the Beach do not
receive a second chance to rebuild civilization, strengthening the perception
that nuclear war has the potential to factually eradicate humanity.61
It is noticeable that apocalyptic nuclear war fiction of the 1980s is as much
concerned with the instant horror of nuclear bombing as with its long-term
consequences. When the Wind Blows (1986) and two novels for adolescents,
Robert Swindells’ Brother in the Land (1984) and Louise Lawrence’s Children of
the Dust (1985), all draw attention to the danger of nuclear fallout. The major
characters in When the Wind Blows, James and Hilda Bloggs, survive a nuclear
missile attack but fall ill and eventually die after they expose themselves to
contaminated air and drink polluted rainwater. Similarly, the main characters
in Brother in the Land also suffer from nuclear fallout which, in the novel, kills
‘nearly as many people as the bomb itself’.62 And in Louise Lawrence’s Children of
the Dust (1985), the plot is split up into three different parts, two of which
describe the struggles and encounters in a post-apocalyptic world between the
survivors who went underground and the survivors who stayed on the surface
of the Earth and became human mutants because of their exposure to ‘radiation
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British Apocalyptic Fiction
sickness’.63 By addressing the harmful effects of nuclear fallout, these stories
bring to attention the fact that Britain does not have to be the direct target of a
nuclear attack to suffer its dreadful consequences.
In some of British apocalyptic fiction of the Cold War era, the apocalypse is
an unintentional result of nuclear weapons testing. In Val Guest’s film The Day
the Earth Caught Fire (1961), simultaneous hydrogen bomb tests by the United
States and the Soviet Union have caused ‘an eleven-degree shift in our orbit’ so
that Earth is ‘moving towards the sun.’64 In Brian Aldiss’ Greybeard (1964), the
USA and the USSR conduct atomic tests in space which lead to a discharge of
‘hard radiation’65 and eventually causes human infertility. And at the beginning
of The Furies (1966) by Keith Roberts, ‘all news was overshadowed by the
nuclear test series being run by both East and West.’66 Simultaneous tests by
the Americans and the Soviets trigger earthquakes and mass devastation and
allow the Furies—an energy form from outer space that has adopted the shape
of a swarm of giant wasps—to take advantage of the ensuing chaos, attacking
Earth and using humans as slaves to build wasp cities. In contrast to apocalyptic
war fiction, these stories which have nuclear testing as the starting point of the
breakdown of order present the apocalypse as an accident, a unwanted result of
the existence and application of nuclear power that creates imponderabilities
beyond human control.
Yet it is not only these nuclear apocalypses of war and testing that highlight
the inherently dangerous nature of nuclear weapons. British apocalyptic fiction
during the Cold War generally warns of the existence and application of nuclear
armament. Even in John Christopher’s The Death of Grass (1956), which centres
on a virus that infects plants and crops and thus causes a global famine, nuclear
weapons take on a menacing role. In order to shorten the British people’s suffering
and to reduce chaos and anarchy, the British government develops a plan ‘to
drop hydrogen bombs on cities—on one’s own people’.67 Here, clearly, the
British possession of nuclear bombs is depicted as a threat rather than ensuring
people’s safety. The same is true for the TV serial The Quatermass Experiment
(and its film spin-off). A part of the atomic rocket bomb that Quatermass sends
into space becomes ‘dangerously radioactive’68 with unknown consequences for
humanity. Moreover, the entire crew of the space rocket fall victim to the atomic
experiment: Two of them die during the flight; the protagonist Victor Carroon
is invaded by an alien life form and eventually dies as well.
Fred Hoyle’s The Black Cloud (1957) also criticizes nuclear armament. When a
black cloud threatens to shield off solar radiation, a group of scientists manages
to establish communication with the highly intelligent cloud and convince it to
change its path. However, the leaders of the United States and the USSR are not
patient enough for the cloud to redirect its course and, in a joint effort (!), fire
off over 150 rockets with nuclear warheads to poison the cloud with radioactive
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materials. The cloud reacts by redirecting the nuclear bombs to ‘the exact
points they started out from’,69 destroying two American and one Russian city.
The Black Cloud is unambiguous in its message that those who fire nuclear bombs
will indeed harm themselves in the end. The first strike by the two terrestrial
superpowers does not succeed as planned in disabling the cloud but instead
results in the cloud’s retaliation.70
The mere detonation of an atomic bomb is responsible for the apocalyptic
catastrophe in Richard Pape’s And so Ends the World… (1961). After a race to
the moon which mirrors the nuclear armament race, the Soviet Union and the
USA divide up the moon’s territory: ‘[I]t was agreed that Soviet Russia held
sovereignty over that four-sevenths of the moon’s surface that faced towards the
earth, while the Americans could lay claim to the remaining three-sevenths.’ 71
Both the Russians and the Americans are eager to mine Lunarite, a resource
found in the depths of the moon. In an attempt to ‘displace millions of tons of
underground bedrock by thermo-nuclear explosion’,72 the Soviets accidentally
set off a blast that causes the moon to leave its orbit and thus catastrophically
destabilizes the Earth’s ecosystem. Similarly to the examples of nuclear testing
apocalypses, And so Ends the World… stresses the point that humanity has lost
control over the powers of the nuclear age.
Cold War
Apart from a pre-occupation with the nuclear bomb, apocalyptic fiction after the
Second World War until the mid-1960s as well as in the 1980s is characterized by
the Cold War. Even in stories that do not feature nuclear bombs or communist
attacks, the Cold War serves as an ever-present backdrop. In Arthur C. Clarke’s
Childhood’s End (1953), for instance, Cold War competition is the starting point
for humanity’s transformation into a superior species and thus the end of
humankind as we know it. At the beginning of the novel, the USA and the
Soviet Union are committed to a race the outcome of which will show which
superpower ‘can get to the moon first.’ 73 The race to the moon, representative
of the pursuit of dominance in the rivalry between East and West, is abruptly
stopped when the alien Overlords come to Earth and help humankind overcome
their Cold War obsessions.
More explicitly, Stanley Kubrick’s satirical film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Stopped
Worrying and Love the Bomb (1963) shows that Cold War mentality leads humankind
into disaster.74 An American attack on Russian soil automatically activates the
Russian ‘Doomsday Machine’, a ‘device which will destroy all human and animal
life on Earth’.75 Despite desperate attempts by the American and Soviet political
leaders to recall or destroy all aeroplanes involved in the attack, one aircraft
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reaches its target and detonates the bomb. The absurd logic of Cold War thinking
is particularly exposed when American military advisors discuss the option of
survival in a mine shaft with the American President. In the face of nuclear
apocalyptic disaster, they fear that ‘the Russkies [might stash] away some bombs
and we didn’t’ which would create ‘a mine-shaft gap’ and allow the Russians
to pursue their ‘expansionist policy’.76 Meanwhile, the Russian ambassador,
who helps to mediate between the President and the Russian Premier, uses the
agitated discussion to secretly take pictures of the American war room. Even
in the hour of nuclear death, both East and West insist on disastrous Cold War
military doctrine and futile espionage.
The Last Gasp (1983) by Trevor Hoyle also addresses the catastrophic
consequences of Cold War strategy. Unusual for the time of its publication, the
novel does so without taking up the threat of nuclear weapons. The Last Gasp
claims that ‘[t]he use of nuclear weapons is becoming an outdated concept in
terms of global strategy’ 77 and rather focuses on eco-doom and ‘Environmental
War’.78 With the oxygen level in the air already at a threateningly low level, the
two superpowers develop a deterrent strategy that is based on manipulating
the environment to such a degree that could make life on Earth impossible.
Environmental deterrent strategy in The Last Gasp is as ludicrous as nuclear
deterrent strategy: ‘Risking a global calamity in order to keep the balance of
power – it’s futile to expect logic.’ 79 In the end, both Americans and Soviets
have to work together to save humanity, establishing a colony on the moon
until Earth has had enough time to regenerate itself to be able to support life
again. The novel makes a political statement by suggesting that the survival of
the human species and the future of the planet can only be ensured through
concerted cooperation rather than Cold War competition.
Fear of communist invasion
While the previous examples take a more or less neutral position in the conflict
between East and West, a considerable portion of British Cold War apocalyptic
fiction uses end-of-the-world scenarios to address fears of communism to spread
anti-USSR propaganda. The Day of the Triffids (1951) is an early example of how
fears of a communist invasion translate into an apocalyptic invasion narrative.
The triffids, a mobile plant species with a potentially lethal sting is engineered
in ‘the first experimental triffid station in the district of Elovsk in Kamchatka’80
in the Soviet Union. When almost the whole of humanity goes blind, maybe
because of a comet, possibly as a result of an accident in relation to ‘satellite
weapons’,81 the triffids slowly take over the rule of Britain.82 In the end, the main
character Bill Masen hopes that the younger generation will be able to ‘drive the
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triffids back and back with ceaseless destruction until we have wiped the last
one of them from the face of the land that they have usurped.’83 Even though
communism is never openly mentioned in the novel, the triffids’ place of origin
and the threat from satellites in outer space clearly point to Cold War anxieties.
The idea of the triffid plague as spreading communism is also reinforced by
two quotations from The Night of the Triffids (2001), Simon Clark’s sequel to The
Day of the Triffids, which, at its beginning, looks at the events of Wyndham’s story
in retrospect. In doing so, it draws noticeable parallels between the triffids and
what communism meant to the West in the 1950s: ‘[W]aves of triffids spreading
from the Russian steppes drove human survivors westward until their backs
were to the Atlantic.’84 Looking back on the 1950s with a 21st century perspective,
The Night of the Triffids’ narrator David Masen, son of Bill Masen, even comments
on the disproportional condemnation of communism when he states that ‘the
triffid had been demonized and held responsible for the destruction of the Old
World’.85
Furthermore, the reading of the triffids invasion as a communist infiltration
gains credibility if one considers that the first two adaptations of Wyndham’s
novel, the first for the cinema screen in 1962, the second one as a BBC series in
1981, were produced at the height of Cold War crisis. In the film version directed
by Steve Sekely, however, the allusions to the communist threat are toned down.
Andy Sawyer rightfully points out that ‘the film loses Wyndham’s hints that the
meteors may be debris from a satellite weapons system which has gone wrong
and that the triffids themselves are a result of a Russian bioengineering project’.86
Instead of being created in Russia, ‘Triffidus selectus’ was ‘brought to Earth on
the meteorites’.87 Hence, the film The Day of the Triffids loses most of its social
commentary. In contrast, the BBC TV series from 1981 takes up the novel’s Cold
War perspective more faithfully. This even extends to reproductions of some of
the novel’s dialogue passages. For example, Bill’s speech in which he blames the
governments’ satellite systems for the blinding of the world is changed only in
nuances: ‘I suppose one of these weapons had been specially constructed to emit
a radiation our eyes couldn’t stand. Something that could burn out the optic
nerve.’88 In this way, the re-emergence of Cold War tensions corresponds with
the return of the ‘communist’ triffids to public attention.
The Quatermass TV series and films present further instances of invasion
narratives that toy with Cold War anxieties and fears of communist invasion.
All three series and subsequent film adaptations depict an alien invasion that
threatens mankind.89 In contrast to the Wyndham novels, it is not only an invasion
of the human world but also of the human body. In The Quatermass Experiment
and its film adaptation, the astronaut Victor Carroon returns from a rocket trip
into space, outwardly unchanged but possessed by an alien organism. Soon,
Carroon starts to kill people, the alien organism spreads and reproduces quickly
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and threatens to eliminate humanity. It would be misleading, though, to simply
equate the alien with the communists in this instalment of the Quatermass
series. Tony Shaw explains:
Victor could be interpreted as the disguised communist enemy within. Yet the fact
that sympathy is constantly elicited for the man-monster – through its pathetic failures
to commit suicide and desperate attempts to overcome loneliness by befriending an
innocent child – suggests that Victor ought to be viewed as more of a victim than a
threat.90
This is why it makes more sense ‘to interpret the “monster” as a metaphor for
the “beast” unleashed by the atomic bomb’.91 The second instalment of both
Quatermass series, on the other hand, portrays a different scenario.
BBC’s Quatermass II (1955) and Quatermass 2 (1957) hint at anxieties about a
communist invasion of Britain. Unnoticed by the government and public, an alien
life form uses an asteroid in the Earth’s orbit to launch an invasion. A vanguard
lands on Earth in the guise of meteorites and uses humans as hosts to take
over a factory that was originally the site of Quatermass’ ambitious space travel
project Moon Colony. Upon its arrival on Earth, the alien produces methane
and ammonia, the gases it needs in the atmosphere to live, and prepares for a
mass invasion. Quatermass, though, destroys both the aliens already on Earth as
well as the asteroid in the nick of time. In contrast to the character of Carroon
in the first Quatermass story, there is no empathy for either the alien itself or for
the people invaded by it. Furthermore, the alien and its victim are characterized
as lacking individuality, a common stereotype with regard to communism in
the 1950s. Quatermass describes the alien’s organization as ‘[a] thousand billion
intelligences if you like with one single consciousness.’92 Moreover, when
invading people’s bodies, the alien organism leaves a black v-shaped mark on
their body that gives the invasion victims a collective appearance.93 Thus, the
second Quatermass story underlines the impression that ‘British feature films
might have been more nuanced in their overwhelming support for the Western
cause and condemnation of Communism [than American films], but their
ideological parameters were readily identifiable’.94
Cold War propaganda
Apart from these invasion stories, there are a number of propagandistic apocalyptic
novels which make the West look superior and the East (morally) inferior.
Edmund Cooper’s Seed of Light (1959) serves as anti-communist propaganda. In
an attempt to stop the arms race between the USA and the Soviet Union, the
British government has assigned a team of scientists to build Commonwealth
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Satellite, a weapons system that is supposed to function as a celestial policeman
to encourage the two superpowers to disarm. However, the USA and the
Soviet Union, themselves in the process of developing their own satellites,
refuse to accept this new world order and the British government abandons
its initial plan, a plot twist that illustrates Britain’s loss of political power and
minor role during the Cold War era. Consequently, British Professor Bollinden
and Austrian Dr Rehn, the masterminds behind Commonwealth Satellite, take
control of the weapons system to ‘destroy the Russian and American launching
grounds’ 95 and enforce peace in this way. Aboard the satellite, Rehn turns out
to be a Soviet spy who intends to only destroy all the British and American
bases. In order to defend this attack, the American President orders a first strike
that sets off global nuclear war and almost leads to the extinction of mankind.
Seed of Light stigmatizes communism as a totalitarian ideology which becomes
responsible for the nuclear catastrophe. The Soviet spy Dr Rehn believes that
‘[o]nly Russia—under the so-called communist regime—has sufficient staying
power, sufficient energy to bind the world together’.96 The morally superior
character is the Westerner Bollinden who truly wants to destroy the weapons of
the world so that East and West have a chance at peaceful co-existence.
Anti-communist views are also expressed in And so Ends the World… (1961).
First of all, the ‘greedy’ 97 Soviet regime plans to ruthlessly exploit the moon’s
resources, an enterprise that brings about the cataclysmic catastrophe. Even
more propagandistic, communism is presented as an authoritarian regime that
is better abolished. Sibyl, an American whose marriage to the Russian Ivan
Semionov is crucial in the eventual rescue of mankind, perceives the Soviet
regime to be like ‘slavery’.98 Ivan himself defects to the West to gain ‘his freedom
from Russia’ and to join ‘the free nations.’ 99 The strictly negative assessment of
communism is, moreover, illustrated when the narrator metaphorically compares
communism to a disease by talking of it as ‘the germ of Marxism’.100
Even in Threads (1984), which seems to be more concerned with the dangers of
nuclear weapons in general rather than anti-communist Cold War propaganda,
the Soviet Union is implicitly blamed for the cataclysm. The Soviet invasion of
Iran triggers a political crisis between the Soviet Union and the United States,
the outcome of which is global nuclear war. The fictional Soviet invasion into
Iran and the attack on an American submarine boat are described as ‘the actions
of a reckless and warlike power.’101 Later, it is the Soviets who move the conflict
to the next level of escalation by using ‘nuclear-tipped air defence missile’102 in
reaction to the Americans’ conventional bomber attack.
Graham’s Down to a Sunless Sea (1979) is yet another vehicle for Cold War
propaganda. Graham’s novel describes a nuclear war and the resulting fallout
which dooms mankind. Israel attacks several Muslim countries with nuclear
weapons. Accusing the USA of supplying Israel with those nuclear warheads,
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communist countries retaliate and the world is thrown into global nuclear war.
The only survivors are aboard a British and a Russian aeroplane. The captains of
the aircrafts, the protagonist Jonah and Russian air force pilot Valentina decide
to fly to the American McMurdo Station in the Antarctic where they hope to
escape from the contaminated air. The novel shows the West at the top of the
order. Most meaningfully, the Russian survivors are successfully colonized
by the Western survivors at the American Antarctic base. When the survivor
community at McMurdo Station decides to establish a world without nations
and languages, it is naturally decided that ‘the future language of the land was
English—any objectors could like it or lump it.’103 In addition, the protagonist
Jonah is depicted as having conquered and anglicised Valentina. Within a few
days, middle-aged Jonah has seduced the young attractive Russian. Besides that,
he calls her ‘Val’, a more easily pronounceable English nickname for the Russian
sounding Valentina.
Ambivalence toward science
The condemnation of the nuclear bomb in many cases does not result in outright
criticism of science in apocalyptic works. Science is assessed in much more
ambivalent terms. Quatermass 2 is a good example of apocalyptic fiction after the
Second World War in which science is evaluated in conflicting terms. The fact
that the original location for Quatermass’ Moon Project serves as a breeding
ground for the alien indicates a critical attitude towards scientific advancement
during the Cold War. Moreover, a launch of Quatermass’ new atomic rocket to
be further developed on the moon project site threatens to be catastrophic. Yet,
it is the very same rocket that destroys the alien asteroid and therefore wards
off the invasion. Peter Hutchings explains: ‘In part this ambivalent treatment
derives from a broader uncertainty at this time about the role of the scientist
in the nuclear age, as someone who deals with a mysterious power that is both
wonderful and immensely destructive.’104
Similarly, the attitude towards nuclear power remains ambivalent in a number
of other apocalyptic stories. In The Day the Earth Caught Fire, the parallel explosion
of the nuclear bombs by the USA and the Soviet Union are to blame for the
disaster. Then again, it is only with the help of ‘four thermonuclear bombs,
the largest ever devised’,105 that the world can be saved. In One in Three Hundred,
atomic power is the only source of energy and thus becomes indispensable
for the survival of mankind: ‘We simply had to use the new source of power
[…]—atomic power’.106 In the same way, the extra-terrestrials who find the diary
of John Smith in Death of a World use an ‘atomic-propelled and atomic controlled
rocket’107 to travel through space. This shows that an intelligent species can
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also benefit from nuclear power. Therefore, it is not science in itself that is
guilty of the cataclysmic disasters in Cold War apocalyptic fiction. Instead,
mankind is blamed for the abuse of science and thus at least equally responsible
for its catastrophic consequences. Doctor Jansen, a character from And so Ends
the World…, aptly describes the human dilemma:
To think we can discover power and then find no other use for it than futile, destructive
machines. We could do so much good with it, but men will never learn. […] We could
make a wonderful paradise in this world but, instead, we have to have ugly, terrifying
monstrosities like this [nuclear powered rocket].108
The progress of nuclear science could be beneficial for mankind but ‘humanity’s
apparently natural inclination towards self-destruction’109 turns scientific
discoveries into fierce weapons.
Flawed human nature
The relationship between mankind, science and the ultimate disaster explains
a considerable number of apocalyptic novels which emphasize flawed human
nature. The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961) makes the link between nuclear
devastation and mankind’s inherently bad nature explicit. As mankind hopes
for its survival at the end of the film, the protagonist Peter Stenning, in what
resembles a sermon, surmises that the nuclear catastrophe happened because
man is ‘insensitive […], proud and defiant in his pursuit of power’.110 The Last 14
also strongly points towards the faults in human nature. When the survivors
return to Earth, ambition and jealousy cause the new society to collapse, inducing
once more the downfall of mankind. Martha, one of the crew, attributes this
to flawed human nature: ‘[H]atred and temper among other things, are born
of man’s instinct.’111 The novel’s ending emphasizes this perspective. Instead
of successfully reconstructing a better society, the survivors grow hostile to
each other and the group breaks up into opposed fractions. In fact, humanity
is so fundamentally flawed that it has a tendency for self-destruction. Paul, the
crew’s clergyman points out that the ‘hunt for food will cause rivalry […]. Then
each to arms and on to hatred and to bloodshed. On to nations and to wars
and to empires and bondage. On to the inevitable destruction again.’112 In this
way, the novel leads the nuclear catastrophe back to humanity’s basic defective
disposition.
The Fittest (1955) by J. T. McIntosh is another apocalyptic text which illustrates
the post-war idea of mankind turned savage. A scientist has created four species,
so-called paggets, of evolutionary advanced animals which turn against their
creator, start killing humans and take control over a disintegrating society.
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Thus, even though nuclear science does not feature, the careless handling of
science is of major importance here as well. In consequence, humanity, instead
of uniting against a common enemy, turns against itself. Thus, even though
the animal species pose the initial threat to mankind, mankind’s deterioration
from civilized man to primitive animal dominates the second half of the novel.
Accordingly, the novel’s protagonist Don points out that the worst thing in the
world is ‘[m]en and women turned into human paggets’,113 thus metaphorically
equating man with beast. In fact, this is a recurrent conclusion drawn by a
number of novels. In Death of a World, the protagonist John Smith asks in the
face of impending extinction: ‘Are we just animals—all of us, throughout the
entire limitless universe’.114
In a similar vein, Edmund Cooper’s All Fool’s Day (1966) draws a grim picture
of humanity’s character. In the novel, radiation emerges from the sun’s spots,
directly causing mass suicide and insanity in the world. In consequence, the wild
animal kingdom reclaims the world and the remaining human survivors have
to battle both each other and hordes of fierce dogs. The majority of the novel’s
characters, including its protagonist John Greville, stand out as unlikeable and
egoistic. Similar to Christopher’s The Death of Grass and even more graphic in
its description, All Fool’s Day is particularly marked by humiliation, rape and
murder. Consequently, human kind is described as ‘rotten’115 and Nibs, a young
psychopath who assaults Greville and rapes Greville’s companion Liz, is not
considered to be an exceptional example of a human being. Rather, ‘he was of
all of mankind. He was the human tragedy writ small’.116
A negative attitude towards human nature is further apparent in McIntosh’s
One in Three Hundred (1953). When flaming hydrogen dramatically causes the
sun to burn hotter so that life on Earth quickly becomes untenable, there is a
chance of sending spaceships to Mars, a planet that has already been colonized.
Lieutenant Bill Easson is chosen to be one of the ships’ captains. It is his
responsibility to pick a crew, i.e., to choose approximately one person out of
three hundred because of limited spaceship capacities, and fly them to Mars. In
the process of compiling a list of people to go aboard his ship, Bill notices how
repulsive the majority of humankind is, prepared to do practically anything from
lying to killing to earn one of the spaceship’s seats: ‘The more I learned about
people, the more likely they were to come off my list.’117 Eventually, Bill and
his crew make it to Mars. Upon arrival on Mars, it becomes evident once more
that ‘human beings aren’t perfect.’118 Rather than establishing a better society, a
fierce competition for power develops which results in more murder and almost
in the extinction of humankind.
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Case study: The Kraken Wakes
John Wyndham’s invasion tale The Kraken Wakes (1953) reflects upon the dangers
of Cold War mentality at a time when the conflict between East and West reached
its first peak. The story starts with Phase One and the sighting of red points in
the sky by the novel’s narrator, the journalist Mike, and his reporter wife Phyllis.
These red points, the origin of which is initially unclear but is later revealed to
have been some kind of alien spacecraft, enter the airspace of Western and Eastern
countries before they come down in deep-sea areas. This violation of territorial
airspace creates an almost disastrous increase in international suspicion and
tension, especially between the United States and the Soviet Union. When the red
dots continue to appear over domestic territory, US and Soviet military destroy a
great number because they believe them to be enemy aircrafts used for espionage.
Only the geographer Bocker rightfully assumes that the appearance of the red
dots is the start of an interplanetary invasion. However, then and throughout
the novel, he is not believed by governments and the public. The US Navy and
the Royal Navy investigate those areas where a high concentration of red dots
has fallen into the sea. The exploration of the deep sea turns out to be fatal as
the research vessels are destroyed and the crews killed at the bottom of the
ocean. When the Americans continue their investigation efforts, one of their
ships disappears without a trace. As a consequence, the US forces, and later the
British, retaliate by dropping atomic bombs on the enemy in the sea.
Meanwhile, at the beginning of Phase Two, the aliens further prepare their
colonization of Earth. They sink military and non-military ships that cruise over
deep-sea areas in order to protect their habitat and they start mining operations
on the bed of the ocean to establish underwater communication links. As a result,
maritime travel and trade become constrained. US forces retaliate once more and
bomb the area where American ships have been lost. This course of action turns
out to be disastrous as the US warships are destroyed in return and a nuclear bomb
aboard one of the ships explodes and contaminates the surrounding territory.
Soon after, the aliens’ attacks spread to the mainland. Sea-tanks eject a variety of
sea-anemones, hence the name Krakens, which catch, collect, and devour human
inhabitants. The first attacks take place in the Caribbean but quickly extend to
other regions until they hit Europe and the British Isles. Again, military force is
used to defend these attacks and, in consequence, the land attacks of the Krakens
or Bathies, as they are called, become rarer.
The aliens change their strategy at the start of Phase Three. Fog patches appear
over the Polar Regions as the Bathies start melting the ice of the Arctic and
Antarctic to raise the sea levels and drown humanity. In addition, the Kraken
attacks resume, killing many and endangering all inhabitants at the coastlines.
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Therefore, more and more people have to flee the coastal regions to move to
areas of high altitude. After the global population is severely diminished in
numbers—only 10–20 per cent have survived due to the attacks, illness, and lack
of nutrition—humankind is eventually rescued. The Japanese have developed a
weapon that emits ultrasonic sounds underwater which is lethal to the Bathies.
Humanity is now able to reconstruct society.
The Kraken Wakes is dominated by Cold War ideology. This is evident in the
deadly competition between two rivals for world domination and conquest.
The human race and the aliens start a confrontation that only comes to an end
with the extinction of the Bathies. In the course of this conflict, both parties
engage in an arms race as they take increasingly extreme measures to overwhelm
their enemy. The human race utilizes missiles, nuclear bombs and, ultimately,
ultrasonics. The aliens employ means to destroy underwater vessels and ships,
attack with their sea-tanks and sea-anemones and, in the end, use their resources
to melt the polar ice in order to drown humanity. Therefore, even though the
aliens are not made to be the Russians, the analogy between Cold War rivalry
and the opposition between humanity and the aliens cannot be mistaken:
Two intelligent forms of life are finding one another’s existence intolerable. I have now
come to believe that no attempt at rapprochement could have succeeded. Life in all its
forms is strife; […] a rival form of intelligence must, by its very existence, threaten to
dominate, and therefore threaten extinction. Any intelligent form is its own absolute;
and there cannot be two absolutes.119
The idea that two different forms of life cannot peacefully co-exist but have to be
in conflict with each other until ‘one will exterminate the other’120 corresponds to
the political notion of the 1950s that either the capitalist West or the communist
East would eventually prevail in the Cold War and win over its rival. Moreover,
the analogy is even more plausible when one considers that The Kraken Wakes was
written at the time of the Korean War, when fears of invasion were widespread
and East-West relations were tense. The analogy between the fictional war against
the aliens and the real-life war against the communists is made explicit when
the British press criticizes the government’s reluctance to use the atomic bomb:
‘Having made it, we were too scared to use it in Korea; now, it seems, we are too
scared to use it on the Bathies.’121 The conflict between humanity and the aliens
merely seems to amplify the idea that humanity ‘can’t even tolerate anything but
the narrowest differences of views within our own race.’122 Cold War ideology
serves as a perfect example of this perspective.
Despite the eventual defeat and extinction of the enemy Bathies, The Kraken
Wakes is not a piece of Western propaganda. The fact that a Western ally,
the Japanese, succeeds in overwhelming the alien species might suggest the
superiority of Western science. Moreover, the flight path of one group of the red
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dots, discovered first in Finland and taking an East-West direction via Sweden,
Norway, and Ireland,123 could imply the red dots’ Soviet origin. These, however,
are the only hints that support a communist identity of the aliens and a proWestern agenda of the novel. Rather than Western enemies, the Bathies are
more strongly characterized as an equal threat to both East and West and thus to
all humanity. Mike finds out that, during the aliens’ landing, the red dots cross
through Western and Eastern skies and, as a result of that, are shot down by both
sides.124 He also learns that the Bathies attack cruising ships in the deep-sea areas
independent of national affiliation. The British, for example, lose the Atlantic
cruiser Queen Anne and the Russians admit to have ‘lost one large freighter
and one unspecified naval vessel’.125 In addition, East and West eventually join
forces after the Russians are ‘willing to co-operate with other powers in putting
down this menace to the cause of world Peace.’126 For most of the novel, it is not
quite clear whether the information about the Russians’ actions and intentions
is actually true or whether the Russians merely pretend to be threatened by the
Bathies. After all, the novel’s homodiegetic narrator only allows for a limited
point of view of what happens in Russia. Yet the idea that the Soviets have to
be regarded as being on the same side as the Westerners is confirmed towards
the end when the Russians are equally threatened by the aliens’ flooding of the
planet. Faced with ‘the formation in Central Russia of a great inland sea’,127
the Soviets, like their Western counterparts, make use of nuclear bombs in the
hope of stopping the rise of the water levels. With East and West on the same
side and the aliens on the other, The Kraken Wakes neither warns of a communist
threat nor serves as a moral boost in the East-West rivalry.
Instead, the plot of the alien invasion serves to illustrate and explore the fatal
potential of Cold War thinking. Most apparently, it depicts a lethal ‘Darwinian’128
struggle between two species. Bocker recognizes the essence of the conflict:
I say now we must attack as swiftly as we can find the means, and with the full intention
of complete extermination. […] For the moment we have pushed them back, but they
will return, for the same urge drives them as drives us – the necessity to exterminate,
or be exterminated.129
The ‘them or us’ mentality displayed in The Kraken Wakes is fatal in that it inevitably
must result in death and destruction and cannot lead to a peaceful solution. Both
humans and the aliens follow a strategy of confrontation. In The Kraken Wakes,
this leads to a hot war and eventually ends with one species extinct and the
other species reduced to a fraction of its number. It is rather fortunate and
coincidental, as the events of Phase Three show, that humanity survives at all.
Despite this, the Cold War mentality is preferred over conciliatory approaches.
Bocker’s alternative response to the landing of the aliens, which would be taking
an ‘amiable and sympathetic approach’130 to the arrival of a different life form
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on Earth, does not stand a chance in the mind-set of the Cold War. The fact that
Bocker’s other assessments and predictions with regard to the Bathies all prove
to be right—he is the first to realize an extra-terrestrial intelligence behind the
red dots, he foresees the unavoidable battle between humanity and aliens, he is
the first to understand the Bathies’ tactics of melting the Polar ice—suggests
that his idea of reconciliation could have been successful. Humankind and the
Bathies could have shared the world. Phyllis supports his view when she points
out that the deep seas are ‘of no conceivable use to us, a part we can’t even
reach’ and therefore could be left for the aliens if ‘it happens to suit them’.131 The
narrator Mike, too, believes that Bocker’s call for a compromise is ‘a sensible
suggestion’.132 In this way, The Kraken Wakes mildly challenges the logic of Cold
War ideology.
Mocking Cold War paranoia condemns the black-and-white mentality of
the time. On the side of the West, this is most evident in the common man’s
inclination to think that the aggressors from the depths ‘must be the Russians.’133
Tuny, the wife of a friend of Phyllis and Mike, represents the ordinary citizen in
that she blames any threat or negative development on the Russians and is sure
that it is the Russians’ idea ‘to make trouble everywhere they can.’134 She claims
that the alien presence in the sea ‘was thought up in Moscow’135 so that the
Russians could attack the West without being blamed and punished for it. Later,
when more and more icebergs appear after the aliens start melting the polar
ice, she demands that the government should stop ‘the Russians from making
icebergs.’136 Tuny’s views are ridiculed by the narrator’s description of her as
being ‘decorative’137 rather than intelligent and the later insight that the aliens’
melting of the ice creates the icebergs, and by no means the Russians. The idea
that Tuny stands for the ordinary person is further underlined by the anti-Soviet
sentiment of the ordinary man in an episode in a British pub. There, one of the
guests points out that the Russians, in contrast to everybody else, did not lose
any ships in the sea—something we later find out is not even true. He would like
‘to know why not’,138 implying that he believes that the Russians are responsible
for the sinking of the ships.
The Kraken Wakes satirizes not only the ordinary Western citizen’s paranoia of
the Russians but also the Russian’s paranoia of Western aggression. The Soviet
government interprets any event as an act of hostility from the ‘capitalistic
warmongers.’139 When, for instance, the Western countries decide to build more
aeroplanes to make up for the inability to travel the seas, this is regarded as ‘no
more than a part of a bourgeois-fascist plan by warmongers’.140 Fog patches,
created by the Bathies’ melting of the polar ice, are immediately blamed on the
Americans and understood as ‘a menace to Peace.’141 As a consequence of this
paranoia, the real danger from space is ignored for the longest time, bringing
humankind to the brink of annihilation.
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Therefore, the satirical elements of the novel are not only used to ridicule
both the attitudes of East and West but also to point towards the dangers
that come with narrow-minded Cold War thinking. The lack of mutual trust
in Cold War ideology prevents the East from cooperating with the West in
fighting the aliens. Even when the aliens start sinking ships and thus seriously
interfere with international maritime navigation, Soviet distrust prevails as they
refuse to share their scientific knowledge with the West: ‘It could scarcely be
expected of the Soviets that they should make a present of their discoveries to
warmongers.’142 Moreover, The Kraken Wakes illustrates that reciprocal suspicion
has the capacity for escalation with potentially devastating consequences for
all of humankind. Suspicion is the reason that they blame each other for any
unexplained phenomenon. The arrival of the red dots, the sinking of the ships,
and the fog patches of the Arctic serve as good examples of that. The fatal
aspect of this strict ideological thinking is that enemy aggression, even if it is
based on unfounded information, generates a demand for retaliation. This is
what happens after the British passenger ship Queen Anne is sunk: ‘There’s a
rumour running wild here that the Russians did it. […] [I]t’s got to be stopped.
If it isn’t, there might be enough pressure worked up to force the Government
out, or make it send and ultimatum, or something.’143 During the build-up of the
atomic weapons race, ‘something’ very likely refers to the deployment of ‘atom
bombs’144 which would, in consequence, throw the world into a devastating
nuclear exchange of apocalyptic dimensions.
