American Science Fiction and the Cold War: Literature and Film [1 ed.] 1579581951, 9781579581954

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
I Postwar Jeremiads: Philip Wylie and Leo Szilard
II Variations on a Patriotic Theme: Robert A. Heinlein
III History and Apocalypse in Poul Anderson
IV Views from the Hearth
V Cultures of Surveillance
VI Take-Over Bids: Frederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth
VII The Russians Have Come
VIII Embodying the Arms Race: Bernard Wolfe's Limbo
IX The Cold War Computerised
X Conspiracy Narratives
XI Absurdist Visions: Dr. Strangelove in Context
XII The Signs of War: Walter M. Miller and Russell Hoban
XIII In the Aftermath
XIV The Star Wars Debate
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

A m erica n Science Fiction an d the C old W ar

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Am erican Science Fiction and the Cold War Literature and Film

David Seed

0 Routledge Taylor Si Francis Group LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 1999 by Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers Published 2013 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY, 10017, U SA Routledge is an imprint o f the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© David Seed, 1999 A CIP record for this book is available from the British L ibrary A C atalogin g-in-Pu blication record for this book is available from the L ib rary o f Congress A ll rights reserved, in clu d in g the rig h t o f reprodu ction in w h ole or in part in an y form

The right of David Seed to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

ISBN 13: 978-1-579-58195-4 (hbk)

Contents

A ck n o w le d g em en ts In trodu ction I

vi i

Postw ar Jeremiads: P h ilip W y lie and Leo Szilard

14

Variations on a Patriotic Them e: Robert A . H einlein

28

III

H istory and A p o ca ly p se in Poul A n d erson

40

IV

V iew s from the H earth

53

V

Cultures o f Su rveillan ce

68

T ake-O ver Bids; Frederik Pohl and C yril K orn bluth

82

The Russians H ave Come

94

II

VI VII VIII IX X XI XII

E m bodyin g the Arm s Race: Bernard W o lfe 's Limbo

107

The Cold W ar Com puterised

119

C onspiracy N arratives

132

A b su rd ist Visions: Dr. Strangelove in Context

145

The Signs o f W ar: W alter M. M iller and Russell H oban

157

XIII

In the A fterm ath

168

XIV

The Star W ars Debate

181

B ib liograp h y

194

In d ex

212

Acknow ledgem ents

G rateful than ks are g iv e n to the fo llo w in g for their help d urin g this project: Poul A n d erson , Paul Boyer, R ay B rad bu ry, Paul Brians, D avid Brin, John Clute, Chandler D avis, M . J. Engh, Jack F inn ey, H. Bruce Franklin, Charles G annon, Russell H oban, Dean Ing, D avid Karp, Ju dith M erril, F rederik Pohl, Jerry P ournelle, Kim Stanley Robinson, M ordecai R oshw ald, A n d y S aw yer, W illiam J. Scheick, G eorge Slusser, A lb ert E. Stone, Lorna Toolis, and Daniel L. Zins. I a ck n o w led ge the in valu ab le release from teach in g to com plete this book from an a hr b aw ard and a fello w sh ip from the L everh u lm e Trust. F inally a special d ebt o f g ratitu d e to m y w ife Joanna for her u n w a v erin g en couragem ent and su pport at e v e ry stage o f this project.

Introduction

(i) The Cold W ar w as a m etaphor. A s soon as the label w as applied to m aterial conditions it carried entailm ents for su bsequ en t designa­ tions o f the p ostw ar scene. G en erally dated from a 1947 speech b y Bernard Baruch ('w e are in the m idst o f a cold w ar') and then popularised b y the jou rn alist W alter Lippm ann (see Goldm an i960: 60), the phrase had been used as early as O ctober 1945 b y G eorge O rw ell w hose article 'Y o u and the A tom Bom b' foresaw a situation o f arm ed paralysis, o f h o stility that could n ever d evelo p into o vert com bat w ith a superstate 'at once unconquerable and in a perm anent state o f "cold w a r" w ith its neighbours'. O rw ell m istakenly assumed that the atom ic bom b w o u ld stay too co stly to m ass-produce, but sh rew d ly fo u n d early signs o f a status quo that could o n ly be described p a ra d o x ica lly as a 'peace that is no peace' (O rw ell 1970: 26). O nce put into circulation the tw o terms in 'cold w ar' came to im p ly that 'tw o m u tu ally ex clu siv e political system s w ere frozen in ideological place' and that politics could o n ly be cond u cted as conflicts w h ere v ic to ry becam e the 'o n ly means o f resolution' (Hinds and W in d t 1991: 219). Exam ination o f p olitical speeches for co vert m essages has led one com m entator to argue that the us perception o f the Cold W ar w as stru ctu red around k e y m etaphors, lik e the an alo gy betw een the Soviet U nion and 'dangerou s predators' (M edhurst et al. 1990: 74). Such m etaphors carried their o w n narrative w ith them - here prim arily o f attack - w h ich po stw ar science fiction rep eated ly actualised. The 1954 film Them!, for instance, p icks up the double m etaphor o f ants-as-m onsters and ants-as-people to dram atise the u n p red icta b ility o f the Bomb and fears o f Com m unist attack. Radiation from the W h ite Sands testing g rou n d has prod u ced g igan tic m utant ants w h o threaten centres o f civilisatio n lik e Los A n geles. T h ey are thus 'sp a w n ed ' b y the Bomb bu t also em bo dy a 1

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perception o f Com m unist society. A n ex p ert in the film v irtu a lly d raw s the an alo gy for us w h en he explain s: 'A n ts are the o n ly creatures on Earth other than m an w h o m ake w ar. T h ey cam paign; th ey are chronic aggressors; and th e y m ake slave labourers o f the cap tives th e y d on 't k ill'. So w h en the m ilitary m oves into action against the ants it is no surprise that a jou rn alist asks 'has the Cold W ar gotten h ot?' The question opens up one w a y o f v ie w in g the narrative as a battle b etw een the u s a and Com m unist aggressors en coded as a m onster fantasy, and the film w as no isolated instance. T he n o velist Poul A n d erso n fig u red the Com m unist m illennium as 'h u m an ity turn ed into an an t-h ill' and N orm an Spinrad co n clu d ed The Iron Dream (1972) w ith a d escription o f an em pire resem bling the So viet U nion as the 'en d -p ro d u ct o f Com m unist id e o lo g y — an anthill o f m indless slaves presid ed o ver b y a ruthless h ie r a r c h y '.1 T hese exam ples, taken from fiction al and non -fictional sources, su ggest that science fiction n o vels and film s are not p rod u cin g a rb itrary fan tasy but rather rew o rk in g k e y m etaphors and narra­ tiv es alread y circu latin g in the culture. H ayden W h ite has argu ed that historical and fiction al discourses h ave com m on aspects in narratives that transm it 'm essages about the nature o f a shared rea lity'. A t a n y g iv e n historical m om ent there exists an 'enorm ous num ber o f kin d s o f narratives that e v e ry cu ltu re disposes for those o f its m em bers w h o m igh t w ish to draw upon them for the en codation and transm ission o f m essages' (W hite I 9 ^7 : 4 1)* These narratives are form ed th ro u gh a process W h ite labels the 'tropics o f d iscou rse', b y w h ich he means the m eta­ phorical and related strategies em p loyed b y historian and n o velist alike to fashion a 'com preh en sible to ta lity ' from th eir m aterials (W h ite 1978: 2, 125). W h ite 's argum ent is broader than that o f L a k o ff and Johnson (L ako ff and Johnson 1980) on m etaphor, alth o ugh both coincide in dem onstrating that m etaphor and other rh etorical d evices p lay an in tegral part in h o w w e stru ctu re our concepts. Being less tied to p rescrip tive con ven tion s o f rep resen ­ tation than realism , science fictio n can defam iliarise m etaphors o f the tim es b y rend ering them as concrete m etonym s. T h u s Bernard W o lfe depicts the arms race as a bizarre form o f athletics in Limbo and N ick Boddie W illiam s transform s the Iron Curtain m etaphor into an atom ic curtain in his 1956 n o vel o f that title, a curtain w h ich n o w screens postholocaust A m erica, not the Soviet b lo c.2 In these and sim ilar cases the fiction uses n arrative to interrogate the k e y m etaphors w ith in Cold W ar discourse. W h ite bridges the gap b etw een factual m aterial and fiction b y argu in g that both d raw on a com m on pool o f narratives and im ages

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circu latin g in the culture. For exam ple, in F ebruary 1957 James W . Deer addressed the co n tro v ersy on civ il defence in the pages o f the Bulletin o f the Atom ic Scientists w h ere he extrap olated a sequence o f races from 1945 into the near fu tu re o f fission (A) bom bs, fusion (H) bom bs, i c b m s , and fin a lly an 'international race for sh elter'. Deer foresaw the co nstru ction o f self-sufficient u nd ergro u n d 'city-states' w h ich w o u ld house m ost o f the population. His accoun t did not dem onstrate plan nin g so m uch as a confirm ation that h u m an ity w as perform ing to a script: The p lay has begu n, and w e are the actors. The end is im plicit from the nature o f the begin n in g. W ith in the fram ew ork o f fu sion bom bs, g u id ed m issiles, and shelters, there is nothing w e can do but go ahead and p lay out our part in the preordained ritual. (Deer 1957: 67) The fo llo w in g year James Blish's n o vel A Case o f Conscience incorporated D eer's propositions. Here an arms race has indeed led to a shelter race and m assive u nd ergro u n d com plexes. H ow ever, Blish m akes ex p licit w h at is o n ly a suggestion in Deer: that these com plexes resem ble tom bs not refuges: 'th e planet w o u ld be a m ausoleum for the liv in g from n o w until the Earth itse lf p erished' (Blish 1963: 97). Secon d ly D eer's fatalism is e x p lic itly protested, but b y a fig u re from another planet w h o renounces the 'Shelter state' declaring his righ t to be a 'citizen o f no co u n try but that bounded b y the lim its o f [his] o w n m ind' (Blish 1963: 168). Blish applies D eer's perception o f ritual th ro u gh a p a rty (perform ance) w h ere the guests travel around on trains (i.e. according to preordained 'tracks'). A n d lastly, Blish exp loits the traditional to p o g ra p h y o f the u ncon scious to dem onstrate a co llective neurotic unrest sim m ering 'un dern eath the apparent co n form ity'. Blish's n o ve l supplies an u n u su a lly direct instance o f non-fictional debate feedin g into fiction al im agery but such connections w ill recur th ro u gh o u t this period. The one o verrid in g issue w as that o f nuclear w ar w h ich raises particular d ifficu lties o f realisation as a subject.

(ii) D errida and the N u clear Subject

In the sum m er o f 1984 the jou rn al Diacritics brou gh t out a special num ber d esigned to fou n d a new school o f post-structuralist analysis called 'N u clear Criticism ', w h ich w as to exam ine 'all the form s o f nuclear d iscourse'. A start w as made on this program m e

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w ith discussions o f the contrad ictions w ith in deterrence and the relation betw een the nu clear and the tradition o f the sublim e (Fergusson 1984), but the cen trepiece o f the issue w as an essay b y D errida ('N o A p o ca ly p se, N ot N o w (Full Speed A h ead , Seven M issiles, Seven M issives')) in w h ich he bom bards the reader w ith a num ber o f propositions, the m ost im portant o f w h ich for present purposes are three dealing w ith the nuclear referent, specialism and literary represen tation .3 D errida argues that nuclear w ar w o u ld be an ev en t w ith o u t preced en t b rin g in g the 'total and rem ainderless destruction o f the arch iv e'; and then he puts fo rw ard his central point: 'the terrify in g reality o f the nuclear co n flict can o n ly be the sign ified referent, n ever the real referen t (present or past) o f a discourse or a te x t' (Derrida 1984: 23). N uclear w ar thus takes on a 'fab u lo u s te x tu a lity ' since it o n ly exists 'th ro u g h w h a t is said o f it' and, since th ey cannot be k n o w n in advan ce, the v ie w s o f 'e x p erts' becom e m erely opinion. D errida ca refu lly retains the real as the starting point for his form ulation, bu t runs the risk o f su bstitu tin g one k in d o f specialism for another. Ken R u th ven has acco rd in g ly insisted that it is crucial to 'p reserve the nuclear referen t and to resist efforts to textu alise it out o f existen ce' (R uthven 1993: 174)M ore elab orately J. Fisher Solom on has argued for in clu d in g the process o f becom ing w ith in referen tiality, prop osin g an 'o b jectiv e reality o f em pirical p o te n tiality ' (Solom on 1990: 63) to counter D errida's stark opposition b etw een science and belief. If Derrida is red efin in g rather than d en y in g the nuclear referent, one effect o f his argum ent is to raise the status o f literatu re.4 For if n uclear w ar can o n ly be approached sp ecu la tively, then literature — and p articu larly science fiction — can o ccu p y a space equal to sociological, strategic and other m odes o f speculation. P arad o x­ ica lly, even as he is openin g up a literary subject, D errida turns his back on nuclear fiction in a gestu re o f conservatism b y citin g M odernists lik e M allarm e, K afka and Jo yce as being m ore relevan t to the nuclear age. He th ere b y ign ores the m assive corp us o f fiction listed in Paul Brians's p ioneering and in dispen sable Nuclear H olo­ causts (1987), for if nuclear w ar is as im portant as D errida recognises, then this fiction should be attended to and the literary canon re-exam ined (cf. Zins 1990). In fact this v e ry fiction confirm s D errida's thesis on the u n u su a lly elu sive nature o f the nuclear su bject b y sh ow in g again and again a co llective suppression o f the dreaded even t w h ich is often signalled pron om in ally qu ite sim p ly as 'it'. The recu rren ce o f secret u n d ergro u n d locations su ggests a representation th ro u gh im ages o f the suppressed. James A g e e 's 1946 sketch 'D edication D ay' (A gee 1972), for exam ple, describes a