Consistent with a warning of the dangers of Cold War strategy, The Kraken
Wakes adopts a critical attitude towards the nuclear bomb. While the bomb
is not directly responsible for the cataclysm, it does not help humankind to
deal with the alien invaders successfully at any point in the novel either. The
initial bombing of the deep-water areas proves futile as the bombs do not
prevent the aliens from continuing their mining operations. Instead, the use
of atomic bombs only has damaging consequences for the environment and
humankind. First of all, any attempt at a potential peaceful solution with
the aliens is thwarted ‘when we prodded them with the first atom bomb.’145
Moreover, the bombs exploded in the sea ‘kill an awful lot of fish quite
uselessly, and make a lot more radio-active’,146 seriously harming the marine
environment. Furthermore, when the Americans plan to use nuclear bombs
in the Caymen Trench, their carrier ship is exploded by the aliens with the
result that two more ships involved in the mission ‘[succumb] to the bomb’.147
Most vitally, ‘the extensive use of hydrogen and other fissile-material bombs’
by the British government in reaction to the appearance of the mysterious
fog patches accelerates ‘the disintegration of the ice-fields’148 in the Arctic
and thus speeds up, rather than stops, the disastrous flooding process. It is
only too appropriate with the negative assessment of the atomic bomb that
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a non-nuclear device, the Japanese ultrasonic weapon, eventually succeeds in
overwhelming the aliens.
As nuclear bombing is shown to be futile or to have damaging effects, the idea
that atomic weapons represent a universal remedy to solve conflicts is revealed
to be false. In The Kraken Wakes, the common British man, the British press, and
the British government all believe at some point that using the nuclear bomb
solves problems. A salesman, one of the guests in the pub, demands that the
British military should ‘go out to bomb ‘em [those who sink the British ships] to
hell before they get up to more trouble’.149 The Nethermore Press also strongly
calls for the deployment of nuclear weapons justifying it with the fact that all
the financial investment into the bomb has to pay off eventually: ‘Billions have
been spent upon this Bomb which appears to have no other destiny but to be
held up and shaken threateningly, or, from time to time, to provide pictures for
our illustrated papers.’150 The British government, in addition, orders ‘the Royal
Navy, partly in deference to public feeling, but probably more for reasons of
prestige, [to send] down a bomb’151 after the first explorations of the deep-sea
areas end fatally. In all these cases, the detonation of nuclear bombs does nothing
to improve the situation but further escalates it. Hence, The Kraken Wakes implies
that atomic weapons are not a means to ease or end Cold War hostilities.
This makes The Kraken Wakes a general critique and a warning of 1950s
world politics. Wyndham’s novel recognizes the capacity for disaster inherent
in the combination of Cold War thinking and paranoia with nuclear weapons.
While fears of communist invasion might be subliminally addressed, the alien
invasion mainly serves as a backdrop against which the possibility of Cold War
catastrophe is projected. In this way, the dysfunctionality of Cold War strategy
is doubly shown. First, Cold War paradigms fail in the conflict with the aliens,
thus killing the great majority of the world’s population. Second, the logics of
the Cold War dramatically increase tensions between East and West, equally
putting humankind at risk. In times of the atomic bomb especially, the escalation
of international (or interplanetary) suspicion and conflict is shown to reach a
dimension bordering on the apocalyptic.
Case study: The Tide Went Out
Charles Eric Maine’s novel The Tide Went Out (1959) takes up popular anxieties
surrounding the dangers of nuclear bomb testing as a starting point to
investigate the sinfulness of human nature and the decline of Britain. A series of
Anglo-American H-bomb tests under the code name Operation Nutcracker has
accidentally led to fractures in the Pacific Ocean’s seabed. Seismic disturbances
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across the globe are the immediate consequence. Moreover, the ocean’s water
pours through the cracks into the subterranean cavities. Over time, all the oceans
and seas are to run dry. The corollary is a severe change in climate because
there is no longer enough moisture available to form rain clouds. Therefore, the
only water resources still accessible to mankind are the icy Polar Regions. The
majority of humankind, those people who cannot make it to either the Arctic or
Antarctic, is bound to die.
The main character of the novel is Philip Wade, a journalist who works for
the weekly magazine Outlook, which is based in London. Wade is married to
Janet; they have a son called David. The marriage has not been happy, especially
after Wade had a short affair with another woman. This is why Wade, who also
has an alcohol problem, prefers spending time and flirting with fellow Outlook
writer Shirley. The story begins with Wade finding out that the government
has prevented the publication of his article on the Nutcracker tests. Soon, it
becomes evident that the nuclear tests have caused devastating damage;
earthquakes in London and all over the world are proof of that. With the help
of Outlook’s owner Stenninger, Wade gets a job with the International Bureau
of Information (I.B.I.), a new government department. There, he edits and
manufactures news to boost the public’s morale in times of crisis. Officially, the
government works on a design to pump water from the Polar Regions to Britain.
In case this plan is not successful, the government’s secret emergency plan is to
evacuate a selected group of people to the Arctic where a camp is being set up
to ensure the survival of the human race.
When supplies come to an end and the populace begins to grasp the gravity
and hopelessness of the situation, law and order start to break down in and
outside London. Moreover, Britain faces invasion from across the—now dry—
English Channel as there is general mass migration towards the poles. In stark
contrast, Wade as a government employee is privileged to live in a security
sector in London, provided with comfortable housing and a plenitude of food.
Moreover, his family, Janet and David, are sent ahead to the government camp
in the Arctic. He stays behind to continue feeding the public with propaganda,
so that a minimum level of order is guaranteed, and is due to follow them with
one of the final air lifts. After he fails to make progress with his love interest
Shirley, Wade indulges in an affair with his colleague Sue.
When a fire breaks out in London, the situation becomes increasingly serious.
Wade and Sue take a helicopter to survey the scene but break down outside the
security perimeter. Sue dies and Wade, after murdering several people, makes
it back to the government zone where, to his horror, everybody has already
left. He travels to the airfield from which the government aeroplanes start for
the Arctic. The last aeroplane is ready for take-off yet government employees
and military soldiers fight over the remaining seats. Wade outwits everybody
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and, after killing the people who stand in his way, takes sole possession of the
aeroplane and takes off for the Arctic. During the flight, the government camp’s
defensive units shoot him down. Years later, Wade’s wife Janet leads her son to
believe that Wade stayed behind in London to serve the people and died a good
and honourable man.
The H-bomb tests in The Tide Went Out echo and extrapolate anxieties about
nuclear testing in the 1950s in order to warn of the nuclear bomb. Most notably,
this is done by references to Western nuclear tests on the whole and the fatal
Operation Castle H-bomb tests in the Bikini atoll in 1954 in particular. Operation
Nutcracker generally shares the characteristics of the nuclear test series carried
out by the West in that it has a similar name and location. The fictional test
series Operation Nutcracker in The Tide Went Out follows the naming of the
American and British test series in the 1950s that almost all started with the
word ‘Operation’. Moreover, Operation Nutcracker takes place ‘in the [fictional]
Kaluiki group of islands in the South Pacific’,152 thus in the vicinity of where the
Americans and the British conducted their tests. More specifically, the dangers
of nuclear testing are emphasized by alluding to the Operation Castle Bravo Test.
Like the Castle Bravo Test at the time, Operation Nutcracker is considered to be
‘the biggest man-made explosion of all time’.153 Furthermore, radioactive fallout
spreads beyond expectations and is ‘detected in the most improbable zones of
the world.’154 Clearly, poetic licence here amplifies the problem and the popular
anxiety about nuclear fallout. Nevertheless, the analogy remains intact due to
the fact that the H-bomb fallout in The Tide Went Out is also discovered much
further away than originally thought possible. In addition, as with the tests in
the bikini atoll, it is Japanese people who accidentally become the first casualties
of the Nutcracker test. In contrast to the events of 1954, the fallout has no
further effects on the planet’s population. Yet instead, the H-bomb test series
results in ‘recurrent earth tremors in the Pacific and the Far East’, leading to the
devastation of ‘smaller towns in the Japanese islands’.155
Apart from the allusions to actual H-bomb tests, The Tide Went Out adopts
popular anxieties about nuclear tests unfounded in reality. This becomes clear
when looking at the central dilemma of the story, the fracture of the Pacific
Ocean’s seabed and the accompanying earthquakes as results of the nuclear
tests. It seemed feasible at the time that the immense power of nuclear test
bombs could affect the geology of the planet and thus trigger earthquakes and
other natural catastrophes. This cataclysmic potential presents nuclear testing as
being just as dangerous as nuclear war.
Even though the testing of atomic bombs brings about the destruction of
the planet’s geology, scientists and nuclear power are not depicted in strictly
negative terms. Admittedly, when Wade happens to go to a church service,
the priest calls attention to the fact that hydrogen bombs are ‘designed for one
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specific purpose—destruction.’156 Therefore, he calls the hydrogen bombs ‘the
ultimate evil’157 because they turn against God’s creation. The role of science as
a whole, however, is more ambivalent in The Tide Went Out. It is the scientists who
provide the survivor’s camp in the arctic with the ‘warmth of atomic heating.’158
Neither scientists nor atomic power are assessed in negative terms here but are
considered to be essential for survival. Wade’s thoughts succinctly express the
ambivalence of scientists and atomic power in The Tide Went Out: ‘Those who
have the power to destroy also have the power to create.’159 Hence, it is not
science in itself that is essentially bad. Rather, the decision-makers, who abuse
science, are responsible for destruction and disaster.
For that reason, The Tide Went Out characterizes politicians and the government
in negative terms. In his sermon, the priest criticizes both groups as he regards
the responsibility for the cataclysm to lie with the scientists and the politicians.160
They invented the bomb and had it tested. Whereas the scientists seem to serve
the public good after the nuclear tests go fatally wrong, the politicians, who
are supposed to act on behalf of the people, pursue selfish motives, primarily
that of their own survival. The government establishes both the Arctic camp
and the government zone in London to help an elite caste of politicians, their
relatives, and their friends to survive. The general population is left to die.
Controlling the people through propaganda and rationing is ‘not for their
[the people’s] benefit—it’s for ours [the government employees]. It’s a ruthless
rearguard action to keep the peace while the privileged ones pull out.’161 Thus,
when London finally perishes in flames, disease and death, the top-ranking
government officials have already long been evacuated. The unethical dimension
of this course of action is unmistakable in Colonel Brindle’s comment as he
destroys all evidence of the government’s activities. Brindle, who is to profit
from the government’s plan himself, compares the fate of the British people
with that of ‘the million Jews that Hitler destroyed in the gas chambers and
ovens of his concentration camps.’162 By likening the government’s doings to
one of the biggest atrocities in human history, Brindle passes direct judgement
on the political class.
Yet it is not only government officials who lose their humanity. All of mankind
adopts an immoral attitude. This becomes especially noticeable when human
behaviour is no longer restricted by values imposed by civilization. As soon as
society is collapsing in The Tide Went Out, humanity reverts to natural law, ‘to the
law of the survival of the fittest.’163 The rule of law is lost and replaced by the rule
of the strongest. As a result, the ‘niceties of social relationships are as dead as a
dodo’164 and thus gone forever. In this Social Darwinist world, humankind can
no more be distinguished from ‘desperate beasts’.165 In pursuing survival and
personal pleasure, the people of London commit the ultimate sins when they
‘rape’, ‘murder’ and practice ‘cannibalism’.166
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The population’s relapse into barbarism is often part of apocalyptic fiction’s
generic code and thus could be dismissed as genre convention; yet the emphasis
on the immorality of humanity in The Tide Went Out is reinforced by the behaviour
of the novel’s main character Wade. In the majority of apocalyptic fiction, the
main character serves as a moral authority, maintaining the ethical standards of
civilization. This is different in The Tide Went Out. Wade is as selfish and immoral
as the rest of the population. The novel hints at this even before the breakdown
of society occurs. From the beginning, he is deceptive in both his professional
and his private life. He has given up on the ‘integrity of true journalism’ and is
more than willing to add ‘a little dirt, a little distortion’167 to his articles just like
everybody else does to get ahead in the business. As a husband, he has betrayed
his wife by having had a secret ‘affair with another woman’168 merely to indulge
in sexual pleasure.
For Wade, other people are there to be exploited with no regard for their
feelings. This becomes especially clear in Wade’s relationship with Shirley.
Throughout the novel, Wade turns to Shirley whenever she is of use to him
but never considers or respects her perspective. On one occasion, he himself
admits: ‘I didn’t think of you at all, and I didn’t attempt to look at things from
your point of view.’169 At the beginning of the novel, Shirley is good enough
for some flirting and kissing. Later, she is convenient for Wade because she can
fulfil his sexual needs. He visits Shirley for the simple fact that ‘she was a woman
and, even more important, because she would be available at short notice.’170 He
obviously does not appreciate her as a person. When Wade starts an affair with
Sue, Shirley becomes redundant and he decides ‘never to think of her again.’171
However, after Sue dies in the London fire and Wade is desperate for food and
lodging, he heads for Shirley’s home once more.
Eventually, Wade’s immoral behaviour comes to a climax when he struggles
for survival in a world without rules. In order to reach the Arctic, he betrays
several people’s trust, scorns the rules of war, and, most crucially, kills a
number of people in cold blood. Wade’s motto of ‘every man for himself’ is
not only evident in his deeds but also in his thoughts. In several free direct
thought passages, he refers to himself as ‘brother’.172 It is only himself and his
own survival that matter to him because he believes that the ‘world survives
so long as you survive.’173 Other people, in contrast, are reduced to their role as
‘enemies’174 which he has to eliminate in order to survive.
The description of Wade, the government officials and the British populace
as egoistic, immoral beings indicates a negative perspective on humanity.
Human beings are essentially not designed for peaceful cooperation but for
fierce and brutal competition. In other words, humans are savages and thus
prone to aggressiveness and (self-)destruction. As shown, this is evident in
the portrayal of apocalyptic London in The Tide Went Out. It is, on a grand
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scale, also palpable in the nuclear arms race between the Western powers
and the Soviet Union which is the reason behind the nuclear tests and
consequently responsible for the apocalyptic disaster.175 Atomic weapons are
simply the most advanced means for humankind’s capacity to murder and
destroy itself.
In adopting the view of human beings as savages, The Tide Went Out follows
the perspective of contemporary literary intellectuals in Britain such as William
Golding. Their idea of universal savagery in human beings—‘the savage
within’176 —replaced the traditional conception of colonial Third-World people
as savages.177 Next to the detonation of ‘the atomic bomb and the general success
of science’, it was also the experience of the Second World War and of Nazi
cruelty that undermined the Western ‘claim to superior rationality and general
culture’.178 This connection between savage behaviour and the Nazi slaughter is,
as pointed out, also made in The Tide Went Out as well when Brindle compares
the activities of the British government to that of Hitler. Therefore, The Tide
Went Out not only reflects upon the nuclear arms race of the 1950s but also takes
a critical look at the Second World War.
The novel alludes to the Second World War several times. A number of
characters, for example, talk about what they did in the war. Wade ‘flew a
helicopter a few times in the final year of the war.’179 One of the soldiers who
helps Wade to capture the government aeroplane was ‘a sniper in the last war’.180
While these references to the Second World War are rather general, there are
some specific allusions to the Blitz which resonates in the descriptions of the
London earthquakes. When the first earthquake hits London, the city is described
as looking ‘like the victim of an air raid’.181 The comparison is taken up again
after another earthquake has shaken London even more devastatingly: ‘Oxford
street in London resembled the aftermath of an air raid’.182 The references to
the Blitz are particularly striking when related to the myth of the Blitz and the
savage behaviour of the London population.
The myth of the Blitz was created during wartime and was further popularized
after the war by social researcher Richard Titmuss.183 According to the myth, the
British people ‘became united as never before [in reaction to the air raids], with
a strong bond of equality of sacrifice. Presiding over this new national spirit
was a benevolent government that provided inspirational leadership’.184 As the
term ‘myth’ already suggests, the myth of the Blitz did not correspond with
reality but was ‘constructed during the war for patriotic purposes.’185 Instead of
‘unity of purpose, high moral, calmness and valiant struggle’,186 people followed
their own law, often disregarding the codes of civilization. The British troops
looted ‘what they required from the locals’187 and ‘there were a large number of
shootings of “suspicious” characters, many of whom had done nothing worse
than possess fair hair’.188 Moreover, previously existing class divisions did not
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change through the war but were sustained and increased during the period of
the Blitz:
As members of the establishment were able to take refuge in country houses, in comfort
and out of the way of the bombs, or in expensive basement clubs in the city, the lowermiddle and working classes were forced to stay in the cities and face up to the deadly
raids with inadequate provision for shelter.189
Noticeably, this discrepancy between actual behaviour and mythical is a major
theme in The Tide Went Out.
The novel deconstructs the myth of the Blitz and its creation in that it shows
the true and cruel behaviour of the London citizens. The majority of the British
people do not show solidarity but perceive each other as bitter enemies.190 The
government is malevolent towards its people and only protective of its own
interests. And just as during the Blitz, the privileged classes, i.e. mainly the
government officials in The Tide Went Out, have superior chances of survival.
The novel also unveils the creation of the myth of the Blitz. The government in
The Tide Went Out feeds the London population with the same kind of propaganda
that established the myth of the Blitz, thus providing ‘morale boosting’191 in
similar fashion. For instance, the number one hit on the radio, promoted by the
government, ‘is a thing called “Shoulder to Shoulder”—all about how we are all
brothers and sisters in arms, facing whatever may come with cheerfulness and
optimism.’192 Ironically, Wade hears about this song just after he has been attacked
and beaten up by a group of street toughs which marks ‘the beginning [..] of
incipient chaotic anarchy.’193 The song’s propagandistic message clearly counters
and negates the actual events like the myth of the Blitz counters and negates the
true behaviour of the people in Second World War London. The myth serves to
re-establish the good in humanity. This becomes visible in the novel’s ending.
Wade’s son David is ‘satisfied’ that his father, ‘a fine man’, stayed behind to
help people rather than fighting ‘everyone’ and stealing ‘an aeroplane’,194 actions
David initially suggests for what his father should have done. Janet’s lie, then,
is supposed to point her son to a future in which human beings are no longer
savages but restored to selfless, moral creatures once again.
Moreover, the decline of British moral strength can be seen in correspondence
with the decline of Britain as a nation. When the seabed runs dry, Britain loses
its economic strength and its militarily superior position. Most significantly, the
British economy, ‘which depends so much on imports’,195 collapses as a result of
the end of maritime trade. Britain finds itself cut off from global commerce as
‘most of the ports and harbors of the world are going to be useless’ and shipping
is ‘paralyzed’.196 Immediately, there is a shortage of ‘grain, timber, newsprint,
meat, metals, raw material of all kinds’,197 emphasizing the British reliance on
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trade and its helplessness in the future. In the long run, all commercial activities,
even those of the industrial businesses, the backbone of British economic
strength, suffer severely and break down: ‘The critical shortage of fuel oil and
petrol, and the closing of export markets coupled with the complete cessation
of imports, spread like leprosy throughout the factories of the countries.’198 In
addition, Britain, which is no longer surrounded and thus no longer protected
by water, is susceptible to invasion from the Continent. Only shortly after
the English Channel has become dry and Britain has ceased to be an island,
Wade observes a ‘battle between the invaders from across the Channel and the
coastal defenders.’199 The collapse of Britain, not only from within but also from
without, seems inevitable.
The decline of the British economy and the threat of invasion in The Tide Went
Out clearly mirror the situation in 1950s Britain. Politically and economically,
Britain had lost its dominant position in the world. The economic and political
decline is strongly echoed in the reference to the ‘Suez Canal’ which becomes
‘impassable’200 in the early stages of the water drought. The loss of the strategic
gateway during the Suez crisis epitomized both Britain’s political and its
economic decline at the time. Besides, with the development of long-distance
missiles, Britain had become vulnerable to attacks. In this context, the end of
Britain as an island in The Tide Went Out as a consequence of the detonation of
nuclear bombs appears to be deeply symbolic. Britain’s insular location, which
for centuries worked to protect the British against invasion, no longer provided
any security against nuclear attacks and was thus irrelevant. The Tide Went Out,
like many other examples of British apocalyptic fiction of the time, conceives
the development and employment of nuclear weapons and missiles as a threat
to Britain’s future. It would be hasty and too simplistic to disregard this as
a similar scepticism towards science as can be found in the interwar period.
British apocalyptic fiction in the 1950s presents a more complex case. Suspicion
towards the government and a pessimistic image of humanity in general are just
as vital in fuelling fears about the end of Britain and an impending apocalypse.
*
The formation of a bipolar world in the aftermath of the first atomic bomb
detonations defines post-Second World War apocalyptic discourse. Unlike the
end-of-the-world stories of the interwar period, Cold War apocalyptic fiction
does not reimagine the horrors of the past but looks fearfully ahead to impending
horrors of a nuclear holocaust. Nevertheless, it also continues and refines themes
from the previous era of apocalyptic war: International military conflict is shown
to have the potential to take on cataclysmic dimensions beyond recovery. In an
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escalating hot Cold War, the difference is that the bomb as the instrument of
doom is simply a technologically more advanced and more harmful version of
First World War poison gas. It is surprising in this context then that Cold War
end-of-the-world fiction does not wholly condemn science and its application.
Rather than science, which is viewed in fairly neutral terms, it is humanity and
its flawed disposition that is blamed for the fate of civilization and its downfall.
A number of stories reflect upon the savage nature of humankind even more
drastically and pronouncedly than during the interwar period. The Second
World War and the Holocaust had proven of what humanity, at its very worst, is
capable. In addition, there is also a second, politically motivated dimension to
British apocalyptic fiction of the Cold War period. Many of the novels and films
serve as a vehicle for Western anti-Soviet propaganda, echoing chauvinistic
tendencies of apocalyptic fiction from the New Imperialist era. This time,
though, Britain, no longer the stand-alone world power of the past, finds itself
as one of several members of a US-led Western alliance.
Ch ap ter 5
Eco-doom
The environmental movement in Britain
and the world
During the years of détente, the discourse on apocalypse centred on fears of
ecological catastrophe. New Environmentalism, the environmental movement
that seized Britain and the world in the late 1960s and that lasted up to the mid1970s, was initially closely connected to the threats of the nuclear age. There had
been a general awareness of the potential dangers of nuclear testing for a civilian
public and the environment ever since the nuclear fallout of the Castle Bravo
hydrogen bomb test in the Pacific had accidentally contaminated several hundred
people and killed a Japanese fisherman. Therefore, when nuclear tests increased
in great numbers towards the end of the 1950s, poisonous fallout became the
‘first truly global environmental issue’.1 The controversy over nuclear fallout also
established a scepticism towards technology, a major theme later to be taken
up by the ecological movement: ‘[T]he fallout question undoubtedly alerted
many people to the idea that technology could cause unlimited environmental
contamination and that everyone could be affected’.2 The strong link between
early ecological concerns surrounding nuclear fallout and the later emerging
environmental movement is also apparent in the advent of the publication
Nuclear Information which originated as a mimeographed sheet published by the
St. Louis Committee for Nuclear Information. Nuclear Information started out in
1958 by investigating the consequences of radioactive fallout, for example in the
Baby Tooth Survey. Yet, over the next ten years, the publication eventually took
on the name Environment, to reflect ‘more accurately [..] the magazine’s expanding
reach’3 beyond nuclear pollution. This development, from ecological concerns
over radioactive fallout to a broad environmental movement, was strongly
advanced by the publication of the non-fiction bestseller Silent Spring.
American biologist Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) propelled the debate
about humankind’s careless and arrogant treatment of the ecosystem to new
dimensions.4 In fact, the book is ‘frequently credited as signifying the beginning
of the environmental revolution’.5 In Silent Spring, Carson pointed towards the
dangers that chemical pesticides and insecticides posed for the ecological system.
She showed that ‘the use of such pesticides as DDT threatened ecocatastrophe
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because non-biodegradable organic compounds accumulated in the tissues of
higher animals’.6 Birds especially but also other wildlife and human beings
would be seriously harmed by this.
Because of the book’s enormous success, environmental concerns unrelated
to nuclear fears entered the public and political debate. Silent Spring was at the
top of the prestigious New York Times bestseller list for non-fictional books
in October 1962 and stayed in the top ten for over 30 weeks.7 Originally
published only in the United States, Silent Spring quickly reached an international
readership. It was published in 15 countries in 1963,8 one of which was Britain,
where Silent Spring came out in February of that year.9 The popularity of the
book ultimately had a major effect on readers and politicians: ‘Silent Spring can
be implicated in instigating changes in local and national government policy
in the United States […] and several European countries (e.g. Britain, Sweden,
Denmark, and Hungary).’10 Most importantly, it led to the complete ban of DTT
in the United States in 1972.
Apart from this, Silent Spring established the discourse of man-made ecological
catastrophe and thus ‘inaugurate[d] the literature of ecological apocalypse.’11
In the book’s opening chapter, ‘A Fable for Tomorrow’, Carson employs an
‘apocalyptic narrative’ to ‘extract a warning’12 against ecological pollution. A
once lively and thriving town is completely deserted by humanity after all its
animals and plants have died because of pesticide pollution:
The roadsides, once so attractive, were now lined with browned and withered vegetation
as though swept by fire. These, too, were silent, deserted by all living things. Even the
streams were now lifeless. Anglers no longer visited them, for all the fish had died.13
The reference to ‘a white granular powder’,14 which is the cause behind the
disaster, evokes the dangers of nuclear fallout and illustrates the grave threat
posed by chemicals.
The shift in the apocalyptic discourse away from nuclear fears towards
environmental catastrophe is also apparent in a Punch cartoon from 1964 that
characterizes pesticides rather than nuclear weapons as the new agents of
doom (Figure 11). In the cartoon, Nikita Khrushchev is prepared to extinguish
Chinese weeds in his garden with the help of giant pesticide equipment. The
pesticide’s name, ‘Doomsday’, foregrounds the apocalyptic potential of the
chemical. Moreover, the Soviets now rely on pesticides, not nuclear weapons, to
fight the West. This is at least what is suggested by the ‘Westicide’ container in
the background of the drawing.
A few years after the publication of Silent Spring, towards the end of the 1960s
and into the 1970s, a number of environmental disasters increased public
awareness in environmentalism. These highly publicized incidents ‘had the
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effect of catalyzing environmental fears.’15 In 1967, the Torrey Canyon super
tanker sank off the coast of Cornwall. Almost 120 million tonnes of oil leaked
into the English Channel, making it ‘the biggest oil spill ever’16 at the time.
Furthermore, in a desperate attempt to remedy the disaster, huge amounts of
chemical dispersants were sprayed, damaging the environment even more.17 In
the US, the Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969 caused 4 million gallons of oil to
pollute the west coast after a blowout on a Union Oil platform. In addition,
there were a great number of minor pollution events in the US: ‘Altogether, an
Figure 11: Khrushchev sprays the Chinese weeds with a lethal pesticide. Cartoon by Norman
Mansbridge. Punch, 23 September 1964.
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estimated 10,000 spills of oil and other hazardous material annually polluted
the navigable waters of the United States during the late 1960s.’18 Industrial
pollution at Minimata and Niigata in Japan in the late 1950s and throughout the
1960s is testament to the global scale of environmental contamination incidents.
Chemical factories discharged small amounts of an organic mercury compound
into the adjacent rivers. The mercury accumulated in food fish which, when
eaten, poisoned the local population. The Minimata Disease attacked the
central nervous system of those people poisoned and subsequently killed,
according to the Environmental Agency of the Japanese government, more than
2,900 people.19
With the media starting to pay more attention to environmental issues, the
accumulation and severe consequences of these disasters fuelled the foundation
of environmental campaigns. Up to the mid-1960s, ‘questions of pollution and
conservation were not newsworthy.’20 However, with environmental disasters
making the news and giving environmentalism a public stage, reports on
‘environmental issues in the Times increased by 281 percent between 1965 and
1973’.21 As a result of the increase in environmental news coverage, more and more
people ‘were sensitized to the potential costs of careless economic development
and now lent growing support to a series of local and national environmental
campaigns, which [themselves] were often given wide media attention.’22 The
formation and success of Friends of the Earth (1969) and Greenpeace (1971)
exemplifies the growing interest in environmental campaigning. In Britain, the
Conservation Society was formed in 1966 and a British branch of Friends of the
Earth was founded in 1970. Friends of the Earth especially attracted wide public
interest: ‘FOE activists embarked in high-publicity campaigns to mobilize the
media in support of its demands’.23
The positive reception of these campaigns led to memorial days and international
conference the initiation of which was favoured by the political climate of
the 1960s.24 The anti-war movement and the civil rights movement created ‘a new
climate of heightened public activism from which environmentalism benefited.’25
This was particularly true because ‘activists turned to the environment at the end
of the 1960s as the civil rights and antiwar movement lost momentum.’26 The
activists’ endeavours eventually culminated in the first Earth Day. On April 22,
1970, over 20 million people peacefully demonstrated in the US against the
deterioration of the environment, ‘kicking off […] the “Environmental Decade”
of radical legislative reforms.’27 As a result, the 1970s saw the implementation of
various significant changes in environmental US law.28 In Britain, the Deposit
of Poisonous Waste Act was introduced in 1972, as a result of the Conservation
Society’s ‘exposure of cyanide dumping in Warwickshire’,29 and the Pollution Act
became law in 1972. On the global political level, the process of ecological
reflection and reform gave way to the UNESCO Biosphere Conference in Paris
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in 1968 and, even more crucially, the UN Conference on the Human Environment
in Stockholm in 1972. The Stockholm Conference ‘was the single most influential
event in the evolution of the international environmental movement.’30 The
introduction of an international convention on marine dumping was realized,
the installation of a global environmental monitoring system (Earthwatch) and
the creation of the UN Environment Programme were amongst its results.
Undoubtedly, Stockholm hugely benefited from the fact that it ‘occurred at a time
when environmental concern was at its highest point since the century began’.31
Environmental concerns voiced as part of the Stockholm Conference were
also related to the publication of a number of (popular scientific) books written
between 1968 and 1972. These books dealt with limited resources and pollution
and made bleak predictions for the fate of the Earth, often describing a possible
future in apocalyptic terms. The first central publication from these ‘prophets
of doom’32 was Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb (1968). Ehrlich, an American
biologist, warned of overpopulation of the Earth, suggesting that there would
not be enough earthly resources to support an ever increasing population in
the future. The resulting conflicts over supplies would inevitably lead to major
conflicts and global catastrophe. The Population Bomb ‘became one of the bestselling environmental books of all time, with three million copies in paperback by
the mid-1970s.’33 While Ehrlich did not directly address humanity’s abuse of the
environment, he was the first to confront a wide audience with the finite nature
of environmental resources. In The Closing Circle (1971), US environmentalist
Barry Commoner focused more strongly on the ecological damage inflicted on
the environment:
It was not so much that more goods were being consumed, but that their production
and disposal were more costly in environmental terms. […] He emphasized that some
of the most dangerous environmental perils were those that could not be seen, notably
air, food, and water contaminated by polluting substances.34
Commoner blamed multi-national corporations for environmental pollution
because he saw them ‘as responsible for forcing unwanted and unnecessary
technology down people’s throats.’35 Commoner’s views are effectively reflected
on the title page of an issue of TIME magazine from 1970 that shows the
contrast between an idealized healthy environment and a desolate polluted urban
environment.36 The dystopian right-hand side, emphasized by the reverse print,
hints at the harmful consequences of unhealthy industrial technology: smoking
factory chimneys (air), endangered bird species (food), and polluted seas (water).
The caption of the title page, ‘The Emerging Science of Survival’, underlines the
apocalyptic dimension the environmental threat is given. The apocalyptic ideas
voiced by Commoner became part of British public discourse, for example in
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Michael Cummings’ cartoon for the Daily Express in 1969 (Figure 12). The cartoon
shows three aliens visiting a ruined Earth void of people. Several signs indicate
that environmental catastrophes have devastated the planet. The warnings on
the signs reflect Commoner’s concern over contaminated air, food, and water.
Another influential publication was The Limits to Growth (1972), a report
commissioned by the global think tank Club of Rome. The authors of
The Limits to Growth ‘prophesied imminent global catastrophe’37 due to ecological
damage. They argued that ‘the roots of environmental crisis lay in exponential
growth. Catastrophe was inevitable by the end of the century, brought on by
the exhaustion of resources and rising death rates from pollution and food
shortages.’38 The Limits to Growth was received well, selling four million copies by
the late 1970s and thus becoming the ‘best popularly known book on ecology
since Silent Spring’.39 Considering that British environmentalism was ‘influenced
by important U.S. authors of the 1960s, such as Rachel Carson, Paul Ehrlich,
Barry Commoner’,40 the success of these American environmentalist books
paved the way for two significant British publications in the early 1970s.
In Britain, A Blueprint for Survival by Edward Goldsmith and Robert Allen
(1972) and E. F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful (1973) familiarized a general
Figure 12: Aliens land on a poisoned and polluted planet Earth. Cartoon by Michael Cummings/
Express Newspapers. Daily Express, 10 November 1969: ‘So it wasn‘t the H-bomb that finished
off the Earth people, after all!’
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public with ideas of ecological doom. Timothy O’Riordan notes that ‘both
publications were tremendously influential because they appeared during the
heyday of environmental scare publicity and popular interest in environmentalism
generally’.41 A Blueprint for Survival claimed that ‘[p]opulation growth and
resource consumption necessitated radical changes in attitudes and practices’.42
In calling for reform on the social, political, and economic level and also in
‘its message of doom’,43 A Blueprint for Survival echoed the position of British ecoactivists and struck a note with publishers and the public: ‘The Blueprint received
a remarkable amount of attention. The special Blueprint issue of the Ecologist sold
out immediately, was published by Tom Stacey, and then picked up by Penguin’.44
One year after A Blueprint for Survival, E. F. Schumacher also criticized Western
lifestyle in what became ‘[o]ne of the most important texts in the early Green
movement in Britain’45 and a bestseller: Small is Beautiful (1974). Like A Blueprint
for Survival, Small is Beautiful represented a more comprehensive attack on the
ideals of Western culture. First and foremost, Schumacher ‘criticized the waste
and squandering of resources and the over-reliance of Western industry on
capital- and energy-intensive technology.’46 This kind of existence, he argued,
would lead to an energy crisis which could ‘threaten the survival of industrial
civilization’ and, even more fatal, an environmental crisis which would ‘destroy
the very earth’.47 Non-fiction books like G. R. Taylor’s The Doomsday Book (1971)
supported such alarmist predictions which were then heavily criticized in a
number of publications, for example in The Doomsday Syndrome (1972) by John
Maddox or Thomas R. Shepard jr.’s The Doomsday Lobby (1973). This further
amplified the pervasion of apocalyptic environmental catastrophe discourse in
British culture.
The height of this phase of environmental awareness and anxiety lasted from
the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. Afterwards, Western culture adopted a more
moderate perspective on environmental issues. As a result, the public, to some
extent, lost interest in environmentalism and ecological Armageddon for some
years to come. Environmental organization membership and decreasing media
interest provide evidence for this. The number of members of the Conservation
Society, for example, peaked in 1973–1974 but decreased afterwards.48 Press
coverage and public awareness of environmental issues generally ‘dropped
dramatically after 1975, during the era of economic recession, rising
unemployment, and severe labor unrest’.49 This does not mean that the ecological
movement came to an end in the second half of the 1970s. The renaming of the
British party PEOPLE to Ecological Party in 1975, for instance, contradicts this
conclusion. More accurately, ‘environmentalism gradually became tempered by
a less emotional and more carefully considered response to the problems of the
environment.’50 This meant that the time of publically dreaded eco-doom was
over for the time being.