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surface celebration o f techn ological trium ph w h ile beneath the surface w o rkers, in clu d in g su rviv o rs from H iroshim a and N agasaki, labour o ver the 'Eternal Fuse'. This topograp h ical separation has been read as spatialising the same am bivalen ce o f A m erican attitudes to the Bomb (Boyer 1994: 244) w h ich inform s N ick Boddie W illiam s's The Day They H-Bombed Los Angeles (1961). Here the 'th e y ' o f the title p roves to be the u s a itself and the true enem y other A m ericans w h o are being transform ed into p red ato ry animals. The agent o f this change is a giant, ex p a n siv e p rotein m olecule created b y the Pacific H -bom b tests and w ash ed on to A m erican shores as plasma. The narrative therefore has a circu la rity in so far as H -bom bs are being used to eradicate the m utants caused b y the bom b in the first place and not, as one character assumes, b y 'them dam ned d irty Com m ies'. The bom b's valu e as a w eapon is co u nter­ balanced b y the threat o f its effects gettin g out o f control. G ranted that nuclear w ar poses a special problem o f expression, D errida's insistence on fo regro u n d in g the 'strategic m anoeuvers' o f discourse to 'assim ilate that assim ilable w h o lly other' (Derrida 1984: 28) rig h tly directs us to p a y attention to the n arrative and stylistic procedures fo llo w ed in attem pts at describing such an event. Peter S ch w en g er's Letter Bomb (1992) fo llo w s this lead in sk ilfu lly dem onstrating the tw ists, turns, and deferrals o f nuclear texts w h ich , for exam ple, fo llo w a circular tim e-sequence: 'P red ictin g a fu tu re, w e ... fin d ourselves turn ed back to the past, w h ich is our present, and our present task to interpret' (Schw enger 1992: 10). D errida's w arn in g o f the elusiven ess o f the nuclear su bject can alread y be seen in H. G. W ells's The W orld Set Free (1914), a precu rsor n arrative w h ich both alarmed p h y sicist Leo Szilard w ith its d epiction o f nuclear w ar and also su ggested to him the p o ssib ility o f a chain reaction he w as to a p p ly in the plan nin g o f the first atom ic bom b (Lanouette 1992: 107, 134). W e lls's account o f nuclear attack is problem atised at its centre: 'It is a rem arkable th in g ', the narrator reports, 'that no com plete contem porary account o f the exp losion o f the atom ic bom bs su rviv es. There are o f course innum erable allusions and partial records, and it is from these that su bsequ en t ages m ust piece togeth er the im age o f these d evastations' (W ells 1988: 137). The result is a p a tch w o rk o f sp ecu ­ lation and rum our because W ells sh rew d ly notes that su rviv o rs' traum a w o u ld lead them to suppress m emories o f their experience. W ells sets a pattern w h ich w ill recur th ro u gh o u t the Cold W ar w h ere representational d ifficu lty regu larly m akes the nuclear su bject m etafictional. W e can see this process at w o rk in Roger Z elazn y's Damnation A lley (1969) w h ere a major textu al d isruption

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tem porarily suspends the n arrative o f a jo u r n e y across p o st­ holocaust A m erica m ade b y an alienated lone biker as he takes m edical supplies from California to Boston. The landscape he traverses confronts him w ith in crea sin gly fabu lou s m onsters (m utations, gian t bats), but before he reaches his destination Zelazn y suspends the n arrative to d escribe a 'settin g w ith o u t plot or ch aracters', in v itin g the reader to 'fram e' it w ith a chosen title. T h rou g h a single sentence ex ten d in g for m ore than tw o pages Zelazn y evokes a nuclear ap ocalyp se w ritten across N ature w h ere the transform ation o f elem ents expresses itse lf th ro u gh alternative propositions ('perhaps it takes fire from the hot spots w h ere the cobalt bom bs fell and, o f course, perhaps not also') w h ich u ltim ately elude coherence: 'it ju s t d oesn 't seem that a n y name w ill f it '.5 A s lan gu age slips o ff a stable referen t it seems that the su bject escapes.

(iii) N u clear U ltim acy

Derrida installs his discourse o f u ltim acy ('absolu te', 'irreve rsib le', 'to tal', etc.) th ro u gh the prem ise o f the 'un iqu en ess o f an ultim ate ev en t' w h ose v e ry u niqu en ess collapses the d istin ction betw een b e lie f and science. It m akes no sense to D errida for an yon e to claim a n y special expertise on nuclear w ar because no preced en t exists w h ich w o u ld u n d erpin such expertise. W h at about H iroshim a and N agasaki? one m ight object. N ot so, Derrida replies: 'T h e exp losion o f Am erican bom bs in 1945 ended a "classica l", co n ven tion al w ar; it did not set o ff a nuclear w a r' (Derrida 1984: 23). In th is am azin gly categorical statem ent D errida ign ores the co n tin u in g debate o ver h o w to 'n arrativise' these tw o even ts (to speed Japanese surrender or to w arn the Soviets o f A m erica's n ew tech n ology?). These even ts are used th ro u gh o u t the p ostw ar period to m easure the p ossible d estruction o f a nuclear w ar. The latter's grim ico n o gra p h y (clothes patterns im printed on bodies, eyes turn ed to je lly , the sh adow s o f atom ised victim s im prin ted on w alls, etc.) all derives from 1945, pa rticu larly from John H ersey's reportage narrative Hiroshima (1946).6 The 1984 issue o f Diacritics devotes considerable space to Jonathan Sch ell's The Fate o f the Earth (1982) w h ich attem pts to describe a fu ll-scale holocaust and attacks the Reagan adm inistration's nuclear brinkm anship. There are, h o w ev er, im portant d ifferences betw een Schell and D errida w h ich em erge if w e ba ck tra ck to a k e y con trib u tio n to the nuclear debate, Herm an K ahn's Thinking about the Unthinkable (1962), w h ich set out to attack the pessim ism o f

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N e vil Sh u te's On the Beach. His declared target w as fear: 'E ither th ey ["m any people"] are afraid o f w h ere the th in k in g w ill lead them or th ey are afraid o f th in k in g at all' (Kahn 1962: 27). Kahn confronted this situation w ith a determ ination to introd u ce an an alytical rig o u r w h ich w o u ld h ave been congenial to Derrida. In practice this resulted in an abstracted em phasis on tech n o lo g y and international politics, so K ahn's claim o f strategic exp ertise then w o u ld be part o f the 'scien ce' w h ich D errida rejects as spurious. In contrast, both Kahn and Schell v ie w nuclear w ar as a v a rie ty o f scenarios, not a single instance (Kahn discusses 'w a r su rv iv in g ' situations); and Schell fu rth er describes nuclear w ar as a process not a discrete event. A d m itted ly takin g the w orstcase scenario, Schell argues from a prem ise o f ecological and social holism that the Earth and hum an so ciety form a sin gle system w h ose delicate balance w ill be u n p red icta b ly d isrupted b y a nuclear w ar, co nstru cting an argum ent from scientific reports and speculation w h ich exem plifies before the fact D errida's blu rrin g o f science and belief. But if nuclear w ar is the u n k n o w n lim it case, then the prop osition itself that it is a total u n iqu e ev en t becom es a m atter o f belief, a co n v ictio n o f p ro b ab ility. D errida's insistence on u ltim acy form s part o f his v ie w o f nuclear w ar as an en ding, but here again Cold W ar narratives problem atise the concept and m ake it into part o f their subject. T h u s an early film o f the m aking o f the atom ic bom b w as entitled The Beginning or the End (1947) w h ile a later pu lp m ovie about radiation p rod u cin g g ig an tic grasshoppers w as called The Beginning o f the End (1957). The esch ato lo gy o f science fiction narratives o f the period (contextu alised in W . W arren W a ga r's Terminal Visions, 1982) revo lve s around the p o ssib ility o f su rv iv a l o f course, but also around the story o f that su rviv al. The narrator o f Stuart Cloete's 'T h e Blast' I1 947), for instance, begins his account o f nuclear attack after his assum ption has passed that he is the sole su rviv o r. The attack 'w as w h at m ight be called the last real even t in h istory. I seem to be in the interesting position o f h a vin g su rv iv ed h isto ry, o f being h isto ry itself' (Conklin 1954: 12). The tem porary im pression o f being history collapses together his self-perceptions as su bject and object. O nly the d isco very o f other su rviv o rs g iv es him an im petus to narrate and in the process changes his subject. W h en he is taken up b y a band o f A m erican Indians he reflects that he has com pleted his 'sto ry o f the end o f the w h ite m an's w o r ld '.7 Cloete's aw areness o f w h at sort o f narratives m ight articulate the nuclear afterm ath is echoed m uch later b y Bernard M alam ud's R obinsonnade God's Grace (1982). T his tim e the sole su rv iv o r is one C alvin Cohn, his

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name com bining ironic su ggestion s o f pred estination and p riestly election, w h o attem pts to reenact stories from W estern cu ltu re on an island w h ere his sole com panions are apes. T h e latter perform litera lly 'ape' — the role o f hum ans in recap itu latin g the sto ry o f A braham and Isaac, even sim ulating hum an speech. T h e apes' final loss o f speech seems to ind icate the end o f civilisatio n (Sch w enger 1992: 80), bu t here again the en din g is not final. T h o u gh the n o vel closes w ith C oh n's im pend ing death, a ch ron ological b ey o n d has been opened up, albeit ten ta tiv ely , b y the line 'm aybe tom orrow the w o rld to com e?' and in the non -specific other presence im plicit w ith in the third -person narrator. It seems then that nuclear n arratives refuse ultim ate en dings. A s the n o velist A lg is B u d rys states, 'e v e n its [science fiction 's] most d ed ica ted ly ingeniou s tales o f a p p a ren tly unrem itting cataclysm m ust, b y the nature o f the prose, in clu d e a n arrative p resence o f some sort - an actual character, or at least the author's vo ice' (Budrys 1986: 45). Richard Klein does not exp ress this issue as a question o f vo ice bu t rather locates a 'g h o stly su rv iv a l' in the 'p ositio n from w h ich one a n ticip ato rily contem plates the end, u tter nuclear d evastation, from a standpoin t b ey o n d the end, from a posthum ous, a p o caly p tic p ersp ective o f fu tu re m ou rn in g' (Klein 1990: 77). Such narratives m ight p lay w ith con trad iction lik e the 1955 film The Day the W orld Ended w h ich opens w ith the 'T otal D estru ction ' d ay o f nuclear w ar, proceeds to redu ce the term 'to tal', and concludes w ith a shot entitled 'The Beginning' as a man and wom an straigh ten their ru ck sa ck s and m arch into the post-holocau st fu tu re.