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Apocalyptic fiction 1965–1973
From natural catastrophe to environmental fiction
Even though environmental cataclysms started to feature regularly in British
disaster fiction at the beginning of the 1960s, this group of novels did not mark
the beginning of the apocalyptic eco-doom period. In environmental fiction, the
‘crisis exists in the foreground, invariably providing the basis for the plot rather
than merely its setting’.51 This is not the case, for example, for the apocalyptic
novels of John Christopher. None of these stories are truly concerned with
the ecology of the planet. The environmental catastrophe mainly serves as a
backdrop for existentialist adventures and survivalist struggle. In The World
in Winter (1962), a new ice age begins when the sun, for no apparent reason, loses
its power due to a decrease in solar radiation. In A Wrinkle in the Skin (1965),
a series of unexplained massive earthquakes terrifies the British population
and geologically changes the British Isles beyond recognition. Therefore, these
two tales are not much different from other, earlier stories which also featured
environmental catastrophe: ‘In the early twentieth century literary images of
worldwide disaster were commonplace, but they almost invariably laid the blame
on agents external to human society.’52
Most of J. G. Ballard’s apocalyptic novels of the 1960s do not deal with ecological
anxiety either. This is true despite the fact that they envision ‘various forms
of ecological calamity.’53 His writing debut The Wind from Nowhere (1961) takes
after Christopher’s novels in that the environmental apocalyptic threat serves
more as scenery than theme. It features a mysterious wind current which, when
becoming increasingly faster, threatens humanity. The Drowned World (1962),54
The Drought (1965), and The Crystal World (1966) are rooted in the tradition of
New Wave SF.55 The English New Wave ‘defined the turn from muscular
adventures in outer space to psychological examination of inner space’.56 Ballard
and his New Wave contemporaries primarily use apocalyptic imagery to reflect
upon psychological states of mind. The environmental catastrophe becomes ‘an
external projection of a deranged inner landscape.’57 The same is true for Anna
Kavan’s Ice (1967), a novel in which the extremely cold climate is descriptive
of the main character’s mental state. As writers of avant-garde science fiction,
Ballard and Kavan were not attempting to reflect upon contemporary public
discourses of ecological anxiety. Only in The Drought does Ballard introduce the
problem of pollution to rationalize the permanent aridity in the narrative.58
When public fears of environmental disaster more strongly emerged in the
course of the 1960s, British apocalyptic fiction eventually started to address
the realities and dangers of ecological catastrophe in earnest. In fact, ‘many
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genre SF writers collaborated eagerly in the alarmism of the apocalyptic
ecocatastrophists’.59 Subsequently, this led to a number of science fiction stories
which dealt with ‘the possible disastrous consequences of phenomena such as
pollution and overpopulation.’60 Dystopian stories about overpopulated (city)
spaces were the first to be published: ‘A voluminous outpouring of literature
appeared on the population-resource dilemma in the 1960s’.61 American SF
authors wrote a substantial amount of overpopulation fiction,62 the short story
‘Billennium’ (1962) by J. G. Ballard and John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar (1968)
are the best-known British examples. In ‘Billenium’, the masses are herded into
the cities with a minimum of space to live in so that there is enough land for
farming to feed the ever-growing population. Stand on Zanzibar, through its
title alone, conveys the concept of overpopulation and lack of space, stating
the novel’s central idea that the planet’s entire population could easily fit on
the isle of Zanzibar if only standing upright and shoulder to shoulder. Yet
none of these tales reach apocalyptic dimensions. Eco-doom only became ‘an
important new strand of apocalyptic fiction’63 when environmental abuse and
industrial pollution dominated the public discussion at the beginning of the
1970s. Almost all known examples of environmental apocalyptic fiction were
published during that time. Mutant 59: The Plastic Eaters by Kit Pedler and Gerry
Davis and D. F. Jones’ Don’t Pick the Flowers were published in 1971, Brunner’s
The Sheep Look Up in 1972. The Phaeton Condition by Douglas R. Mason became
available in 1973.
The comparatively small number of titles is explained by the short period of
time during which ecological apocalypse dominated the apocalyptic imagination.
The comparative dearth of environmental apocalyptic fiction is also connected to
general developments in science fiction starting in the 1960s and progressing into
the 1970s. First, the majority of science fiction writers lost interest in cataclysmic
disasters. Instead, ‘the continuing mainstream of commercial sf was distinctly
upbeat, constructing a universe in which technological salvation arrives through
virtuous human efforts.’64 In Britain, it was merely the New Wave writers Ballard
and Brunner whose interest in apocalyptic fiction was unbroken. Secondly, SF
generally was not as prolific during the time of ecological anxiety as in previous
times. In his historical survey of science fiction, Roger Luckhurst states that ‘genre
criticism of the 1970s suspected that SF was on the verge of disappearing.’65
Environmental destruction
Apocalyptic fiction during the time of the ecological movement is preoccupied
with the many ways humankind is harming the environment. Don’t Pick
the Flowers (1971) by D. F. Jones warns of environmental destruction as a
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consequence of mankind’s irresponsible treatment of our planet. Experimental
drilling in the Pacific Ocean accidentally opens up a gas pocket in the Earth’s
mantle from which great amounts of nitrogen escape. The eventual collapse
of the nitrogen pocket triggers a series of tidal waves and earthquakes that
devastate the Pacific coast of the United States. Worse, the emerging nitrogen
has started mixing with the air so that the percentage of oxygen in the air is
expected to ‘be reduced to a point that makes breathing less easy for those of us
with chests and hearts not so good as they once were.’66 At the end of the novel,
this process is still in progress, threatening to make life on Earth impossible.
The novel’s title is an appeal for treating our environment more carefully: ‘Plants
are our only source of oxygen […]; if you’re human, you love plants!’67 The title
may also allude to Flower Power, the cultural peace movement of the late 1960s
and early 1970s. As another countercultural movement, environmentalism was
closely linked to the anti-war movement: ‘In both Britain and the United States,
many of the young supporters of the environmental movement had been
introduced to activism through the experience of other protest campaigns.’68
Thus, the title’s flower is not only a metonymy for nature but also symbolizes
youth and youth culture. Consequently, picking this flower is not only a hazard
to the environment but also a potential danger to the survival of the younger
generation and its ideals.
In The Phaeton Condition (1973) by Douglas R. Mason, industrial pollution and
the consequences of overpopulation on the environment have brought mankind
to the brink of annihilation in the far future. The planet’s condition has become
so poor that ‘all the [environmental] trends will be irreversible’69 within the next
ten years, inevitably threatening to doom mankind. One of the main characters,
the environmentalist campaigner Margaret, describes the ecological dilemma
and the fact that humanity is failing to deal with it:
Population’s climbing back to the nineteen ninety peak, at a faster rate. Pollution levels
are even higher. Do you realize that atmospheric oxygen is being consumed at one
point six times the rate it’s being replaced? Will people wait until they can’t breathe
before they wake up?70
Clearly, this speech’s didacticism and environmental warning is not only targeted
at the novel’s other characters but also at the reader.
Despite the fact that J. G. Ballard’s The Drought (1965) is a psychological New
Wave novel and written some time before the height of environmental panic, it
is also a condemnation of humanity’s careless handling of the Earth’s ecosystem.
The novel’s narrator tells us that industrial pollution is the reason behind the
lack of rain:
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Covering the off-shore waters of the world’s oceans, to a distance of about a thousand
miles from the coast, was a thin but resilient mono-molecular film formed from a
complex of saturated long-chain polymers, generated within the sea from the vast
quantities of industrial wastes discharged into the ocean basins during the previous
fifty years. This tough, oxygen-permeable membrane lay on the air-water surface and
prevented almost all evaporation of surface water into the air space above.71
However, in contrast to conventional environmental apocalyptic fiction, the
disaster in The Drought does more than simply illustrate human mismanagement
of the Earth’s ecology. The apocalyptic landscape also indicates the alienated
state of mind of the main character, Dr Ransom. Thus, when Dr Ransom
‘at last complete[s] his journey across the margins of the inner landscape’,72 a
redeeming rain sets in even though there is no indication that the environmental
circumstances could have changed.
Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis’s Mutant 59: The Plastic Eater (1971) is not about
pollution but about the problem of waste disposal. In the novel, scientific efforts
to cope with the increasing amount of garbage almost lead to an apocalyptic
disaster. Scientist Dr Ainslie has experimented with bacteria that feed on litter.
When he dies unexpectedly, the fifty-ninth variant of this bacterium, which
feeds on plastic, disappears unnoticed in the London sewers. Years later, Kramer
Consultancy develops a dissolvable plastic bottle for a lemonade company.
This is to promote sales by advertising the environmental-friendly aspect of
the product as indicated by the slogan ‘Help your environment, drink Tropic
Delight.’ 73 Ironically, the mutant 59 bacteria in the London sewage system start
to feed on the dissolved plastic bottles and spread and mutate further to eat other
kinds of plastic. As a result, all plastic products malfunction and fall to pieces.
This throws London and eventually parts of the world into chaos ‘as if after a
nuclear holocaust.’ 74 Furthermore, the bacteria pose another threat because the
digestion process of the plastic creates explosive gases. In the end, civilization
is saved only when a scientist creates a plastic that is poisonous for the plastic
eaters. As a consequence of the near-fatal events, the Kramer Consultancy’s
executive board reconsiders its company policy and plans to employ science for
the benefit of mankind rather than financial profit in the future. Hence, science
is presented as a tool that people can use for different purposes, either to help
humankind or to harm it.
Critique of capitalism
In blaming pollution for the ecological collapse, most contemporary environmental apocalyptic fiction often entails a critique of industrialist capitalism.
This is most explicit in Mutant 59: The Plastic Eater in the character of Kramer.
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Kramer, the head of the Kramer Consultancy, is described as having started out
as an idealist scientist who wanted to use science for the good of mankind. In
the course of the novel, however, it becomes clear that his attitude has changed:
‘Every remark, every concept, every speculation was now directed towards a
profit motive.’ 75 To make money, his company invents dissolvable plastic bottles,
ignoring all potential risks. Kramer’s greed leads to chaos and disorder and, in
an instance of poetic justice, to his death. The change in company ideology at
the novel’s end shows that Mutant 59 is not so much a critique of science but a
condemnation of capitalism.
The Phaeton Condition is equally critical of industrial entrepreneurs. A group
of twenty top class industrialists has foreseen the disastrous environmental
developments. However, instead of trying to decrease their companies’
pollution or acting against the ecological catastrophe, their countermeasures
focus on building a large underground sanctuary in East Africa. There,
the twenty businessmen and those they have selected for their ark will be
able ‘to sweat out the holocaust’ 76 while the rest of humanity is destined to
die. Characterized as immoral cowards, they abdicate responsibility for the
destruction of the planet for which they are mainly to be blamed in the first
place.
Case study: The Sheep Look Up
John Brunner’s novel The Sheep Look Up (1972) depicts the apocalyptic
consequences of industrial pollution and places the largest portion of blame on
the establishment of industrial-capitalist societies. The title The Sheep Look Up is
an explicit reference to the pastoral elegy ‘Lycidas’ by John Milton. Hence, the
title establishes the novel’s environmental theme and love for nature while at the
same time warning of, if not lamenting, its demise. Predominantly set in the US,
The Sheep Look Up introduces a substantial number of characters and plotlines to
draw a complex picture of the contemporary ecological problem.
The protagonist of The Sheep Look Up is Austin Train. Train, a scientist who
is modelled on Barry Commoner,77 used to bring the dangers of environmental
pollution to the attention of a mass audience. As a result, he was regarded as the
spokesperson of the ecological movement and thus became an enemy of those
in power. Moreover, a growing group of environmental activists adopted him
as their idol, calling themselves Trainites. Train, however, became dissatisfied
with the fact that both the public and the Trainites did not really listen to his
message but took advantage of his persona for their own purposes. This is why
he disappeared from public view and started working incognito as a garbage
collector. He returns to public life at the end of the novel when he agrees to
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make a public statement in a popular TV talk show. He is then imprisoned for
the kidnapping of Hector Bamberley.
Hector Bamberley belongs to a family of wealthy industrialists. His father,
the tycoon Roland Bamberley, tries to benefit from the ecological misery and
sells water-purifying filters to the people in California. Hector’s uncle Jack
Bamberley is the owner of a hydroponics plant that manufactures the cassava
product Nutripon. Unlike his brother Roland, Jack Bamberly is no longer
primarily interested in profit but runs his factory for charitable purposes. He
places Nutripon at the disposal of Globe Relief, an international organization
that supports developing countries. Yet Bamberley comes under public pressure
when Nutripon is suspected of being some kind of madness-inducing drug.
Deadly riots in San Pablo, Honduras, Noshri, a city in the north of Africa, and
eventually in Denver are apparently caused by the consumption of Nutripon.
Even Bamberley’s wife Maud suspects that he is responsible. After a confrontation
between the two over this matter, Jack Bamberley dies tragically when he eats a
stale candy bar. Earlier in the novel, Jack’s adopted son Hugh voices his disgust
at his father’s capitalist past and leaves home. He first becomes part of a tranquil
Trainite settlement in Colorado. When he becomes unhappy with the Colorado
Trainites’ lack of counter-establishment action, he joins an extremist Trainite
terrorist cell headed by Ossie. Ossie, who is one of many who pretend to be
the missing Austin Train, and Hugh later abduct Hector to blackmail Roland
Bamberley into giving 20,000 water purifiers away for free. After a while, they let
Hector go when they realize that Roland Bamberley will never pay the ransom.
Since Hector is under the impression that he was kidnapped by Austin Train
alias Ossie, Robert Bamberley uses his political power to have the police arrest
the real Austin before the transmission of the disclosing TV show.
The televised trial for Austin’s presumed abduction of Hector Bamberley
makes up the climax of The Sheep Look Up. Hector realizes that the real Austin
Train is not identical to the one who kidnapped him. He admits that his father
Roland wanted to see the real Austin Train guilty and thus bullied Hector into
naming Austin as his kidnapper. Proven innocent, Austin seizes the opportunity
to speak in front of a nationwide TV audience to explain the recent incidents
of mass madness. A military psychomimetic, which was insufficiently disposed
of in a Rocky Mountain silver mine by the US government, mixed with the
groundwater and thereby poisoned Nutripon and the water supply in Denver.
Austin makes a passionate appeal for treating the environment more carefully
and with more respect before it is too late. However, his call remains unheard
outside of the courtroom because the US President has ordered his speech to be
cut off on TV. Moments later, a bomb detonated by Ossie, who was disappointed
by Austin’s silence between the arrest and the trial, blows up the court of law,
killing everybody in it.
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At the end of the novel, another scientist, Dr Grey, points out on another TV
show that the Earth can still be saved if a population of the size of the United
States with the polluting lifestyle of the United States would be exterminated
immediately. Again, the transmission is stopped. The novel remains ambiguous
about whether the US population was wiped out and whether humanity was
saved. The last proper section of the book, ‘The Smoke of that Great Burning’,
indicates that a nationwide civil war must have broken out in the US. Stephen
H. Goldman’s reading implies that this civil war came just in time so save
mankind.78 However, the quotation from ‘Lycidas’, which finally explains the
novel’s title and is the only text of the final chapter ‘Next Year’, weakens this
interpretation:
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,
But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread.79
It strongly indicates that mankind is doomed to extinction as ‘foul and contagion
spread.’
Throughout, The Sheep Look Up reflects upon the various contemporary
anxieties of ecological doom, for example, the potential long-term effects of
pesticides. In the early parts of the book, there are a number of short passages
that relate news and facts related to environmental hazards. In one passage, it is
pointed out that the Californian pelican failed to breed ‘owing to estrogenic effect of
DDT on shell secretion’.80 Ossie also alludes to the insecticides’ poisonousness. He
is appalled when farmers, in reaction to crop failure, irresponsibly request ‘to be
allowed to turn loose all the old poisons, like DDT!’81 Apart from the pesticides’
venomousness, their existence and use is further criticized in The Sheep Look Up.
Because they have been used excessively, lice and fleas have become ‘immune
to insecticides’.82 An even more prominent example is the immunity of jigras,
a local worm in Honduras. Whilst Global Relief workers are investigating the
Guanagua province in Honduras, they find that ‘[t]his area’s been sprayed and
soaked and saturated with insecticides!’83 As a result, the jigras have become
‘resistant to DDT, heptachlor, dieldrin, pyrethrum’.84 Invulnerable, the jigras
are capable of attacking human food plants unchecked which eventually leads
to famines in Honduras and the US.
DDT, the insecticide brought to the fore through Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring,
is especially conspicuous in The Sheep Look Up. The presence of DDT emphasizes
the lasting impact of Silent Spring in the environmental debate, inside and outside
of fiction. In Brunner’s novel, DDT is used to put the environmental dangers
of non-pesticide chemicals in perspective for the reader: ‘Polychlorinated biphenyls:
waste products of the plastics, lubrication and cosmetics industries. Universal distribution
Eco-doom
119
at levels similar to DDT’.85 One reason why DDT serves as a point of reference
rather than a hazard itself is the fact that other environmental dangers are more
prominent in Brunner’s novel.
In The Sheep Look Up, environmental apocalypse is most imminent because
pollution has ruined the terrestrial water resources. Undoubtedly, these problems
of pollution ‘derive from prevailing fears and topics of the 1960s.’86 In the novel,
the oceans, the Mediterranean, the Great Lakes, the Baltic and the Caspian Sea
are all heavily contaminated if not already entirely devastated; industrial pollution
is mainly responsible. The Mediterranean, for instance, has been ‘destroyed by
the filthy wastes from European factories’.87 The Californian coast has been
‘contaminated over generations by lead shot in the water.’88 Moreover, an American plastics
company poured day-to-day ‘half a million gallons of hot and poisoned water into
a river that served eleven cities before it reached the ocean.’89 The consequences
of this behaviour are abominable. The beaches are ‘fouled with oil and sewage,
[…] the water at your sink reeking of chlorine’.90 Aside from industrial pollution,
environmental disasters and careless waste disposal add to the ecological and
human calamities. The Atlantic Ocean was ‘made foul by a hundred and eighty
thousand tons of oil from [a shipwrecked] tanker’.91 Furthermore, the American
government dumped ‘an arsenical compound they invented in the First World
War’92 just off the Florida coast. In consequence, one of the novel’s minor
characters, Nancy Thorne, is poisoned and dies while swimming in the sea.
While all these instances of industrial pollution are only in rare cases directly
responsible for human deaths, they are the underlying cause of the decline of
living conditions and, therefore, the spread of illness and epidemic disease. In this
way, the pollution of the Earth prepares the ground for the apocalypse implied
by the novel’s ending. The increasingly deteriorating living conditions are already
apparent at the beginning of the story. The opening sections of The Sheep Look Up
describe that the air and water quality has become almost unbearable as a result
of pollution. The air is so repugnant that it makes people’s hands become ‘slimy
with the airborne nastiness’.93 They have to ‘cough’ and their eyes begin ‘to water’94
as soon as they go outside. Therefore, most people only venture outside wearing
a filter mask. Similarly, general water conditions are so terrible that clean tap
water, which is only available from water-dispensers, is neither free of charge nor
is it suitable for drinking. One consequence of these appalling conditions is the
recurrent outbreaks of plague: ‘Over the past few weeks thirty-five million people
have been sick for a week or longer. […] And according to HEW we’re going into
a second cycle of the epidemic because we’ve run out of water, we’re having to
re-release it before it’s been completely sterilized.’95 The situation deteriorates to
such a level that the whole of the United States is gripped by a number of endemic
diseases: ‘Brucellosis is the main one, but they have calls for infectious hepatitis,
dysentery, measles, rubella, scarlet fever and something [that] may be typhus.’96
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These plagues threaten humanity as much as when they were first discovered
because many of the diseases have become ‘resistant to antibiotics’.97 As with the
imprudent use of pesticides, the wasteful employment of antibiotics backfires on
the human race. In addition to these known diseases, a ‘new kind of influenza’98
develops and starts to kill off people. While it remains unclear what caused the
emergence of this disease, it is beyond doubt that humankind’s vulnerable state
of health contributes to its proliferation.
By making a causal connection between their actions and the ecological
collapse explicit, The Sheep Look Up blames the Western industrial nations for
the environmental apocalypse. The novel time and again emphasizes that ‘rich
industrial countries were ruining the planet’.99 Among the Western countries,
the USA is singled out as especially liable. The United States’ biggest import is
oxygen as they ‘produce less than sixty per cent of the amount [they] consume.’100
The country’s biggest export, in contrast, is ‘noxious gases’.101 The USA lives
beyond its means at the expense of other countries and in the end at the expense
of the whole planet. This reading is consolidated at the end of the novel. Dr
Grey explains that humanity could be saved if implementing Malthusian logic:
We can just about restore the balance of the ecology, the biosphere, and so on […] if we
exterminate the two hundred million most extravagant and wasteful of our species.102
The figure of two hundred million is not coincidental. It is approximately the
number of American citizens at the time The Sheep Look Up was written.103 The
novel, therefore, suggests that humanity could be saved if it was not for American
ill-treatment of the environment.
The root of the Americans’ misconduct is their capitalist economic system. The
Bamberley brothers serve as representatives of the flawed American way of life.
For many years, Jack and Roland Bamberley have made profits without regarding
the environmental consequences of their actions. This is why Jack’s adopted
son Hugh condemns their behaviour. He uses a graphic but adequate simile to
underline Jack’s and the Americans’ abusive treatment of the Earth: ‘You and your
ancestors treated the world like a fucking great toilet bowl. […] And now it’s full
and overflowing’.104 Moreover, Hugh points out the direct connection between
the Bamberleys’ wealth and the state of the planet. After abducting Hector, he
calls attention to the fact that Roland Bamberley ‘inherited a fortune made by
ruining the earth.’105 Notwithstanding that The Sheep Look Up denounces the USA
as the worst perpetrator, the novel extends its criticism of capitalism to the other
Western nations as well. It is not the US capitalism alone but ‘the greed of Christian
countries’106 in general that causes the pollution and tips the ecological balance.
Their Christian value system has been replaced by a capitalist-commercial value
system that works at the expense and towards the destruction of God’s creation.
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121
Capitalism is also addressed and criticized through the behaviour of a number
of characters in reaction to the impeding ecological doom. Rather than taking
action against the environmental decline, these characters invest their time
and money in finding ways to profit from it. For example, Philip Mason and
Alan Prosser start to sell home water-purifiers in the hope of making ‘a fucking
fortune’.107 Following the same line of thinking, a cabdriver is going to ‘put my
savings into a dry-cleaning business. […] Five minutes of rain, umbrella or no
umbrella, and if you don’t go to the cleaners right away you need a new suit.’108
In both cases, it is short-term greed that drives the ambition to help people cope
with the miserable conditions.
The novel’s critical attitude towards this capitalist exploitation of other
people’s suffering is doubly expressed. On a small scale, the water filters soon
stop fulfilling their function when they become clogged with bacteria so that the
sale of the water purifiers does not end up reaping the desired profit. Attempts
to financially gain from environmental devastation are not only unfeasible but,
in fact, fatal. This is even truer on a bigger scale: With humankind probably
extinct at the conclusion of the novel, all capitalist ambitions have come to a
definitive end.
By attacking the capitalist structure of Western countries, The Sheep Look Up
questions not only the actions of Western industrialists but the future of Western
civilization altogether. The novel ‘radically exposes the decadence […] of Western
society’.109 Brunner’s America, a pars pro toto for the Western world, represents
a battlefield between a fascist establishment and an ever-growing discontented
radical public. With the help of ‘straw dummy [President] Prexy and his cabinet of
mediocrities’,110 the big corporations have turned the United States into a country
where ‘every effort at reform must conform to the capitalist profit motive’.111
Dissenting opinions are no longer wanted or accepted. The environmental
campaigners Professor Quarrey and Gerry Thorne are assassinated, most
probably on behalf of the ‘corporate-military ruling elites’.112 The same powers
are behind the lethal attack on the Trainite community in Colorado. Austin
Train is put into prison simply on the basis of tycoon Roland Bamberley’s
accusations. Moreover, President Prexy, who is in control of the media system,
single-handedly stops the transmission of Train’s anti-establishment speech at
the trial. In response to this capitalist streamlining of public opinion, terrorism
gains popularity within parts of the Trainite community. Extremist Trainites
attack industries with high pollution ratings, Hugh and Ossie kidnap Hector
Bamberley, Ossie blows up the courtroom. In the end, the conflict between
the entrepreneurs and the fanatic environmentalists only produces losers, as
humankind is about to become extinct. Even Ossie’s terrorist act can only be
taken as a failure. Blinded by his ideal of being a radical campaigner for the
environmentalist cause, he not only kills the Bamberleys at the courtroom but
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also Austin Train, presumably the only man who had the potential to save the
planet.113
In view of these wider implications, The Sheep Look Up is more than just a piece
of ecological apocalyptic fiction. Undoubtedly, the novel is primarily a warning
of environmental abuse and its consequences. Brunner’s novel addresses, above
all, the dangers of industrial pollution. Beyond that, however, Brunner’s novel
points towards the decline of Western society. The apocalypse in The Sheep
Look Up is shown to be a result of the West’s mismanagement of the planet as
a consequence of its blind belief in the capitalist economic system. The USA,
as the leading Western nation, becomes the centre of Brunner’s critique and,
in an act of poetic justice, perishes in chaos. It is noteworthy in this respect
to bear in mind that Brunner’s novel is predominantly set in the US and that
Britain or British characters do not significantly feature. It suggests that, by the
1970s, Britain’s fall from political power no longer enabled it to exert influence
in matters and threats of global proportion.
*
Environmental disaster dominates apocalyptic discourse in Britain from the mid1960s to the mid-1970s, filling the gap in the collective consciousness that détente
between East and West had created. Unlike the previous periods of apocalyptic
fiction in Britain, the era of eco-doom is not concerned with either military
conflict or foreign invasion. Rather than focussing on and fearing aggression
from the outside, it directs its attention to the dangers that lie within. Together
with the attack on Western capitalism, a predominant theme of environmental
apocalypse, this signals a turn towards left politics that is in line with British
apocalyptic fiction’s pacifist agenda of the early and mid-interwar period. For
the time frame of détente, it strictly demarcates the genre from past xenophobic
or jingoistic tendencies. The apocalyptic stories themselves are not entirely new.
There are numerous examples of cataclysmic environmental disasters in British
apocalyptic fiction before eco-doom. This time, however, environmental disaster
is no longer a setting, it is a theme. In addition and in contrast to many of these
previous examples, the narratives of ecological apocalypse have in common that
they appear to be more science than fiction, more realistic than extrapolated.
Consequentially, the explicit didactic intentions serve to make these stories grim
warnings of ecological disaster and the Western abuse of the environment. In
this way, eco-doom dissolves past political alliances. The United States, the
strongest and politically most important ally since the Second World War, has
turned into an ungovernable threat, exposing Britain’s impotence on the world
stage.
Ch ap ter 6
Fears in transition
Absence of an apocalyptic metanarrative
After the end of the Cold War, apocalyptic discourse became fragmented as
there was no overriding fear to fill the gap vacated by the end of the nuclear
threat and the conclusion of the power struggle for world domination between
East and West. At first sight, the end of the Cold War and thus the end of the
nuclear confrontation appeared to mark the beginning of an era of stability
devoid of global anxieties. The collapse of the Soviet Union left the United
States as the primary superpower. That ‘suggested that American hegemony
was complete and that the American Century […] would extend well into
the twentieth century.’1 In consequence, the possibility of nuclear apocalypse
for the most part disappeared from the public’s consciousness. Anti-nuclear
movements such as the CND lost members and financial resources at the
beginning of the 1990s.2 The danger of an apocalyptic catastrophe seemed to
have been averted.
As a result, the philosopher Francis Fukuyama went so far as to propose
‘The End of History’ in an article that appeared in the political journal
The National Interest in 1989. Fukuyama argued that the victory of the Western
capitalist countries in the epic struggle against communism inferred that all
nations across the globe would eventually adopt that same Western social order,
making liberal democracy the ‘final form of government’.3 One widespread
interpretation of Fukuyama’s thesis was that the ideological harmony among
the world’s countries would necessarily make conflicts less likely in the future
and make the world a safer place.4 Naturally, Fukuyama’s theory ‘enjoyed wide
publicity’5 in the US as it played up ‘to the famed complacency and optimistic
spirit of Americans’6 in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War. Fukuyama’s
ideas attracted a wide readership not only inside but also outside the US so that
his book The End of History and the Last Man (1992), which elaborated on the
article’s argument, became a global bestseller.7
Yet the optimism surrounding the Western victory in the Cold War struggle
quickly gave way to new fears and uncertainty. A cover story from Newsweek in
1991 concisely sums up the change of atmosphere at the beginning of the new
decade:
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A year ago the world was steeped in euphoria. The cold war had ended, the economies
of the West were booming and democracy was on the rise. Now the sunny forecasts
have given way to the dark prospects of war in the desert, a free-falling economy and
disarray across Eastern Europe. […] Of course it’s too soon to tell how the ‘90s will
turn out. But it seems already clear that, compared with the decade just past, they will
be a far more turbulent and anxious age.8
Even though the Cold War brought forth the terrifying possibility of nuclear
war, the threat had at least been clearly defined, and so could be confronted
and protested against. Moreover, during its final years, the chance of nuclear
escalation had become increasingly slimmer. The end of the struggle produced a
new ‘age of anxiety’ 9 which was based on the idea that ‘our unease is that we do
not quite know where we ourselves are now headed.’10 As a consequence, public
discourse featured a diversity of dangers with apocalyptic dimensions.
Once again, fears of ecological apocalypse returned to the foreground.
Similar to the period between 1965 and 1975, industrial pollution caused
strong concerns among politicians and the populace. For this new period of
environmental anxiety starting in the mid-1980s, the dangers of smog and
acid rain as consequences of industrial pollution gained significant public
interest.11 In addition, human infertility appeared to be another potentially
disastrous consequence of environmental pollution. In 1995, an article in New
Scientist debated the possibility of infertile mankind as a result of ‘hormonelike pollutants’12 in a cover feature called ‘End of Man? The Threat to Sperm’.
However, it was the damage to the ozone layer and the consequences of the
greenhouse effect on global climate that especially disconcerted the public and,
in reaction, inspired a ‘new wave of environmentalism’.13
The depletion of the ozone layer as a hazard for humankind became a topic
in public debate in the second half of the 1980s. In fact, the negative impact of
chemicals on the ozone layer had already been an issue in 1978 when several
countries banned aerosol sprays containing CFC. However, it was not until
1985 that the damaged ozone layer attracted the general attention of scientists,
politicians and eventually the general public. That year, three British scientists14
detected ‘a thinning (or a “hole”) in the Antarctic ozone layer’.15 It meant that
more harmful ultra-violet radiation would be able to pass through the Earth’s
atmosphere. This finding left a deep impression: ‘The immediate threat of
increased skin cancer and other damage to people and biological system shocked
officials. Meanwhile magazine and television images of the ominous map of
ozone loss carried the message to the public.’16
Fears of global warming due to the greenhouse effect amplified public anxiety
over environmental decline. The increasing occurrence of climatic extremes
had become noticeable in the 1970s and early 1980s. Yet, there was no clear
evidence as to whether extreme rainfall or temperatures actually constituted the
Fears in transition
125
beginning of climatic change. It was in the mid-1980s that the theory of a general
warming of the planet gained more credibility and that this global warming,
in fact, appeared to be far advanced: ‘New and more sophisticated computer
models suggested that the climate was not only growing warmer, but was doing
so faster than scientists had predicted.’17 The reason behind the climatic change
was ascribed to the increase in human-produced carbon dioxide (CO2) and
other greenhouse gases.18 Yet, despite some fears that ‘the rise in CO2 could
lead to major climatic changes—including the so-called “greenhouse effect”—
with profound social, economic, and political implications’,19 there were not
any strong public and political reactions. This finally changed after the ‘deadly
summer of ‘88’20 when high temperatures, forest fires, and drought resulted in
the death of several thousand people in the United States.21 The US summer
heat wave became the costliest natural disaster in US history at the time.22 At the
same time in Russia, citizens of Moscow fled the city in search of cooling water,
many of them dying in the polluted rivers and ponds.23 In Britain, the high
temperatures caused a severe drought so that ‘Margaret Thatcher declared a
drought emergency for parts of Britain.’24 At the end of the year, British scientists
not only noted that 1988 was the world’s hottest year in the last 100 years but also
pointed out that the six hottest years of the 20th century all fell in the 1980s.25 All
of this ‘ignited an explosion of media, public, and governmental concern that
the long debated global warming ha[d] arrived’.26 The international edition of
the magazines Newsweek and Time both featured cover stories on global warming
from the greenhouse effect within a week.27 The National Geographic magazine’s
cover of the centennial issue from December 1988 shows a vulnerable Earth
from space with the headline asking the pertinent question: ‘Can Man Save this
Fragile Earth?’
However, widespread public and political agitation about the planet’s ecology
did not endure for an extended period of time. The dangers of acid rain and smog
apparently did not seem severe enough to attract long-term public attention. In
the case of ozone layer depletion, the ban of CFC and other harmful chemical
compounds seemingly put an end to the destruction of the ozone layer and in
this way helped to stop public anxiety. Even the debate around global warming
only flared up occasionally in the course of the next few years. As ‘average global
temperatures dipped’28 in the early 1990s, climate change sceptics felt confirmed
in their belief that there was in fact no trend for global warming. This did not
change either when a controversial report by the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) in 1995 stated that there was an ‘increase in global mean
temperature’ assisted by ‘a discernible human influence on global climate’.29
Despite the fact that the results of the report were ‘page-one news everywhere’,30
global warming was not seen in apocalyptic terms again until the beginning of
the new millennium.
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Since the debate around environmental threats did not dominate contemporary
apocalyptic discourse, warnings of fatal collisions with small solar system bodies
(i.e. comets and asteroids) also inspired the public’s apocalyptic imagination.
The scenario that an asteroid had the potential to destroy a whole species had
been introduced to the public in 1980. In a paper for Nature, Berkeley scientists
controversially argued that the Earth’s collision with a large asteroid had caused
the dinosaurs’ extinction 65 million years ago.31 Their theory resonated strongly
in the media at the end of the decade and after when more and more scientists
found additional supporting evidence. National Geographic devoted its cover in
June 1989 to the dinosaurs’ ‘March Toward Extinction’. With the idea of species
extinction as a result of asteroid impact already circulating, news of threatening
solar system objects gained an even more menacing dimension.
Several incidents drew public attention to the threat of a cosmic catastrophe
of apocalyptic proportions. In 1989, the asteroid 4581 Asclepius startled people
around the world when it missed the Earth by a mere 500,000 miles. Despite
its comparatively small dimensions, a collision would have been fatal because
Asclepius ‘was firmly in a size category for objects capable of creating a global
catastrophe’.32 Three years later, the rediscovery of Comet Swift-Tuttle provoked
apocalyptic predictions: ‘“The End of the World!” was one of the headlines
in November 1992 as sober scientists identified a comet […] that looked set
to collide with the Earth in August 2016’.33 In its issue from November 23,
Newsweek depicted a comet on a collision course with Earth on its cover and
speculated about ‘how the world might end’34. Indeed, the scientific community
was in agreement that ‘if comet Swift-Tuttle were to strike the earth, very little
would be left alive.’35 The third remarkable and newsworthy (near) impact event
happened in 1994 when Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 hit Jupiter. The impact of
Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 produced ‘a stunning series of explosions that were
seen from earth’36 and gave humanity an idea of how devastating an asteroid
or comet strike would be. However, Shoemaker-Levy 9 would be the last small
solar system body to generate public excitement and worry so that the fears of
cosmic apocalypse were essentially over by the mid-1990s.