(iv) Science Fiction as Social Criticism

The u n iq u e u rgen cies o f the Cold W ar, and p a rticu larly fear o f n uclear w ar, affected w rite rs' perceptio n s o f the ch anged status o f science fiction . A sim o v dated the shift precisely: 'T h e d ro p p in g o f the atom ic bom b in 1945 m ade science fiction resp ectable'. Sim ilarly James Gunn: 'from that m om ent on th o u g h tfu l men and w om en recogn ised that w e w ere liv in g in a science fiction w o rld '. Indeed b y the m id-1960s n ew s reports o f rockets and nuclear w eapo n s had becom e so routine that for James Blish th ey challenged the novelist's im agin ation .8 C ertain ly science fiction w as so q u ick to en gage w ith n uclear w ar that b y 1952 H. L. Gold, the editor o f Galaxy, w as com ­ plain in g about h o w m an y stories 'still nag a w a y at atom ic, h y d ro g e n and bacteriological w ar, the post-atom ic w o rld , reversio n to barbarism , m utant ch ild ren ... w o rld dictatorships, problem s o f

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su rv iv a l w e a rily turn ed o ver to w om en, w ar, m ore w ar, and still more w ar' (Gold 1952: 2). Despite the stifling effects o f the M cC arth y years m an y n ovelists took ju stifia b le pride in the w a y 'scien ce fiction becam e the v eh icle for social criticism ' (D avenport 1964: 102). So declared Robert Bloch in a lecture series on this v e ry topic d elivered at the U n iversity o f Chicago in 19 5 7.9 This stu d y w ill contend throu ghou t that science fiction novelists made constant in terven tio n s in the debates that w ere raging th ro u gh o u t the Cold W ar on such m atters as civ il defence, fo reign p o licy and internal secu rity. A b o v e all these issues loom ed the threat o f nuclear w ar w h ich g av e an added u rg en cy to this fiction al representation. Here, p a ra d o x ica lly, the latter's p o w er is d ep loyed tow ard s a realisation w h ich w ill 'p u t o ff the d ay ' (D ow ling 1987: 86). These narratives perform a role o f n egative p ro p h e cy w h ere dreaded outcom es are en visaged and therefore h o p efu lly deferred, in such a w a y that the reader is in d u ced to ponder on present signs o f disaster. H ow to d ecipher such signs can be a com plex problem . M u rray L einster's Operation Terror (1962) appears to be using the tim ehonoured n arrative o f alien invasion w h en reports start leak in g out o f a 'p aralysis beam ' from a landed u f o , operated either b y m onsters or b y m en .10 If men, it m ust be a 'cold w ar d evice'; and if it is not the A m ericans, there is o n ly one other co n ceivab le co u n try respon­ sible. But there is a third p o ssib ility, o n ly d isco vered at the end: the U nited States k n e w the Soviets w ere fin alising such a w eap on and m anufactured the u f o story so that the A m ericans w o u ld be seen as protectors. 'T h is w as an attem pt to fig h t the last w ar on earth in disgu ise' (Leinster 1968: 147). The 'theatre o f w a r' re vo lves around not com bat but the circulation o f inform ation. The w artim e restrictions on a n y m aterial relating to the Bomb w h ich had led to the arrest o f the w riter C live Cartm ell in 1944 (see Berger 1984) had i f an y th in g becom e even tigh ter as the postw ar secu rity state took shape. Kris N e v ille's 'Cold W ar' (1949) defines the status quo th ro u gh an absolute im perative o f secrecy. W h en a jou rn alist stum bles across a story about the neuroses o f Space Station com m anders he is gu n n ed d ow n b y the secret service because the issue w as 'too big to protect b y normal, dem ocratic procedu res' (Cam pbell 1952: 4 11). In a ligh ter ve in W illiam Tenn parodies institu tional secrecy in 'Project H ush' w h en an arm y team land on the M oon and d isco ver a dome bu ilt - not b y aliens - but b y the 'goddam U nited States N a v y ' (Tenn 1956: 219). S ecrecy often legitim ates the reification o f characters so that th e y becom e in d is­ tin gu ish able from the inform ation th ey carry. So C. M . K o rn blu th 's teenage p h y sics gen iu s in 'G om ez' (1954) is classified as a 'w eap o n '

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b y A tom ic E n ergy Com m ission In te llig en ce.11 Th e restrictions on inform ation ex p lain the in ten ded appeal o f the stories in W illiam Sam brot's Island o f Fear (1963) w h ich p u rp ort to be secret reports from d ifferen t govern m en t agencies, g iv in g the reader an illu sion o f insider k n o w led g e on the space race and nuclear research labora­ tories. P ostw ar science fiction dem onstrates again and again the w a y s in w h ich secrecy becom es in stitu tion alised in m echanism s o f control. T w o o f the m ost p o w erfu l treatm ents o f this issue, W ilso n T u ck e r's W ild Talent (1954) and A lg is B u d ry s's W ho? (1958) dram atise the failu re o f the state to contain its su bject. In the first, a telep ath Paul Breen is b ro u g h t in b y the A m erican secret service to detect espionage routes. F in ally shot because u n con trollab le, B reen's treat­ m ent b y the authorities is a 'm ix tu re o f exp loitatio n and a n x ie ty [which] m irrors reactions to the A -b om b its e lf' (Sh ipp ey 1979: 106). W ho? pursues the logic o f se cu rity processes to th eir ultim ate im passe. Lucas M artino, an A m erican scientist w o rk in g on a topsecret project, is taken to an East Germ an clinic after a near-fatal accident at his plant near the border. Th e n o ve l opens w ith W estern agents a w aitin g his return. To th eir am azem ent M artin o has been reb u ilt so e x te n s iv e ly that he resem bles a robot w ith an all-m etal head. From then on w ards his id e n tity becom es an open enigm a. E v e ry h yp oth esis can be reversed: a recu rrin g nightm are m ight sh o w m em ories o f w h a t 'th e y ' did to him , or anticipate his fear o f the A m ericans. In other w o rd s, M artin o m igh t be a 'p la n t'. The tropes o f p h y sica l in v estiga tio n ('d ig d eeper', 'p u ll this th in g apart', etc.) lead now here. A s in Curt Siodm ak's science fiction thrillers, lik e H auser's Memory (1968) w h ere the r n a o f a d efectin g scientist is used to access his m em ory, the hum an su bject and inform ation becom e iden tified, w h ile the latter rem ains elu sive. In B u d ry s's n o ve l w e are told: 'T h e w ar w as in all the w o rld 's filin g cabinets. The w eap o n w as inform ation ' (B udrys 1964: 6). T he narratives ju s t considered do not fit the label o f science fiction as 'fu tu ristic' in a n y straig h tforw ard w a y and m ost o f the w o rk s discussed in this stu d y w ill tu rn out to be set in com ­ p a ra tiv ely near fu tu res w ith some internal exam ination o f w h at changes b ro u g h t about the n e w state o f affairs. These fu tu res, in Fredric Jam eson's w o rd s, 'serve the ... fu n ctio n o f transform ing our o w n present into the determ inate past o f som ething y e t to com e' (Jameson 1982: 152). W h eth er the narratives estrange the reader from the present b y the in trod u ctio n o f 'n o vu m s' or w h eth er th e y use a ch ro n o lo gica lly m ore distant m ethod o f 'fu tu re retro sp ect', the focu s here w ill fall p rim arily on h o w A m erican science fiction

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deals w ith the o verlap p in g issues o f nuclear w ar, the rise o f totalitarianism and fears o f in v a sio n .12 The result w ill dem onstrate the fine responsiven ess o f fiction and film to a w h o le range o f social, tech n ological and political changes takin g place during the Cold W ar.

(v) C o ld W ar Criticism

A lth o u g h the special num ber o f Diacritics h a rd ly triggered a new critical school it did help to d evelo p 'nuclear criticism ', in the low er case, to adopt a d istin ction b y Ken R u th ven w h ose o w n Nuclear Criticism (1993) rem ains an excellen t in trod u ction to the subject. The earliest m onograph in this area w as D avid D o w lin g 's Fictions o f Nuclear Disaster (1987) w h ich g iv es p rio rity to the ap ocalyp tic paradigm and opens a discussion o f h o w w riters 'attem pt to locate the exp erien ce o f n uclear disaster b y su rrou nd ing the in exp ressible w ith verb al strategies' (D ow ling 1987: 13 -14 ). Special issues on nuclear w ar w ere prod u ced b y the Northwest Review (1984) and Science-Fiction Studies (July 1986), the latter edited b y H. Bruce Franklin w hose W ar Stars (1988) rem ains an in valu ab le h isto ry o f the su perw eapon in the A m erican im agination. M artha A . Bartter's The Way to Ground Zero (also 1988) p rovid es a useful them atic su rv e y o f treatm ents o f the atom ic bom b in A m erican fiction . 1988 fin a lly saw the fou nd ation o f the jou rn al Nuclear Texts and Contexts w h ich continues to p ro v id e a crucial forum for critical debate. Thom as H ill S ch au b's American Fiction in the Cold W ar (1991) proposes a paradigm shift from thirties radicalism to a postw ar 'liberal narrative' o f disillusionm ent w h ere w riters sh y aw a y from partisan politics. Schaub lim its his discussion to realist fiction, but his stu d y reflects a general critical revisio n o f w riters lik e Flannery O 'Connor and S y lv ia Plath. Even literary criticism itself has been historicised b y T o bin Siebers w h o accuses critical schools o f shad ow in g the policies o f d ifferent us adm inistrations and w h o argues that the Cold W ar has 'in tro du ced a m odel o f the selfconscious critic w h ose greatest desire is to d en y his or her ow n a gen cy in the w o rld ' (Siebers 1993: 34). In addition to b o ok len gth studies tw o fu rth er collections h ave been p u b lish ed on nuclear literature. The W in ter 1990 special num ber o f Papers on Language and Literature focuses more tig h tly on literature than the com parable issue o f Diacritics but adopts a critical pluralism since, in the w o rd s o f the editor W illiam J. Scheick, nuclear criticism is a 'p olym o rp h ou s ethical m ode o f

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critical e n q u iry ' based on the im perative to p reserve life. Sch eick and other critics fig u re also in N a n cy A n isfie ld 's 1991 collection on nuclear w ar literature, The Nightmare Considered. A rn e A x e lsso n 's Restrained Response (1990) su rv e y s p o st-1945 A m erican w ar fiction bu t uses a constraining realist m odel, w h ereas P atrick M an n ix (The Rhetoric o f Antinuclear Fiction, 1992) applies the A ristotelian m odes o f rhetorical appeal - ethical, rational, and em otional - to p rod u ce an accoun t valu ab le for id e n tify in g spokespersons and the nature o f debate in the fiction. O f the tw o more recent studies, A lb ert E. Stone's Literary Aftershocks (1994) discusses clusters o f w o rk s in clu d in g ch ild ren 's fiction and p o etry to dem onstrate 'literatu re 's p o w er as social instrum ent o f inform ation and ind o ctrin atio n ' (Stone 1994: x vi), w hereas co n tin u in g the line o f post-stru ctu ral analysis A lan N ad el's Containment Culture (1995) cross-relates an im pressive range o f cu ltu ral texts from Playboy to diplom atic dispatches. Su bjectin g these w o rk s to soph isticated scru tin y, N adel focuses his s tu d y on the trope o f containm ent w h ich is sh o w n to conceal a d u a lity o f p ersp ectives tow ard s the bom b and related issues. To con clu d e this b rie f su rv e y , tw o w o rk s deserve special m ention for the breadth o f their scholarship w h ich m akes them essential reading for Cold W ar cu ltu re. Paul B o yer's By the Bom b's Early Light (1985, 1994) g iv es an aston ish in g ly th oro u gh 'th ick d escription ' o f A m erican responses to the Bomb w ith in the first p ostw ar decade and has been co nsu lted at e v e ry stage o f this stu d y. A n d Spencer R. W ea rt's N uclear Fear (1988) docum ents the w h o le p ostw ar period, exam in in g its topic th ro u gh 'im ages', a notion broad en ou gh for W eart to negotiate b etw een m otif and discourse. L ike Paul Brians, W eart dem onstrates that fear o f doom sday, su perw eapon s, etc. predates 1945 and that the Cold W ar w as rein fo rcin g already ex istin g im agery. This stu d y w ill attem pt a balance b etw een close tex tu a l analysis and the historicism proposed b y H ayden W h ite and others. It w ill exam ine prim arily us science fiction from 1945 up to the 1980s in a series o f chapters w h ich focu s on in d iv id u a l authors or them es and w h ich fo llo w s an approxim ate ch ro n o lo g y up to the period o f the Star W ars co n troversy. Each chapter w ill raise issues — the role o f the home, operative m etaphors, and so on - w h ich are not u n iq u e to that m aterial but w h ich cou ld be applied to the fiction discussed in other chapters. Space lim itations have in ev ita b ly restricted coverage o f topics lik e Vietnam , as w e ll as the num ber o f film s c o v e re d .13

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Notes 1. Anderson 1972: 89; Spinrad 1974: 252. In Thermonuclear War Anderson described the aim o f Communism similarly: 'man is to be turned into a kind o f ant' (Anderson 1963a: i n ) . Cf. Biskind 1983: 123, 132. 2. Cf. the author's note: 'It was w ritten at the time w e w ere debating the setting up o f a fixed line far out from our shores (the Taft plan, the Hoover idea)' (Williams 1956: I). 3. For a point-by-point discussion o f Derrida see Ruthven 1993: 71-8 . 4. Christopher Norris glosses Derrida as follows: he recognises 'that nuclear "reality" is entirely made up o f those speech-acts, inventions and projected scenarios w hich constitute our present know ledge of the future (unthinkable) even t' (Norris 1995: 241-2); and continues that literature preserves its value b y being perform ative (ibid.: 246). Jean Baudrillard's related diagnosis o f the 'h yp erreality' o f nuclear culture is discussed in Messmer 1988b: 399-402. 5. Zelazny 1973: 145. For critical com m entary on Zelazny see M orrissey 1986: 182-91. 6. For discussion o f Hersey see Nadel 1995: 53—67 and Ruthven 1993: 35-40. 7. Conklin 1954: 64. Cloete anchors his narrative to the 1946 Bikini tests: 'it was, if one had been clever enough to see it, the beginning o f the end' (ibid.: 26). 8. A sim ov 1970: 93; Gunn 1975: 174; Blish 1965: 184. 9. The other speakers w ere A lfred Bester, Robert Heinlein and C. M. Kornbluth. 10. Leinster published one o f the earliest accounts o f a nuclear attack on Am erica [The Murder o f the USA, 1946), the reprisal for w h ich estab­ lishes a Pax Am ericana. Leinster's 1945 story 'First Contact' about an encounter w ith an alien spacecraft achieved the rare privilege o f being critiqued in Soviet science fiction. Ivan Yefrem ov described it as exem p lifyin g a 'w ar id eology' in 'The Heart o f the Serpent' (1961). 11. It was exactly this use o f youth w hich John H ersey's The Child Buyer (i960) protested. The pan icky search for potential scientists in the w ake o f the 1957 Sputnik launch 'as if children w ere to be som ehow instruments o f our pow er' led Hersey to construct a narrative as a hearing into this conspiracy against the nation's you th (Hersey inter­ view . Columbia,

mo:

Am erican A u d io Prose Library).