As environmental anxiety and threats of cosmic catastrophe peaked
only for a brief time in the aftermath of the Cold War, the 1990s showed a
number of disparate public fears. Epidemics, for instance, regularly entered
the public discussion. The fatal, highly infectious Ebola virus was regarded
as ‘a considerable public health concern’37 at the time. Ebola first appeared in
Zaire in 1976 when it killed almost 300 people in a remote town. However, the
threat of Ebola appeared to be limited geographically to Central Africa and
even there, outbreaks were infrequent.38 Things changed with the appearance
of Reston-Ebola in 1989. Reston-Ebola caused a worldwide panic when infected
Philippine monkeys brought Ebola to a laboratory in Virginia.39 It was also
Fears in transition
127
detected in lab monkeys in Siena, Italy, in 1992. Moreover, outbreaks of Ebola
occurred ‘almost annually in Central African countries’40 in the mid-1990s.
A number of non-fiction writers popularized the great danger of Ebola. Richard
Preston’s bestseller The Hot Zone (1994), which centred on the Ebola virus,
received massive attention and American science journalist Laurie Garrett
published The Coming Plague (1994), an international bestseller on the hazards of
viral disease. In addition to the Ebola virus, the spread of AIDS caused by HIV
further underlined the public’s impression that pandemics could bring about the
downfall of civilization.
After reports on a new lethal infectious disease accumulated in the early 1980s,
scientists soon discovered the cause of it in AIDS and the HI-virus. Following
a period of official denial, politicians took action in the late 1980s. In 1987, the
World Health Organization started its Global Program on AIDS. One year later,
World AIDS Day took place for the first time to raise awareness. In Britain,
the government established a cabinet committee to control the disease in 1986.
Despite these efforts, eight million people were infected with HIV in 199041
and thus doomed for certain early death. Consequently, anxiety over AIDS
reached apocalyptic dimensions as is documented by a cartoon that appeared
in The Independent on 28 January, 1988 (Figure 13). The skeletal figure AIDS,
Figure 13: AIDS sits on Civilization’s shoulder. Cartoon by Nicholas Garland. The Independent,
28 January 1988: ‘…For within the hollow crown that rounds the mortal temples of a king
keeps death his court, and there antick sits, scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp…’ (King
Richard III)
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sitting on anthropomorphic Civilization’s shoulder, threatens to bring death to
civilization.42
Anxiety in Western countries around Ebola and AIDS calmed down towards
the end of the century. AIDS and Ebola primarily remained a problem
in developing countries. 90 per cent of the people infected with HIV came
from African countries alone and outbreaks of the Ebola virus were mainly
restricted to the African continent. Hence, viral threats did not influence British
apocalyptic discourse over a long period.
Instead, the fear of the approaching millennium and the ensuing possible
collapse of computer technology became just two more of many instances of
end-of-the-world worries in the 1990s. To some extent, the cover of TIME
magazine from January 18, 1999, illustrates that a general millennium madness
in the media and among the population stimulated end-of-the-world fears.43
However, the cover also reveals that the atmosphere compared more to
hysteria—‘Y2K insanity’ and ‘millennium madness’—than to genuine fears of
the end. When the year 2000 came and went without much harm, millennial
fears swiftly evaporated.
Apocalyptic fiction 1989–2001
With the end of the Cold War, atomic bombs and the threat of nuclear war
became a thing of the past in British apocalyptic fiction and science fiction
in general. Even though the nuclear arsenals still existed, they were neither
interesting nor did they worry a wider populace in the post-Cold War years.
In any case, this is how British science fiction writer Chris Wooding explains
the limited success of Endgame (2000), his novel about imminent (but smallscale) nuclear war: ‘Whereas most of my other stories had spread to a good
deal of foreign territories, Endgame didn’t. I can’t say I’m surprised. Nuclear
bombs are so sixties.’44 In apocalyptic fiction, this paradigm shift is also evident.
In Year Zero (2000) by Brian Stableford, one of the characters aptly describes
the change in situation when he states that ‘the collapse of communism has
reduced the probability of nuclear war to one in a million’.45 Ben Elton’s This
Other Eden (1993) explicitly brings up the fact that the nuclear threat of the
1950s, 1960s, and 1980s has been replaced by other fears. The novel contrasts
people’s means to protect themselves in their respective times: ‘[Before the
1980s,] people had built fallout shelters, as they now built Claustrospheres’46 —
i.e., a form of refuge developed to survive environmental devastation. And in
The Hammer of God (1993) by Arthur C. Clarke, the atomic warhead is shown to
be an impotent device.
Fears in transition
129
Consequently, as the metanarrative of atomic apocalypse no longer served
writers as a genre archetype, a variety of novels with distinctly dissimilar
scenarios surfaced in British apocalyptic fiction of the closing 1980s and the
1990s. Gwyneth Jones notes:
[W]e have an embarrassment of possibilities [to let the world end]. We can crash the
population with a killer virus; a decade or two of low-intensity warfare; the failure of
a major food crop; a megasized pollution incident; an asteroid strike—not to mention
plain old global warming, which can sink much of modern civilization in a watery
grave.47
Up until that point, there had always been a tendency towards one or two
apocalyptic metanarratives that led to the publication of a cluster of similarminded stories about the end of the world. By contrast, the wide variety of stories
in the 1990s, the multiplicity of micro-narratives documents the fragmentation of
the apocalyptic discourse. The stories draw on contemporary anxieties popular
before—cosmic catastrophe, environmental disaster—or anticipate future
dominant discourses on the apocalypse—pandemics, global climate change.
Two novels by Ben Elton address the need for environmentalist action to
save the planet from destruction.48 Similarly to the eco-doom novels of the
1960s and 1970, Elton’s books strongly criticize capitalists for the demise of
the Earth. In Stark (1989), mankind has driven the environment to the brink
of collapse as a result of chemical pollution. Heat waves and rising sea levels
due to global warming foreshadow inevitable eco-doom. Apparently, ‘the
moment at which the world will cease to be able to sustain balanced life’49 is
only a matter of time. The members of the Stark conspiracy, which consists
of ‘the super-rich; those of us who own the means of production’,50 have
foreseen this fatal development. However, they do not do anything to stop it
because trying to save the planet would compromise their profits. Instead, to
guarantee their own survival, they have bought the moon to establish a new
colony for a total of 250 people there. Together with a reserve of hibernating
embryos to populate the new habitat, this group is supposed to become the
foundation of a lunar civilization. Despite the attempts of EcoAction, a group
of environmentalists, to stop the Stark Ark rockets from launching, the Stark
conspiracy leaves the Earth just when the ecological collapse is imminent and
humanity on Earth is about to perish. Nonetheless, the new civilization on the
moon does not survive either. The Stark members find each other’s company
so unbearable that they neither procreate nor bring the embryos to life and,
in the most extreme case, commit suicide. The novel’s moral seems to be that
living a life that is solely geared towards profit and greed is not sustainable, not
on an environmental level and not on a psychological level, neither on Earth
nor on the moon.
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Elton’s This Other Eden (1993) presents an even more cynical scenario of capitalist
environmental exploitation. In order to increase sales of Claustrosphere models,
a ‘multi-billion dollar industry’51 that produces small self-sustaining sealed-off
containers that enable survival after the ecological collapse, the central villain
Plastic Tolstoy covertly wreaks ‘his own private environmental holocaust’.52
Moreover, he is secretly partners with Jurgen Thor, a former green activistterrorist and icon of the environmental movement who is now head of the green
political party Natura. Together, they use the reports on ecological disasters and
the counter-reaction of Thor’s disciples as a marketing campaign to scare people
into buying newer Claustrosphere models. In the event of doom, they have
set up for themselves a Claustrosphere the size of an island. The day of ‘EcoArmageddon’53 arrives and the citizens of the Western hemisphere disappear
into their Claustrospheres, locking themselves in for forty years. Thor is killed
by green terrorist Rosalie after he is forced to reveal his evil capitalist scheme.
Tolstoy, in an instance of poetic justice, cannot reopen his Claustrosphere and
dies in the prison of his own making. Ironically, the planet’s ecosystem is able to
recover as a result of the forty-year-absence of Western civilization and presents
humanity with the opportunity for a fresh start. This Other Eden shares many
ideas with environmental fiction from the 1960s and 1970s, particularly with
Brunner’s The Sheep Look Up, by blaming the Western nations and suggesting
that a temporary absence of Western lifestyle would give the damaged planet a
definite chance for rebirth.
Looking at cosmic disaster tales in British apocalyptic fiction, The Hammer of
God (1993) by Arthur C. Clarke is the only example of the threat of an asteroid
collision in end-of-the-world stories of the 1990s.54 Humankind fears impending
doom as the ultimate consequence of a potential crash: ‘The aftereffects of the
impact could be even worse than the immediate consequences, as the skies were
blackened by smoke for months – perhaps years. Most of the world’s vegetation,
and perhaps its remaining wildlife, would fail to survive’.55 The Hammer of God
is evidently a reaction to the public scare in relation to Comet Swift-Tuttle. As
a matter of fact, the novel makes explicit reference when the characters discuss
Kali’s potential danger: ‘[Comet Swift-Tuttle] was rediscovered by a Japanese
amateur astronomer in 1992, and when its new path was computed, there was
widespread alarm.’56
Examples of viral apocalypse and human infertility are equally rare. Only
Plague ’99 (1989), a novel for adolescents by Jean Ure, presents a plot in which an
airborne and highly infectious virus of unknown origin has attacked the British
Isles in the year 1999. The infected suffer vomiting attacks and die quickly
thereafter. Likewise, there is only one novel that centres on human sterility.
In P. D. James’ novel The Children of Men (1992), the last baby in the history of
mankind is born in 1995 when males become infertile for unknown reasons.
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131
The novel suggests that human sterility is not the result of natural external
influences but rather a divine punishment for the immoral Western lifestyle.57
The small number of titles per apocalyptic scenario does not mean that the
number of apocalyptic novels itself was insignificant in the 1990s. On the contrary,
the output of apocalyptic fiction is as large, if not larger, as before. In addition
to the aforementioned novels, Simon Clark, James Herbert, Stephen Baxter and
Stel Pavlou also published apocalyptic fiction in the years between 1995 and
2001.58 In contrast to previous times, however, the apocalyptic texts after the
Cold War and before 9/11 taken as a whole are exceptionally heterogeneous. It is
not possible to identify clusters of cultural fear, not even common themes.
The notion that British apocalyptic fiction during this time had lost its capability
to act as a seismograph of cultural fear is also supported by the genre’s turn from
its roots of science fiction towards fantasy and parody. Fantasy fiction, because it
‘tells a story which is impossible in the world as we perceive it’,59 essentially does
not aim for the depiction of realistic scenarios of global cataclysm. It neither
warns nor reassures the reader of real-world threats to humankind. Especially
when coupled with elements of parody, these narratives are so far removed from
human experience that they lose some of their cultural potency and significance.
Nevertheless, apocalyptic fantasy fiction, too, is a response to cultural crisis.
The crisis, though, seems to concern the idea of apocalypse and apocalyptic
fiction as a genre more than anything else.
Indeed, there are three fantasy apocalyptic novels from the late 1980s to the
year 2000 which parody the foundation of apocalyptic fiction: biblical apocalypse.
In Robert Rankin’s Armageddon – The Musical (1988), Terry Pratchett and Neil
Gaiman’s Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (1990)
and Brian Stableford’s Year Zero (2000), the figures from the Bible—God,
Jesus Christ, the devil, Antichrist—behave like ordinary people with ordinary
motives. The Christian idea of a divine plan for the end of the world and the
beginning of a paradisiacal new world is completely undermined, and with it the
foundation of apocalyptic fiction.
Case study: Earthdoom!
Earthdoom! (1987) by David Langford and John Grant exemplifies British
apocalyptic fiction’s inclination towards parody and the comical in the late
1980s and 1990s. It features a multitude of apocalyptic scenarios that are all
equally important to the story’s plot, thereby not taking any single one seriously
enough and mirroring the absence of an apocalyptic metanarrative at the end
of the 20th century. To achieve its comic ambition, Earthdoom! self-consciously
draws attention to its own artificiality and, even more significantly, mocks
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apocalyptic genre fiction by frequently and explicitly addressing its conventions
and therefore its constructedness.
In Earthdoom!, there are 100 different menaces that threaten to bring about
the end of humankind. About a dozen of these are described in greater detail
and are of significance to the plot, including both ‘material’ and ‘spiritual’60
catastrophes. Among these plotlines are, for example, the sudden dawn of a ‘new
Ice Age’,61 the awakening of the Antichrist in a baby’s body,62 a spaceship likely
to crash into the Earth, ‘all-pervasive pollution’,63 harming greenhouse effect
and an increasingly damaged ozone layer, hazardous atomic tests in the Middle
East, a ‘powerful X-ray pulse’64 accidentally fired at the Earth, the sterilization
of the whole Solar System, an alien attack and more.65 While these threats in
themselves are not necessarily ridiculous, it is the sheer amount of apocalyptic
dangers that make each of them seem ludicrous. Furthermore, several of the
novel’s main characters connected to these plotlines are hilariously clichéd
figures from apocalyptic novels, such as world-saving scientists, hate-filled
aliens, the doomsday prophesying reverend or the all-evil Antichrist. The others
are also rather caricatures than properly rounded characters, for example the sexaddicted American astronaut Bart Malone, the gorgeous but brainless primary
school teacher Zenna Brabham, or the careerist feminist single mother Nadia
Finkelstein.
The novel’s satirical disposition is further underlined by several fairly
ridiculous threats to mankind. By way of example, a substance called superglue,
‘a form of life possessed of an intelligent hive-mind and an astonishing degree
of mobility’,66 starts attacking humanity. Moreover, there is a mass movement
of lemming hordes which are ‘carrying ruin and rabies’67 and thus threaten to
infect mankind with disease. Another equally extravagant danger is a group of
Adolf Hitler clones that want to establish the ‘Fourth Reich’68 and gain ‘world
domination’.69 To avoid capture and criminal conviction, Hitler uses a time
machine to travel to the novel’s present year 1989, successfully creates 400 ‘human
carbon copies’ 70 of himself and haunts the world with the help of the Loch Ness
monster. And even one of the conventional menaces, a comet on a collision
course with Earth, is humouristically undermined. The comet in Earthdoom! is
not an ordinary comet but an ‘antimatter comet’.71 While there actually have been
speculations about the existence of antimatter comets,72 its unexpected presence
in this context goes completely against the conventions of apocalyptic fiction,
undermining its sincerity and thus creating a comical effect.
The novel’s mocking attitude towards apocalyptic fiction is further emphasized
by the fact that the apocalyptic dangers either have cancelled each other out
or are effortlessly overcome by the end of the novel. For example, the aliens
capture the Hitler clones along with the Loch Ness monster and liquidate
the German dictator before he can realize his megalomaniac dreams. Other
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133
apocalyptic dangers conveniently go away for foolish or unexpected reasons.
The aliens, for instance, abort their plan to conquer the Earth because a gigantic
‘holographic representation’ 73 of the doomsday priest in the sky upstages their
first contact with the Earthlings. The sudden and unforeseen annihilation of
the antimatter comet additionally vaporizes the spaceship that threatened to fall
into the Earth so that humanity is saved from both menaces at the same time.
When the aliens leave behind a matter transmitter when they hastily leave the
Earth’s orbit, this kind of ‘plot convenience’ 74 also allows the novel to dispose
of the remaining threats at the end of the story. The survivors on Earth simply
transfer the hordes of lemmings, ‘the superglue, Bigfeet, mutant cockroaches,
glaciers, nuclear fallout, plague virus, fluorocarbon molecules, falling moon and
traffic wardens’ 75 to the depths of the universe. This kind of deus ex machina
ending fits the novel’s ironic character.
Several metafictional and genre-referential comments contribute to the
satirical deconstruction of apocalyptic genre fiction. In that it constantly refers
to its artificiality, Earthdoom! stands in contradiction to the escapism of disaster
stories. The tagline subtitle—‘The End of the Disaster Story as We Know It’—
indicates the novel’s attitude. Narrator and characters repeatedly mention the
existence of a designed ‘plot’ 76 and the presence of a ‘Reader’ 77 or a ‘novelist’.78
These more general metafictional elements are supplemented by comments
on various tropes of apocalyptic fiction which are made to undermine generic
convention.
The genre’s sexism, for instance, is remarked upon and challenged. When
the aliens are about to invade the Earth, the attractive female character Zenna
points out that the women among the survivors have got ‘too many clothes on’.79
Her statement draws attention to the fact that women characters in apocalyptic
fiction often serve as sexual objects, especially considering the representation of
women in B-movies.80 Given that women in apocalyptic fiction are often either
sexually objectified or reduced to their maternal role of producing offspring to
repopulate the planet, another female character in Earthdoom! rightfully identifies
the genre’s chauvinist nature by pointing out that ‘feminists don’t usually do
well in disaster novels’.81 In accordance with genre convention, the women
characters in Earthdoom! cast themselves in the role of the victim and inform the
male characters that the men, not the women, are in charge of ‘saving the world
with your atomic blasters and all’.82
Other comments address the poor quality of writing that is characteristic of
some of apocalyptic genre fiction. The novel points out that apocalyptic fiction
is stylistically inferior and that the plots are sometimes badly constructed.
Accordingly, one character wishes that disaster novels would come ‘with a better
class of dialogue’.83 Another character wonders why the syntax in apocalyptic
fiction gets ‘so unconvincingly jerky when [writers want] to inject a bit of
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spurious excitement.’84 The narrator complains about the ‘prescience’85 of some
characters because it is merely a plot device to explain and anticipate the plot
for the reader.
Finally, the novel’s genre-conscious approach becomes evident in numerous
allusions to classics of science fiction and apocalyptic fiction.86 For example,
Earthdoom! quotes the famous line ‘So it goes’87 from John Vonnegut’s
Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) when astronauts Malone and Dimpla die as a result of
the anti-matter comet’s annihilation. The novel quotes the character Oswald
Cabal from Things to Come (1936) when the aliens, for no apparent reason, ask
humanity: ‘WHICH SHALL IT BE PASSWORTHY, WHICH SHALL IT BE
PASSWORTHY’.88 The novel plays upon the famous tagline ‘In space nobody
can hear you scream’ from Ridley Scott’s film Alien (1979) when the narrator
points out after a gunshot that ‘in space, nobody can hear you BLAM!’89 Besides
these quotations, there is also an explicit reference to the film The Omega Man
(1971), an adaptation of American writer Richard Matheson’s apocalyptic novel
I Am Legend (1954). Psychiatrist Dr Al Bran wonders how the main character
of that film, played by Charlton Heston, survived despite being ‘surrounded by
rabid hordes of albino vampires’.90
Altogether, the parody in Earthdoom! lays bare the identity crisis of apocalyptic
fiction in the final years of the Cold War and the following decade. The novel
exposes end-of-the-world stories as products of genre formula and thus not to
be taken seriously. The novel’s humorous approach to the end of humankind
indicates that, at the time, secular apocalypse had lost some of its horror and
potency. Apocalyptic fiction was reduced to generic conventions and the
ridiculing of these conventions.
*
British apocalyptic fiction of the 1990s is strikingly different from other
periods of the genre’s history. Real-life nuclear Armageddon, which shaped
apocalyptic fears in and outside of fiction for close to a half a century, ostensibly
ceased to be possible and none of the (re-)emerging threats to humankind
demonstrate the potential to fill the gap. Instead, the fragmentation of the
apocalyptic discourse produces many distinctively different stories which
hardly betray a common grounding in the same cultural spirit of the age.
As a result, these stories seemingly reflect and construct present fears just
as much as they convey the impression of being disconnected echoes and
harbingers of apocalypses past and future: apocalyptic asteroid collisions
recall the comet scares of Victorian and Edwardian times, global warming
Fears in transition
135
and ecological apocalypse call back to mind eco-doom warnings of the
détente period, an instance of viral apocalypse anticipates the cluster of
end-of-the-world narratives surrounding pandemic and infectious disease
post-9/11. By themselves, these apocalyptic stories might still be indicative
of contemporary fears on a micro-level, yet, for this transitional period, the
apocalyptic genre viewed as a whole is restricted in its quality to indicate
and construct cultural anxiety in Britain. This is emphasized by a tendency
towards a more playful treatment of the end of the world which leads to a
significant number of comical examples of apocalyptic fiction. Apocalypse is
not only and not necessarily something to fear, it is also something at which
to laugh, undermining its traditionally inherent function to warn of dangers
to the survival of the human species.
Ch ap ter 7
Apocalypse after 9/11
New age of anxiety
The terrorist attacks of September 11 launched a new era of anxiety. More than
2000 people, among them 67 British citizens, died in the attacks.1 The live
TV coverage of the event, which brought the ‘apocalyptic destruction’2 of the
attacks into the homes of people all around the world, amplified the effect of the
attacks. Aside from a wave of international solidarity with the American people,
the prevalent reaction was ‘shock and fear’ and a feeling that ‘September 11,
2001 changed everything’.3 The terrorist attacks irrevocably shattered Western
post-Cold War hopes for a peaceful future without threats of conflict and war.
The West, with America at the forefront, ‘truly entered the twenty-first century,
an era marked by uncertainty and danger’.4
In an attempt to prevent future attacks from happening and to deprive the
terrorists of their home base, NATO allies invaded Afghanistan and undertook
a peace-building mission there. However, reality did not sustain the illusion of
a peaceful Afghanistan for long: ‘The hopes that Afghanistan’s problems would
rapidly be solved had proved to be ill-founded, and the threat of a sudden upsurge
of violence continued to hover like an ominous storm-cloud over the daily lives
of many Afghan people.’5 While the original NATO mission in Afghanistan
lasted until 2014 and was followed by a non-combat mission, a positive outcome,
that is the end of war, chaos, and anarchy, is still in question. In 2008, British
commander Mark Carleton-Smith had already pointed out: ‘We’re not going to
win this war’.6 The attempt to restore the belief in the invulnerability of the West
and its ideals turned out to be a disappointment.7
The Iraq War, the second major conflict in the US-led Western combat against
terrorism, became an even more disastrous undertaking, from a legal, military
and moral perspective. Without a clear UN mandate and with only limited
international support,8 the United States, Britain and Spain invaded Iraq—with
the intention of making the world a safer and more peaceful place. As one of
the coalition forces, Britain once more confirmed its status as the ‘United States’
staunchest ally’,9 sending 35,000 troops to Iraq,10 by far the only substantial
military force aside from the US. However, instead of bringing peace, the
invasion and succeeding occupation brought about a seemingly never-ending
civil war that lasted for years until the US withdrew its last troops at the end
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137
of 2011. In addition, the military failure in Iraq was matched by the moral
failure of the coalition forces. In 2004, US media published pictures of tortured
Iraqi prisoners from the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. Their publication
‘caused public shock and revulsion all over the world’11 and further damaged
the reputation of the American-led mission in Iraq. Moreover, it provoked a
resurgence of terrorist attacks and anxieties.12
Public insecurity and fear surrounding terrorist attacks reached a highpoint
in Europe and the UK after the Madrid and London bombings. Ever since
9/11, terrorism had already featured regularly in public discourse in Britain.
It was ‘continually front-page news and the subject of much discussion on the
airwaves and amongst politicians in the United Kingdom.’13 However, the fear of
terrorism gained even more momentum after attacks on two European capitals.
On 11 March 2004, almost a dozen bombs exploded on four commuter trains in
the Greater Madrid area. Almost 200 people were killed, another 1,800 injured.14
Just over a year later, on 7 July 2005, suicide bombers detonated four explosives
in a double-decker bus and three underground trains in London. That time, the
terror cost the lives of fifty-six people and hurt several hundred more.15 In the
way the terrorists coordinated their attacks on the public transportation systems,
the incidents brought back the memory and shock of September 11, if only on a
smaller scale. In addition, it showed that terrorism was an international problem
and ‘that Europe, and thus Britain, had no special immunity from terrorism of
the 9/11 variety.’16 The majority of the British public felt that this reality was
a consequence of the Iraq War as the attacks took place in Spain and Britain,
two countries which had strongly supported the invasion and deployed troops:
‘Polls after the July 7 bombings […] show[ed] that two of three Britons strongly
suspect[ed] that the suicide attacks [were] related to the unjustified Iraq War.’17
Hence, the war in Iraq and thus the American war on terror did not bring down
terrorism but rather propelled it. In this way, it enhanced the ‘new climate of
fear’18 that had its origins in the attacks of September 11.
Post-9/11 anxiety constituted a frame of reference under which, for instance,
infectious disease grew into a life-threatening menace for Western populations.
This was motivated to some degree by the anthrax attacks connected to 9/11.19
This attack let infectious disease, which so far was perceived to be only a
natural agent of death, appear in a completely different light. It ‘focused public
attention on the way in which disease-causing pathogens could be used as
terrorist weapons’ 20 and thus underpinned the idea that biological weapons
were ‘one of the foremost threats to global security in the twenty-first
century.’ 21 Several outbreaks of diverse viruses in the year after the anthrax
attacks reinforced the view that pandemic disease, along with terrorism,
became the ‘defining public fear for much of Western society in the twentyfirst century’. 22
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British Apocalyptic Fiction
First, the respiratory disease Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) set
off public fears of a global pandemic. In spring 2003, SARS became news ‘on
the front pages and on our TV screens’23 when it ‘erupted out of China into the
wider world’,24 first spreading within Southeast Asia in March 2003 and soon
beyond. Within just a few months, the SARS coronavirus infected more than
8,000 people in 32 countries, including four cases in Great Britain. By August,
916 people on three different continents had died of SARS.25 In addition to the
absolute number of deaths, the mortality rate was startling: ‘SARS had a fatality
rate of around 11 percent, high by the standards of most common diseases’,26
much higher than the influenza epidemics. SARS became ‘the first new infectious
disease to cause a global health scare since the emergence of AIDS nearly 20
years earlier.’27 The outbreak of SARS propagated the idea of a devastating virus
as it ‘focused popular attention on the risk of global pandemic’.28 Newspapers
from all over the world reported on SARS, especially emphasizing the fatal
link between infectious disease and the globalized world of the 21st century.
Newspaper headlines such as ‘A Shrinking World Raises the Risk for Global
Epidemics’ or ‘The Way We Live Now’29 pointed towards the fact that today ‘it
is increasingly easy for a virus to be transported out of its natural environment
to new areas where it can spread and find new hosts to infect.’30
Before long, concern over SARS fed into fears of viral apocalypse. Mike
Fitzpatrick published an article on SARS called ‘Apocalypse from now on’ in the
medical journal The Lancet in April 2003 already.31 The same year, The Daily Mail
featured an interview with chemist Dr Martin Westwell under the title ‘Superbug
apocalypse’. And the popular science book The Killers Within (2002) by Michael
Shnayerson and Mark Plotkin was reviewed under the title ‘Apocalypse soon?’.32
Public discourse on SARS additionally reinforced the idea that humanity was
in a state of war against SARS. News reports described SARS as ‘an attack by
an unseen invader to which nations had to respond as they would to any other
attack’.33 It became evident, however, that these extreme fears of fatal worldwide
pandemic were unsubstantiated, at least with regard to SARS as the disease was
contained soon after.34 Nevertheless, the danger of infectious disease appeared
to be serious, potentially even for the developed countries of the Western
hemisphere, something the next viral outbreak would confirm.
The outbreak of avian influenza re-inflamed anxiety over a major pandemic.
In 2004 and 2005, H5N1, a particularly pathogenic strain of the virus
responsible for the avian flu, infected people in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand,
and Indonesia. In 2005, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed
57 victims altogether.35 Despite the fact that absolute numbers were comparatively
low, this outbreak of the avian influenza ‘inflamed the public imagination’36 and
caused public alarm in Britain and worldwide. The WHO issued a checklist for
influenza pandemic preparedness planning to cope with calculations of ‘233
Apocalypse after 9/11
139
million outpatient visits, 5.2 million hospital admissions and 7.4 million deaths
globally’.37 American university professor Mike Davis instantly published a rather
sensational and scary book on the bird flu, The Monster at Our Door: The Global
Threat of the Avian Flu Pandemic (2005). Davis’ book, which was widely reviewed in
the US and Britain,38 claimed that ‘a worldwide bout of avian flu is a certainty’.39
Concern over the avian flu even inspired extraordinary political measures and
reactions. In Britain, for instance, Ken Livingstone, mayor of London at the
time, prepared for a worst-case scenario by hoarding antiviral drugs to keep the
disease from spreading quickly. He ‘stockpiled more than £1 million worth of
Tamiflu for his personal office and staff—nearly 100,000 tablets.’40 Consistently,
Livingstone took the view that the avian flu posed a greater danger than
terrorism: ‘We’re more at risk from dying of bird flu than we are of being blown
up by any terrorist.’41 Fortunately, Western fears of a global pandemic caused by
the avian flu never materialized. By the end of 2011, merely 304 people had died
as a result of avian influenza with none of the victims coming from Europe or
the American continent.42
In 2009, the swine flu pandemic constituted the third major virus outbreak
in a decade. That year in April, a new strain of the influenza A virus H1N1 was
discovered in the United States and Mexico.43 The virus could not be contained
within North America but swiftly spread around the globe. Within two months,
‘a total of 74 countries and territories had reported laboratory confirmed
infections’44 so that the WHO declared a pandemic in June 2009, for the first
time in 40 years. By that time, there were already almost 30,000 confirmed cases
of infection across the world, of which just over thousand had ended fatally. The
swine flu received an exceptional amount of media attention with ‘front page
headlines, constant news updates and top story status as scientists and the media
tried to understand the potential threat posed by the virus.’45 Britain was strongly
affected by the pandemic, counting most infections in Europe and the sixth-most
worldwide (822) in the early stages of the pandemic:46 ‘The UK was one of the first
countries affected in Europe and one of the few to experience a substantial first
wave in spring and summer 2009.’47 The result was alarmist doomsday headlines
painting more or less apocalyptic scenarios. While The Guardian predicted a mere
65,000 victims,48 The Daily Mail foresaw a much bleaker future: ‘Hundreds will
be ill in weeks and a swine flu pandemic could strike 40% of us’.49 However,
the swine flu turned out to be relatively harmless in the course of the next year
and anxieties over the fatal consequences of swine flu infection subsided. By
the summer of 2010, the swine influenza had claimed around 18,500 deaths,
including almost 360 people in Britain,50 a relatively small number compared to
the usual number of victims from influenza epidemics per year.51
The outbreaks of SARS, the avian flu and the swine flu in the 2000s elevated
the anxiety over infectious disease to apocalyptic dimensions. The recurrent
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outbreaks turned the virus into ‘a powerful presence in the public imagery of
threat’.52 In the end, none of the individual outbreaks ultimately proved to have
the potential for a viral apocalypse. Yet the enduring experience of lethal viruses
starting with mad cow disease, AIDS and Ebola in the 1990s and continuing
with SARS, the avian and the swine flu suggested that the end of the world
brought about by a virus, however improbable, was possible:
The nightmare for the human race would be a new disease with the transmissibility of
influenza and the lethality of Ebola. This would be a disease with the potential to spread
widely and kill the majority of those who contracted it. This is the kind of pandemic
that Lederberg and others have been warning of as a threat to human society.53
The apocalyptic danger of deadly and quickly spreading infectious diseases
was furthermore enhanced by the growing resistance of bacteria to antibiotics.
British bio-molecular scientist Richard James envisioned a ‘post-antibiotic
apocalypse’, a phrase that ‘reverberated through the regional, national and
international press.’54 Evidently, the idea of viral and bacterial apocalypse was
pervasive in Western culture in general and British culture in particular during
the first decade of the 21st century. Nonetheless, it was rivalled by another public
fear which was also thought of in apocalyptic proportions.
At the beginning of the 21st century, concern over global warming reached
a new height when scientists predicted severe climatic change if humanity
was not to adapt its lifestyle. The Third and the Fourth Assessment Report
by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2001 and 2007
presented new evidence to establish global warming as a fact. The reports
showed a significant increase in both the carbon dioxide concentration in the
atmosphere and consequently a substantial rise in global average temperatures
over the course of the 20th century.55 Furthermore, the reports strongly claimed
that humanity was responsible for the global climatic change because of the
anthropogenic production of greenhouse carbon dioxide. In fact, the Fourth
Assessment Report reckoned that ‘it is 90-99% likely that global warming since
1950 has been driven mainly by the build-up of carbon dioxide and other heattrapping greenhouse gases, and that more warming and rising sea levels are on
the way.’56 According to the IPCC’s predictions, the consequences would be
far-reaching. The Summary for Policymakers envisages ‘metres of sea level rise,
major changes in coastlines and inundation of low-lying areas’ and the possible
extinction of up to 70% of all terrestrial species.57
Apocalyptic fears related to global warming reverberated in the British
media and several science books in the first decade of the new century. Tabloid
newspapers in particular published news stories in which climate change was
reported about in apocalyptic contexts. In his study on the cultural politics of
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141
climate change discourse in UK tabloids, Maxwell Boykoff notes that ‘fear,
misery and doom headlines dominated the coverage.’58 For instance, The
Express foresaw the apocalypse, if not taking place in the immediate future,
happening to our offspring: ‘It’s the End of the World…Mainly for Children’.59
The less sensationalist broadsheet papers also covered the issue of climate
change and global warming with an extremely pessimistic outlook, such as
when The Independent suggestively headlined: ‘Global warming and ozone loss:
Apocalypse soon’.60 Mike Hulme concludes that the UK print media provided
information about climate change ‘through scary, and almost pre-determined,
doom-laden scenarios saturated in the language of fear and disaster.’61 Nonfictional book publications helped to establish the idea of the end of the world
due to climate change. Hulme notes that the apocalyptic discourse surrounding
climate change proliferated ‘through a new cohort of popular science books’.62
As examples, he names Fred Pearce’s With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear
Tipping Points in Climate Change (2007) and The Suicidal Planet: How to Prevent Global
Climate Catastrophe (2007) by Mayer Hillman et al. Apart from print media, two
films furthermore amplified public anxieties in Britain.
The Day After Tomorrow (2004) depicted the sudden arrival of a new ice age that,
ironically, is the unexpected result of global warming. Snowstorms, hailstorms,
tornadoes and tidal waves bring Western civilization to the brink of collapse
before a fortunate turn of events. The film was a success at the box office,
earning over 500 million US dollars worldwide, 46 million in Britain,63 making
it one of the ten commercially most successful films of the year in the UK.
Despite the fact that the film was more science fiction than documentary, one
of its main effects was ‘to create fear of […] climate change’.64 The apocalyptic
images of Western metropolises like Los Angeles and New York emphasized
and reinforced already existing fears despite a lack of credibility.
Just two years later, the documentary An Inconvenient Truth (2006) also centred
on the disastrous consequences of climate change. The film was based on the
educational presentation by former US vice-president and environmentalist Al
Gore, who also served as the figurehead of the film. Though actually scientifically
inaccurate,65 Gore’s warning rang true with audiences and appealed to critics and
the public, not only in the United States but also all over the world.66 In Britain,
An Inconvenient Truth ‘sparked a great deal of tabloid coverage and commentary’.67
In fact, the documentary film was one major reason why media coverage of
climate change increased drastically in the autumn of 2006.68 Gore’s film left no
doubt that climatic change might endanger the survival of humanity.
Despite the apocalyptic predictions in the media, the idea of climate change
as a threat to mankind remained controversial in British society. Opinion polls
carried out in the UK by the BBC and The Guardian showed that a significant
portion of the British people was reluctant to accept the scientific findings on
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climate change. Up to a quarter of the British people either did not believe in
climate change at all, did not see a connection between human activity and
global warming, or did not think that climate change poses a threat to humanity.
Moreover, an even greater group, regardless of whether they believe in climate
change or not, considered the dangers of global warming to be exaggerated,
especially with regard to climate change reaching cataclysmic or even apocalyptic
dimensions.69 This was often shared by climate scientists who would say that
‘[n]ature will not collapse in a global catastrophe’.70 The apocalyptic rhetoric,
more than anything else, served the purpose of raising public awareness.
Stephen H. Schneider, one of the co-authors of the Third IPCC Report, actually
admitted to this when he said in an interview that the report deliberately
overstated the threat to gain public attention.71 While this strategy worked to
some extent, it also hurt the overall credibility of global climate change.
Regardless of some reservations about the factual truth of global warming,
climate change shaped public apocalyptic fears at the beginning of the
21st century. Arguably, climate apocalypse had already taken the place of nuclear
apocalypse at the end of the 1980s. Accordingly, Mike Hulme states that ‘fears
of Cold War destruction were displaced around the turn of the decade by those
associated with climate change’.72 However, the situation was not as clear-cut as
Hulme makes it appear to be. In the 1990s, global warming was an even more
contested phenomenon as a more equal number of apocalypticists and sceptics
stood in fierce opposition to each other.73 Yet with an increasing amount of
scientific evidence brought forward and a climate of fear building in the years
after 9/11, ‘the language and metaphorical constructions of fear and catastrophe
shaping this discourse have been embellished substantially’.74
Apocalyptic fiction 2001–2011
After the terrorist attacks
The general feeling of fragility and uncertainty after the 9/11 attacks fuelled
a noticeable increase in apocalyptic narratives in the 2000s, largely due to an
upsurge of British apocalyptic film. Eight apocalyptic films were produced
in Britain from 2001 to 2011. This number stands out against the lack of
apocalyptic films in the 1990s and is unrivalled in the genre’s history with maybe
the exception of the 1960s. One explanation for why the visual medium of film
became so popular for the depiction of apocalyptic scenarios is that the terrorist
attacks of September 11 were conceivably as much an atrocious crime as they
were a global TV event. The images of the crashing aeroplanes, desperate people
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143
jumping to certain death, the collapsing Twin Towers, the search for survivors,
and the national mourning around Ground Zero in the aftermath were burned
into the minds of a worldwide audience.
9/11
28 Days Later (2002) and Children of Men (2006) most impressively evoke familiar
images from September 11 and the London terrorist bombings respectively. In
28 Days Later, monkeys used for virus experimentation have infected and turned
the majority of the British population into fast-moving flesh-eating zombies. In
the middle of the crisis, the protagonist Jim walks up to a wall on which people
have put up posters and leaflets of their missing family and friends (Figure 14).
This type of image was especially reminiscent and potent in the aftermath of
9/11 since it brought back to mind the pictures of flyers hung up on walls at
and around Ground Zero (Figure 15), pictures which were shown on TV all
over the world. Children of Men, alternatively, contains an ‘overt thematization of
terrorism’.75 The film opens with the bombing of a London café in broad daylight,
echoing the London bombings of 2005 and evoking the ‘iconography of 9/11’.76
In reaction to the attack, the main character Theo Faron remarks that it was ‘the
second [terrorist bombing] in a month’ and names ‘Islamic’ extremists among
the prime suspects for it.77 Post-9/11 fears overall set the tone for Children of Men
as the danger of terrorism remains a strong theme throughout the film. In the
battle over Kee, the first pregnant woman after 18 years of global infertility,
the terrorist group Fishes are willing to jeopardize her life and thus the future
of humanity for the possibility of exploiting her existence for their political
motives. In addition to its theme of terrorism, Children of Men contains other
visual references to the period after September 11. The film ‘directly references
the maltreatment of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib, in a scene where Theo and
Kee pass through a prison camp in a refugee-filled bus’.78 Moreover, the sign
‘Homeland Security’ is an explicit reference to post-9/11 US politics.79 These
allusions conspicuously stand out as markers of that period, especially in view
of their absence in P. D. James’ apocalyptic novel The Children of Men (1992) on
which the film is loosely based.
Besides these two films, the many references to terrorism in British
apocalyptic novels indicate that 9/11 heralded the start of a new period for the
genre. Admittedly, in British end-of-the-world films and prose fiction of the
early 21st century, there is not a single instance in which terrorist attacks bring
about the end of the world, nor do terrorists even present a severe threat to the
survival of humankind. Nevertheless, British apocalyptic novels and films in
the 2000s are filled with references to terrorism. The Snow (2004), A Planet for the
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President (2004), Extinction (2005), The Zombie Diaries (2006), and Last Light (2007)
in fact explicitly refer to 9/11.80 Sunstorm (2005) and Flood (2008) prominently
feature terrorist acts which have significant consequences for the development
and outcome of the narrative. In view of these examples, it becomes apparent
Figure 14: Jim is walking away from the missing persons poster. Boyle, 28 Days Later, 0:12:28.
Figure 15: A missing persons poster in New York after September 11, 2001. Photograph by Mike
Caine.
Apocalypse after 9/11
145
that the fear of terrorism often serves as a backdrop in early 21st century British
apocalyptic fiction against which the scenario of the end of the world can
unfold.
Zombies
The resurgence of the zombie genre from the early 2000s onwards further
supports the idea that the terrorist attacks of September 11 represent a starting
point for a new age of paranoia. The popularity of zombie fiction, especially
zombie cinema, has been an indicator of cultural anxiety in the past. Kyle Bishop
notes that ‘the frequency of these movies has noticeably increased during periods
of social and political unrest’,81 for example during the Great Depression and
the Vietnam War. After the attacks of September 11, zombie fiction experienced
its latest renaissance. Henceforth, ‘the number of both studio and independent
zombie movies has risen dramatically’,82 amounting to more than a 100 films
in just a few years.83 Significantly, the zombie renaissance of the 2000s is not
restricted to film but extends to prose fiction. Next to several zombie fiction
anthologies84 and Max Brooks’ The Zombie Survival Guide (2003), one of the
most noteworthy examples of fiction is the mash-up novel Pride and Prejudice
and Zombies (2009) by Seth Grahame-Smith in which the story of the classic
Jane Austen novel is enriched with the fatal presence of the undead. Therefore,
Bishop claims that the ‘appearance of zombies in print media other than
graphic novels is perhaps the most notable evidence of a renaissance within the
mainstream public’.85 While the zombie is ‘a fundamentally American creation’86
and most zombie film and fiction indeed comes from the US,87 British cinema
substantially contributed to its revitalization. In effect, the apocalyptic 28 Days
Later is credited for the reinvigoration of zombie motion pictures by introducing
fast-moving creatures: ‘British director Danny Boyle officially kicked off the
“Zombie Renaissance” with the first truly frightening zombie movie in years’.88
Moreover, the success of 28 Days Later encouraged the production of several
British apocalyptic zombie films in the following years.
28 Days Later inspired not only its sequel 28 Weeks Later (2007) but also the
zombie parody Shaun of the Dead (2004) as well as a number of low-budget zombie
apocalypse genre pieces. Edgar Howard Wright’s Shaun of the Dead implicitly
pokes fun at 28 Days Later by dismissing the initial claim that ‘the virus [in the
film] was caused by infected monkeys’.89 Instead, the zombies appear out of
nowhere and for no apparent reason and start attacking the British population.
The independent film The Zombie Diaries (2006), directed by Kevin Gates
and Michael Bartlett, like 28 Days Later, features a virus that turns humans
into zombies. The episodic film starts off with reports of a pandemic which
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originated in Asia but has spread to Europe and is about to affect Britain. In the
course of the film, it turns out that the flu virus does not simply kill the infected
but has the effect of turning them into flesh-eating zombies. A sequel by the
same filmmakers, World of the Dead: The Zombie Diaries 2 (2011) builds on the first
film’s scenario of zombie apocalypse. It loosely continues the events of the first
instalment, depicting a world in which the virus and the zombies have already
eradicated most of humankind.
In The Vanguard (2008), directed by Matthew Hope, a drug has turned people
into violent and inhuman creatures. The film’s prologue recounts that a powerful
corporation had scientists develop a drug which would kill people to counter
overpopulation and a shortage of energy sources. Revolting against ‘this heinous
act’, the scientists instead developed a drug that turned most of mankind into
the ‘Biosyns’, a ‘dominant and savage’ 90 species.
British novelists have also adopted the zombie narrative to describe apocalyptic
scenarios. In Thomas Emson’s Zombie Britannica (2010), gangs of zombies appear
out of nowhere, attacking people to infect and transform them into zombies. The
British authorities and people are unable to stop the living dead from infecting
the rest of the population. By the end of the novel, Britain has transformed
into a ‘zombie nation’.91 Unusual for contemporary apocalyptic zombie fiction,
the novel also establishes a connection between global warming and the viral
zombie apocalypse. Throughout the novel, a heat wave grips Britain, apparently
as a result of global warming. Carrie, one of the major characters, believes that
this heat wave represents the ‘[p]erfect weather for a zombie plague’,92 suggesting a
causal relationship between the high temperatures and the zombie invasion.
And in fact, ‘heatwave’ is the title of the first part of the novel during which
the zombies start their assault. In Flu (2010) by Wayne Simmons, it is yet again
a lethal virus which poses ‘the threat of INFECTION’.93 Once infected, people
die a painful ‘sweat-stained, flu-ridden death’ 94 and reawaken as zombies soon
after, trying to hunt down and infect the remainder of the human population.
Zombie Apocalypse (2010) is yet another example of a virus that turns humanity
into a horde of the living dead. Put together by Stephen Jones, more than a dozen
writers contribute one or several sections in the form of fictional private journals,
conversations transcripts, blog entries, tweet exchanges, newspaper reports and
the like. The zombie pandemic breaks out when workers excavate a burial ground
from the Great Plague of London to prepare the site for The New Festival of
Britain, an event to restore national pride. By doing so, they set the human
reanimation virus HRV free, which is the source of a ‘powerful, voracious,
all-consuming disease’.95 The zombies first take over Britain, then the United
States and eventually rule over the whole world, having completely displaced
humankind. The focus of Zombie Apocalypse, however, is not so much on the
risks of pandemic disease but on the dangers of British nostalgia for an allegedly
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glorious past. Only when British patriotic citizens start digging up and trying to
reanimate the infected bodies of dead British icons—one of which, for example,
is Princess Diana—does the zombie pandemic spread beyond containment.
Viral infection
Conspicuously, many of the zombie narratives have in common that some kind
of viral disease brings about the zombie apocalypse. The zombie genre functions
as an apocalyptic framework used to reflect upon popular anxiety over infection
and global pandemic in some of the novels, underlined by overt references to
the various epidemics of the 2000s. The Zombie Diaries alludes to the pandemic
scare caused by avian influenza. Not only does the virus have its source in Asia, a
school spokeswoman at the beginning of the film also states that the government
has assured her that ‘the molecular structure of this virus was very similar to that
of bird flu.’96 Zombie Apocalypse refers to the swine flu. At the outset of the novel,
many Londoners believe that the released virus is ‘nothing but a flu outbreak,
more H1N1 kind of shite’.97 Flu does not single out one type of infectious
disease. Rather, the novel’s characters attribute the disease in the early days of
the pandemic to ‘a choice of different types of flu’,98 including swine flu, bird flu
and mad cow disease. Even though the various types of real-world flu viruses are
not responsible for the respective zombie pandemics and the end of humankind,
their existence suggests that they helped to inspire the fictional diseases.
In addition to the aforementioned novels and films, there is also one example
of viral apocalypse that is not based within the zombie genre. In the British TV
series Survivors (2008–2010), a remake of the 1970s TV series Survivors (1975–
1977), an aggressive flu virus triggers a global crisis, killing ‘more than 90% of
the world’s population.’ 99 The fictional pandemic is conspicuously based on the
SARS and flu epidemics as a statement by producer Hugh Warren confirms:
[Executive producer Sue Hogg] rightly saw it would be timely [to remake the original
series] following the outbreak of the Sars virus, bird flu and all the reports that we are
overdue a flu pandemic.100
The first cases of infection in the series are reported in China101 which establishes
a geographical parallel to the outbreaks of SARS and avian influenza. The series,
however, shifts responsibility away from Asia and makes the West’s ambition
and arrogance accountable for this biochemical catastrophe. In the series finale,
it is revealed that the pandemic broke out when British scientists lost control
over ‘a genetically engineered virus that would provide a single cure for all
forms of flu.’102
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Global climate change
Next to these narratives of apocalyptic infection, stories of global climate
change equally dominate British apocalyptic fiction in the first decade of the 21st
century. Over half a dozen apocalyptic narratives in the 2000s feature cataclysmic
climate change of some kind. The wave of apocalyptic climate change fiction
begins in 2004 when A Planet for the President (2004), The Snow (2004), and The
Flood (2004) are written and published, just three years after the release of the
Third Assessment Report by the IPCC. The publication of Extinction (2005)
and The Deluge (2007) soon followed. Climatic apocalyptic fiction gained
momentum once more in 2008, presumably in response to the publication of the
IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report the year before. Flood (2008) and its sequel
Ark (2009) as well as The Rapture (2009), a new TV version of The Day of the
Triffids (2009) and Guardians of the Phoenix as short story (2010) and novel (2010)
all reached the public within just three years. The increasing fear of a climate
change catastrophe in apocalyptic fiction was not only due to scientific evidence
found by the IPCC but also reflects the growing unease with the actions of
Western nations, especially the US. By producing the largest proportion of the
greenhouse gases, the West had demonstrated its key role in climate change,
a view reflected and reinforced in contemporary British apocalyptic fiction.
A pertinent example of British apocalyptic fiction that combines climate change
catastrophe with biting criticism of the US is A Planet for the President (2004) by
Alistair Beaton. At the beginning of the novel, advisers to the US President have
come to realize that Earth will be unable to support human survival in the near
future, mainly as a result of the American population’s appalling treatment of
the environment and its consumerist waste of natural resources. Consequently,
severe climate change has already started to take effect: ‘The planet is warming
up. The sea-level’s rising. The ozone layer is thinning. The rainforests are
disappearing’.103 From an American point of view, a reversal of this development
and therefore the survival of the human race only seem possible by drastically
reducing the number of people on the planet.104 To achieve this, the advisory
staff convinces the American President to release a lethal virus upon the
world ‘to knock off six billion people the day after tomorrow’.105 If successful,
‘Operation Deliverance’ is expected to kill everybody with the exception of the
secretly vaccinated American citizens. However, when ‘the deadly new strain
of flu [is] being released upon the world’,106 the vaccine fails to be effective.
The last man on Earth is the US President who survived because he received a
different serum than the rest of the American population. This makes A Planet
for the President a rare example of apocalyptic fiction in the early 21st century to
address both the threat of global warming and the dangers of a viral catastrophe
in the same story.
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Ray Hammond’s novel Extinction (2005) takes global warming as the starting
point for an apocalyptic catastrophe. By the year 2055, low-altitude areas like
the Seychelles, the Philippines or Bangladesh have become submerged due
to ‘extreme global warming’.107 Because of this, Western climate management
corporations like ERGIA have helped to manipulate the Earth’s climate for
decades, employing weather-control space stations to ‘manage away the worst
effects of global warming’108 for solvent countries. Nonetheless, an increasing
number of seismic disasters—earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis—
indicate that climate management might have disastrous side effects. Scientists
realize, then, that climate management is ‘seriously damaging the Earth’s
magnetic field’109 and ultimately initiates a reversal of the magnetic poles. This
brings about a volcanic winter on Earth which kills all but a few people from
developed countries who witnessed the cataclysm from the moon and a few
hundred ‘Hulk people’, people from low-altitude developing countries that
started to live on rafts. The novel’s conclusion suggests a simple lesson: A
restoration of paradise is only possible if people from developed and developing
countries work together to build a future. As the responsibility for the apocalypse
is shown to lie with the developed nations, the politics of Extinction stand in the
tradition of 1960s, 1970s environmental apocalyptic fiction
In Eric Brown’s ‘Guardians of the Phoenix’ (2010),110 the warming of the
Earth’s atmosphere is also responsible for the climate change and significantly
contributes to the downfall of human civilization. Brown’s short story is set
around 2090, 50 years after a military coup in China that led to a succession
of wars which eventually resulted in World War III, a five-day biological and
nuclear war. However, in ‘Guardians of the Phoenix’, World War III is only
one factor in the near destruction of the human race; the ensuing temperature
rise is the other factor. Edvard, one of the story’s characters, remembers: ‘What
humankind had begun with wars, the planet finished off with global warming’.111
In 2060, the climatic drought leads to the collapse of entire nations. Ultimately,
the hot climate becomes devastating for human survival and other terrestrial
plants and creatures. The outside temperature regularly reaches ‘fifty-five’112 and
the ‘the little rain that [falls] evaporate[s] in the superheated lower atmosphere
before it reache[s] the earth’.113
In The Rapture (2009) by Liz Jensen, humanity faces sudden global warming
when the drillings of an energy exploration company trigger a cycle of disasters.
In search of new energy sources, companies all over the world are exploiting suboceanic hydrate fields to extract frozen methane from the ocean floors, ignoring
all warnings by scientists who, in worst-case disaster scenarios, predict ‘global
warming on a scale that’s beyond anyone’s worst nightmare’.114 Eventually, an
accident at a methane rig in the North Sea triggers a cycle of disasters—submarine
avalanches, tsunamis and landslides—which have disastrous consequences for
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the human race on both a regional and a global level. Instantly, giant waves
devastate Northern Europe and submerge much of the British Isles. Moreover,
the breakup of the sea floors unlocks gigantic amounts of methane gas. With
methane being ten times as powerful a greenhouse gas as CO2 , the much feared
drastic global climate change ‘with an increase of average global temperatures
by four degrees’115 becomes inevitable.
The two-part TV adaptation of John Wyndham’s classic The Day of the Triffids
from 2009 updates the original storyline so that the triffids are related to the
danger of global warming rather than a Soviet threat. In this new version, oil
extracted from the triffids serves to replace fossil fuels. The triffids, dangerous
as they might be, are essential in providing enough environmentally friendly
energy to lower greenhouse gas emissions. This is why the nations across the
world have established triffid farms with millions of triffids: ‘Triffid oil saved
the world from global warming.’116 Ensuing from this premise, the course of
events more or less follows the footsteps of the Wyndham novel.
There are a few more apocalyptic novels in the first decade of the 2000s that
depict climatic change yet do not attribute it to either anthropogenic activity in
general or global warming in particular. In The Snow (2004) by Adam Roberts,
the entire surface of the Earth is covered under a layer of ice and snow of several
kilometres thickness. However, the climate change is completely unrelated to
human activity on Earth as it turns out that an alien life form is behind the
long-standing snowfall. The invading aliens are ‘the authors of the snow’,117
requiring snow as a natural environment to survive. In Maggie Gee’s The Flood
(2004), by contrast, ‘months of rain’118 produce the eponymous flood which
threatens the lives of the inhabitants of an unnamed city. The novel describes
the events after this period of prolonged rain until, in the end, ‘the immense
water’119 in the form of a tidal wave returns and buries humankind. Likewise,
a gigantic wave submerges London and the rest of Britain in The Deluge (2007)
by Mark Morris. As with The Flood, the incredible disaster in The Deluge remains
unexplained. It is merely at the beginning of the novel that the characters
rationalize that the flooding is connected with ‘the greenhouse effect’,
‘[c]limate change’120 and ‘global warming’.121 These references show the novels’
awareness of the contemporary discourse on apocalyptic global warming. Yet, at
the same time, The Deluge, The Flood and The Snow challenge the idea of humaninduced climate change on a global scale because the apocalyptic climate change
remains a mysterious, seemingly random natural disaster or is brought about
by extra-terrestrial creatures. This is why it makes sense to use the term ‘global
climate change’ rather than ‘global warming’ when speaking of environmental
apocalyptic fiction at the beginning of the 21st century. Whereas global warming
would strongly imply a human factor in the change of weather conditions,
climate change is a slightly more neutral term.
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Case study: 28 Weeks Later
28 Weeks Later (2007), directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, employs an infection
narrative to reflect upon international politics after 9/11. While the fear of
a viral epidemic is in the foreground of the story at all times, Fresnadillo’s
film is mainly not about ‘global anxieties about migration of bodies, capital
and infection (AIDS, SARS, influenza epidemics)’,122 even though these fears
strongly resonate within it. Rather, by juxtaposing the epidemic outbreak with
a disastrous US American occupation, 28 Weeks Later, above all, reads as a
critique of the US-led War in Iraq. In addition to that, the film brings up the
idea that Britain’s relationship with the US in the early 21st century has become
ambivalent if not troubled, a recurrent theme for the genre in the early 21st
century.123
28 Weeks Later starts with a prologue that takes place in a remote country house
at the height of British viral infection with RAGE. RAGE, as introduced in the
first film of the series 28 Days Later, turns any infected person into a bloodthirsty
fast-moving zombie-like creature. When a group of infected zombies attack,
Don (Robert Carlyle) leaves his wife Alice (Catherine McCormack) behind to
save his own life. 28 weeks later, an American-led NATO mission helps the
surviving British citizens to reconstruct the country after the British mainland
was quarantined and finally declared free of infection. Don has been put in
charge of a section within the Green Zone, a security district on the Isle of
Dogs where all British survivors are supposed to live and stay for the period
of reconstruction. When Don’s children Tammy (Imogen Poots) and Andy
(Mackintosh Muggleton), who had been on a trip to Spain during the epidemic,
return to Britain, Don tells them that he saw their mother die and that he was
powerless to help her. Shortly later, Tammy und Andy leave the Green Zone
without authorization to visit their former home. They find Alice who survived
the attack due to her natural immunity to RAGE infection but, nevertheless,
remains a carrier of the virus. When the military forces bring her in for tests,
medical officer Major Phillips (Rose Byrne) hopes that her immunity might be
the key for a vaccine against RAGE. Meanwhile, Don, without permission, visits
Alice in her quarantined hospital room, is bitten by her and becomes infected.
He kills Alice, breaks into the containment area and starts randomly infecting
people.
As a result, the NATO force completely loses control over the occupation zone
as a mass of the infected run amok. Subsequently, the military firebombs the
Green Zone and uses gas in the districts beyond to exterminate all the infected
and thus avoid further spread of the infection. Major Phillips is determined
to save Andy as Andy shares his mother’s immunity to the virus. Phillips,
Tammy, Andy, and the US soldier Doyle as well as Don and some of the other
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infected are able to escape the inferno. On the way to a rendezvous point with
an American helicopter pilot, Doyle is killed when the military forces drop gas
on London city and Major Phillips is murdered by Don. Don also bites Andy
before Tammy shoots him dead. Andy, who is now a carrier of the virus, and
Tammy make it to Wembley Stadium where Doyle’s helicopter pilot friend Flynn
(Harold Perrineau) picks them up and takes them away from Britain and across
the English Channel. An epilogue shows a crowd of infected people emerging
from a Paris underground station.
The situation of London and, in fact, the whole of Britain at the beginning
of 28 Weeks Later resembles the situation of Iraq after the US invasion.
Like Baghdad, London is under US military rule. The sequence which describes
what has happened in the 28 weeks after the prologue informs the viewer that
‘AN AMERICAN-LED NATO FORCE’124 has entered London to restore
order and to bring safety to the remaining citizens. The zone of safety is called
the Green Zone and thus has the same name as the safeguarded headquarter
district in the centre of Baghdad during the time of the US occupation of Iraq.
The allusions to the Iraq occupation are so obvious that Joshua Clover even
deems it possible ‘that the audio [in 28 Weeks Later] comes from field recordings
of the Baghdad Green Zone’.125 In what follows, the film emphasizes the US
identity of the occupation forces as there is no sign or mention of soldiers from
other nations. The military characters throughout the film are portrayed as
American soldiers, played with American accents by mostly American actors
so that ‘visually and verbally US forces are the main occupiers’.126 Moreover,
a military guide informs Tammy and Andy that ‘the US Army is responsible for
your safety’,127 emphasizing the US American’s leading role in the occupation
evoking the role of the US in the invasion of Iraq and Baghdad.
The outcome of the US occupation in 28 Weeks Later is equally disastrous
to the US occupation of Iraq. The US fails to restore order permanently and
instead exacerbates the situation by letting the virus spread beyond Great
Britain. Until the fresh outbreak of RAGE, point of view shots through rifle
scopes and the images from CCTV cameras supposedly convey an atmosphere
of security: ‘Space is controlled and observed’.128 However, this impression
reveals itself to be an illusion. Once infection breaks out again, the US military
is helpless in containing it and reacts with indifferent brutality. Major Phillips
succinctly explains the simple military procedure in case of another breakout:
‘Step one, kill the infected. Step two, containment. If containment fails, step
three, extermination’.129 The result of this strategy is the death of almost all
British citizens as well as most of the US troops. The failure of the US is
emblematically captured in a shot which shows Doyle’s point of view through
his rifle scope (Figure 16). The American flag towers in the midst of zombies
hunting after British civilians and US soldiers. This shot of chaos and human
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suffering foreshadows the murder of the remaining British population by
American soldiers and the infected (Figure 17). Hence, the film, at least partially,
puts the blame on the US for the catastrophic consequences and conclusion.
Fresnadillo’s film attributes the re-escalation of the infection in part to the
military’s arrogant and careless approach to their mission of reconstructing
Britain, constructing a parallel to the insufficient measures taken by the US
in Iraq after the invasion. At the beginning of the film, all the high-ranking
Figure 16: The British people become targets for the US soldiers. Fresnadillo, 28 Weeks Later,
0:53:07.
Figure 17: US soldiers have massacred the Green Zone’s residents. Fresnadillo, 28 Weeks Later,
0:54:54.
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British Apocalyptic Fiction
officers with the exception of Major Phillips underestimate the danger the virus
still might pose. They believe that the virus is already completely eradicated
anyway or, in case it indeed does come back, that the US military will easily
‘kill it’.130 The combat soldiers display the same careless attitude until the
breakout. Two early scenes show soldiers joking and even playacting as zombies.
It is this carelessness that makes the renewed viral outbreak possible. Firstly,
the US soldiers do not pay enough attention to immediately stop Tammy and
Andy from illegally leaving the security zone which, in turn, is how the virus,
in Alice’s body, invades the security zone. Secondly, the US military does not
take the necessary precautions to stop Don or other unauthorized non-medical
staff from getting in contact with Alice. Don’s security pass, which he needs for
his work as a section officer in the Green Zone, allows him to enter and leave
the medical centre without being checked by any military personnel. The reescalation of infection after a short period of stability represents another parallel
to the war in Iraq. After the initial swift and successful invasion, Iraq remained
in a state of war for years despite US efforts to pacify the country.
The film furthermore criticizes the US for its inhumane treatment of the British
residents. In their attempt to keep Britain free of infection, the US military
regime reduces the British citizens to defenceless captives. The Green Zone
is not ‘home’,131 as Tammy suggests, but becomes a prison for the British
inhabitants. And while the need for limited freedom and strict control to protect
the Zone’s residents is appropriate, the military is shown to abuse their power.
The first scene of Alice inside the Green Zone is a good example. It shows her
brutally victimized by US military personnel in order to disinfect her. They
forcefully scrub her naked body of any germs, ignoring Alice’s desperate pleas
to stop their torturing. The necessity of this enforced act of cleaning before
entering a secluded space establishes her status as a prisoner as the scene is
highly reminiscent of the induction process of new convicts in prison films.132
The images of Alice pressed with her face against the translucent shower wall
and cowering on the floor at the end of the procedure (Figure 18; Figure 19)
furthermore give the scene the visual quality of a rape scene. Alice’s sobbing
and screaming as well as her vain protestations ‘No!’ and ‘Get off me! Get off
me!’133 further emphasize the scene’s tenor as a depiction of rape. By showing
the US soldiers in the act of overstepping this kind of ethical boundary in a
prison environment, 28 Weeks Later evokes the events at Abu Ghraib prison.
The critique of the military operation is also evident in the subversive behaviour
by some of the soldier characters. Sergeant Doyle, Major Phillips, and Flynn all
ignore military orders to make ethically superior choices. Sergeant Doyle stops
executing the order to shoot all targets when he sees Andy through his gun
sight: ‘That’s not a target anymore.’134 Instead of following the protocol and
killing all civilians, he acts as a sensible human being, disregards ‘the chain of
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155
command’135 and abandons his post. Likewise, the helicopter pilot Flynn takes
Tammy and Andy aboard his aircraft even though he knows that any civilians
are to be killed. To avoid being shot down, he even flies them across the English
Channel. Major Phillips, finally, also goes against General Stone’s (Idris Elba)
orders by trying to save and evacuate Tammy and Andy. She makes this her main
priority because she hopes that Andy or Tammy have inherited their mother’s
immunity. Their blood, then, could be ‘the key to a vaccine, even a cure’136 and
could save lives. General Stone, by contrast, is not interested in finding a cure
but only wants to see all infected and potential virus carriers dead. Ironically, if
Figure 18: US military personnel torture Alice I. Fresnadillo, 28 Weeks Later, 0:36:21.
Figure 19: US military personnel torture Alice II. Fresnadillo, 28 Weeks Later, 0:36:31.
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the three soldiers had followed their orders, Andy and the virus would indeed
have been killed and containment could have been successful. This, however,
does not take away from the fact that the result of the occupation would have
been equally fatal for the British population in case the three soldiers had
followed their orders. Dying at the hands of the infected or the US military, the
US occupation inevitably results in the end of the British people.
By moving the disastrous US American invasion from Baghdad to London and
by linking it with the extinction of the British people, 28 Weeks Later brings into
question whether Britain’s special relationship137 with the US is still beneficial.
Throughout the 20th century and especially since the Second World War, Britain
and the US have shared a history as political and military allies. The beginning
of 28 Weeks Later underlines the special bond between the two countries and
suggests that the US serves, to some degree, as Britain’s guardian. The strong
military presence by the US gives the impression that the US ‘will do everything
to make [British citizens’] repatriation as easy as possible.’138 In the course of the
film, however, the bond between Britain and the US becomes deeply damaged.
The British loss of trust in the Americans as their protectors is reflected in the
relationship between the two British children and Major Phillips. Despite her
good intentions, Major Phillips cannot keep her promise to Tammy that she is
‘gonna get you [Tammy and Andy] both out of here’139 safely. In the end, the
children actually manage to leave apocalyptic London, yet Phillips’ promise is
ultimately broken. Attacked and killed by Don, she is unable to protect Andy
from Don’s assault which results in Andy becoming a carrier of the virus. The
Paris epilogue, then, shows that Andy, just like his mother before him, must
have eventually infected others. The shot of the empty helicopter furthermore
implies that neither Flynn nor the children survived the Paris outbreak. Phillips’
failure to serve as the children’s protector makes her character emblematic for
the flawed efforts by the US American occupation forces.
Britain’s problematic relationship with the US in 28 Weeks Later reflects a
growing unease in early 21st century Britain about America’s war on terror and
its consequences for Britain and its people. The many parallels between the
film’s scenario and the US led invasion and occupation of Iraq indicate that the
film serves as a commentary on contemporary foreign affairs. By making the
British people suffer and die as a consequence of the US military’s actions, the
film points towards the idea that Britain was in fact ill-advised in following the
United States’ lead in the post-9/11 world. From that perspective, it is possible
to read the story of the two British children, Tammy and Andy, as a warning
of what might happen to Britain in the future. Betrayed and assaulted by their
father, a representative of an older, pro-American generation, and failed by the
US forces, Tammy and Andy cannot rely on traditional bonds and authorities
for their survival.
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157
Furthermore, 28 Weeks Later not only criticizes the politics of the United
States in the early 21st century but also challenges Britain’s political role in the
world after 9/11. As the catalyst behind the fresh outbreak of RAGE, the father
figure Don is partially to blame for the viral catastrophe and the demise of the
British people. Reading the film within the context of the British participation
in the Iraq invasion and the subsequent London bombings, Don’s failure to
serve as a guardian for his wife and family is representative of the failure of
the British government to fully protect the British citizens during this period.
In this way, 28 Weeks Later mirrors and reinforces the British public’s critical
stance towards their government’s foreign affairs in the aftermath of the attacks
on September 11.
Case study: Flood
Depicting the catastrophic consequences of a massive sea level rise, Stephen
Baxter’s Flood (2008) seizes upon public anxieties over the danger of global
climate change in the first decade of the 21st century yet also reflects the popular
controversy over anthropogenic global warming during that time. The novel is
set over a 36 year-period, 2016 to 2052, during which the mean sea level rises
from just one metre to over 8,800 metres, initially causing the evacuation of the
lower heights and leading to mass migration to higher altitudes until the flood
drowns the entire surface of the planet.
The novel relates the events from the perspectives of the four central characters:
the main character Lily, an American-British helicopter pilot; Piers, a British
military officer; Helen, a woman from England; Gary, an American climate
scientist. Significantly, they are connected through five years of captivity, held
hostage by religious extremists in Barcelona. Due to their background as victims
of terrorism, the novel early on establishes a theme of captivity. Remarkably,
captivity is initially associated with terrorism but, in the course of the novel, is
realigned with climate change.140
At the beginning of the novel, business tycoon Nathan Lammockson, who
sympathizes with the victims, sends a task force which frees the four hostages.
Lammockson continues to stay in touch and supports them throughout the novel.
After their liberation, the ‘Barcelona Four’ part company and pursue individual
interests in the face of sea level rising. Lily repeatedly saves her sister, niece
and nephew from the dangers of the flood and eventually joins Lammockson
in Project City, a settlement in the heights of the Peruvian Andes. Piers, after
a preliminary separation from the other three, rejoins Lily and they become
partners in life. Helen, who was raped and conceived her daughter Grace during
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British Apocalyptic Fiction
captivity, is separated from Grace after the liberation and thereafter focuses all
her efforts on finding her. Gary joins other scientists to try and find the source of
the sudden and severe flooding. One of his colleagues, Thandie Jones, discovers
the reason for the deluge. Tectonic activity has fragmented the seabed, opening
up gigantic suboceanic water reservoirs which pour into the oceans and bring
about a continuing increase in sea level. Governments and the IPCC ignore
Thandie’s theory and the accompanying warning, attributing the unexpected
climate change to global warming and thus failing to anticipate the long-term
consequences of the flood—i.e., a planet submerged by water. Slowly, the oceans
inundate countries and continents. Helen falls victim to the flooding of the
British Isles, Gary tracks down Grace and takes her to Project City. When the
water reaches the top of the Andes, Lammockson puts Ark Three, a gigantic
ocean liner, to sea, with Lily, Piers and Grace aboard.