12. The 'novum ' is a term denoting a deviation from the reader's implied notion o f reality applied in Suvin 1979. 13. For discussion o f Vietnam see Franklin 1998; 165-86; for film criticism see Biskind 1983, Sayre 1982 and Shaheen 1978.

Postwar Jeremiads: Philip W ylie and Leo Szilard

The blam e for A rm aged d o n lies on man (Philip W y lie 1942)

(i) A ll the narratives exam ined in this volum e are w arn in gs, en visa g ­ ing a fu tu re w hose im agin ative representations, it is h oped, w ill p reven t it from m aterialising. This ch apter w ill exam ine prim arily the w o rk s o f the best-selling author P h ilip W y lie (1902—71) v ie w e d as an exam ple o f the jerem iad genre w h ich b y the m odern period had becom e in v erted into an 'an ti-jerem iad', w h ich d ep loys a 'doom sday visio n ' th ro u gh the 'd en u n ciatio n o f all ideals, sacred and secular, on the gro u n d s that A m erica is a lie' (B ercovitch 1978: J94 ' I 9 1)- Such a d escription fits W y lie 's oeuvre. Th e son o f a P resbyterian m inister, W y lie rejected o rth o d o x C h ristian ity in fa vo u r o f the role o f spokesm an for ch erish ed national ideals w h ich he felt w ere lapsing. He d escribed his w artim e ind ictm en t o f the national character, Generation o f Vipers (1942), as a 'm iscellaneous Jerem iad', attackin g A m erican m aterialism , h y p o c risy and — most im p ortan tly as a pred ictio n o f p o stw ar d evelopm ents - the creation o f a d ictatorship in the u s a (W ylie 1942: 305). W y lie first ach ieved fam e th ro u gh tw o collaborations w ith E d w in Balmer, When W orlds Collide (1933) and A fter W orlds Collide (1934). The first o f these describes the d isco v ery o f tw o planets h u rtlin g tow ard s Earth, the one set on a collision course, the other offerin g a chance o f salvation in appearin g habitable. The n o ve l com bines the story o f Noah w ith ap ocalyp se so that the old w o rld is d estroyed and a savin g rem nant is co n v e y e d b y spaceship (the 'A rk ') to the n ew planet in a com bination o f spiritual w ill, national d estin y and tech n o logical kn o w -h o w . The sequel, h o w ev er, brin gs this triu m ph into question w h en the pioneers d isco ver that another rock et from Earth has landed w ith a band o f Russians, Germ ans and Japanese determ ined 14

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to set up a Soviet. The n ew planet n o w becom es the site for an ideological and territorial stru ggle betw een freedom and despotism , a clear anticipation o f Cold W ar rivalries. A s one character explain s, 'th e y w ere sw orn ... to set up their o w n govern m en t — to w ip e out all w h o m ight oppose them . It is not even a govern m en t like that o f Russia. It is ruthless, inhum an - a tra ve sty o f socialism , a sort o f scientific fanaticism ' (W ylie and Balmer 1970: 92). From the end o f the w ar up to the m id-fifties W y lie w as in v o lv e d w ith govern m en t nuclear p o licy in a w h o le range o f areas. A fte r servin g w ith the O ffice o f W ar Inform ation he w as in v ited to report on the H iroshim a bom bing, a report w h ich in the even t w as carried out b y the jo u rn a list W illiam L. Laurence. He served as special ad viser to the Chairm an o f the Joint Com mittee for A tom ic E n ergy and w as g iv e n a Q (i.e. m axim um ) secu rity clearance so that, again at govern m en t request, he could attend the Desert R ock A -bom b tests and b rie f pu blish ers on the im plications o f the atom ic a g e .1 A n d fin a lly he served as consultant to the Federal C ivil D efence A u th o rity w h o se p erceived inertia led him to w rite the n o vel Tomorrow!. A ll o f these roles w ere related to each other b y the loom ing shad ow o f the Bomb, w h ich W y lie w as co n vin ced had ind u ced a national neurosis o f suppressed fear. He revelled in the charge that he w as an alarmist, claim ing: 'I h ave done m y best to create alarm about the A tom Bomb - a certain kind o f alarm '.2 W y lie fo u gh t co n sisten tly against a su perficial optim ism o ver the nuclear age and polem icised on b eh alf o f su p p ly in g the p u b lic w ith inform ­ ation, h o w ev er unw elcom e. One o f his more extrem e proposals w as to m ount a series o f p u b lic displays to acquain t the p u b lic w ith n uclear casualties from burns to decapitation. There is no evid en ce that this su ggestion w as acted on. The Cold W ar then for W y lie w as defined th ro u gh one p reva il­ ing em otion. 'W e liv e in a m idn igh t im posed b y fear — a tim e lik e all dark ages', he declared in his m emoir Opus 2 1 (W ylie 1949: 256). A n d four years later he stressed the u n iqu e cap acity o f science fiction to en gage w ith that fear. In 'Science Fiction and Sanity in an A g e o f Crisis' W y lie railed against pu lp science fiction for p ro­ d ucin g 'w ild ad ven tu re, w an ton genocide on alien planets, gigan tic destruction and a p id d lin g phantasm agoria o f w anton nonsense' (Bretnor 1953: 234). It w as o n ly a fe w w riters lik e W ells, O laf Stapledon and A ld o u s H u x le y w h o address the read er's m ind. Science fiction should incorporate 'logical extrapolation s from existin g law s and scientific h yp oth eses' into tales 'w ith the hope o f a su b jective integration to m atch the integrated k n o w led g e w e h ave o f the outer w o rld ' (Bretnor 1953: 239).

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T h ro u g h o u t his po stw ar career W y lie attem pted to realise this role b y attackin g tw o targets: national self-delusion and Com m un­ ism. His u n w a v erin g h o stility to Com m unism had an u n u su a lly personal basis. W ith his stepb rother he visited the Soviet U nion in 1936, tra vellin g as far as the Caucasus w h ere th e y both rash ly expressed their determ ination to report on the repression, p o v e rty and su fferin g th ey had w itn essed. D uring their return via Poland their railw a y carriage w as left for hours in a siding. W y lie drank from a bottle o f w ater and p ro m p tly fell serio u sly ill, p o ssib ly from cholera or plague. In the m eantim e W y lie 's stepbroth er w as th ro w n to his death from a W a rsaw hotel room , p ro b a b ly b y So viet agents. This inform ation w as m ade p u b lic b y W y lie in The Innocent Am bassadors (1957), a n arrative o f a jo u rn e y roun d the w o rld fram ed as a report on the Soviet plan to dism em ber the w o rld . 'W h a t the cold w ar co n cern s', he declares, 'is human belief: prim arily your belief!' (W ylie 1957: XIV). W y lie 's conclusion to The Innocent Am bassadors resem bles the 'ap p licatio n ' w h ich m igh t close a sermon. Like Robert H einlein (who read The Innocent Ambassadors before his o w n v isit to the So viet Union), W y lie calls on his readers to respond to a com m on d anger b y em bark in g on a m ission to preserve freedom . Iro n ically, he takes John Foster Dulles to task for irrelevan tly attacking Soviet atheism, although both w riters applied a discourse o f moral absolutes to contem p orary politics. W y lie 's jerem iads regu larly prom ote a sense o f crisis and en visage disasters as a means o f testing A m erican valu es and morale. W h atev e r n arrative means he adopts, there is u su a lly a single vo ice w h ich expan d s, som etimes strid en tly, the au th o r's co n victio n s. N arrative and polem ic often p u ll against each other, as th e y do in the w o rk s o f the w rite r W y lie most adm ired at this time: A ld o u s H u x le y . In his 1946 tract Science, Liberty and Peace H u x le y in v e igh s against nationalism as the root o f all evil: To be a w o rsh ip p er o f one o f the fifty -o d d national M oloch s is, n ecessarily and autom atically, to be a crusader against the w o r ­ shippers o f all the other national M olochs. N ationalism leads to m oral ruin because it denies u n ive rsa lity, denies the existen ce o f a single God, denies the value o f a hum an being as a hum an being. T he 'natural reaction' o f the nationalist to the atom ic bom b is to 'm ake use o f the n ew p o w ers p ro v id ed b y science for the p u rpose o f establishing w o rld dom inion for his particu lar gan g' (H u xley 1947: 34, 37). H u x ley em bodied this bleak vision in A pe and Essence (1948) w h ere the contem porary fram e-n arrative establishes nationalism as

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a system o f en forced o rth o d o x y sp ecifica lly in H o llyw o o d , con­ dem ning as 'u n -A m erican ' a n y heterod o x screenplays. T he latter are b u rn t in scenes at once echoing the In quisition and anticip ating R ay B rad b u ry's Fahrenheit 4 5 1. T he scenes also open u p a space for H u x ley 's o w n n o vel as a criticism o f contem porary culture. Th e inset script describes a post-holocaust A m erica in the year 2108 contextu alised b y the narrator w h o describes m odern h isto ry as a stead y rise in nationalism and the abuse o f science u n til fear has becom e the 'v e r y basis and fou nd ation o f m odern life'. Th e w o rsh ip o f false god s lik e science and nationalism has resulted in a literal cu lt o f M oloch. H ere H u x le y anticipates later post-holocaust w riters lik e L eigh Brackett and Edgar P an gb orn in ev o k in g a w o rld o f organised repression and ignorance w here difference is suppressed as d evia n cy . H u x le y refuses the grand narrative o f ev o lu tio n w h en nuclear w ar is iro n ically d escribed b y the narrator (clearly an author-surrogate) as the 'consum m ation o f tech n ological progress' (H u xley 1949: 37, 50). W y lie had lon g adm ired H u x le y 's w o rk and in 1949 he sent H u x le y a co p y o f his Opus 2 1 w h ich contained assertions that A pe and Essence w as no 'w ild fa n ta sy ', bu t rather the 'lo gical extension o f cu rren t ev en ts' (W ylie 1949: 198). His attacks on the o v e r­ valu ation o f science and the h y p o c risy o f established religion m ust h ave been to ta lly congenial to H u x le y w h o th an ked W y lie for his g ift and sh re w d ly recogn ised a problem the tw o w riters had in common: 'Y o u suffer, as I h ave a lw ay s done, from the d ifficu lty , the all bu t im p ossib ility, o f com bining ideas w ith n arrative'. Just as H u x le y u rb an ely spotted the polem icist in W y lie , so the latter took A pe and Essence as evid en ce o f the Cassandra-like role w h ich b y 1955 P hilip K. D ick had decided w as o b lig a to ry for the science fiction w riter (Sutin 1995: 54): 'H u x le y secretly v ie w s h im self as m ore o f a prop het than a potential sa v io r'.3 Ironically, this w as e x a c tly the role that W y lie w as to p lay in his o w n n o vel on h u m a n ity 's su icidal nuclear m adness, Triumph.