Ultimately, as the passengers on Ark Three run out of resources in the course
of the following years, the only way of long-term survival is to secure one of
the limited spaces on Ark One, a starship to launch from the United States. Lily
manages to make Lammockson award Grace a spot aboard Ark One; the others
stay behind on Earth. Subsequently, Piers is killed when pirates attack Ark Three
and, a while later, Lammockson dies, raddled by age and exhaustion. Eventually,
the novel ends with the sea closing over the tip of Mount Everest, witnessed by
Lily, Thandie and the next human generation, who never properly lived ashore
and, instead, is used to living on rafts and therefore does not understand the
significance of the event.
Evidently, Baxter’s Flood identifies global climate change as a danger of
apocalyptic proportions. On the way to total submersion, humankind, as a result
of climatic change, is haunted by the collapse of the terrestrial climate system,141
a series of catastrophic tectonic events, such as ‘volcanoes, quakes, tsunamis’,142
and by mass refugee migration which spreads ‘disease and conflicts’.143
Ultimately, the rising sea level destroys human civilization and makes the global
environment essentially unsuitable for human survival. Consequently, the
extinction of human life on Earth seems to be only a matter of time. The maps
of the increasingly drowned world, which open each of the novel’s five parts,
effectively illustrate the growing extent to which the flood endangers human
life on the planet (Figure 20). With spaceship Ark One apparently offering the
only way to survive, climate change has forced humanity off the face of the
Earth.144
Yet in contrast to the popular notion in the early 2000s, it is not global warming
that triggers the cataclysmic flooding. As the global climate change in Baxter’s
novel is caused by leaking subterranean seas and not by ‘glacier melting, the ice
caps, or the heat expansion of the water itself’,145 global warming does not pose
the main threat in Flood. By comparison, global warming is in fact portrayed as
Apocalypse after 9/11
159
possessing only limited apocalyptic potential. Instead, it develops its potential
for disaster only as a harmful corollary of the sea level rise:
The unending rise in cee-oh-two levels in the atmosphere was one undeniable
consequence of the flood. […] Aside from the warming pulse it caused, acid rain burned
the leaves of the plants in the ship’s gardens and little farm, etched away at the solar cell
panels, and, sometimes, stung unprotected human flesh.146
While the damaging effects of global warming on humanity and nature
strengthen the overall idea of climate change as a worldwide threat to the
environment and the human race, global warming itself becomes a secondary
problem and, hence, loses some of its potential to scare. By way of example,
Thandie trivializes its dangers, referring to the pre-flood period as ‘the good old
days of global warming.’147 She implies that the threat posed by global warming is
insignificant in view of the new dangers. After all, ‘the global warming crisis [..]
had afflicted the planet long before the flood itself’148 and never had come near
to having similarly devastating consequences. In Flood, it is solely the breaking
open of the subterranean water reservoirs that brings about the apocalypse.
The idea of global warming as a cataclysmic threat for humanity is further
undermined by the disapproving characterization of the IPCC, an organization
which stands for the danger of and the fight against climate change in general,
but in particular with respect to human-induced global warming. The IPCC
is characterized as an incompetent and slow-acting institution, inadequate to
properly fulfil its function as the authority in matters of climate change. The
negative attitude towards the IPCC becomes apparent in several condemning
Figure 20: The Earth is almost fully submerged under water in the year 2035. Image by Malcolm
and Jonathan Burke (www.calculatedearth.com). Stephen Baxter, Flood, p. 349.
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British Apocalyptic Fiction
remarks by some of the main characters. Thandie calls the delegates
‘boneheads’149 and Lammockson even goes so far as to refer to them as
‘arseholes’.150 Undoubtedly, these characterizations are not voiced objectively
and rationally. However, as Thandie is the one scientist who discovers the
actual reason behind the sea level rise and Lammockson turns out to be one of
the few characters with the foresight to anticipate and prepare for the ultimate
catastrophe, their judgement is not as unfounded as it at first may seem. The
fact that the IPCC delegates reject Thandie’s ground-breaking findings on the
subterranean water reservoirs backs Thandie’s and Lammockson’s dismissive
appraisal. To Thandie’s dismay, they blindly continue to explain the sea level
rise with global warming despite the absence of any evidence: ‘[T]here are
plenty of commentators taking these exceptional events as proof that global
warming is a reality, even though there’s no immediate causal link’.151 In
that way, Flood reinforces contemporary opinion that the scientists working
for the IPCC misjudge or misrepresent the danger of global warming. The
peripheral nature of global warming for the climate apocalypse in Flood does
not necessarily mean that the climate change catastrophe in the novel is a
natural disaster void of any human influence. Flood remains ambiguous with
regard to the question whether the change in climate is the result of human
(wrong-)doing.
On the one hand, there is a general suspicion that humanity must be guilty or
at least partially responsible for the disaster. A variety of characters in the novel
believe that ‘anthropogenic activity’152 prompted the environment to change so
drastically. Taking a moral perspective, Lily, the protagonist and moral centre of
the novel, believes that humankind’s wastefulness ‘may have caused this global
convulsion.’153 In an attempt to answer the question of human responsibility,
she furthermore sees the flooding of the Earth in context with the biblical
deluge. She concludes that the sea level rise is God’s punishment of mankind for
having broken the Noachian covenant with God.154 Arguably representing the
developing countries, Ollantay, a supposed Inca descendant who fights to gain
access to Lammockson’s Project City, shares Lily’s opinion but is more specific as
to who is to be counted among the culprits for the disaster. Ollantay holds only
a part of humanity responsible as he blames the way of life of the industrialized
countries for the catastrophe. He accusingly claims that ‘the world drowns
because of centuries of [Western] industrial excess’.155 Moreover, Thandie, who
represents the voice of science in Flood, also speculates that humanity’s impact
on the planet’s ecology set off the cataclysmic events. In her talk to the IPCC
delegates, Thandie points out that human activities have had a tremendous
impact on the Earth since the Industrial Revolution, thus not only sharing
Ollantay’s view but also echoing familiar observations on global warming in
scientific publications of the first decade of the 2000s.156 She speculates that the
Apocalypse after 9/11
161
impact now has reached the level of ‘Dangerous Anthropogenic Interference’.157
In that way, she suggests that it was in fact human influence on nature that broke
open the subterranean seas.
On the other hand, the novel offers a geological answer that questions human
responsibility for the climate apocalypse. As a proper scientist who relies on
data and evidence, Thandie herself stays doubtful because there is ‘no concrete
proof’158 for mankind’s contribution to the climatic apocalypse. From her point
of view, it is as likely that the flooding is a natural ecological process and so just
‘another of those dramatic but natural transitions’159 between two of Earth’s
climatic stable states. The novel’s other main scientist, climatologist Gary, is
equally unsure about whether it was humanity who ‘gave [the Earth] the kick in
the ass that induced her to start the process’160 of transformation. And yet, as he
takes into account the geological history of the Earth, Gary assuredly considers
the flooding of the planet as just another natural renovation in the large scale of
the Earth’s geological history: ‘[T]his whole story has never been about us, has it?
It’s always been about the Earth, transforming herself as she has in the past.’161
This remark and his further elaborations on the mechanisms behind the climate
change162 make the human race and its role in the apocalyptic transformation
seem rather insignificant and irrelevant.
Stephen Baxter’s Flood hence strikes a balance of arguments in favour
and against human-induced climate change and does not support a simple
global warning activist agenda. Unmistakably, it contains a warning of global
climate change and its potentially fatal consequences for large proportions
of the human race. Nonetheless, the novel also reflects and underlines the
existence of multiple opinions on climate change in British society in the early
21st century. In particular, it offers a multi-facetted view on anthropogenic
global warming. While Flood acknowledges the existence of global warming
and its dangerous influence on the environment, it supports the view of many
global warming sceptics who claim that its prospective dangers are overstated.
One would expect global warming to be the source of disaster in a story about
apocalyptic climate change and sea level rise. Yet the novel instead features a
different, popularly unknown scientific phenomenon to drive the apocalyptic
plot,163 therefore implicitly undermining the catastrophic effects of global
warming. Moreover, in contrast to the popular but controversial conception of
anthropogenic climate change, the climate change catastrophe in the novel is
neither clearly a man-made nor a natural disaster. This is how Flood addresses
the most contentious aspects of the contemporary debate around climate
change and its capacity for disaster.
*
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British Apocalyptic Fiction
The terrorist attacks of the 2000s put an end to the apocalypse lethargy of the
post-Cold War era. The September 11 attacks and bombings of London and
Madrid infused British culture with a new climate of fear. While the danger of
terrorism pervades much of British apocalyptic fiction and film, it is not at the
very centre of the post-9/11 apocalyptic narrative. Instead, early 21st century
British apocalyptic fiction revolves around two clusters of apocalyptic discourse:
pandemics and global climate change. At first sight, the fears of worldwide
infection and deteriorating climatic conditions appear to be noticeably different
in nature and seem to lack common characteristics. However, they are similar in
that they illustrate the reality of a globalized, interdependent world. Apocalyptic
pandemics are often coupled with zombie narratives in order to give the
otherwise invisible threat of infection face and form. Apocalyptic climate change
continues the tradition of environmental catastrophe in British apocalyptic
fiction that started with détente eco-doom and which played a minor role after
the Cold War. This time, though, the role of humanity in the destruction of the
planet is much more ambiguous. Still, post-9/11 British apocalyptic fiction shares
a parallel with some of eco-doom fiction on a political level by re-examining and
re-evaluating the special relationship with the United States. More than ever
before, the trusted ally from the Cold War period is eyed critically, an agent of
disaster no longer to be relied on.
Conclusion
Apocalyptic fiction occupies a unique position within British literary production
in that it provides a chronicle of a nation’s collective fears and anxieties. These
fears are manifested in a range of forms, reflecting existential shifts, technological
developments, political nuances, and natural phenomena. The main chapters of
this study illustrate the forces and influences that have shaped the discourse on
apocalypse in Britain in the last 120 years: Cosmic catastrophes and dangerous
scientists, apocalyptic wars, the nuclear threats of the Cold War, environmental
disasters, viral pandemics and global climate change. These narratives shape a
sense of national identity and reveal the changing factors necessary to provide
a reassuring collective understanding of sustained survival. Apocalyptic fiction
traces the move away from a biblical ontological understanding of humankind
and its ultimate destiny towards a secular interpretation of the origin of human
life and future of the Earth. The genre provides a vehicle to explore the fragility,
fallibility and finite nature of humankind.
The shifts in Britain’s collective fears are not only evident when following
this study’s approach by looking at the corpus of apocalyptic fiction as a whole
but can also be detected in individual narratives that have seen adaptations and
sequels over time. John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids (1951), which has been
adapted to film (1962) and as a TV mini-series (1981 and 2009), had a sequel in
The Night of the Triffids (2001) and to some degree inspired Danny Boyle’s 28 Days
Later (2001),1 is the best example of such an apocalyptic narrative. The original
novel, the film adaptation and the 1980s TV mini-series were all written during
the Cold War and address fears of communist invasion.2 The sequel, written
in the post-Cold War era, appropriately enough lacks this cultural subtext. The
2009 TV series and 28 Days Later update the Triffids narrative in correspondence
with what dominated British apocalyptic discourse at the time of production:
infectious disease in 28 Days Later and global climate change in The Day of
the Triffids (2009). In the case of 28 Days Later, this might be expected as the
film is a loose adaptation of Wyndham’s novel anyway and represents more
an amalgamation of various apocalyptic source texts and generic tropes than
a straightforward adaptation. The 2009 TV series is a more striking example.
While plot and characters bear a strong resemblance to Wyndham’s novel, the
most significant update is the use of triffid oil as an alternative source of energy
to ward off the danger of global warming, a concept that entered the public
consciousness only in the 1980s, long after the publication of the original
Triffid text. This is how adaptations of classic apocalyptic texts by themselves
can reveal and help to construct shifts and changes in the collective fears of a
nation.
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British Apocalyptic Fiction
An observation of the development of British apocalyptic fiction over the
past 120 years shows that the outlook on apocalypse changed from a national
to a global perspective. In the apocalyptic stories up until the beginning of
the First World War, the apocalypse is told from a strictly British point of
view. The narratives are almost exclusively set in Britain; other parts of the
world seemingly ceasing to exist. This suggests a world picture in which
Britain stands pars pro toto for the whole world and reflects upon the British
role and self-assessment as a world power at the time. This view is further
supported by contemporary apocalyptic stories like The Violet Flame in which
the assassination of Britain by a foreign figure is a threat to the survival of all
humanity.
This British self-perception increasingly disappears after the First World
War and even more so after the Second World War and thus mirrors Britain’s
decline on the world political stage. During the Cold War, the idea of Britain
as the world is replaced by the concept of the West as the world in invasion
narratives and Western propaganda apocalyptic fiction, indicating Britain’s
necessary alignment with the more powerful United States. This political
shift is also apparent in apocalyptic fiction outside the Cold War era. John
Brunner’s environmental apocalypse The Sheep Look Up serves as a good
example in that it is mostly set in the United States and thereby implies Britain
(alone) can no longer adequately represent the setting for events of apocalyptic
proportions.3
The process of internationalisation and globalisation of British apocalyptic
fear reaches its final stage in the 21st century when the end of the world is a
catastrophe unrestricted by national boundaries, political alliance, or cultural
affiliation. Accordingly, some of these most recent apocalyptic stories are set
all over the world. For example, Stephen Baxter’s The Flood takes place in Spain,
Britain, the US, Peru, Tibet and eventually concludes in the Himalayas. Global
climate change and viral pandemic, the two dominant clusters of presentday apocalyptic discourse, are symbolic of this globalization of apocalypse in
that both threats develop their full disastrous potential as a result of global
connectedness and interdependencies.
Despite the globalized perspective on apocalypse, British apocalyptic fiction
has retained a distinct Britishness, negotiating matters of national identity and
foreign relations in fiction about the end of the world. In its 120-year history,
British apocalyptic fiction not only formed part of the discursive formation
on ideas of the end of the world but also used the apocalyptic narrative to
comment on the state of the nation and its position in the world. The case study
of The Violet Flame shows that, before the First World War, writers employed
apocalyptic scenarios to warn of foreign invasion and Britain’s decline as a
world power.4 Towards the end of the period between the two World Wars, the
Conclusion
165
will towards rearmament within Britain in the face of the fascist movement in
Europe is implicit in Things to Come5 and evident in The Machine Stops.6 After the
Second World War, British apocalyptic fiction looks back on the war experience
and comes to terms with Britain’s new role as a subordinate American ally.
Narratives like The Tide Went Out question the veracity of the British myth of the
Dunkirk Spirit which thrived in the aftermath of the war.7 In tales more absorbed
by Cold War mentality, British apocalyptic fiction documents the British alliance
with the West and positions Britain against communism.8 Finally, in reaction to
the terrorist attacks of September 11 and the ensuing war on terror, apocalyptic
fiction is used to re-evaluate if not redefine the relationship with the US as
illustrated in the case study of 28 Weeks Later.9 These negotiations of British
identity and British foreign relations gain additional potency considering that
the future of the human race is at stake in these stories.
Next to the negotiation of British identity, the role of science is at the forefront
of British apocalyptic fiction. In many stories, science plays a significant
part in the annihilation or salvation of humankind. In The Violet Flame, the
foreigner’s knowledge of science and the Englishman’s ignorance of science
turn the world into stone.10 In Things to Come, scientific warfare first brings
humankind to the brink of extinction but is also crucial in its restoration.11
In much of Cold War apocalyptic fiction, the products of science—i.e. nuclear
weapons—are responsible for the downfall of mankind. Yet there are also
a number of examples that show science in ambivalent terms and not solely
as an instrument of destruction.12 Therefore, it is necessary to view the role
of science as interrelated with the portrayal of human nature in apocalyptic
fiction. During the interwar period and the Cold War era, British apocalyptic
fiction comprises harsh assessments of humanity as savage and flawed.13
In consequence, it can be argued that the judgement passed on science is to
some degree neutral. Science merely provides humankind with tools that can
be used for good and evil purposes. Humankind, however, because of its flawed
egoistic disposition for power and domination, realizes the apocalyptic potential
that science offers. In part, this attitude already exists in The Violet Flame and
other apocalyptic dangerous scientist stories.14 In these stories, though, it is
only one scientist who abuses the power of science whereas in later texts, we
find a general condemnation of human nature independent of national origin.
The interrelation between the role of science and flawed human nature is also
apparent by looking at current examples of viral pandemic apocalypse and
global climate change in which both themes are not nearly as pronounced as
during the interwar years and the Cold War.
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British Apocalyptic Fiction
Outlook on related fields of research
The results of this study on apocalyptic fiction in Britain could provide the basis
for an investigation into public fear and apocalyptic discourse from a comparative
perspective. Here, one major point of interest is whether the development of
the discourse on apocalypse is the same or similar across different cultures. As
argued before, apocalyptic fiction in Britain became increasingly globalized in
perspective over time. Accordingly, it is to be expected that viral pandemic and
global climate change dominate the apocalyptic discourse at the beginning of
the 21st century, not only in British culture but in other cultures as well. The same
might also be true for apocalyptic discourse during the Cold War when both
East and West equally feared a cataclysmic nuclear catastrophe and the Cold War
enemy. For the interwar period, it is conceivable that the cultural reaction on
most of the Continent was similar to that in Britain—i.e. condemning war and
science. However, it would be interesting to learn whether this condemnation and
fear of future war also became part of apocalyptic discourse and was expressed
in stories about the end of the world in these cultures. Moreover, a comparison
with countries/cultures that were not as strongly involved in the events and
suffering of the Great War as Britain might bring to light a different discursive
formation on apocalypse between the First and Second World Wars. Even more
interesting is the time before the First World War. With Camille Flammarion’s
La Fin du Monde (1893), which tells the story of a comet collision with Earth, there
is one example of French apocalyptic fiction that integrates perfectly with the
apocalyptic discourse in Britain. The analysis of more examples of apocalyptic
fiction from this early period could help to show whether apocalyptic discourse
was already international and cross-cultural in outlook from the very beginning.
The main research question, then, for a cross-cultural study would be at what
times the discourse on apocalypse was more strongly regionally or culturally
fragmented and at what times it appears to have been more homogenous.
As far as a comparative study with a single other English-speaking culture
is concerned, a comparison with American apocalyptic fiction could be
especially rewarding and insightful. Like its British counterpart, American
apocalyptic fiction has a long and prolific tradition. Jack’s London The Scarlet
Plague (1912), Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer’s When Worlds Collide (1933), and
Richard Matheson’s I am Legend (1954) are only some of the most prominent
examples of a large corpus of American apocalyptic fiction, the history of
which is almost as long as that of British apocalyptic fiction and has not been
given sufficient scholarly attention.15 As Britain and the US share to some
extent a cultural background and history, parallels in apocalyptic fears are to
be expected. Certainly, this seems likely for the era of the Cold War when both
countries were allies in the common battle against communism. By contrast,
Conclusion
167
the experience of the First World War possibly did not have such a profound
effect on the apocalyptic discourse in the US as it had in Britain, since the war
was not fought on US American soil. The exploration of such diverging cultural
conditions and their consequences for the discursive formation of the discourse
on apocalypse in the US and in Britain would be a fruitful field of research. The
results of this study on British apocalyptic fiction could be used as a foil against
which a history of American apocalyptic fiction can be read and compared. In
addition, considering British apocalyptic stories such as 28 Weeks Later, it would
be interesting to investigate in which ways American writers and filmmakers use
apocalyptic scenarios to comment on US-British-relations, if they do so at all.
Apart from research that investigates apocalyptic fiction from a comparative
perspective, it will be interesting to observe the future development of apocalyptic
discourse in Britain. As there are two quite distinct but equally significant
clusters of apocalyptic discourse at present, viral pandemic and global climate
change, the next few years will show whether one of these two clusters will
come to dominate apocalyptic discourse in Britain.
Notes
Introduction
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
Beckett, ‘News is Terrible’.
Cruickshank, ‘Bird Deaths’.
Keneally, ‘Apocalyptic Year to Come?’.
Stevens, ‘Will the World End Today?’.
Batty, ‘Apocalypse Not Now’.
Pope, ‘Will the World Really End’.
Allen, ‘End of the World Speculation’.
‘2012 (It Ain’t the End)’.
‘Official Charts Company: Jay Sean’.
‘Box Office Mojo: 2012’; ‘Box Office Mojo: United Kingdom’.
Tate Britain, ‘John Martin: Apocalypse’.
For a collection of articles dealing with various aspects of the flood myth, cf. Dundes,
Flood Myth.
13 Frymer-Kensky, ‘Atrahasis Epic’, p. 64.
14 Haselböck, Vom Ende der Zeiten, p. 65; Hämmerly-Dupuy, ‘Some Observations’, p. 54.
15 See Davies, ‘Introduction to the Pentateuch’, p. 37.
16 Haselböck, Vom Ende der Zeiten, p. 65.
17 Newman, Real History, p. 20.
18 See Collins, ‘Introduction’, pp. 12, 18.
19 See Zamora, Writing the Apocalypse, p. 2; Lewis, ‘Days of Wrath and Laughter’, p. 196.
20 See Collins, ‘Introduction’, p. 9.
21 Zimbaro, Encyclopedia of Apocalyptic Literature, xi.
22 McKinnell, ‘Vluspá’, p. 19.
23 De Grainville, Le Dernier Homme, p. 133.
24 Alkon, Origins of Futuristic Fiction, p. 175.
25 Roberts, History of Science Fiction, p. 89.
26 Cf. McWhir, Introduction to Last Man, xvi. Furthermore, John Martin portrayed
The Last Man in a series of paintings (1826; 1833; 1850). These paintings, however, are
rather traditional in that they conjure up biblical imagery and do not reflect the increasingly
secular quality of the literary texts.
27 Mellor, Mary Shelley, pp. 148–149.
28 In Thomas Hood’s poem, the last man states at the beginning of the poem that ‘the pest
had spared my life’ (Hood, ‘The Last Man’, line 5). In Thomas Campbell’s poem, there
are a number of reasons given for the extinction of mankind one of which is the plague
(Campbell, ‘The Last Man’, line 17).
29 Hays, Burdens of Disease, p. 136.
30 Bradshaw, ‘Mary Shelley’s The Last Man’, p. 166; Fisch, ‘Plaguing Politics’, p. 270; Paley,
Apocalypse and Millennium, p. 22.
31 Bewell, Romanticism and Colonial Disease, p. 296.
32 Pechmann, Mary Shelley, p. 186.
33 Stafford, Last of the Race, p. 219.
Notes to pages 4–9
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
169
An, ‘Signs of Plague’; Cantor, ‘Apocalypse of Empire’; Lew, ‘Plague of Imperial Desire’.
Ackland, ‘Mary Shelley’s Revolutionary Concept’; Sterrenburg, ‘The Last Man’.
Snyder, ‘Apocalypse and Indeterminacy’.
Edgar Allan Poe’s apocalyptic short story ‘The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion’ (1839)
is probably the only known exception.
For examples of parodies in British apocalyptic fiction, cf. chapter 6.
Booker and Thomas, Science Fiction Handbook, p. 4.
See Bould et al., Routledge Companion to Science Fiction, p. viii; Booker and Thomas, Science
Fiction Handbook, p. vii.
Paul Goat Allen selects a list of his 13 favourite apocalyptic novels—all written by
Americans—just for the year 2011 (Goat Allen, ‘Best Apocalyptic Fiction Releases’).
Wagar, ‘Rebellion of Nature’, p. 168.
Cf. Voßkamp, ‘Literaturwissenschaft als Kulturwissenschaft’, p. 77.
Russell, ‘Apocalyptic Literature’, p. 36.
James, ‘Introduction’, p. 1.
See May, Toward a New Earth, p. 19; Zamora, Writing the Apocalypse, pp. 3–4; Berger, After
the End, p. 34. Berger, in fact, qualifies this statement when he says that, in the recent past
and unlike before, apocalyptic writings respond not only to crisis but also ‘to perceived crisis’
(Berger, After the End, p. 34). What he expresses by this is that, today, it is not so important
whether there is an actual, factual crisis to which writers, filmmakers and the public react
but rather whether the present situation is understood by society as one of crisis.
Wagar, ‘Rebellion of Nature’, p. 169.
Elias Canetti in: Plank, ‘Lone Survivor’, p. 41.
Wolfe, ‘Remaking of Zero’, p. 6.
Clarke, having made the same observation, criticizes this generic convention heavily. He
calls apocalyptic narratives ‘myths of reassurance’ and ‘deceptive dreams’ because they ‘carry
the rainbow promise that Homo Sapiens will face the evolutionary challenge in an exemplary
manner’ so ‘that the survivors of the great catastrophe will at least find a harmony and a
meaning in their lives’ (Clarke, Pattern of Expectation, p. 293). Clarke finds this idealized idea
of man and the positive influence of a cathartic catastrophe naïve and implausible.
See Weaver, Apocalypse, p. 64.
This is true for those narratives which are more or less devoid of the supernatural. Stories in
which metaphysical elements still play an important role might not always have a completely
negative attitude towards the approaching end.
Rosen, Apocalyptic Transformation, p. xv.
Weaver, ‘Appeal of Apocalypse’, p. 174. Here, attitudes vary as to whether the threats
depicted in apocalyptic fiction represent ‘the anxieties and phobias of their authors’
(Fletcher, ‘Last Watchman after the Fire’, p. 281) or, quite the reverse, ‘reveal the reader’s
expectations’ (Kreuziger, Apocalypse and Science Fiction, p. 2) of what they think might doom
the human race to extinction. This seems impossible to resolve, as both authors and readers
equally draw their apocalyptic anxieties from and thus reinforce public discourse, both is
probably true.
Foucault, Archaeolog y of Knowledge, pp. 25–26.
Foucault, Archaeolog y of Knowledge, pp. 41–42.
Gaisbauer, Weltendämmerungen; Grimm, Faulstich and Kuon, Apokalypse; Gysin, Apocalypse;
Kaiser, Poesie der Apokalypse; Rabkin, Greenberg and Olander, End of the World; Seed,
Imagining Apocalypse; Uhlig and Kalkofen, In Erwartung des Endes; Walliss and Newport,
End All Around Us.
170
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
Notes to pages 9–15
Grimm, Faulstich and Kuon, Apokalypse; Uhlig and Kalkofen, In Erwartung des Endes.
Gysin, Apocalypse.
Martens, End of the World; Mitchell, Guide to Apocalyptic Cinema; Newman, Apocalypse Movies.
Robinson, American Apocalypses, p. xi.
Böck, Kontinuität der Geschichte; Dewey, In a Dark Time; Lewicki, Bang and the Whimper; Mani,
Apocalyptic Vision; May, Toward a New Earth; Robinson, American Apocalypses; Zamora, Writing
the Apocalypse.
Ketterer, New Worlds for Old, p. x.
Weaver, Apocalypse, p. 1.
Dyja, BFI Film Handbook, pp. 28–32.
Aldenderfer and Blashfield, Cluster Analysis, p. 7.
Of course, this tactic resembles the much criticized New Historicist tendency to ‘eliminate
or ignore historical differences’ (Brannigan, New Historicism and Cultural Materialism, p. 75).
This is why it needs to be emphasized here that this study does not deny cultural diversity.
Rather, it deliberately focuses only on the dominant discourses of apocalyptic fear to show
which cultural fears most strongly concerned British culture at various points in time.
Chapter 1: A definition of apocalyptic fiction
1 See Collins, ‘Introduction’, p. 9; Russell, ‘Apocalyptic Literature’, p. 36.
2 This chapter will not deal with matters of narrative situation because, rather ironically,
the biblical element of prophecy is not foregrounded in modern apocalyptic fiction and
therefore is not part of its definition. This major difference underlines the notion that
apocalyptic fiction is distinctively set apart from its biblical predecessors.
3 James, ‘Introduction’, p. 1.
4 Russell, ‘Apocalyptic Literature’, p. 36.
5 Cf. Daniel 7:23, 7:26; Ezekiel 38:22; Zechariah 14:11, 14:18. (All Bible references and
citations quoted from The Official King James Bible Online.) The story of Noah’s ark in chapters
6–9 of the Book of Genesis share this property and the other key characteristics of the
canon of biblical apocalyptic literature. However, the Great Flood is not considered to be
apocalyptic because the tale of Noah and the flood (as all of Genesis 1–11) was perceived to
be history, not revelation or prophecy (Wenham, ‘Book of Genesis’, p. 246). Nevertheless,
due to its apocalyptic qualities, it serves as a source for apocalyptic fiction, as is evident in
titles such as S. Fowler Wright’s Deluge (1927), Maggie Gee’s The Flood (2004), Mark Morris’
The Deluge (2007) and Stephen Baxter’s Flood (2008).
6 Revelation 6:12–13.
7 Cf. Gysin, Introduction to Apocalypse, p. 10.
8 Lewis, ‘Days of Wrath and Laughter’, p. 196.
9 Revelation 16:18–21 (italics in the Bible passage).
10 Mark 13:24–25, 31.
11 Daniel 2:44.
12 Revelation 21:1.
13 Revelation 22:5.
14 Russell, ‘Apocalyptic Literature’, p. 36.
15 Revelation 20:13.
16 See Daniel 12:10; Zechariah 13:9; Mark 13:27.
Notes to pages 16–22
171
17 The fact that the term ‘apocalypse’ today is often simply equated with ‘end of the
world’ indicates how dominant the aspect of catastrophe actually is. See the book titles
Apocalypse Now and Then: A Feminist Guide to the End of the World by Catherine Keller and
Apocalypse Movies: End of the World Cinema by Kim Newman.
18 Kim Newman in his book on apocalyptic movies, for example, does not offer a definition
at all. Instead, he merely links ‘global disaster’ and ‘mass devastation’ (Newman, Apocalypse
Movies, p. 18) to the event of the apocalypse. In addition, he also includes invasion literature
or imaginary war in his study, two genres which at times only border on the genre of
apocalyptic fiction but rather represent separate genres.
19 Clarke, ‘End of the Ages’, p. 32.
20 Plank, ‘The Lone Survivor’, p. 24.
21 Detweiler, ‘Apocalyptic Fiction’, p. 154. Take M. P. Shiel’s The Purple Cloud (1901) or Ray
Hammond’s Extinction (2005) as examples.
22 As, for instance, in genre classics like Mary Shelley’s The Last Man (1826), John Christopher’s
The Death of Grass (1956) or P. D. James’ The Children of Men (1992).
23 Morgan, Shape of Futures Past, pp. 101–102.
24 See, for instance, Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Poison Belt (1913) in which the presumed
apocalypse-bringing poisonous gas turns out to merely put people asleep for a brief length
of time. Another good example is Sunshine (2007) in which only the crew members of the
two mission flights die in the process of saving humankind.
25 Grimm, Einleitung Apokalypse, p. 9 (my translation). Original quotation: ‘“Apokalyptisch”
sollen die Werke genannt werden, die […] eine sich in fortschreitender Auflösung befindliche,
unaufhaltsam auf den Untergang, die Katastrophe, zusteuernde Ordnung vorstellen.’
26 Seed, ‘Introduction’, p. 6.
27 Wagar, ‘Rebellion of Nature’, p. 170.
28 Brunner, The Sheep Look Up, p. 405 (italics in the novel).
29 Boyle, 28 Days Later, 0:45:41–0:47:03.
30 The close association between war and ideas of apocalypse is well illustrated by the French
documentary series Apocalypse: The Second World War (2009).
31 Actually, there are a number of essays dealing with apocalypse in tragedies by Thomas Kyd
and William Shakespeare (e.g. cf. Ardolino, ‘Spanish Tragedy’; Hassel, ‘Last Words and Last
Things’; Hunt, ‘Time and the Apocalypse’; Wittreich, ‘Apocalypse in King Lear’).
32 Cf. Berger, After the End, p. 5.
33 Cf. Berger, After the End, p. xvi.
34 For example, cf. Ketterer, New Worlds for Old; Robinson, American Apocalypses; Zamora,
Writing the Apocalypse.
35 Frenkel, Bangs and Whimpers.
36 Rabkin, ‘Introduction’, p. ix.
37 Koundoura, ‘Real Selves and Fictional Nobodies’, p. 86.
38 May, Toward a New Earth, p. 38.
39 Ahearn, Visionary Fictions, p. 2.
40 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 64.
41 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 64.
42 Booker, Dystopian Impulse in Modern Literature, p. 5.
43 Wolfe, ‘The Remaking of Zero’, p. 1.
44 Lewicki, Bang and the Whimper, p. xii.
45 James, ‘Rewriting the Christian Apocalypse’, p. 52.
172
Notes to pages 22–27
46 Wolfe, Critical Terms, p. 92; Pierce, Great Themes of Science Fiction, p. 152; Gordon, ‘Utopia,
Genocide, and the Other’, p. 206.
47 Ketterer, New Worlds for Old, p. 140.
48 Apocalyptic Fiction Magazine; Donner, ‘Post-Apocalypse Now’, p. 53; Transparency, ‘PostApocalyptic Fiction and Science Fiction’.
49 Gordon, ‘Utopia, Genocide, and the Other’, p. 206; also see references above. An exception
here is Ketterer who hints at a definition of postcatastrophe as stories in a setting in which
most of civilization’s skills have been lost (Ketterer, New Worlds for Old, p. 140).
50 Apocalyptic Fiction Magazine (my emphasis).
51 Pierce, Great Themes of Science Fiction, p. 152 (my emphasis).
52 Donner, ‘Post-Apocalypse Now’, p. 53.
53 Donner, ‘Post-Apocalypse Now’, p. 54.
54 Cf. Newman, Apocalypse Movies, pp. 17–31.
55 Donner, ‘Post-Apocalypse Now’, p. 53.
56 Adams, Introduction to Wastelands, p. 1.
57 Jefferies, After London, chapter v.
58 Cf. Negley, Utopian Literature; Sargent, British and American Utopian Literature; Haschak,
Utopian/Dystopian Literature; also cf. Biesterfeld, Die literarische Utopie, pp. 78–81. Admittedly,
some classics of British apocalyptic fiction are entered in some of these bibliographies
as well: Mary Shelley’s The Last Man (1826), M. P. Shiel’s The Purple Cloud (1901), or Nevil
Shute’s On the Beach (1957)—incidentally all novels in which the apocalypse happens over a
longer period of time and the depiction of the post-disaster world is short or even missing.
However, these entries appear random in comparison to the entries of the post-apocalyptic
works.
59 Rosch and Mervis, ‘Family Resemblances’, p. 574.
Chapter 2: First age of extinction
1Fichman, Evolutionary Theory and Victorian Culture, p. 17.
2 Chapple, Science and Literature, p. 45.
3 Bush, Temperature of History, p. 30. The Frenchman Sadie Carnot had first referred to entropy
in 1824 and the German physicist Rudolf Clausius was the first scientist to formulate the
second law of thermodynamics in 1850.
4 Myers, ‘Popularizations of Thermodynamics’, p. 317.
5 Myers, ‘Popularizations of Thermodynamics’, p. 318.
6 Myers, ‘Popularizations of Thermodynamics’, p. 317.
7 ‘Date of the End of the World’, The Pall Mall Gazette, 22 January 1887. These types of
lectures appear to have been quite common. The newspaper Northern Echo features an
article called ‘The End of the World’ which reports on a similar lecture by biologist Arthur
Nicols (‘The End of the World’, Northern Echo, 11 September 1890).
8 The French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Erasmus Darwin were even earlier
advocates of the idea of evolution, publishing their major works in the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth century. However, their publications on evolution did not have the impact
in Britain as Chambers’ Vestiges and later Darwin’s Origin of Species.
9Fichman, Evolutionary Theory and Victorian Culture, p. 24.
10 Fichman, Evolutionary Theory and Victorian Culture, p. 22.
Notes to pages 27–32
173
11 Fichman, Evolutionary Theory and Victorian Culture, p. 24; Secord, ‘Behind the Veil’, pp. 165–
166.
12 Fichman, Evolutionary Theory and Victorian Culture, p. 36.
13 Fichman, Evolutionary Theory and Victorian Culture, p. 37.
14 Darwin, The Descent of Man, p. 213.
15 Lightman, Victorian Popularizers of Science, p. 34fn.
16 Cosslett, ‘Introductory Essay’, p. 4.
17 Fichman, Evolutionary Theory and Victorian Culture, p. 53.
18 Fichman, Evolutionary Theory and Victorian Culture, p. 114.
19 Bynum, Science and the Practice of Medicine, p. 221.
20 Glasser, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, p. 26.
21 Bynum, Science and the Practice of Medicine, p. 173.
22 ‘The New Photography’, Punch, 25 January 1896.
23 Glasser, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, p. 33.
24 Apart from Roentgen’s X-ray, several landmark discoveries in physics, chemistry, and biology
are proof of the progress in the sciences with which people’s increasing apprehension of
scientific discoveries developed. In chemistry, Sir William Ramsay discovered the noble
gases, isolating argon and helium. In physics, J. J. Thomson discovered the electron and
subatomic particles, and Henri Becquerel, Marie and Pierre Curie discovered radioactivity.
In biology, Louis Pasteur developed the germ theory of disease, invented pasteurization
and developed the first vaccine for rabies. Robert Koch isolated various bacterial microorganisms.
25 Fyfe, ‘How will the World End?’, pp. 85–86.
26 Fyfe, ‘How will the World End?’, pp. 86–94.
27 ‘The End of the World’, Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle etc., 5 May 1894.
28 ‘The End of the World’, Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle etc., 5 May 1894.
29 Cf. ‘The End of the World’, Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle etc., 5 May 1894; ‘The
Approaching End of the World’, Bristol Mercury and Daily Post, 27 January 1899; ‘The End of
the World’, Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle etc., 4 February 1899.
30 Fyfe, ‘How will the World End?’, p. 89.
31 North, Cosmos, p. 531.
32 ‘Life from the Dead and the End of the World’, The Belfast News-Letter, 17 March 1881.
33 Henry, Virginia Woolf, p. 25.
34 Bartholomew and Radford, Martians Have Landed!, p. 87.
35 Bartholomew and Radford, Martians Have Landed!, p. 90.
36 ‘One of the Least Features of the Present Condition of the Continental States of Europe
is the Abnormal and Almost Universal Activity Being Displayed in the Enlargement,
Equipment, and Training of Their Respective Armies’, The Illustrated London News, 19
January 1875.
37 ‘Fixing the End of the World’, The Reynold’s Newspaper, 21 August 1887.
38 ‘Fixing the End of the World’, The Reynold’s Newspaper, 21 August 1887.
39 Lightman, ‘Ideology, Evolution’, p. 295.
40 Wende, Das Britische Empire, p. 213.
41 Arata, ‘1897’, p. 53.
42 Fichman, Evolutionary Theory and Victorian Culture, p. 62.
43 Schwarz, Schlüssel zur modernen Welt, p. 333.
44 Alter, ‘Science and the Anglo-German Antagonism’, p. 272.
174
Notes to pages 32–38
45 Alter, ‘Science and the Anglo-German Antagonism’, p. 287.
46 Alter, ‘Science and the Anglo-German Antagonism’, p. 280.
47 Actually, this is not so clear in The Doom of the Great City. The homodiegetic narrator’s
account of the events is limited to his experiences in London before the report suddenly
breaks off. However, the fact that the report is part of a letter written in New Zealand
many years after the actual events potentially implies far-reaching consequences of the
catastrophe. On the other hand, the novella’s title indicates that the disaster is restricted to
the great city of London.
48 Sam Moskowitz notes that ‘disaster and catastrophe stories with civic significance were
popular’ (Moskowitz, ‘Introduction’, p. 42) at the time. More examples of this type of short
story are Grant Allen’s ‘The Thames Valley Catastrophe’ (1897), Cutcliffe Hyne’s ‘London’s
Danger’ (1898) and Fred M. White’s series of London disaster stories published in 1903:
‘The Dust of Death’, ‘The Four Days’ Night’, ‘The Four White Days’, and ‘The Invisible
Force’.
49 Minto, The Crack of Doom, Vol. I: p. 11.
50 Minto, The Crack of Doom, Vol. III: p. 265.
51 Luckhurst, Science Fiction, pp. 16–17.
52 Crossley, Imagining Mars, p. 73.
53 Shiel, The Purple Cloud, p. 56.
54 For example, cf. James, ‘Wells’s The Time Machine’; Pamboukian, ‘What the Traveller Saw’.
55 Wells, The Time Machine, p. 97.
56 Wells, The Time Machine, p. 93.
57 Green, The End of an Epoch, p. 8.
58 Wells, The War of the Worlds, p. 8.
59 Wells, The War of the Worlds, p. 8.
60 Wells, The War of the Worlds, p. 145 (my emphasis).
61 Cromie, The Crack of Doom, p. 49.
62 Green, The End of an Epoch, p. 33.
63 ‘The Great Crellin Comet’ is evidently a reaction to Falb’s prediction that Comet Biela
would bring about the end of the world in 1899. The date of publication coincides with
Falb’s prediction for the end and the threat in ‘The Great Crellin Comet’ comes in the shape
of Gambart’s Comet, which appears to be simply a different name for Biela’s Comet. The
World Peril of 1910 alludes to the return of Comet Halley and thus anticipates the comet scare
of 1910.
64 Griffith, ‘The Great Crellin Comet’, p. 114.
65 Oliver, ‘The Long Night’, p. 44.
66 Oliver, ‘The Long Night’, p. 49.
67 Wells, In the Days of the Comet, pp. 27–28.
68 Wells, In the Days of the Comet, p. 72.
69 Doyle, The Poison Belt, pp. 238–240.
70 This precaution is reminiscent of the comet pills which were sold to protect from the
poisonous gas of Comet Halley in 1910 (Henry, Virginia Woolf, p. 25).
71 Wallis, ‘The Great Sacrifice’, p. 628.
72 Wallis, ‘The Great Sacrifice’, p. 636.
73 Fletcher, ‘The New Sun’, p. 106.
74 Fletcher, ‘The New Sun’, p. 114.
75 Haynes, From Faust to Strangelove, p. 127.
Notes to pages 38–44
175
76 Cromie, The Crack of Doom, p. 122.
77Cromie, The Crack of Doom, p. 177.
78 Alden, ‘The Purple Death’, p. 7.
79 Green, The End of an Epoch, p. 334.
80 In effect, fears of invasion brought to life a whole genre of British invasion literature
produced in the years between 1871 and 1914. For an overview of British invasion literature,
cf. Eby, Road to Armageddon, pp. 10–37.
81 Alden, ‘The Purple Death’, p. 4. The English homodiegetic narrator substitutes the
scientist’s real name for the alias Schwartz, supposedly to protect the man’s reputation.
82 Davidson, Dictionary of Angels, p. 64.
83 Green, The End of an Epoch, p. 49.
84 Cromie, The Crack of Doom, p. 3.
85 Wells, ‘The Star’, p. 723.
86 Wells, ‘The Star’, p. 725.
87 Wells, ‘The Star’, p. 726.
88 Wells, ‘The Star’, p. 725.
89 Wells, ‘The Star’, p. 726.
90 Wells, ‘The Star’, p. 724.
91 Wells, ‘The Star’, p. 724.
92 Cf. ‘The End of the World’, Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle etc., 5 May 1894.; ‘The
End of the World’, The Pall Mall Gazette, 23 September 1895.
93 Wells, ‘The Star’, p. 716.
94 Wells, ‘The Star’, p. 720.
95 Wells, ‘The Star’, p. 720.
96 Wells, ‘The Star’, p. 718.
97 There is only the vaguest allusion to the biblical flood at the end when ‘all over the earth
was such a downpour of rain as men had never before seen’ (Wells, ‘The Star’, p. 728). Apart
from this biblical reference, there is no sign of divine intervention with regard to the star.
98 Wells, ‘The Star’, p. 717.
99 Wells, ‘The Star’, p. 729.
100 Wells, ‘The Star’, p. 729.
101 Jane, The Violet Flame, p. 195.
102 Jane, The Violet Flame, p. 193.
103 Jane, The Violet Flame, p. 194.
104 Jane, The Violet Flame, p. 194.
105 Jane, The Violet Flame, p. 186.
106 Jane, The Violet Flame, p. 188.
107 Jane, The Violet Flame, p. 40.
108 Jane, The Violet Flame, pp. 58–59.
109 Jane, The Violet Flame, p. 111.
110 Jane, The Violet Flame, p. 104.
111Jane, The Violet Flame, p. 81.
112 In fact, there is one exception. Mirzarbeau seems to care for Lester and Landry Baker who
he initially provides with the protective green discs. However, it is only Landry he is really
interested in, either in the form of genuine affection or lustrous desire. He confesses his
romantic feelings to her when he says that ‘I have thought sometimes how I will kill by
annihilation all of the world, leaving only me—and you’ ( Jane, The Violet Flame, p. 178),
176
Notes to pages 44–48
whereas he later exchanges Lester’s shielding disc for a dummy. Ironically, it is Landry and
Lester, not Mirzarbeau, who become the new Adam and Eve.
113 Jane, The Violet Flame, p. 108.
114 Jane, The Violet Flame, p. 171.
115 Jane, The Violet Flame, p. 65.
116 Jane, The Violet Flame, pp. 72, 74.
117Jane, The Violet Flame, p. 74.
118 Revelation 13:16–17.
119Jane, The Violet Flame, p. 90.
120 Jane, The Violet Flame, p. 3.
121 Jane, The Violet Flame, pp. 41, 62.
122 Jane, The Violet Flame, p. 65.
123 Jane, The Violet Flame, p. 71.
124 Jane, The Violet Flame, p. 3.
125 Jane, The Violet Flame, p. 56.
126 Jane, The Violet Flame, p. 56.
127 Jane, The Violet Flame, pp. 61, 63, 83.
128 Jane, The Violet Flame, p. 56.
129 Jane, The Violet Flame, pp. 54–55.
130 Schäffner, Anarchismus und Literatur in England, p. 226.
131 Choosing Waterloo Station seems significant in that Mirzarbeau thereby implicitly avenges
Napoleon’s defeat by the British at Waterloo in 1815.
132 In this context, it seems more than coincidental that Mirzarbeau takes up the name ‘Beast’
in the course of the novel.
133 Schäffner, Anarchismus und Literatur in England, p. 34.
134 Shpayer-Makov, ‘Anarchism in British Public Opinion’, p. 490.
135 Gabriel, ‘Anarchist as Monster’, p. 108.
136 Shpayer-Makov, ‘Traitor to his Class’, p. 302.
137 Other late Victorian apocalyptic stories also feature the destructive anarcho-scientist:
In The Crack of Doom, atomic bomb inventor Herbert Brande is the founder and leader of
the Cui Bono Society which appears to be an anarchist society. And in ‘The Purple Death’,
Professor Schwartz, the inventor of the deadly microbial disease, openly sympathizes with
the anarchists.
138 Jane, The Violet Flame, p. 3.
139 Jane, The Violet Flame, p. 81.
140 Jane, The Violet Flame, pp. 8, 9, 40, 67, 100.
141 In contrast, the only other foreign character in the novel, Landry Baker, is not nearly as
strongly marked as foreign in comparison to Mirzarbeau’s characterisation. She does not
have a distinctively exotic, i.e. foreign sounding name and she only speaks English.
142 Jane, The Violet Flame, p. 149.
143 Jane, The Violet Flame, pp. 19–20.
144 Michie, London Stock Exchange, p. 123.
145 Jane, The Violet Flame, p. 23.
146 Michie, London Stock Exchange, p. 124.
147 Jane, The Violet Flame, p. 60.
Notes to pages 50–55
177
Chapter 3: Apocalyptic wars
1 Numbers vary but it is established that ‘[f]rom the outbreak of war to its close the British
army and navy […] lost at least 616,382 men’ (May, Economic and Social History, p. 361). To put
this in perspective, all the major wars of the entire 19th century combined did not cause so
many British casualties. Around 20,000 soldiers died during the Crimean and the Second
Boer War respectively (Raugh, Victorians at War, pp. 53, 113) and over 300,000 soldiers
lost their lives during the 20 years of British involvement in the French Revolutionary and
Napoleonic Wars (Dumas and Vedel-Petersen, Losses of Life, pp. 29–30).
2 Kent, Aftershocks, p. 20.
3 Kent, Aftershocks, p. 20.
4 Kent, Aftershocks, p. 16.
5 Brittain, Testament of Youth, p. 395.
6 Ceadel, Pacifism in Britain, p. 179.
7 The Air Raid Precautions Act asked the British people to prepare and help fellow citizens
in case of an air raid gas attack.
8 Ceadel, Pacifism in Britain, p. 168.
9 In the following, science and technology will be used interchangeably in this context as
technology can only ever be the result of scientific research. This conception is supported by
‘the public image of a close nexus between “science” and “technology”’ (Rieger, Technolog y,
p. 39) at the time.
10 Jonsson, ‘Images of Science in Literature’, p. 175.
11 Edgerton, ‘Science and War’, p. 937.
12 Richards, Age of the Dream Palace, p. 283.
13 Miles and Smith, Cinema, Literature and Society, p. 226.
14 Marwick, Deluge, p. 334.
15 Rieger, Technolog y, p. 274.
16 Graves and Hodge, Long Week-End, p. 203.
17 Paris, Warrior Nation, p. 155.
18 Paris, Warrior Nation, p. 147.
19 Ward, Britishness since 1870, p. 100.
20 Lowe, Mastering Modern British History, p. 432.
21 Paris, Warrior Nation, p. 155.
22 Lowe, Mastering Modern British History, p. 431.
23 Pugh, Britain since 1789, p. 198.
24 Ceadel, Pacifism in Britain, p. 178.
25 Rieger, Technolog y, p. 238.
26 Rieger, Technolog y, p. 243.
27 J. S. Fletcher’s ‘The New Sun’ and Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Poison Belt.
28 Ceadel, Pacifism in Britain, p. 170.
29 These are, for example, Edward Shanks’ The People of the Ruins (1920) or P. Anderson
Graham’s The Collapse of Homo Sapiens (1922).
30 Hamilton, Theodore Savage, pp. 104, 127. In this study, quotations from the narratives Theodore
Savage and Lest Ye Die are taken from a copy of Theodore Savage. This is acceptable as both
texts are basically the same novel with only the most minor changes at the beginning of the
novel.
31 Hamilton, Theodore Savage, pp. 68, 105.
178
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33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
Notes to pages 55–59
Hussingtree, Konyetz, p. 320.
Paris, Warrior Nation, p. 148.
Paris, Warrior Nation, p. 148.
Paris, Warrior Nation, p. 181. It was only in popular youth literature that war was still
represented and, curiously so, even in positive terms ‘as righteous, justified and, in most
cases, heroic, exciting and romantic’ (Paris, Warrior Nation, p. 151).
Hamilton, Lest Ye Die, p. 7.
Stableford, Introduction to Deluge, p. xxi.
Connington, Nordenholt’s Million, p. 286.
Kent, Aftershocks, p. 32. Like other apocalyptic novels from the interwar period, Nordenholt’s
Million addresses the role of science with regard to the survival of humankind. Unlike the
later stories, the role of science is much more ambiguous in Connington’s novel. On the
one hand, Wotherspoon’s experiments are the origin of the apocalyptic catastrophe. On the
other hand, the novel’s other scientist figure, Henley-Davenport, invents an apparatus that
is able to generate ‘a tremendous store of intra-atomic energy’ (Connington, Nordenholt’s
Million, p. 270) to solve the community’s energy problems and thus enables survival.
As ‘The End of the World’ does not relate a breakdown of society, it certainly represents a
non-prototypical case of apocalyptic fiction. The short story is mentioned here due to its
apocalyptic title and background scenario.
Kingsmill, ‘The End of the World’, p. 17.
Kingsmill, ‘The End of the World’, p. 56.
Scholars and in fact some of the contemporary authors have explained the ‘ten year gap’
between the end of the First World War and the wave of commemorative war literature
at the end of the 1920s in psychological terms. After a long period of suppressing the
dreadful memories of the First World War, the veterans surrendered to an inner longing to
cleanse themselves of the war experience and overcome it by writing it down (cf. Schneider,
‘Erinnerungsroman in der Autobiographie’, p. 37).
Paris, Warrior Nation, p. 154.
Kent, Aftershocks, p. 31.
Hamilton, Lest Ye Die, p. 7.
Ceadel, Pacifism in Britain, p. 172.
Ceadel, Pacifism in Britain, p. 172.
Ceadel, Pacifism in Britain, p. 161.
For example, H. G. Wells describes a war fought with then unknown nuclear weapons in
The World Set Free (1914).
Stableford, Introduction to Deluge, p. xxii.
Stapledon, Last and First Men, pp. 31–32.
Wells, The Shape of Things to Come, p. 51.
Wells, The Shape of Things to Come, p. 227.
Wells, The Shape of Things to Come, p. 293. The complete annihilation of the human race
occurs in To-Morrow’s Yesterday (1932) by John Gloag. However, the apocalyptic scenario
only takes place in a film that is presented in the novel. In this film, a Soviet attack on the
United States triggers a world war. The long-term consequence of this conflict is mankind’s
lapse into savagery before the human race becomes entirely extinct in the year 2,000,000
A.D.
Best, The Twenty-Fifth Hour, p. 225.
Noyes, The Last Man, p. 40.
Notes to pages 59–62
179
Noyes, The Last Man, p. 270.
Sherriff, The Hopkins Manuscript, Foreword (first page though no page number given).
Hamilton, Theodore Savage, p. 68.
Hamilton, Theodore Savage, pp. 109, 91.
Smith, The Machine Stops, pp. 143, 148, 145.
Connington, Nordenholt’s Million, p. 176. It needs to be noted that savage behaviour by
humankind in the face of disorder is a regular feature of apocalyptic fiction and is in no
way a unique feature of the interwar period. In fact, apocalyptic fiction after the Second
World War is even more pronounced and extreme in its depiction. However, it is in between
the First and the Second World War that savage behaviour, especially to the misanthropic
degree presented in the texts, becomes an essential and recurring characteristic and thus an
established generic convention for the first time.
64 Ceadel, Pacifism in Britain, p. 172. In view of the section ‘Dangerous scientists’ in chapter 2 of
this study, Ceadel’s assessment on novelists’ perspective on science before the First World
War needs to be qualified, at least with regard to science fiction and apocalyptic fiction.
65 In fact, the dangers of poison gas also haunted the public imagination in non-apocalyptic
future war fiction of the interwar period: ‘[N]ovelists took up gas warfare almost to the
neglect of other types of weapons’ (Ceadel, Pacifism in Britain, p. 168). Non-apocalyptic
future gas war novels include The Gas War of 1940 (1931) by Neil Bell or Reginald Glossop’s
Ghastly Dew (1932).
66 Hamilton, Theodore Savage, p. 127.
67 Stapledon, Last and First Men, p. 89.
68 Lamb, The World Ends, p. 17.
69 Neill, The Last Man Alive, p. 20.
70 Hamilton, Theodore Savage, p. 122.
71 Wright, ‘Automata’, p. 115.
72 Wright, ‘Automata’, p. 116.
73 Smith, The Machine Stops, p. 75.
74 Smith, The Machine Stops, p. 49. Neither the general theme nor in fact the title of the novel
is original in apocalyptic fiction. E. M. Forster anticipated and voiced anxieties about
technological progress and dependence on machinery already in his pre-war short story
‘The Machine Stops’ (1909). Almost all of humankind has retreated below the surface of
the earth and is kept alive by a great machine. In the end, the machine breaks down and the
subterranean population dies. ‘Humanity has learnt its lesson’ and thus will never ‘start the
Machine again’ (Forster, ‘The Machine Stops’, p. 158). The few remaining survivors on the
surface of the Earth reclaim the planet.
75 Smith, The Machine Stops, p. 198.
76 Smith, The Machine Stops, p. 209.
77Smith, The Machine Stops, p. 241.
78 Donald, Fighting Talk, p. 255.
79 Smith, The Machine Stops, p. 282.
80 Ceadel, Pacifism in Britain, p. 176.
81 All quotations and screenshots are taken from the Things to Come special edition DVD
published by Network Distributing in 2007. As with all remaining copies of the film, this
version is shorter in comparison to the release of 1936. It is nevertheless the best version
available as it comes closest to the opening run of roughly 108 minutes and the later run of
98 minutes at the end of the first year in cinemas (Cf. Low, Film Making, p. 379). Moreover,
the virtual extended edition on the Network publication, which hints at the lost footage,
58
59
60
61
62
63
180
Notes to pages 63–69
does not suggest that the additional material substantially alters the film’s overall meaning
with regard to the argument presented.
82 Richards, ‘Things to Come’, p. 19.
83 Richards, Age of the Dream Palace, p. 280.
84 Menzies, Things to Come, 0:06:32.
85 Menzies, Things to Come, 0:19:55.
86 Menzies, Things to Come, 0:22:38 (upper-case letters in the film).
87 Menzies, Things to Come, 0:21:00.
88 Rieger, Technolog y, p. 239.
89 Cooper, ‘Audio Commentary’, 0:12:20.
90 Menzies, Things to Come, 0:37:49.
91 Menzies, Things to Come, 0:06:09.
92 Lowe, Mastering Modern British History, p. 371.
93 When old Cabal visits Everytown in 1970, he inquires after his friends Harding and
Passworthy. The people point him to Harding but they are not familiar with Passworthy.
94 Menzies, Things to Come, 0:06:16, 0:06:22.
95 In Wells’ published film treatment, he emphasizes that ‘EVERYTOWN IS EVERY
TOWN. That is to say, it is the average great town of our times’ (Wells, Things to Come,
p. 27). The identification of Everytown as London remains vague at best in Wells’ script.
96 Menzies, Things to Come, 0:08:24.
97 Menzies, Things to Come, 0:47:56.
98 Cooper, ‘Shaping of Things to Come’, p. 15. This is probably why the film was banned in Italy.
According to Cooper, ‘Mussolini was so outraged by Richardson’s obvious parody […] that
he did indeed order all copies of the film in Italy to be seized.’ (Cooper, ‘Shaping of Things
to Come’, p. 15)
99Menzies, Things to Come, 0:36:56.
100 Menzies, Things to Come, 0:46:49.
101 Menzies, Things to Come, 0:45:06.
102 Menzies, Things to Come, 0:54:21.
103 Richards, Age of the Dream Palace, p. 285.
104 Menzies, Things to Come, 0:37:18.
105 Menzies, Things to Come, 0:37:29.
106 Bassett and Cooper, ‘Score of Things to Come’, p. 21.
107 Menzies, Things to Come, 0:37:48.
108 Menzies, Things to Come, 0:36:54.
109 Menzies, Things to Come, 0:39:12.
110 Menzies, Things to Come, 1:18:29.
111 Cooper, ‘Audio Commentary’, 0:38:55.
112 Menzies, Things to Come, 0:06:01.
113 Menzies, Things to Come, 1:02:19.
114 Menzies, Things to Come, 0:05:41.
115 Menzies, Things to Come, 0:05:34.
116 We find the same solution to a similar scenario in Wayland Smith’s mid-1930s novel The
Machine Stops. In Smith’s novel, the new metal, symbol for the restoration or order, is used
for a war that is fought to regain peace.
Notes to pages 70–77
181
Chapter 4: Nuclear threats, Cold War
Young, Cold War Europe, p. 3.
Young, Cold War Europe, p. xvi.
Veldman, Fantasy, p. 121.
Greenwood, Britain and the Cold War, p. 2.
Hopkins, Introduction to Cold War Britain, p. 4.
Carruthers, ‘Not Just Washed’, p. 47.
In fact, this cartoon combines two contemporary anxieties: the phobia of communism and
the ‘hysterical, obsessive new fear’ (Clarens, Illustrated History, p. 122) of aliens set off by
UFO sightings in the USA.
8 Seed, American Science Fiction, p. 107.
9Brians, Nuclear Holocausts, p. 17.
10 Young, Cold War Europe, p. 12.
11 Veldman, Fantasy, p. 123.
12 Brians, Nuclear Holocausts, p. 18.
13 Veldman, Fantasy, p. 116.
14 Young, Cold War Europe, p. 12.
15 Brians, Nuclear Holocausts, p. 19.
16 Shils, Torment of Secrecy, p. 71.
17 For the more examples, cf. the political cartoons of the Punch issues of 14 January 1959,
6 May 1959, 18 May 1960, and 23 November 1960.
18 Taylor, Against the Bomb, p. 107. This is true even though the settlement ‘did nothing in
practice to slow the nuclear arms race, for tests continued in underground shafts at a faster
pace than ever’ (Weart, Nuclear Fear, p. 260). This illustrates, once more, that public fears of
apocalypse are as much a result of the existence of realistic threats as of mass psychology.
19 Pry, War Scare, p. 16.
20 Ritter, ‘Ronald Reagan’, p. 322.
21 Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition, p. 131.
22 Taylor and Young, ‘Britain and the International Peace Movement’, p. 287.
23 Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition, p. 65.
24 Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition, p. 82.
25 Greenwood, ‘Helping to Open the Door’, p. 327.
26 Taylor, Against the Bomb, p. 27.
27 Taylor, Against the Bomb, p. 42.
28 J. B. Priestley in: Taylor, Against the Bomb, p. 43. This underlines the shift of the discourse on
apocalypse from anxieties about war, as it can be found before 1945, to a more specific fear
of nuclear conflict.
29 Taylor, Against the Bomb, p. 28.
30 Barberis, McHugh, and Tyldesley, ‘Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament’, p. 331.
31 Taylor, Against the Bomb, p. 91.
32 Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition, p. 131.
33 Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition, p. 138.
34 A group of women set up a peace camp outside of the military basis at Greenham to protest
against the establishment of cruise missiles there. The protest reached a climax when the
women were joined by protestors to form a 14-mile human chain to connect RAF station
Greenham Common with Aldermaston and the arms factory in Burghfield (Cook and
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
182
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
Notes to pages 77–81
Kirk, Greenham Women Everywhere, p. 92). In consequence, the Greenham Common women’s
peace camp became the ‘best-known disarmament venture that developed independently of
CND’ (Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition, p. 133).
Taylor and Young, ‘International Peace Movement’, p. 291.
Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition, p. 133.
Rose, The Maniac’s Dream, p. 7.
More famously than Cromie, H. G Wells’ The World Set Free (1914), a borderline case of
apocalyptic fiction, also featured atomic bombs: ‘[W]ith both hands the bomb-thrower
lifted the big atomic bomb from the box […] and hoisted the bomb over the side’ (Wells,
The World Set Free, pp. 47–48 ).
Shaw, British Cinema, p. 126.
Brians, Nuclear Holocausts, p. 14.
Brians, Nuclear Holocausts, p. 17.
Matthews, Hollywood Aliens, p. 8.
Proietti, ‘Fred Hoyle’, p. 253.
Attebery, ‘The Magazine Era’, p. 42.
Ruddick, Ultimate Island, p. 138.
Scarborough, ‘John Wyndham’, p. 219.
Robert Simpson in: BBC, ‘Quatermass Creator Dies’.
Shaw, British Cinema, p. 128.
Shaw, British Cinema, p. 128. The popularity of the Quatermass franchise is also certainly to
do with the success of American invasion B-movies in the 1950s: ‘American films themselves
played a significant role in shaping the British cinema-goers’ perception of the Cold War
[and] British producers were inclined more than ever before to put profitability before
artistic merit.’ (Shaw, ‘British Feature Films’, p. 126) Not only did Hollywood release a film
version of the role model of the invasion tale, The War of the Worlds (1953), but had produced
several other invasion films before, for example Invasion U.S.A. (1952) or Red Planet Mars
(1952), two ‘fantasies driven by Cold War-inspired anti-Soviet paranoia.’ (Booker, Monsters,
p. 116) Two more classic American invasion films, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and
The Blob (1958), followed later. The producer’s fondness of them ‘was no doubt due partly
to the fact that such films could be set in a perfectly normal earth environment, thus saving
the expense and technical difficulty of depicting alien settings.’ (Booker, Monsters, p. 114)
Hunter, ‘Earth Caught Fire’, p. 104.
Brians, Nuclear Holocausts, p. 20.
Weart, Nuclear Fear, p. 218.
Hunter, ‘Earth Caught Fire’, p. 102.
Shaw, British Cinema, p. 137.
Weart, Nuclear Fear, p. 262.
Brians, Nuclear Holocausts, p. 24.
Booker, Monsters, p. 172en.
Seed, ‘TV Docudrama’, p. 160.
Farjeon, Death of a World, p. 74.
Shute, On the Beach, p. 81.
More examples of apocalyptic war fiction are Tyrone C. Barr’s The Last 14 (1959), Edmund
Cooper’s Seed of Light (1959), and Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to Stop
Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) as well as David Graham’s Down to a Sunless Sea (1979),
the TV film Threads (1984), the comedy film Whoops Apocalypse (1986) and Martin Amis’
Notes to pages 81–86
183
short story ‘The Immortals’ (1987). Of these, however, Dr. Strangelove, Whoops Apocalypse and
‘The Immortals’ are not prototypically apocalyptic as neither of these stories describes the
breakdown of order or a world in disorder in greater detail. The apocalypse is merely an
event that is implied or, in the case of ‘The Immortals’, briefly mentioned.
62 Swindells, Brother in the Land, p. 11.
63 Lawrence, Children of the Dust, p. 19.
64 Guest, The Day the Earth Caught Fire, 1:14:50.
65 Aldiss, Greybeard, p. 224.
66 Roberts, The Furies, p. 13.
67 Christopher, The Death of Grass, p. 49.
68 BBC, The Quatermass Experiment, ep. 1, 0:09:23.
69 Hoyle, The Black Cloud, p. 224.
70 John Wyndham’s The Kraken Wakes criticizes the use of nuclear bombs in a similar way.
71 Pape, And so Ends the World…, pp. 178–179.
72 Pape, And so Ends the World…, p. 191.
73 Clarke, Childhood’s End, p. 5.
74 For a more extensive critical analysis of Dr. Strangelove, cf. e.g. Linden, ‘Dr Strangelove’; Wolfe,
‘Dr Strangelove’.
75 Kubrick, Dr. Strangelove, 0:43:09.
76 Kubrick, Dr. Strangelove, 1:28:07, 1:28:37, 1:28:23.
77Hoyle, The Last Gasp, p. 126.
78 Hoyle, The Last Gasp, p. 127.
79 Hoyle, The Last Gasp, p. 217.
80 Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids, p. 25.
81 Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids, p. 211.
82 It is not made explicit whether the triffids have taken over other countries, too. The fact
that both the blinding of humanity and the spread of the triffids are said to be global events
makes it rather likely that the situation outside of Britain is not much different from the one
in Britain. This idea is also supported by the sequel, which is set in the US.
83 Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids, p. 233.
84 Clark, The Night of the Triffids, p. 38.
85 Clark, The Night of the Triffids, p. 34.
86 Sawyer, ‘Stiff Upper Lip’, p. 81.
87 Sekely, The Day of the Triffids, 0:00:48.
88 BBC, The Day of the Triffids, ep. 6: 0:09:19. This is the corresponding passage from Wyndham’s
novel: ‘Now suppose that one type [of satellite weapon] happened to have been constructed
especially to emit radiations that our eyes would not stand – something that would burn
out, or at least damage, the optic nerve…?’ (Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids, p. 211).
89 For an overview of the three TV series instalments, cf. Chapman, ‘Origins of British
Television SF’.
90 Shaw, British Cinema, p. 129.
91 Chapman, ‘Origins of British Television SF’, pp. 30–31.
92 Guest, Quatermass 2, 0:45:30.
93 Some critics also have taken this as evidence to point towards a criticism of 1950s secret
government activity or social conformity in Britain (see Chapman, ‘Origins of British
Television SF’, p. 35; Shaw, British Cinema, p. 128). While this may also be a feasible
interpretation, the reading of the alien as communist is also convincing as alien invasions
184
Notes to pages 86–94
and government infiltration are typical tropes of Cold War fiction (see Johnston, Science
Fiction Film, p. 73; Kaveney, From Alien to Matrix, p. 51).
94 Shaw, ‘British Feature Films’, p. 139. This perspective also applies to Terence Fisher’s The
Earth Dies Screaming (1965), another apocalyptic invasion film which draws upon fears of a
communist attack.
95 Cooper, Seed of Light, p. 47.
96 Cooper, Seed of Light, p. 54.
97 Pape, And so Ends the World…, p. 191.
98 Pape, And so Ends the World…, p. 134.
99 Pape, And so Ends the World…, pp. 108, 178.
100 Pape, And so Ends the World…, p. 170.
101 Jackson, Threads, 0:12:25.
102 Jackson, Threads, 0:25:49.
103 Graham, Down to a Sunless Sea, p. 303.
104 Hutchings, ‘British SF Invasion Fantasies’, p. 40.
105 Guest, The Day the Earth Caught Fire, 1:23:48.
106 McIntosh, One in Three Hundred, p. 121.
107 Farjeon, Death of a World, p. 6.
108 Pape, And so Ends the World…, p. 64.
109 Hollow, ‘Sir Arthur C. Clarke’, p. 163.
110 Guest, The Day the Earth Caught Fire, 1:34:04.
111Barr, The Last 14, p. 111.
112 Barr, The Last 14, p. 111.
113 McIntosh, The Fittest, p. 128.
114 Farjeon, Death of a World, p. 192.
115 Cooper, All Fool’s Day, p. 121.
116 Cooper, All Fool’s Day, p. 62.
117McIntosh, One in Three Hundred, p. 40.
118 McIntosh, One in Three Hundred, p. 120.
119Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes, p. 180.
120 Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes, p. 68.
121 Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes, p. 207.
122 Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes, p. 51.
123 Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes, p. 19.
124 Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes, pp. 21–22.
125 Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes, p. 98.
126 Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes, p. 98.
127 Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes, p. 218.
128 Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes, p. 69.
129 Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes, pp. 180–181.
130 Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes, p. 49.
131 Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes, p. 68.
132 Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes, p. 107.
133 Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes, p. 52.
134 Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes, p. 194.
135 Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes, p. 84.
Notes to pages 94–101
185
136 Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes, p. 194.
137 Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes, p. 82.
138 Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes, p. 95.
139 Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes, p. 52.
140 Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes, p. 173.
141 Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes, p. 191.
142 Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes, p. 106.
143 Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes, p. 90.
144 Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes, p. 90.
145 Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes, p. 69.
146 Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes, p. 56.
147 Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes, p. 98.
148 Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes, p. 218.
149 Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes, p. 94.
150 Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes, p. 207.
151 Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes, p. 52.
152 Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 12.
153 Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 12.
154 Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 16.
155 Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 7.
156 Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 97.
157 Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 97.
158 Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 156.
159 Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 98.
160 Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 97.
161 Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 74.
162 Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 118.
163 Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 62.
164 Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 95.
165 Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 119.
166 Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 119.
167 Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 19.
168 Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 16.
169 Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 95.
170 Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 90.
171Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 111.
172 Maine, The Tide Went Out, pp. 20, 99, 147, 152.
173 Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 147.
174 Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 147.
175 It may seem that the cataclysm starts a process of rethinking when, for the first time in
human history, ‘the nations of the world had agreed upon a common policy to deal with the
situation’ (Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 66). This inference, however, is illusive. The political
leaders of the world merely work together in setting up the Arctic camp because that gives
them an advantage over the rest of the world’s populace in the race for the Arctic.
176 Sinfield, Literature, Politics and Culture, p. 139.
177 This change in paradigm is unmistakable in Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954) in which he
reworks R. M. Ballantyne’s jingoistic The Coral Island (1857) (Cf. Sinfield, Literature, Politics
and Culture, pp. 139–142).
186
Notes to pages 101–106
178 Sinfield, Literature, Politics and Culture, p. 140.
179Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 125.
180 Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 151.
181 Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 25.
182 Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 101.
183 Cf. Richard Titmuss, Problems of Social Policy (1950), his contribution in the civil series of the
official war history.
184 Ponting, 1940, p. 138. This kind of behaviour among the British populace, which is also
often referred to as the ‘Dunkirk Spirit’, was inspired by the Dunkirk evacuation when
civilians supported the British soldiers in escaping from France.
185 Smith, Introduction to Britain, p. 2.
186 Ponting, 1940, p. 160.
187 Ponting, 1940, p. 91.
188 Ponting, 1940, pp. 92–93.
189 Richards, ‘The Blitz’.
190 John Christopher’s The Death of Grass presents a similar narrative. Echoing the experience
of the Blitz, the Daily Telegraph in The Death of Grass states that, facing famine and social
unrest, ‘it falls to the British people to set an example to the world in the staunch and
steadfast of their misfortune.’ (Christopher, The Death of Grass, p. 44) The novel, then, goes
on to debunk this myth: ‘rape, murder, and theft abound’ (Macfarlane, Introduction to
Death of Grass, p. x) in the face of disaster. The climax of the deconstruction of British
superior morality is reached when John Custance, the novel’s protagonist, is refused to
enter Blind Gill, his brother David’s property and one of the few remaining havens in
Britain. He deviously and forcefully invades Blind Gill which results in the killing of David,
possibly even by John’s own hand.
191Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 72.
192 Maine, The Tide Went Out, pp. 79–80.
193 Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 78.
194 Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 156.
195 Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 52.
196 Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 52.
197Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 69.
198 Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 77.
199Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 112.
200 Maine, The Tide Went Out, p. 69.
Chapter 5: Eco-doom
1McCormick, Global Environmental Movement, p. 51.
2 McCormick, Global Environmental Movement, p. 54.
3 Cutter et al., ‘Editorial’.
4 For more detailed accounts of Carson’s impact on the ecological movement, cf. Brooks,
The House of Life, pp. 228–229; Graham, Since Silent Spring, pp. 53–54; Fox, John Muir and His
Legacy, p. 292.
5 McCormick, Global Environmental Movement, p. 55.
6 Stableford, Science Fact and Science Fiction, p. 140.
Notes to pages 106–110
187
7 Cf. Hawes Publications, ‘New York Times Bestseller List’.
8 McCormick, Global Environmental Movement, p. 56.
9 Stoll, ‘Silent Spring’.
10 McCormick, Global Environmental Movement, p. 56.
11 Worster, Nature’s Economy, p. 23.
12 Killingsworth and Palmer, ‘Silent Spring and Science Fiction’, p. 178.
13 Carson, Silent Spring, p. 4.
14 Carson, Silent Spring, p. 4.
15 McCormick, Global Environmental Movement, pp. 56–57. There had been a number of
comparable incidents before the 1960s. However, John McCormick explains the difference
in public response by the fact that the ‘accidents that occurred from the mid-1960s had much
greater impact because of the heightened public sensitivity to environmental problems’
(McCormick, Global Environmental Movement, p. 57), especially in consequence to the success
of Carson’s Silent Spring.
16 Barkham, ‘Oil Spills’.
17 Barkham, ‘Oil Spills’.
18 McCormick, Global Environmental Movement, p. 58.
19 Cf. Ui, ‘Minimate Disease’, p. 131en.
20 Clapp, Environmental History of Britain, p. 8.
21 Veldman, Fantasy, p. 209.
22 McCormick, Global Environmental Movement, p. 60.
23 Rüdig, ‘Between Moderation and Marginalization’, p. 228.
24 In his study The Global Environmental Movement (1989), McCormick identifies the influence of
other social movements as one of six factors responsible for the strong emergence of the
environmental movement in the 1960s. McCormick furthermore lists ‘the age of atomic
testing, the book Silent Spring, [and] a series of well-publicized environmental disasters’
(McCormick, Global Environmental Movement, p. 49) as major factors. The two other factors
that McCormick gives, the effects of affluence in Britain and advances in scientific
knowledge, undoubtedly also played an important role but are given less attention here due
to their comparatively minor significance (cf. McCormick, Global Environmental Movement,
pp. 49–50, 61).
25 McCormick, Global Environmental Movement, pp. 61–62.
26 McCormick, Global Environmental Movement, p. 64.
27 Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, ‘Meet Gaylord Nelson’.
28 E.g. the Federal Water Pollution Control Amendments (1972), the Clean Air Act (amended
in 1970), and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (revised in 1972).
29 Veldman, Fantasy, p. 222.
30 McCormick, Global Environmental Movement, p. 104.
31 Veldman, Fantasy, p. 239.
32 McCormick, Global Environmental Movement, p. 80.
33 McCormick, Global Environmental Movement, p. 70.
34 McCormick, Global Environmental Movement, p. 71.
35 Bramwell, Ecolog y in the 20th Century, p. 217.
36 ‘Ecologist Barry Commoner’.
37 Bramwell, Ecolog y in the 20th Century, p. 211.
38 McCormick, Global Environmental Movement, p. 77.
39 Block in: Veldman, Fantasy, p. 236.
188
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
Notes to pages 110–114
Rüdig, ‘Between Moderation and Marginalization’, p. 232.
O’Riordan, Environmentalism, p. 52.
McCormick, Global Environmental Movement, p. 78.
Veldman, Fantasy, p. 231.
Veldman, Fantasy, p. 232.
Veldman, Fantasy, p. 206.
McCormick, Global Environmental Movement, p. 79.
Veldman, Fantasy, p. 290.
Cf. Veldman, Fantasy, p. 222.
Veldman, Fantasy, p. 300.
McCormick, Global Environmental Movement, p. 65.
Murphy, ‘Environmentalism’, p. 377.
Stableford, ‘Science Fiction and Ecology’, p. 137. For instance, Christopher’s own The Death
of Grass (1956), Sidney Fowler Wright’s The Deluge (1929), or J. J. Connington’s Nordenholt’s
Million (1923). There are a few stories, though, that deal with environmental catastrophe
seriously, for example J. D. Beresford’s ‘The Man Who Hated Flies’ (1929). It tells the story
of an extremely effective insecticide which actually kills not only unwelcome bugs but
also those insects that pollinate crops, causing major harvest losses. Yet the extent of the
catastrophe appears far from apocalyptic.
Booker and Thomas, Science Fiction Handbook, p. 60.
It has to be noted that The Drowned World is often regarded as one of Ballard’s disaster/
apocalyptic novels (cf. Firsching, ‘Ballard’s Ambiguous Apocalypse’; Franklin, ‘Ballard’s
Apocalypse’). This is why it is mentioned here. However, it is, strictly speaking, a postapocalyptic novel. The novel only begins at the stage of ‘order restored’, after the Earth has
already drowned and humankind has successfully adapted to the new condition of postapocalyptic world submerged under water.
For an overview and discussion of British New Wave science fiction writing, cf. Landon,
Science Fiction after 1900, pp. 149–158; Luckhurst, Science Fiction, pp. 143–160; Roberts, History
of Science Fiction, pp. 230–263.
Luckhurst, Science Fiction, p. 142. Ballard himself established this term for New Wave science
fiction in his essay ‘Which Way to Inner Space?’ which was published in the SF magazine
New Worlds in May 1962.
Franklin, ‘Ballard’s Apocalypse’, p. 87.
Still, The Drought remains an exceptional instance of British eco-doom apocalyptic fiction.
It was written long before environmental anxiety reached its height at the turn of the
decade which reinforces the notion that Ballard’s fiction was written rather independently
of mainstream trends. Furthermore, the novel’s ending appears quite implausible from
a scientific point of view. It is rather based on the logics of psychological New Wave
writing.
Stableford, ‘Science Fiction and Ecology’, p. 139.
Booker and Thomas, Science Fiction Handbook, p. 60.
Linnér, The Return of Malthus, p. 155.
The most famous of these is Harry Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room! (1966).
Booker and Thomas, Science Fiction Handbook, p. 60.
Broderick, ‘New Wave and Backwash’, p. 55.
Luckhurst, Science Fiction, p. 168.
Jones, Don’t Pick the Flowers, p. 75.
Jones, Don’t Pick the Flowers, p. 221.
Notes to pages 114–121
189
68 McCormick, Global Environment Movement, p. 64.
69 Mason, The Phaeton Condition, p. 32.
70 Mason, The Phaeton Condition, p. 20.
71 Ballard, The Drought, p. 34.
72 Ballard, The Drought, p. 188.
73 Pedler and Davis, Mutant 59, p. 51.
74 Pedler and Davis, Mutant 59, p. 189.
75 Pedler and Davis, Mutant 59, p. 25.
76 Mason, The Phaeton Condition, p. 188.
77 Stern, ‘From Technique to Critique’, p. 113.
78 Goldman, ‘John Brunner’s Dystopias’, pp. 268, 270.
79 Brunner, The Sheep Look Up, p. 461.
80 Brunner, The Sheep Look Up, p. 17 (italics in the novel).
81 Brunner, The Sheep Look Up, p. 233.
82 Brunner, The Sheep Look Up, p. 355.
83 Brunner, The Sheep Look Up, p. 30.
84 Brunner, The Sheep Look Up, p. 30.
85 Brunner, The Sheep Look Up, p. 17 (italics in the novel).
86 Browne, ‘Government and Politics’, p. 131.
87 Brunner, The Sheep Look Up, p. 71.
88 Brunner, The Sheep Look Up, p. 16 (italics in the novel).
89 Brunner, The Sheep Look Up, p. 95.
90 Brunner, The Sheep Look Up, p. 116.
91 Brunner, The Sheep Look Up, p. 166. This alludes to the tanker disasters in the 1960.
92 Brunner, The Sheep Look Up, p. 180.
93 Brunner, The Sheep Look Up, p. 9.
94 Brunner, The Sheep Look Up, p. 7.
95 Brunner, The Sheep Look Up, p. 227.
96 Brunner, The Sheep Look Up, p. 320.
97 Brunner, The Sheep Look Up, pp. 356–357.
98 Brunner, The Sheep Look Up, p. 435.
99Brunner, The Sheep Look Up, p. 33.
100 Brunner, The Sheep Look Up, p. 31.
101 Brunner, The Sheep Look Up, p. 31.
102 Brunner, The Sheep Look Up, p. 456. The Sheep Look Up also makes use of Malthusian ideas
in another passage. Dr Doe explains in an interview with Petronella that ‘only a major
catastrophe which cuts back both our population and our ability to interfere with the
natural biocycle would offer a chance of survival.’ (Brunner, The Sheep Look Up, p. 337)
The implicit reference to Malthus is not surprising considering the popularity of Malthus’
theory at the time, also due to the success of Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb.
103 U. S. Department of Commerce, ‘1970 Census of Population’, p. 3.
104 Brunner, The Sheep Look Up, p. 140.
105 Brunner, The Sheep Look Up, p. 300.
106 Brunner, The Sheep Look Up, p. 57.
107 Brunner, The Sheep Look Up, p. 233.
108 Brunner, The Sheep Look Up, pp. 221–222.
109 Rasulis, ‘Future of Empire’, p. 113.
190
110
111
112
113
Notes to pages 121–125
Brunner, The Sheep Look Up, p. 307.
Rasulis, ‘Future of Empire’, p. 114.
Rasulis, ‘Future of Empire’, p. 113.
Even though Goldman states otherwise (cf. Goldman, ‘John Brunner’s Dystopias’, p. 268),
there is no evidence that Train becoming a martyr is the event that triggers the American
civil war. The riots only break out when Dr Grey announces that the death of the American
population could save humanity.
Chapter 6: Fears in transition
Moore and Vaudagna, Introduction to American Century, p. 3.
Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition, p. 407.
Briggs, ‘The 1990s’, p. 204.
In later justifications of his thesis, Fukuyama himself denied such an interpretation (see
Fukuyama, ‘Reflections’, p. 240).
5 Bertram and Chitty, Introduction to Has History Ended?, p. 2.
6 Cumings, ‘Time of Illusion’, p. 88.
7 Burke, ‘History Man’.
8 ‘Age of Anxiety’, p. 18.
9 ‘Age of Anxiety’, p. 18.
10 Burns, Introduction to After History?, p. ix.
11 Cf. Weart, Discovery of Global Warming, p. 189; McCormick, Global Environment Movement,
p. 200.
12 Vines, ‘Our Sperm Are Missing’, p. 23.
13 Rüdig, ‘Between Moderation and Marginalization’, p. 231.
14 Cf. Farman, Gardiner, and Shanklin, ‘Large Losses of Total Ozone’.
15 McCormick, Global Environment Movemental, p. 188.
16 Weart, Discovery of Global Warming, p. 153.
17 McCormick, Global Environment Movemental, p. 190.
18 Initially, the public and scientific debate on global warming focused most strongly on carbon
dioxide which was thought to be ‘synonymous with “increasing CO2”’ (Weart, Discovery of
Global Warming, p. 128). The emission of other greenhouse gases was included later as part
of the problem.
19 McCormick, Global Environmental Movement, p. 187.
20 Fisher, ‘Global Warming’, p. 51.
21 Fisher, ‘Global Warming’, p. 55.
22 Braasch, Earth Under Fire, p. 129.
23 Fisher, ‘Global Warming’, p. 55.
24 Fairbridge, ‘Meeting Report’, p. 700.
25 Fisher, ‘Global Warming’, p. 53.
26 Schneider, ‘Greenhouse Effect’, p. 771.
27 ‘The Greenhouse Effect: Danger: More Hot Summers Ahead’, Newsweek, 11 July 1988;
‘The Big Dry’, Time, 4 July 1988.
28 Weart, Discovery of Global Warming, p. 165.
29 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ‘Climate Change 1995’, p. 22.
1
2
3
4
Notes to pages 125–132
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
191
Weart, Discovery of Global Warming, p. 173.
Cf. Alvarez et al., ‘Extraterrestrial Cause for the Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction’.
Verschuur, Impact!, p. 116.
Briggs and Snowman, Introduction to Fins de Siècle, p. 1.
Doomsday Science: New Theories about Comets, Asteroids and How the World Might End’,
Newsweek, 23 November 1992.
Verschuur, Impact!, p. 118.
Verschuur, Impact!, p. vi.
Klenk and Feldman, Preface to Ebola and Marburg Viruses, p. ix.
Klenk and Feldman, Preface to Ebola and Marburg Viruses, p. ix.
See Dobson, Seuchen, die die Welt veränderten, p. 189.
Klenk and Feldman, Preface to Ebola and Marburg Viruses, p. ix.
See Weinreich and Benn, HIV und Aids, p. 169.
The apocalyptic aspect is additionally strengthened by the fact that the cartoon shows
Civilization as portrayed by the English King Richard II and features a quotation from
Shakespeare’s play Richard II. In Shakespeare’s Richard II (c. 1595), the misrule and death of
Richard II prepares the ground for the War of the Roses (1455–1485), a period of instability
with regard to the English throne. Therefore, AIDS, as sitting on the shoulders of Richard
II, is shown to be a long-term threat to England’s or Britain’s stability in the present. The
accompanying quotation emphasizes the fact that, despite the advanced ‘state’ and ‘pomp’
of mankind at the end of the 20 th century, it would be fatal for it to ignore AIDS.
‘The End of the World !?!’.
‘Chris Wooding’.
Stableford, Year Zero, pp. 61–62.
Elton, This Other Eden, p. 35.
Jones, ‘Kairos’, pp. 178–179.
In fact, as early as 1983, The Last Gasp by Trevor Hoyle anticipates the resurgence of
environmental themes in apocalyptic fiction after its initial peak in the late 1960s and early
1970s.
Elton, Stark, p. 162.
Elton, Stark, p. 340.
Elton, This Other Eden, p. 405.
Elton, This Other Eden, p. 447.
Elton, This Other Eden, p. 470.
The Hammer of God is actually a longer version of Clarke’s short story of the same name.
The short story appeared in ‘Beyond the Year 2000’, a special issue of TIME magazine in
October 1992.
Clarke, The Hammer of God, p. 185.
Clarke, The Hammer of God, p. 212.
Therefore, it cannot be read as a piece of ecological apocalyptic fiction. Gail Vines’ article
‘End of Man? The Threat to Sperm’, which suggests that The Children of Men was inspired
by the public discussion over plummeting sperm numbers because of industrial pollution,
seems inaccurate in this respect.
Simon Clark, Blood Craz y (1995), James Herbert, ’48 (1996), Stephen Baxter, Moonseed (1998),
Stel Pavlou, Decipher (2001).
Clute, ‘Fantasy’, p. 338.
Langford and Grant, Earthdoom!, p. 221.
192
Notes to pages 132–136
61 Langford and Grant, Earthdoom!, p. 59.
62 This appears to be a humorous reference to the film The Omen (1976) in which a baby
becomes the host for the devil.
63 Langford and Grant, Earthdoom!, p. 111.
64 Langford and Grant, Earthdoom!, p. 98.
65 For a more comprehensive overview of the apocalyptic threats apart from those mentioned,
see particularly pages 92–93, 137–138 and 218.
66 Langford and Grant, Earthdoom!, p. 175.
67 Langford and Grant, Earthdoom!, p. 84.
68 Langford and Grant, Earthdoom!, p. 62.
69 Langford and Grant, Earthdoom!, p. 49.
70 Langford and Grant, Earthdoom!, p. 107.
71 Langford and Grant, Earthdoom!, p. 37 (emphasis in the novel).
72 For example, cf. Rojansky, ‘Existence of Contraterrene’.
73 Langford and Grant, Earthdoom!, p. 266.
74 Langford and Grant, Earthdoom!, p. 282.
75 Langford and Grant, Earthdoom!, p. 282.
76 Langford and Grant, Earthdoom!, pp. 267, 274, 275, 282.
77 Langford and Grant, Earthdoom!, p. 260.
78 Langford and Grant, Earthdoom!, p. 273.
79 Langford and Grant, Earthdoom!, p. 263.
80 This is particularly true for American films from the 1950s and 1960s. If one considers
the portrayal of Karen Goodwin as Janette Scott in The Day of the Triffids (1962), a similar
conclusion is possible for British apocalyptic film.
81 Langford and Grant, Earthdoom!, p. 277.
82 Langford and Grant, Earthdoom!, p. 263.
83 Langford and Grant, Earthdoom!, p. 135 (italics in the novel).
84 Langford and Grant, Earthdoom!, p. 273.
85 Langford and Grant, Earthdoom!, p. 274.
86 Actually, many apocalyptic novels refer to precursors of the genre. To name just a few
examples, The Fittest refers to The War of the Worlds (McIntosh, The Fittest, p. 135), Don’t Pick
the Flowers references Shute’s On the Beach ( Jones, Don’t Pick the Flowers, p. 144), Flood cites
Things to Come (Baxter, Flood, p. 431). However, in contrast to Earthdoom!, these novels merely
mention one or, at most, two former examples.
87 Langford and Grant, Earthdoom!, p. 251.
88 Langford and Grant, Earthdoom!, p. 209 (upper-case letters in the novel).
89 Langford and Grant, Earthdoom!, p. 230.
90 Langford and Grant, Earthdoom!, p. 215.
Chapter 7: Apocalypse after 9/11
1
2
3
4
Kean and Hamilton, 9/11 Commission Report, p. 316; Hewitt, British War on Terror, p. 30.
Dixon, ‘Introduction’, p. 9.
Bauer, ‘Terrorism’, p. 427.
Dixon, ‘Introduction’, pp. 3–4.
Notes to pages 136–139
193
5 Maley, Afghanistan Wars, p. 230.
6 Oliver, ‘War on Taliban’.
7 For a more detailed evaluation of the war in Afghanistan, cf. Baker, War in Afghanistan, pp.
214–238; Maley, Afghanistan Wars, pp. 230–274.
8 Bauer, ‘Terrorism’, p. 431.
9 Murray and Scales, Iraq War, p. 130.
10 Kampfner, Blair’s War, p. 258.
11 Bauer, ‘Terrorism’, p. 432.
12 For a more detailed evaluation of the war in Iraq, cf. Bierling, Geschichte des Irakkriegs, pp.
131–180; Murray and Scales, Iraq War, p. 234–258.
13 Hewitt, British War on Terror, p. 1.
14 Lieberman and Bucht, ‘Rail Transport Security’, p. 190.
15 Bauer, ‘Terrorism’, p. 431; Hewitt, British War on Terror, p. 50.
16 Hewitt, British War on Terror, p. 98.
17 Jacobsen and Khan, ‘After the London Bombings’, p. 4515.
18 Jacobsen and Khan, ‘After the London Bombings’, p. 4515.
19 In September and October 2001, two US senators as well as several American news
media agencies each received a letter that contained an Islamist anti-American note and
the bacterium Bacillus anthracis. Consequently, 22 people contracted the bacterial disease
anthrax, five of whom subsequently died ( Johnston, ‘Fall 2001 Anthrax Bioattacks’, p. 1).
20 Abraham, Twenty-First Century Plague, p. 2.
21 Smallman-Raynor and Cliff, War Epidemics, p. 706.
22 Muntean, ‘Viral Terrorism and Terrifying Viruses’, p. 199.
23 World Health Organization, ‘Speech of Dr Brundtland’.
24 Abraham, Twenty-First Century Plague, pp. 1–2.
25 World Health Organization, ‘Summary Table of SARS’.
26 Abraham, Twenty-First Century Plague, p. 14.
27 Abraham, Twenty-First Century Plague, p. 120.
28 Kleinman et al., ‘Avian and Pandemic Influenza’, p. S2.
29 Cf. Wald, Contagious, p. 5.
30 Abraham, Twenty-First Century Plague, p. 13.
31 Cf. Nerlich, ‘Post-Antibiotic Apocalypse’, p. 579.
32 Nerlich, ‘Post-Antibiotic Apocalypse’, p. 579.
33 Abraham, Twenty-First Century Plague, p. 2.
34 Turkington and Ashby, Encyclopedia of Infectious Diseases, p. 275.
35 The Writing Committee of the World Health Organization (WHO) Consultation on
Human Influenza, ‘Avian Influenza A’, p. 1375.
36 Wald, Contagious, p. 269.
37 World Health Organization, ‘WHO Checklist for Influenza Pandemic Preparedness
Planning’, p. vii.
38 For example, cf. Lacey, ‘They Can’t Believe’; Steinglass, ‘Hell on Wings’; Watts, Review of
Monster at Our Door, p. 1275.
39 Lacey, ‘They Can’t Believe’.
40 Greger, Bird Flu, p. 272.
41 Hewitt, British War on Terror, p. 49.
42 World Health Organization, Cumulative Number.
43 The genetic composition of the virus most closely resembled influenza viruses in pigs.
194
Notes to pages 139–144
Hence it was initially given the name swine influenza, swine flu or pig flu. It only later
turned out that the new virus could just be transmitted by humans and not pigs.
44 World Health Organization, ‘What is the Pandemic (H1N1) 2009 Virus?’.
45 Hilton and Hunt, ‘UK Newspapers’ Representation’, p. 941.
46 Cf. World Health Organization, ‘Influenza A(H1N1)’.
47 McLean et al., ‘Pandemic (H1N1) 2009 Influenza’, p. 1531.
48 Bowcott and Batty, ‘Swine Flu’.
49 In: Hilton and Hunt, ‘UK Newspapers’ Representation’, p. 943.
50 World Health Organization, Report of the Review Committee; White, ‘Government is in Talks’,
p. c170.
51 The WHO states that the average number of victims from influenza infection amounts to a
minimum of 250,000 to 500,000 fatalities per year (World Health Organization, ‘Influenza
(Seasonal)’.
52 Mayer‚‘Viral Discourse’, p. 8.
53 Abraham, Twenty-First Century Plague, p. 14.
54 Nerlich, ‘Post-Antibiotic Apocalypse’, p. 579.
55 Bolin, Science and Politics, pp. 200–201.
56 Archer and Rahmstorf, Climate Crisis, p. 4.
57 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2007, p. 13.
58 Boykoff, ‘Cultural Politics’, p. 561.
59 See Boykoff, ‘Cultural Politics’, p. 561.
60 Cf. Swyngedouw, ‘Apocalypse Forever?’, p. 218. Other similarly minded articles appeared in
The Mirror or The Observer (Cf. Boykoff, ‘Cultural Politics’, p. 561; Swyngedouw, ‘Apocalypse
Forever?’, p. 218).
61 Hulme, ‘Conquering of Climate’, p. 12.
62 Hulme, ‘Conquering of Climate’, p. 11.
63 ‘Box Office Mojo: The Day After Tomorrow’.
64 Bolin, Science and Politics, p. 212.
65 Bolin, Science and Politics, p. 212.
66 An Inconvenient Truth took 24 million US dollars in the US, making it one of the highest
grossing documentaries of all time (‘Box Office Mojo: An Inconvenient Truth’), and earned a
similar amount outside the US, indicating that its success and impact was international.
67 Boykoff, ‘Cultural Politics’, p. 554.
68 Boykoff, ‘Cultural Politics’, pp. 553–554.
69 Cf. Populus, ‘BBC Climate Change Poll’; Guardian, ‘Public Attitudes on Climate Change’.
70 Bolin, Science and Politics, p. 210.
71 Behringer, Kulturgeschichte des Klimas, p. 14.
72 Hulme, ‘Conquering of Climate’, p. 11.
73 Behringer, Kulturgeschichte des Klimas, p. 255.
74 Hulme, ‘Conquering of Climate’, p. 11.
75 Bacon and Dickman, ‘Aesthetics and Politics of Representation’, p. 149.
76 Rowin, ‘Children of Men’, p. 61.
77Cuarón, Children of Men, 0:05:07, 0:04:59.
78 Power, ‘Invasion of the Brit-Snatchers’, p. 150.
79 Bennett, ‘Children of Men’, p. 8.
80 See Roberts, The Snow, p. 165; Beaton, A Planet for the President, p. 184; Hammond, Extinction,
p. 171; Bartlett and Gates, The Zombie Diaries, 0:37:11; Scarrow, Last Light, p. 59.
Notes to pages 145–150
195
Bishop, ‘Dead Man Still Walking’, p. 15.
Bishop, ‘Dead Man Still Walking’, p. 11.
Dendle, ‘Zombie as Barometers’, p. 45.
E.g. The Living Dead (2008), The Living Dead 2 (2010), The New Dead: A Zombie Antholog y
(2010).
85 Bishop, ‘Dead Man Still Walking’, pp. 23–24.
86 Bishop, ‘Dead Man Still Walking’, p. 14.
87 The remake of the zombie classic Dawn of the Dead (2004), the new adaptation of I am Legend
(2007) and the Resident Evil series (2002–2012) are most notable in this respect. For a first
overview over zombie films in the 2000s, cf. Bétan and Colson, Zombies!, pp. 269–329.
Despite its recent year of publication, though, Zombies! already seems outdated as it cannot
keep pace with the new releases in the genre.
88 Bishop, ‘Dead Man Still Walking’, pp. 20–21. It is debatable whether 28 Days Later in fact
constitutes a zombie movie ‘as Boyle introduced faster, more feral zombie creatures, and he
kept the monsters alive rather than dead’ (Bishop, ‘Dead Man Still Walking’, p. 21). In its
reception, however, critics see the film in the tradition of the zombie genre, for example, cf.
Pierce, Review of 28 Days Later.
89 Wright, Shaun of the Dead, 1:29:01.
90 Hope, The Vanguard, 0:00:29.
91 Emson, Zombie Britannica, p. 429.
92 Emson, Zombie Britannica, p. 416 (italics in the novel).
93 Simmons, Flu, p. 34 (upper-case letters in the novel).
94 Simmons, Flu, p. 28.
95 Jones, Zombie Apocalypse, p. 161.
96 Bartlett and Gates, The Zombie Diaries, 0:05:24.
97 Jones, Zombie Apocalypse, p. 216.
98 Simmons, Flu, p. 80.
99BBC, Survivors: Series One, ep. 1: 0:27:44.
100 Warren, ‘On Location’.
101 BBC, Survivors Series Two, ep. 1: 0:25:32.
102 BBC, Survivors Series Two, ep. 6: 0:50:55.
103 Beaton, A Planet for the President, p. 12.
104 Another echo of the ending of The Sheep Look Up.
105 Beaton, A Planet for the President, p. 349.
106 Beaton, A Planet for the President, p. 354.
107 Hammond, Extinction, p. 7.
108 Hammond, Extinction, p. 14.
109 Hammond, Extinction, p. 79.
110 The novel Guardians of the Phoenix (2010) by Eric Brown is an extended version of his short
story. Both novel and short story share the same scenario of a world devastated by war and
global warming.
111 Brown, ‘Guardians of the Phoenix’, p. 370.
112 Brown, ‘Guardians of the Phoenix’, p. 380.
113 Brown, ‘Guardians of the Phoenix’, p 372.
114 Jensen, The Rapture, p. 228.
115 Jensen, The Rapture, p. 300.
116 Power, Prodigy, and BBC Wales, The Day of the Triffids, Ep. 1, 0:35:56.
81
82
83
84
196
Notes to pages 150–161
117Roberts, The Snow, p. 305 (italics in the novel).
118 Gee, The Flood, p. 11.
119Gee, The Flood, p. 335.
120 Morris, The Deluge, p. 2.
121 Morris, The Deluge, p. 27.
122 Botting, ‘Zombie London’, p. 157.
123 Other examples include A Planet for the President (2004) and The Snow (2004).
124 Fresnadillo, 28 Weeks Later, 0:11:24 (upper-case letters in the film).
125 Clover, ‘Solid Melts into War’, p. 7.
126 Botting, ‘Zombie London’, p. 163.
127 Fresnadillo, 28 Weeks Later, 0:16:33.
128 Botting, ‘Zombie London’, p. 161.
129 Fresnadillo, 28 Weeks Later, 0:56:56.
130 Fresnadillo, 28 Weeks Later, 0:19:03.
131 Fresnadillo, 28 Weeks Later, 0:16:58.
132 See Alber, Narrating the Prison, p. 233.
133 Fresnadillo, 28 Weeks Later, 0:36:10, 0:36:16.
134 Fresnadillo, 28 Weeks Later, 1:09:03.
135 Fresnadillo, 28 Weeks Later, 1:14:04.
136 Fresnadillo, 28 Weeks Later, 0:40:40.
137 Winston Churchill famously used the term special relationship in the Sinews of Peace
Address to describe the political and military alliance between Britain and the US (cf.
Churchill, ‘The Sinews of Peace’).
138 Fresnadillo, 28 Weeks Later, 0:16:35.
139 Fresnadillo, 28 Weeks Later, 0:52:40.
140 This is most apparent when Lily compares being confined to the ocean liner Ark Three as
a result of the flood to her captivity in Barcelona (Baxter, Flood, pp. 368, 377).
141 Baxter, Flood, p. 206.
142 Baxter, Flood, p. 294.
143 Baxter, Flood, p. 208.
144 Actually, the cliffhanger ending of Flood suggests that there is another haven, Ark Two,
which supports human life on Earth. But this is not relevant for the discussion here as the
nature of Ark Two is only revealed in Baxter’s post-apocalyptic sequel Ark (2009).
145 Baxter, Flood, p. 60.
146 Baxter, Flood, p. 368.
147 Baxter, Flood, p. 60.
148 Baxter, Flood, p. 297.
149 Baxter, Flood, p. 142.
150 Baxter, Flood, p. 166.
151 Baxter, Flood, p. 54 (italics in the novel).
152 Baxter, Flood, p. 225.
153 Baxter, Flood, p. 302.
154 Baxter, Flood, p. 272.
155 Baxter, Flood, p. 247.
156 Houghton, ‘Global Warming’, p. 1346.
157 Baxter, Flood, p. 171.
158 Baxter, Flood, p. 259.
Notes to pages 161–166
159
160
161
162
163
197
Baxter, Flood, p. 171.
Baxter, Flood, p. 466.
Baxter, Flood, p. 466 (italics in the novel).
See Baxter, Flood, p. 466.
In the novel’s afterword, Baxter offers references to the scientific background for the
subterranean oceans and the fact that they could be unlocked in the future (Baxter, Flood,
pp. 472–473).
Conclusion
1 Boyle himself stated that screenwriter Alex Garland drew on Wyndhams classic novel
(Kermode, ‘Capital Place for Panic Attacks’). Indeed, Jim waking up alone in a hospital
echoes the beginning of The Day of the Triffids, the figure of Major West resembles the
character Torrence.
2 Admittedly, the film version does this to a lesser extent. For a discussion of these three texts
and The Night of the Triffids, cf. chapter 4, section ‘Fear of communist invasion’.
3 Cf. chapter 5, section ‘Case study: The Sheep Look Up’.
4 Cf. chapter 2, section ‘Case study: The Violet Flame’.
5 Cf. chapter 3, section ‘Case study: Things to Come’.
6 Cf. chapter 3, section ‘Science and machinery’.
7 Cf. chapter 4, section ‘Case study: The Tide Went Out’.
8 Cf. chapter 4, sections ‘Fear of communist invasion’ and ‘Cold War propaganda’.
9 Cf. chapter 7, section ‘Case study: 28 Weeks Later’. To some extent, this reassessment already
takes place in eco-doom apocalyptic fiction, cf. chapter 5, section ‘Case study: The Sheep
Look Up’.
10 Cf. chapter 2, ‘Case study: The Violet Flame’.
11 Cf. chapter 3, ‘Case study: Things to Come’.
12 Cf. chapter 4, section ‘Ambivalence towards science’.
13 Cf. chapter 3, section ‘Savagery’ and chapter 4, section ‘Flawed human nature’.
14 Cf. chapter 2, section ‘Dangerous scientists’.
15 Cf. introduction, section ‘Literature review’.
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The idea of apocalypse has a long tradition in the history of civilization. Secularized
speculations about the end of the world have been a part of public discourse in Britain
ever since the 19th century. This study investigates fiction about the potential end of
humankind, written and produced by British writers and filmmakers from the 1890s to the
beginning of the 21st century. Martin Hermann argues that British apocalyptic fiction is
deeply embedded in the cultural context of its respective era. Applying ideas from Michel
Foucault’s The Archaeology of Knowledge and analyzing works by H. G. Wells, John
Wyndham, John Brunner, Stephen Baxter and other, less remembered authors of
speculative fiction, Hermann traces a history of fear in British culture, identifying the
discursive formations that have shaped the apocalyptic discourse in Britain over the last
120 years.
‘Working through an impressively wide range of examples, Hermann draws out the larger
trends and currents of this enduring mode of writing.’
ADAM ROBERTS
Royal Holloway, University of London
Author of several acclaimed SF novels