( ii) W y lie used his fiction to en gage w ith Cold W ar issues as early as 1946 w h en he p u b lish ed his sto ry 'B lu n der', set in the state o f 'arm ed secrecy ' fo llo w in g W o rld W ar III (w aged in 1966) w h ich has left N ew E ngland and Central Europe a lunar w ildern ess. T w o scientists h a ve d iscovered 'bism u th fission' and plan to ex p lo d e a d evice in an abandon ed m ine to p rod u ce a n e w and in d efin ite

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source o f po w er. The realisation b y other scientists that there is an error in the original calculations cannot be com m unicated in tim e to p reve n t the experim ent and the resu ltin g exp losion (an 'om ega ray') d estroys the Earth. T aken literally, the potential m oral stated b y one o f the scientists sounds absurd: 'I f this goes w ro n g ... it's justice! It w ill teach the w h o le idiotic w o rld that y o u cannot m onopolise k n o w led g e !' (Derleth 1948: 377). By the end o f the story the 'w h o le idiotic w o rld ' has been red u ced to red-hot ash and is incapable o f learning a n y th in g, so that W y lie has to posit im aginary observers on M ars sy m b o lica lly placed outside this final rou n d o f hum an lu n a cy. (For a com parable n arrative o f a ballistic m issile trig gerin g a m assive u n d ergro u n d fire see A n v il 1957.) The D isap­ pearance (1951), b y contrast, represents a m ore fantastic parable on the Cold W ar situation. On a certain d ay all w om en disappear, w h ereu p o n the Russians, assum ing that the D isappearance has been en gineered b y the A m erican im perialists, then activate plans for atom ic attack u sing coastal mines and bom bs sm u ggled into the co u n try. The resu ltin g w ar has a k in d o f diagnostic fu n ctio n w ith in the n o vel to dem onstrate the thesis that 'hatred is m an's p rin cipal characteristic; h o stility and aggression are the c h ie f m anifestations o f it in the o b jectiv e realm ' (W ylie 1972: 232). W h ere The Disappearance attrib utes social and political ills to gen d er separation the 1955 n o vella The Answ er d raw s on Christian m y th o lo g y for its parable o f the arms race, w h ich d rew ap p reciative com m ents from Eleanor R oosevelt and Bernard Baruch. A us nuclear test p roves to h ave k illed an angel w h o falls to Earth w ith a b ook bearing the m essage 'lo v e one another'; then a parallel exp losion takes place in Siberia w ith the same results. The Russian prem ier has a p o sitiv e ly a p o caly p tic reaction: 'In the angel he saw im m ediately a possible fin ish to the dreams o f Engels, M arx, the rest. He saw a potential end o f com m unism and even o f the hum an race' (W ylie 1956: 47). Each ev en t then critiqu es the id e o lo gy o f the opposin g sides, iro n ically recalling the com m on Christian origin s o f A m erican and Russian cu ltu re.4 The parable suggests parallels b etw een the tw o sides but the apparent evenn ess o f com parison is underm in ed b y the d escription o f the Russian prem ier as a w ily oriental despot w ith a 'M o n go l face and eyes as dark as in ex p ressive and u nfeelin g as pru nes'; and A m erican officers as the em bodim ent o f righ teou s strength ('an vil shoulders, m arble hair, feld spar com ­ p lex io n ', etc.) (W ylie 1956: 45, 10). Th e revelatio n o f id e o lo gica lly controlled hatred as a transform ation o f fear is a diagnosis directed o n ly against the Russians, so The Answ er p roves in that sense to be a sk ew ed fable. On the surface it recom m ends m utual respect and a

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recogn ition o f parallels betw een East and W est; but the su b tex t u n critically polarises each regim e along a series o f oppositions betw een h u m an ity and despotism , reason and repression. This same im agery o f illness and disease w as used in W y lie 's excu rsio n into the thriller genre to describe Soviet sabotage. The p o ssib ility o f the USA being attacked b y sm u ggled atom ic bom bs had been raised in D exter M asters's One World Or None (1946), and Chandler D avis's 1946 story 'T h e N ightm are' describes the related situation o f a secret lab oratory in N ew Y ork for assem bling bom bs. The f b i agen t-protagon ist has a 'su d d en visio n ': 'A pillar o f m ulti­ colored sm oke rising from the city, erasing the Bronx and M anhattan d ow n to Central Park ... A nightmare, a familiar and a v e ry real night­ mare, an accepted part o f m odern life, som ething y o u co u ld n 't get a w a y from ' (Conklin 1948: 11). E xposure pre-em pts the con spiracy w h ose national origin is n ever revealed. W y lie took up the same issue in his 1951 serial The Smuggled Atom Bomb w h ich m akes ex ten sive use o f the frisson o f danger w ith in the com m onplace. A Florida p h y sics grad uate d iscovers an u n u su a lly h e a v y b o x in his lo d ge r's room, w h ich p roves to contain uranium . E ve n tu ally it is revealed to be part o f a Soviet co n spiracy to d estroy N ew Y ork, w h ich is forestalled b y collaboration betw een the b o y and the f b i . One agent describes espionage as a literal process o f corruption w h ere the conspirators 'reach the insides o f patient, peaceful, law abidin g g u y s ... rot out their hearts! A n d y e t leave their outside ju st lik e a lw a y s' (W ylie 1965: 92). The sapping o f the b o d y p olitic b y the en em y w ith in fails this tim e, u n like a story ('T he Sacrifice') W y lie w as plan n in g in 1954 on the same them e w h ere N ew Y o rk is d estroyed bu t the Soviets 'fo rev er d isg ra ced '.5 W y lie m akes no bones about the id e n tity o f the o n ly other nation w ith an atom ic cap ab ility and so has no need to spell out w h o the saboteurs are. He continu ed to take Soviet sabotage so seriou sly that in 1961 he corresponded w ith K en n ed y on the lik elih o od o f A m erican har­ bours bein g m ined. W y lie 's presum ption w as o f a Com m unist expansionism w h ich inform s his tw o most fam ous n o vels o f E a stW est com bat, Tomorrow! (1954) and Triumph (1963), both o f w h ich describe pre-em p tive strikes b y the Soviets.

( in ) Tomorrow! w as o rig in a lly plan ned as a screenplay for a film (The Bomb) about a nuclear attack on A m erican cities. His plan w as en th u siastically received b y General V an d en berg (A ir Force C h ief o f

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Staff), and su pported b y the S ecretary for D efence and the chairm an o f the a e c (Atom ic E n ergy Com mission), W y lie exp lain ed his purpose as follow s: T he a-bom b is the great m odern fear and w ill rem ain so for m any years ... But it is more than a Tear'; it is a fascination, a reality, a th in g about w h ich n early all men and w om en and ch ildren co n stan tly seek to learn more, even w h en w h a t th e y learn co n stan tly increases un con scious d read .6 W y lie 's diagnosis o f am bivalen ce brin gs more u nd er control a contrad iction w h ich A lan N adel has fo u n d in early conceptions o f the nuclear age: that it represen ted 'b o th hope and horror' (Nadel I 995; 19). C ertain ly W y lie h im self had exp erien ced this u n certain ­ ty . In his article 'D eliveran ce or Doom ' he tried to articulate a hope that nuclear p o w er m ight aid the 'rep lan n in g o f our w o rld ', bu t at the same tim e recogn ised that the 'm ilitary valu e o f atom ic fission ' w as 'enorm ous' and w o u ld not stay an A m erican m on op oly for long (W ylie 1945: 18). In the even t the film w as jettiso n ed in fa vo u r o f a n o vel w h ich schem atically separates out tw o attitudes to civ il d efence em bodied in the tw in m idw estern cities o f G reen Prairie (preparedness) and R iver C ity (denial), loo sely m odelled on St. Paul and M inneapolis. W y lie ex p lain ed that in the n o vel he had 'p re d icted that [the] USA, under atom ic blitz, m ight panic and stam pede sim ply because our people w ill not learn the lessons and the facts that their govern m en t, th ro u gh f c d a [the Federal C ivil D efence A u th o rity ] has tried for years to reach th e m '.7 R eview ers took W y lie to task for the flatness o f his characterisation but one o f the m ain points o f the n o ve l is that these figu res and the vie w p o in ts th e y articulate should be fam iliar to the point o f cliche. Characters are d istin gu ish ed from each other prim arily accord in g to their cap acity to accept and deal w ith the nuclear threat; indeed, W y lie rep o rted ly w an ted his n o ve l to be the ' Uncle Tom 's Cabin o f the atom ic age' (Frazier 1954: 128). Standing abo ve all o f them is a local n ew sp ap er editor w h ose exten d ed editorial goes some w a y to ju s tify in g one r e v ie w e r's com plaint that his w as a 'tract in the form o f a n o ve l' (Hine 1954: 15). T here is an absolute con gru en ce b etw een the ed ito r's and the narrator's diagnoses o f a co llective denial o f dread: 'It w as a tim e w h en A m ericans once again refused to face certain realities that glared at them w ith ever-in creasin g balefu ln ess' (W ylie 1954b: 49). The tro u ble w ith official su rvey s, he asserted in a 1954 article in the Bulletin o f the Atom ic Scientists w as that statistics paid no attention

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to the uncon scious. In contrast W y lie 's o w n conclu sion w as 'that the A m erican people u n d o u b ted ly would panic under such bom b­ ing in their present state o f mind,' (W y lie's em phasis, 1954a: 37—8). W y lie 's n o vel, therefore, aimed to confront this fear b y debating, then d escribing, nuclear attack. Section headin gs su p p ly an ap ocalyp tic 'bom b-tim e' cou nting d ow n to disaster: 'x -d a y m inus 90' and so on. The attack comes on Christm as D ay and Tomorrow! is one o f the v e ry fe w nuclear n o vels to describe an explosion . W y lie 's desire to co n v e y scale leads to a series o f com parisons w h ich show w h at the blast is not like: On the sid ew alks, for a part o f a second, on sid ew alks boilin g like forgotten tea, w ere dark stains that had been people, tens o f th ou ­ sands o f people. The L igh t w en t o ver the w h o le great area, lik e a thin g sw itch ed on, and people miles a w a y, h u nd reds o f people loo kin g at it, lost their sight. The air, o f a sudden, for a long w a y becam e hotter than boilin g w ater, hotter than m elted lead, hotter than steel coming w hite from electric furnaces ... (W ylie 1954b: 269) The drama o f W y lie 's description risks blin d in g us to its problem ­ atical nature, for such an explosion cannot be w itnessed lik e any other event. T he focaliser at this point is the editor w h ose role o f w itness lasts o n ly a nano-second before he is killed . Isaac A sim o v addresses the same problem in his 1956 sto ry 'H ell-Fire' (collected in Earth is Room Enough) w h ere a super-slow -m otion film o f a nuclear exp losion con verts it into a spectacle w ith an u n exp e cted revelation o f a lau gh in g dem onic face in the fireb a ll.8 A n d , w h en d escribing a nuclear attack on N ew Y ork, Jonathan Schell has to sim u ltaneou sly h yp oth esise and d en y the p o ssib ility o f an observer tw o m iles from gro u n d zero in order to describe the sequence o f flash, blast and fireball (Schell 1982: 48). W y lie im p licitly (the im print o f hum an figu res on the sidew alks) and Schell e x p lic itly d raw s com parisons w ith Hiroshim a, in the latter case to co n v e y the m onstrous scale o f the im agined destruction. In fact W y lie adm itted to a correspondent in 1952 that sense-perception w as not the issue: 'at an y reason ably safe distance, the bom b isn 't w h at y o u see but w h at y o u know' .9 The contradictions w ith in W y lie 's description exten d into the n o vel as a w hole. In one o f his articles on nuclear su rv iv a l W y lie exh orts A m ericans to rem em ber the spirit o f Londoners w h en the V-2 rockets w ere follow ing (W ylie 1951b: 42), but the analogy collap­ ses before the scale o f atom ic bom bs. A n d in Tomorrow! the obsoles­ cence o f W y lie 's civ il defence prop agan dising is dem onstrated

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firstly b y the fact that H -bom bs are alread y bein g used against A m erica and secon d ly b y the n o v e l's denouem ent. W h en the Soviets dem and su rrender after bom bard ing the USA w ith nuclear and biological w eapons, A m erica responds b y deton ating a 'd ir ty ' H -bom b (coated w ith cobalt) in the Baltic w h ich w ip es out w h o le countries this tim e, not o n ly cities: 'In the en suing dark, a T h in g sw elled ab o ve the w estern ed ge o f Russia, aligh t, alive, o f a size to bu lge b eyo n d the last particle o f earth's air' (W ylie 1954b: 353). By this point W y lie has to ta lly shifted the n o ve l a w a y from considerations o f civ il defen ce and su rv iv a l on to ap ocalyp tic u ltim acy in A m erica's confrontation w ith the enem y. The fact that Finland and the Baltic states are w ip ed out goes u nn oticed before W y lie 's preoccu pation w ith the 'last w a r' w h ich for the editor o f the Bulletin o f the Atom ic Scientists seem ed to pander to 'A m erican sm ugness about bein g u ltim ately the in ev ita b le v ic t o r '.10 In 1954 W y lie w as approached b y M artin Caidin, then a tech ­ nical specialist w ith the N ew Y o rk State C ivil D efence Com m ission, w h o w as w o rk in g on his first n o ve l The Long Night. L ike W y lie , Caidin had a specific c iv il d efence thesis to substantiate, nam ely after nuclear attack to 'get the people back into their c ity ' (Caidin 1956: 232). He ex p lain ed that he 'con cen trated upon the c ity as an e n tity ' rather than on sp ecific ch aracters.11 The Long N ight (1956, o rig in a lly en titled This City Lived) concentrates en tirely on the co llective exp erien ce o f a c ity lik e N ew Y o rk during and im m edi­ ately after nuclear attack. This episodic account combines individuals' exp erien ce o f confusion w ith a scien tifica lly precise d escription o f the bom b blast and a dem onstration o f h o w an efficien t civ il d efence system can sw in g into action. Caidin em braces ap ocalyp se, h o w ev er, in his n o v e l's set piece: the firestorm w h ich rages w ith in hours o f the explosion . R epeating the refrain 'there w as no escape', he ev o k es a spectacle su g ge stive o f hell and vo lcan ic eruption: Sh riekin g insan ely, th e y [the citizens] raced d ow n streets o ver w h ich the tar and asphalt ran in lav a-lik e rivu lets. M ost o f them co vered no m ore than one or tw o h u n d red feet, before th eir shoes and feet burst into flam es. G rasping their b u rn in g legs in m addened pain, th e y top p led and w rith e d in a go n y in the b u b b lin g , flam ing tar. (Caidin 1956: 124) Caidin does not lin ger o ver his victim s bu t g ra d u a lly w ith d ra w s the n arrative van tage point to the ed ge o f the city so that he can con clu d e w ith a triu m phan t reestablishm ent o f the m unicipal services. The long n ig h t has its daw n.

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(IV) The in cip ien t anachronism o f Tomorrow! w as recogn ised b y W y lie w h o saw the H -bom b as a w eapon against w h ich there w as no defence and as a result w ith d re w from civ il defence w o rk . By i960 he w as attacking a persistent belief, 'as absolute as a religious faith ', that, a nuclear w ar w as w in n ab le (W ylie i960: 22). This same naive trium phalism is the target o f W y lie 's 1963 n o vel Triumph w h ere one character rid icu les those 'p ro p h etic books and m ovies about total w ar in the atom ic age' w h ere 'A m ericans took dread fu l punishm ent and then rose from the gro u n d ... and defeated the Soviets and set the w o rld free' (W ylie 1963: 96). Triumph then levels a polem ic against the n aive optim ism o f earlier nuclear fiction as w e ll as reflectin g W y lie 's scepticism about civ il defence w h ich persisted rig h t th ro u gh to 1968 w h en he attacked Robert M cN am ara's 'th in shield' o f nuclear w eapons as in effectu al and exp en sive . In Triumph W ylie radically alters his sense of an ending to

underm ine the very possibility of survival and in the process to repudiate his ow n earlier novel. The novel opens w ith w hat prom ises to be a w eekend p arty at the home of m illionaire Vance Farr. Beneath his house Farr has fitted out a nuclear shelter so elaborate as to be an absurd denial of any national civil defence system . A fter a nuclear strike, like H einlein's Farnham's Freehold and Dan Ljoka's Shelter, chapters alternate betw een descriptions of the behaviour of Farr's group and non-narrative predictions of the external destruction: In a ro u g h ly circu lar area, m iles across, underneath this th in g, all bu ild in gs w ill h ave been vaporised. Farther out, for m ore miles the th ru stin g ram o f steel-hard air w ill top p le the m ightiest structures and sw eep all lesser edifices to earth, as i f their brick and stone, gird ers and beams w ere tissue paper. (W ylie 1963: 40) W h ile the casualties m ount ('m illions', 'm yriad s', 'm ultitudes'), Farr and his guests are still d ow n in their shelter ex p erien cin g such blasts th ro u gh the m ediation o f record ing equipm ent. The latter offers W y lie the m eans to lin k inside to outside. A su rv iv in g t v station in Central A m erica transm its film o f explosion s taken for p o sterity ('the su rv iv in g w o rld needs to k n o w ') b y an aircrew w h ich su b seq u en tly dies o f radiation. A s the su rviv o rs in the shelter gather before the screen, holocaust becom es m edia spectacle, the camera pann in g across lunar landscapes sw ep t b y rad ioactive clouds.

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Both Tomorrow! and Triumph describe scenarios o f nuclear attack w h ere the USA reacts to first strikes from the So viet U nion, in the latter n o vel preced ed b y an in vasion o f Y u g o slavia b y V o lu n te e r' troops. T he us defen ce system is attacked co n stan tly b y the narrator and later b y Farr, sp eakin g as W y lie 's surrogate, for m issing o b vio u s inferences, failin g to design a coherent plan, and ab o ve all for m issing the ideolo gical prem ise o f So viet Com m unism w h ich w as that their leaders 'h ad a lw ay s been w illin g to p a y any price w h a tever to conqu er the w o rld ' (W ylie 1963: 46). U nlike the Am ericans, the Russians h ave a 'fie n d ish ly p lan n ed ' long-term strategy w h e re b y state-selected m em bers from all w a lk s o f life w ill be housed in m assive u n d ergro u n d bu nkers. The fe w s u rv iv in g us subm arines bom b the u n d ergro u n d bases but are th em selves d estroyed in the process. W y lie then points a sardonic epitaph: 'the doctrines o f M arx, Engels, Lenin, K ru sh ch ev, M ero v, and G ro d sk y w ere fin a lly u ndone ... at the cost o f h a lf a w o rld and o f the vast m ajority o f people w h o once called them selves free and civilised ' (W ylie 1963: 240). The iro n y here is am bigu ou s since it cou ld be directed so lely against Com m unism but the n o vel eq u a lly attacks the us g o v e rn ­ m ent's use o f w ar gam es and rou tine 'd o o m sd ay' scenarios in its defence plan nin g. East and W est are both (unequally) in d icted for their m ilitarism and m aterialism . A t the end o f the n o vel, despite some sim ilarities w ith N e vil Sh u te's On the Beach w h ere no-one su rviv es, Farr and his com panions are rescued b y h elicop ters from an A u stralian carrier and taken a w a y from an A m erica w h ich w ill h ave 'no nam e'. C learly there is no su ggestion here o f trans­ form ation, o n ly o f national erasure. W ith in W y lie 's secular apoca­ lyp se the m ushroom clou d here fu n ctio n s as a sign o f destruction. The thun der, lig h tn in g and d evastatin g fire sim ilarly sig n ify the spiralling o f m ilitary te ch n o lo g y out o f hum an control, and the alignm ent o f nations cannot be read as the g o d ly con fron tin g the u n g o d ly because part o f W y lie 's pu rpose is to sh o w his o w n n ation 's slippage into w o rsh ip p in g the false god o f m aterialism . H o w ever potent the extern al threat is from Russia, W y lie u ltim ately w rites A m erica's status as a su p erp o w er into the n o vel as a n egative q u a lity since the failure o f the USA to anticipate w ar results in w o rld w id e d estruction.

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(V) W y lie 's hatred o f the bom b w as shared b y the H ungarian-born p h y sicist Leo Szilard w h o , h o w ev er, approached the problem from a to ta lly d ifferen t p ersp ective. W h ere W y lie feared the super­ w eapon, p a rticu larly in So viet hands, Szilard saw its existen ce as a dam ning com m ent on h u m an ity as a w hole. T h o u gh a co-designer o f the first atom ic bom b after 1945, Szilard turn ed against its use and becam e a tireless cam paigner for nuclear disarm am ent. L ike W y lie , he opposed the im position o f secu rity restrictions on scientific research and, m ostly th ro u gh the Bulletin o f the Atom ic Scientists, p rod u ced a series o f stories all re v o lv in g around the su bject o f nu clear w ar, the m ost im portant o f w h ich w ere collected in The Voice o f the Dolphins (1961). L ike D exter M asters, Judith M erril, and H. G. W ells before him, Szilard too k an internationalist approach to w o rld problem s, d eclaring that a 'cru sad e for an organised w o rld com m u n ity' w as needed (Szilard 1947: 34). W h ere W y lie addresses the conscience o f his nation as a secular prophet, Szilard adopts the role o f scapegoat in 'M y Trial as a W ar Crim inal' (1947). A fte r the T h ird W o rld W a r (Russia attacks N ew Jersey w ith a bio lo gical w eapon, A m erica surrenders), the narrator and the w h o le A m erican leadership are pu t on trial for their bom bing o f Japan. 'R ussia' in this co n tex t is an idealised p rojection o f Szilard's hopes in prod u cin g rational political plan nin g and in declaring its allegian ce to w o rld govern m ent. Sim ilarly 'T h e D iary o f Dr. D avis' (1950) uses a W ellsian 'sleeper a w akes' fram e to d escribe the exp erien ces o f a scientist w h o has slept from 1948 to 1980 in his im agination, exp erien cin g rational discussion o f h o w to ach ieve peacefu l coexistence. The vo ices o f reason in the d iary, h o w ev er, go u n heeded and tw o m ore w o rld w ars h ave to be en du red before w o rld govern m en t is established. Th e same sequence is fo llo w ed in W ells's The W orld Set Free w h ich opens its d escription o f the 'last w a r' w ith the in cred u lou s w ords: V iew ed from the standpoint o f a sane and am bitious social order, it is d ifficu lt to understan d and it w o u ld be tedious to fo llo w the m otives that p lu n g ed m ankind into the w ar that fills the histories o f the m iddle decades o f the tw en tieth cen tu ry. (W ells 1988: 56) Szilard co n verts W ells's rational retrospect into his preferred fiction al form o f an a u to p sy on hu m an ity itself. 'R eport on "G rand Central T erm in a l'" (1948) uses the science fiction d evice o f the extraterrestrial visit in order to dram atise the possible consequences

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o f the arms race. V isitors land in N e w Y o rk and other cities to fin d them deserted bu t undam aged, p o ssib ly exp ressin g a fear exp ressed earlier b y Szilard that A m erica m ight be co vered w ith rad ioactive dust (Szilard 1947: 7). One o f the investigators Xram (M arx reversed) speculates that hu m an ity d estroyed itself in a m assive w ar. The narrator rem ains sceptical: T his sounded p retty u n lik e ly indeed, since uranium is not in itself e x p lo siv e and it takes qu ite elaborate processing to prepare it in a form in w h ich it can be deteriorated. Since the earthdw ellers w h o built all these cities m ust h ave been rational beings, it is d ifficu lt to believe that th e y should h ave gon e to all this tro u ble ... ju s t in order to d estroy them selves. (Szilard 1992: 144) The narrator here personifies the ration ality that h u m an ity has lost, his p u zzlem ent com m enting satirically on m an k in d 's dem ise. A g a in and again in Szilard ration ality is d isplaced in tim e or across species. Dr. D avis's d iary is ju x ta p o se d to the course o f h isto ry w ith o u t affectin g it; the qu asi-an throp ological visito rs arrive too late to save hum anity; and in 'T h e M in ed Cities' (1961) Szilard returns to the 'sleeper aw ak es' d evice to g iv e a p ersp ectiv e from 1980 w h ere nuclear balance is ensured b y devices placed w ith each superpow er. 'T h e V oice o f the D olph in s' (i960) g re w out o f Szilard's fru s­ tration w ith the East—W est stalem ate and gloom o ver the virtu a l in e v ita b ility o f nuclear w ar, w h ich led him to w rite to K ru sh ch ev and K en ned y. It is the fu llest o f Szilard 's fu tu re histories and starts as an ind ictm en t o f the E isenh ow er adm inistration's failure to solve the problem o f the Bomb. The cause o f peace is prom oted w h en the Soviets and A m ericans establish a Biological Research Institute in V ienna. This d evelo p s into a 'th in k tan k' from w h ich the d olphins send proposals for disarm am ent and from w h ich is bred a sym bolic food o f detente, an algae called 'am russ'. Szilard insisted that the book w as not 'abou t the in telligen ce o f the dolp h in bu t about the stu p id ity o f m an' (Lanouette 1992: 415). The d olph ins' utterances becom e institu tionalised as the epo n ym ou s televisio n program m e nam ed in opposition to the partisan V oice o f A m erica. Just at the point w h ere disarm am ent has been agreed a viru s kills o ff the dolphins, and so y et again the vo ice o f reason is stilled. Szilard's biograph er has w ritten that 'm ost o f Szilard's attem pts to control the w eapon he had helped create w ere too visio n ary . Too rational. Too clever. Too im patient' (Lanouette 1992: 357). His stories sardonic­ ally tu rn this im patience against th em selves, problem atising th eir o w n reception . 'Szilard ' is them atised in 'T h e V oice o f the D olphin s'

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as a m arginalised prop het w h o receives the m inim al recogn ition o f h a vin g a 'sm all crater' on the 'b ack side o f the m oon' nam ed after him b y Soviet scientists.

Notes 1. W y lie explained to J. Edgar Hoover that his purpose was 'to think more effectively about our ow n defences from onslaught and about w ays o f attacking Russia' (letter 5 M ay 1951, W y lie archive, Princeton University). 2. Draft o f 'W hat Frightens Jon?' 5, Princeton. This essay was finally published in The Redbook for M ay 1952 3. Letter from H u xley to W ylie, 9 A p ril 1949; letter from W ylie to Canfield (H uxley's publisher), 25 M ay 1948. Princeton. 4. The 1932 film Red Planet Mars sim ilarly uses purported messages from Mars to trigger a religious revival w hich topples the Soviet regime and purifies the Am erican administration. 5. Letter to fiction editor o f Collier's, 18 M arch 1954; Princeton. 6. 'The Bomb', 801, Princeton. Tomorrow! became recommended reading for civil defence programmes and was enthusiastically review ed b y a f c d a administrator (Vol. 1, Peterson). 7. 'The ABC's o f the H-Bomb' (1954: 1). Draft essay, Princeton. 8. The use o f ultra-slow film established the image o f the mushroom cloud: see Rosenthal 1991: 63-92. 9. 'A genda for a Bull Session' (1952; 5), W ylie folder, Records o f Joint Committee on Atom ic Energy, National A rchives, W ashington. 10. Letter to W y lie from Eugene Rabinow itz, 18 January 1954, Princeton. 11. Letter from M artin Caidin, 28 January 1954, Princeton. See parti­ cularly W y lie 1948 and 1951a. W ylie also contributed b y invitation to the 1951 Collier's special issue 'P review o f the W ar W e Do Not W ant'.

Variations on a Patriotic Theme: Robert A. Heinlein

W o rld W ar III is goin g on n o w (Robert A . H einlein, 1963)

(i) In The End o f Victory Culture (1995) Tom E n gelhardt identifies a national w ar narrative w h ere the USA re-enacts its o w n establish ­ m ent and gro w th . 'W a r w as in v a ria b ly p o rtrayed as a series o f reactive incid ents rather than organized and in v a siv e cam paigns' (Engelhardt 1995: 4) and a series trig gered b y a sneak attack or am bush. E n gelhard t's thesis is that, despite its ostensible v ic to ry in 1945, such reconfirm ation o f national id e n tity g ra d u a lly collapsed th ro u gh o u t the p ostw ar period as the us A lost an enem y. This grand narrative lies at the heart o f R obert H einlein's p ostw ar w o rk w h ere the nation rep eated ly fig u res as protagonist. W h ere P h ilip W y lie attacks the n ation 's failin gs and Leo Szilard pleads for a trans­ national rationalism , H einlein dram atizes the nation 's d estin y in action. His insistence on freedom , so strident that he som etimes sounds jin go istic, jostles an opposing p o ssib ility (Calvinist or D arw inian) that hum an actions are som ehow determ ined b y larger forces, genetic or other. No sooner had the w ar fin ish ed than H einlein proclaim ed a crisis dem anding national vigilan ce: 'w e are in m ore danger n o w than ever before in our h is to r y '.1 H einlein had already w ritten this percep tion o f crisis into a w o rk first p u blish ed in the year o f Pearl H arbor. The Day after Tomorrow (serial 1941; n o vel en titled Sixth Column 1949; 1951 retitled) describes an A m erica in vad ed and su bju gated b y the P anA sians, a com posite force o f Chinese and Japanese. T h e y establish a repressive bureaucratic regim e w h ich anticipates later narratives o f Soviet invasion . A scientific research establishm ent in the R o ck y M ountains form s the n u cleu s o f a co vert resistance m ovem ent. U sing a d evice for transform ing m atter this gro u p o f stalw arts 28

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p u rp o rts to found an expanding religious cult w hich it uses to screen its subversive activities, discovering in the process that Asiatics are particularly sensitive to radio beams of certain frequencies, in other w ords they have a biologically determ ined Achilles heel. As the resistance fighters play on the psychology of th eir rulers and gradually take over all com m unications, the morale and th en the occupation of the PanAsians collapse and America is liberated. For K. A. M acDerm ott the placing of the novel's action is all-im portant: By locating these m onsters [the PanAsians] w ithin a conquered America rath er than across enem y borders, Heinlein anticipates the fundam ental strategy of cold w ar plotting: the enem y is w ith in and threatens not ju st our sovereignty bu t our culture itself, rig h t dow n to our very identities.2 The scene is thus set, as usual in H einlein's political fiction, for a heroic elite to save the nation. A rdm ore, the leader of the rebels, comes from a background in commerce, presides over a scientific establishm ent, and runs it w ith m ilitary rigour, com bining three factors w hich u n d erp in his m en's fitness to regain control of the country. The PanAsians represent an early m anifestation of the threatening groups w hich will recur thro u g h H einlein's Cold W ar fiction, characterised by m anifest technological skill and m ilitary organisation, num erical suprem acy and m align intent. In order to readjust his narrative to the Cold W ar, Heinlein reduced references to the 'yellow m onkeys' and inserted new passages of exposition w hich fill out the novel's fictional history. One describes the m erging of China and Russia into a massive pow er bloc w hile another stresses the national im portance of intelligence, even over the most sophisticated w eaponry: A n intelligen ce service w as as im portant as a n ew secret w eapon - m ore im portant ... A rid icu lo u sly inadequate m ilitary in telli­ gence had been the prim e characteristic o f the U nited States as a p o w er all th ro u gh its h istory. The most p o w erfu l nation the globe had ev er seen — but it had stum bled into w ars like a blind giant. Take this present mess: the atom bom bs o f PanAsia w eren 't a n y m ore p o w erfu l than our o w n - but w e had been cau gh t flatfooted and had n ever gotten to use a one. (Heinlein 1951a: 15) A s alw ays, H einlein dem onstrates a sensitive aw areness o f contem ­ p o rary political d evelopm ents. In 1947 the National S ecu rity A ct

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established the c i a . The out-going director of the Central Intelli­ gence Group, General V andenberg, spoke in su p p o rt of the bill, citing A m erica's total lack of preparedness for Pearl H arbor, clearly im plied here by H einlein as one of his co u n try 's 'stum bles' (Ranelagh 1986: 109). H einlein's revisions reinvent the enem y's id en tity and situate the action w ith in a new w orld order w here, how ever, the structure of oppositions stays largely unchanged and w here national survival depends on internal loyalty as m uch as external th rea t.3 The problem of distinguishing traitors und erp in s The Puppet M a sters (1951), described by H einlein as a 'h o rro r story' influenced by Poe (Heinlein 1989: 196), b u t tran sp aren tly a Cold W ar allegory. Flying saucers have bro u g h t an advance guard of sluglike creatures from the planet Titan w ho fasten them selves on to the backs of their hum an subjects like overgrow n leeches. Like other invasion narratives of the fifties the novel describes them as taking over the individual and com m unal body: 'th ey are pinching off the nerve cells of our social organism ', one character exclaims (Heinlein 1979c: 25). H. Bruce Franklin identifies their political symbolism, declaring th at 'th e slugs are not distinct individuals b u t unfeeling m em bers of a com m unal m ind dedicated to the enslavem ent of all other societies' (Franklin 1980: 99). Essentially they represent a variation on the C om m unists-as-bugs trope discussed in the intro d u ctio n w hich we will see again in Starship Troopers. Heinlein was clear from the beginning th at th ey represented a political force, describing the parasites as 'com pletely perfect fifth colum nists' and, revising the serial into the novel, he inserted lines w hich made the analogy even more explicit: 'Too big to occupy and too big to ignore, W orld W ar III had not settled the Russian problem , and no w ar ever w ould. The parasites m ight feel right at home th e re .'4 Philip E. Smith has accused H einlein of w anting to have it both ways: 'th e slugs represent com m unists for readers in the present, and in his future w orld Russian Communism has already been defeated b u t not destroyed by the U nited States in W orld W ar III' (Smith 1978: 149). The reason for this supposed contradiction m ust lie in H einlein's fear th at Communism was a set of beliefs as well as the official ideology of a pow er bloc and therefore m ight never be defeated. The slugs em body the fears of m ilitant Communism and the bomb (they reproduce by fission) and perform a process of social transform ation w hich ironically can only be countered by m irroring the m ethods of the aggressors. Ju st as in The Door into Sum m er (1957) the us possesses a drug w hich is 'Uncle Sam's answ er to brainw ashing', so the intelligence elite can only com bat the slugs

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by functioning as one organism . Danger is not rem oved, only displaced back to its source from w hich it could re-emerge; The P uppet M asters ends w ith a declaration of in ten t to take com bat to Titan: 'D eath and D estruction!'

( ii)

Heinlein had already discussed the political dim ension to super­ w eapons before the end of the w ar in 'Solution U nsatisfactory' (1941) w here scientists invent a deadly radioactive dust w hich is used to subdue Germany. At first the w eapon prom ises the scientist-narrator the means of ushering in a Pax Am ericana but a scheme to im pound the w orld's aeroplanes goes w rong w hen the Eurasian Union proves to possess the dust itself. There follows a 'Four-days W ar' whose victory gives the USA the pow er 'to tu rn the entire globe into an empire, our em pire' (Heinlein 1975: 123), w hereupon a second conflict emerges betw een the P resident's cham pioning of dem ocracy and the lust for pow er of a us officer w ho ultim ately tu rn s him self into the 'u n d isp u ted m ilitary dictator of the w orld'. This story anticipates a situation described by John W. Campbell in 1947 w here the u s a ' s possession of an 'irresistible m ilitary w eapon' (Heinlein calls it an 'absolute' weapon) gives a u n ique b u t politically unacceptable chance to 'conquer every nation on Earth and establish a single w orld governm ent' (Campbell 1 9 4 7 :2 84)H einlein w as less sanguine than Cam pbell about this m ilitary su p erio rity than ks p a rtly to reading L ife's special feature for 19 N ovem ber 1945, 'T h e 36-Hour W a r'. This article extrapolated on a w arning from the ch ief o f the us A ir Force that ballistically delivered atom ic bom bs could open up A m erica to attack: 'w ith present equipm ent and enem y air p o w er can, w ith o u t w arn in g, pass over all form erly visu alised barriers and can d eliver devastatin g blow s at our popu lation centers and our industrial, econom ic or g o v e rn ­ m ental heart ev en before surface forces can be d ep lo yed ' [Life 1945: 28). This accoun t d escribed the bom bing o f thirteen A m erican cities, co n clu d in g w ith a graphic p ictu re o f N ew Y ork redu ced to a rad ioactive ruin. H einlein's jerem iad 'T h e Last D ays o f the U nited States' (collected in E xpanded Universe) w arns the reader that this narrative is 'm u ch too optim istic' since the destruction w o u ld alm ost certain ly be more w id esp read . In contrast, H einlein refused to en visage nuclear w ar as brin gin g an end to hum an life: 'Forget On

the Beach', he declared in 1961, 'the future isn 't that bleak' (Heinlein

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1992a: 235). A n d a cco rd in g ly his concept o f the 'death ' o f the USA is a political even t, the dem ise o f freedom , w h ere a savin g rem nant can continue the good fig h t. So w h en 'T h e Last D ays' confronts its startled reader w ith an epitap h to the U nited States r i p , this sh ock tactic is firstly d esigned to force consideration o f the Bomb on an apathetic p u b lic (one o f H einlein's m ain purposes after 1945) and secon d ly to bring about a realisation that, w ith the w an in g o f faith in a w o rld state, o n ly tw o choices remain: a 'perm anent state o f total w a r' or resigned w aitin g 'fo r death to come out o f the s k y ' (Heinlein 1982: 162). U su ally nuclear w ar perform s the fu n ctio n for H einlein o f b rin gin g about a radical transform ation o f society. R ejecting the fatalism o f total nuclear destruction, he recom m ended to his readers that th e y d evelo p a 'su rv iv a l point o f v ie w ' (Heinlein 1982: 168) and in 1961 he bu ilt a shelter for his fam ily, as he ex p lain ed to Judith M erril, 'as an act o f faith, as an exam ple to o th e rs'.5 C oin cid en tally the sym bolism w as increased b y H einlein's p ro x im ity to the m assive u n d ergro u n d C heyen ne M ou ntain com plex for the N orth A m erican A erospace D efence Com mand (n o r a d ) w h ich H einlein visited that same year for a briefin g on space d etectio n .6 H einlein's cham pioning o f the cause o f su rvivalism anticipates the w ritin g o f figu res lik e Dean Ing (see chapter 13) and p rovid es the basis for his 1964 n o vel Farnham 's Freehold w h ich centres on a fam ily w ith a w e ll-eq u ip p ed shelter or 'pan ic hole' as th e y jo k in g ly call it. A n u n p ro vo k ed attack b y the Soviet Union sends the fam ily, n eigh b o u r and servan t into the shelter w h ich is located in the same area o f Colorado as the H einlein home. H ugh Farnham, the patriotic ideologu e o f the n o vel, even w elcom es the attack because it m ight perform the eugenic fu n ctio n o f k illin g o ff the stu p id .7 A Soviet 'cosm ic bom b' (a m assive H -bom b in satellite orbit) detonates near the Farnham shelter and th ro w s them all fo rw ard in tim e to a 'lon glost Edenic frontier' (Franklin 1980: 154). The fam ily reconstitute the nation th ro u gh the rituals o f raising and low erin g the flag, sin gin g 'T h e Star-Spangled Banner', but th ey are not alone. The third section o f the n o vel show s a fu tu re w h ere, after life in the northern hem isphere has been d estroyed , blacks h ave taken over, establish ing a regim e rem iniscent o f A m erica's form er enem ies in being a 'setup for an absolute totalitarian com m unism ' (Heinlein 1974: 205). A fter the fo u rth shift w h en the Farnhams are returned to their present, w e see them re-established in a trad in g post abo ve w h ich the 'starry fla g' continues to fly . It becom es clear that the 'freeh old ' in the title is n othing less than the co u n try itself w h ose national contract has been broken b y the creation o f slavery. The

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conclusion to the novel then transposes an image of a lost frontier life on to a post-nuclear landscape m ined and cratered w here Farnham 's family m ight form the nucleus for national rebirth. The gesture tow ards perm anency in the last line ('they are still going on') is offset and questioned by the reader's m em ory of the fo rth ­ coming autocracy.

( in )

The sym bolism of Farnham's Freehold is only one exam ple from m any of H einlein foregrounding the fate of the nation. From 1945 onw ards his fiction takes on a conservative colouring as he replays scenarios of invasion or rebellion to release the nation from autocratic bondage.8 H einlein saw Am erican history as a prolonged struggle for freedom . In 1952 he appeared on Ed M urrow 's CBS 'This I Believe' and declared his conviction th at 'you and I are free today because of endless unnam ed heroes from Valley Forge to the Yalu River' (Heinlein 1989: 171). H einlein defined nationhood oppositionally against the com m unistic forces he saw as threatening it, a perception w hich hardened during the 1950s w hen Heinlein singled out for special praise those science fiction novelists like Pat Frank and Philip W ylie w ho shared his political convictions.9 If co n flict w as H einlein's narrative prem ise, this even exten d ed to near space and the question o f national secu rity. In 1947 he w rote to the Saturday Evening Post p red ictin g in terp lan etary exp loration and add ing as a q u ip 'h o w ever, w e m ay w a k e up some m orning and fin d that the Russians h ave q u ietly beaten us to it' (Heinlein 1989: 179). Joke or not, space w as rap id ly becom ing politicised. A s H. Bruce Franklin records, in 1948 the Secretary o f D efence proposed that the U nited States bu ild a space station as a 'm ilitary guardian in the s k y ' (Franklin 1980: 98). The fo llo w in g year H einlein pu blish ed 'T h e Long W a tch ', a story dealing w ith an attem pted m ilitary coup on the us M oon Base, and sh o rtly after w ro te the screenp lay for the G eorge Pal m ovie Destination Moon (1950). Here the fligh t is dram atised as a continuation o f the us m ilitary m achine (the space rocket is nam ed Big Boy, a revisio n o f the H iroshim a bom b Little Boy) and, more im portan tly, as a national race b etw een the USA and the Soviets: 'the first base is goin g to belong to us — or to Russia', declares one o f the crew (Heinlein 1979a: 155). The Soviets u n su c­ cessfu lly attem pt sabotage and the narrative closes w ith u nresolved doubts about w h eth er the crew w ill m anage the return v o y a g e .10 In fact the rocket represents yet another m etaphor o f the nation w h ere

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a m em ber points the m oral o f heroic sacrifice to the co llective mission: 'e v e r y man dies; the gro u p goes on' (H einlein 1979a: 170). From this date on w ards H einlein rem ained co n v in ced o f the strategic im portance o f near space, en th u siastically en dorsing the w ritin gs o f his friend Jerry P ou rnelle and later su p p o rtin g Ronald R eagan's Strategic D efence In itiative. H einlein's frien d and fello w n o velist L. Sprague de Camp has claim ed that up to i960 H einlein w as a 'b rig h t p in k lib eral' and thereafter becam e an 'o u tsp o k en co n serva tiv e' (De Camp 1988: 40). The date in question m arked the H einleins' visit to the Soviet Union, fo llo w in g w h ich H einlein attacked the state O rw ellian m anipulation o f the n ew s m edia and the Intourist sy stem .11 H ow ever, it is d iffi­ cu lt to see this year as a tu rn in g point since H einlein's steadfast opposition to Com m unism had form ed m uch earlier and in 1958 he en gaged in one o f his m ost striden t pieces o f political polem ic. O utraged b y the prom otional literature o f the Com m ittee for a Sane N uclear P olicy, H einlein and his w ife p u b lish ed an advertisem ent called 'W h o A re the Heirs o f P atrick H en ry?' tak in g as its them e the national ideal o f freedom . Here H einlein argu ed that the 'Sane' proposals fo llo w ed (consciously?) a pro-Soviet line w h ich boils d ow n to an 'abject su rrender to ty r a n n y ' (H einlein 1982: 391). In his 1961 address at the W orld Science Fiction Conference Heinlein returns to this issue, grim ly p red ictin g the 'd estru ction o f the U nited States o f A m erica as the political en tity w e k n o w ' w ith fifty to six ty m illion deaths into the bargain (H einlein 1992a: 228). D raw in g on O rw ell, H einlein paints a pictu re o f a So viet-occu p ied A m erica w h ich w o u ld at least g iv e the su rv iv in g citizens an o p p o rtu n ity to fig h t back. Once again he ev o k es the dreaded spectacle o f 'su r­ render to this m onstrous e v il' (ibid.: 244). But there is som ething ev en w orse: Com m unism 's 'cold -b lo od ed m urder o f the truth' (ibid.: 245). H einlein's nightm are is the erasure o f national h isto ry w h ich w o u ld come about b y the assim ilation o f the u s a into the Com m unist W o rld State, a situation w h ich H einlein had already d escribed in Revolt in 2100 (1953) w h ere the y o u n g protagonist d isobeys the ru lin g th eo cra cy b y red isco verin g the suppressed archive o f the A m erican past. Starting w ith Tom Paine, his n ew inform ation em pow ers him to denaturalise the state id e o lo g y and relocate it w ith in a historical sequence. A c c o rd in g ly the th in ly veiled po rtrayal o f M cC arth yite lo y a lty ch ecks under a n ew 'In qu isition ' is en cod ed as an aberration from the national tradition. Sim ilarly Assignment in Eternity (1953) describes another p o st-W o rld W ar III situation w h ere 'th e e v il ethic o f com m unism had corru pted , even after the form had gon e' (H einlein 1977: 66).

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U nlike the first n o vel w h ere the red isco very o f h isto ry opens up heroic roles for the protagonist, Assignment plu n ges the reader straight into an espionage thriller w h ere contem porary perceptions o f Com m unism (torture and brainw ashing) com bine w ith trans­ form ed secu rity institutions: the f b i reappears as the Federal Bureau o f Secu rity. In itially at least Assignment presents a protagonist trapped paran oiacally w ith in a w o rld o f espionage w h ere it p roves im possible to locate enem ies and therefore do more than im provise from situation to situation. By contrast, Lorenzo the actor-protagon ist o f Double Star (1956), is called on to p lay the role o f d ou bling for a k id n ap p ed political leader and then asked to continue that role even after the origin al has been found. The latter is d iscovered on the spaceship Tom Paine, a name w h ich b y n o w should be clear as a sign o f national d u ty , and it is the ultim ate d u ty as leader w h ich L orenzo accepts after the transform ation o f his role. A m erican h isto ry for H einlein fig u red as an inheritance im posing its o w n dem ands o f d u ty and vigilan ce. One o f the most bizarre instances o f such vig ila n ce occurs in 'Project N ightm are' (collected in Expanded Universe), pu blished in 1953, the year w h en the Soviet U nion ex p lo d ed its first H -bom b. Here a gro u p o f 'sen sitives' use their esp talents to p reven t the detonation o f bom bs sm uggled b y the Soviets into k e y A m erican cities. By sheer force o f w ill this gro u p acts out co lle ctiv e ly the role o f national saviour, w ith the single excep tio n o f one w h o nods o ff and as a result Cleveland goes up in smoke; but this detail does not com prom ise the trium phalism o f the story.

H einlein's com m itm ent to the Am erican right was confirm ed in 1964 w hen he cam paigned for Barry Goldwater whose i960 m anifesto The Conscience o f a Conservative coincides at m any points

w ith H einlein's thinking. Both shared a hostility to the Soviet Union, a rejection of the belief th at material goods could 'co n v ert' the latter, and a sense of national betrayal by the compromises of the Eisenhower adm inistration. G oldwater declared: 'our leaders have not m ade victory the goal of Am erican foreign policy' (G oldw ater's em phasis, i960: 91). W hen Goldwater and Heinlein recom m end their readers to go on the offensive both lapse into am biguous references to a Tong fight' and a 'w ar of attrition' against the enem y w hich can scarcely be read as m etaphor only. Indeed one of H einlein's most famous novels presents m ilitary training and com bat as the very model of good citizenship.

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(IV) H einlein and his w ife w ere d eep ly in v o lv e d in their 'P a trick H en ry' d rive w h en E isenhow er ordered a unilateral cessation o f all nuclear testing. H einlein's fu r y at w h at he saw as a gratuitou s concession to the Soviets reflected a total d isillusionm ent w ith the President: 'I k n e w that he w as a political general long before he entered politics — stupid, all front and d epen din g on his sta ff' (Heinlein 1982: 396). H einlein expressed his in d ign ation in one o f his most controversial novels, Starship Troopers (1959), w h ich attem pts to com bat the 'slow -m otion collapse o f a heroic w ar ethos' (Engelhardt 1995: 10) b y reinstating the role o f the hero w ith in the drama o f national su rviv al. The n o vel is a Bildungsroman o f the m ilitary life, narrated b y Juan Rico from his in d u ctio n up to his ach ievem en t o f the rank o f officer. The concentration on the detail o f m ilitary life is so rem orseless that A le x e i Panshin reads the n o vel as a recru itin g film in prose starting w ith an initial episode o f rapid action to catch the read er's attention and then m ovin g th ro u gh sections on basic training and instru ction . He concludes: 'T h ere is no sustained hum an con flict ... T he narrator goes in as a boot and em erges a lieutenant, and that is all' (Panshin 1968: 95). The n o ve l contains y e t another transform ed version o f the stru ggle against Com m unism , this tim e pu rsu ed to its p o w er centre. R ico's narration g iv es a m om ent-by-m om ent drama to even ts w ith in strategically en coded landscapes and p rivile ges the fu n c­ tion in g o f the m ilitary. W ar is a stru ctu rin g prem ise not an issue to be speculated over. H einlein introd u ces tw o analogies to u n d erpin R ico's g ro w in g aw areness o f the in fan try: that o f the b o d y and that o f the ex ten d ed fam ily. D uring bootcam p training Rico realises that the exercises and tests h ave as their pu rpose a k in d o f su rgery, to cut the fat o ff the co llective b o d y. A s the failures (the m ajority) drop a w a y and as the m uscles in his o w n b o d y d evelo p , Rico experien ces the satisfaction o f m erging into a larger w h o le expressed as a transform ed fam ily. Rico leaves his biological parents behind to find su bstitu te fathers in the officers w h o instru ct him and su p p ly role m odels w h ile a platoon sergeant ('Jelly') p lays the role o f substitute m other. Once the Bug W ar breaks out R ico's father join s up to fin d a patriotic su bstitu te for self-d ou bt ('I had to p ro v e to m y self that I w as a m an' [Heinlein 1976b: 146]) and his m other is k illed w h en the Bugs 'sm ear' Buenos A ires, and trans­ form ed into a m otivation for com bat. H einlein w as not alone in sh o w in g h o w the m ilitary could engross the fam ily into its structure. The 1955 film Strategic A ir Command m erges the dom estic

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and m ilitary spheres, syn ch ro n isin g the birth o f the p rotagon ist's b a b y w ith the u n v eilin g o f a n ew 'fa m ily' o f bom bers. Bom ber crew , fam ily and squadron are situated w ith in an exp an d in g series rising to the ultim ate co lle ctiv ity o f the nation itself. Because Rico is learning the m ilitary trade the narrative has to be suspended at regu lar in tervals for its inform ing ideas to be ex p o u n d ed and debated. R ico's leading tutor D ubois, for instance, puts the case for heroic sacrifice: 'the noblest fate that a man can endure is to place his o w n m ortal b o d y b etw een his loved home and the w a r's d eso latio n '.12 M ilitary service is thus presented as an idealised form o f citizen sh ip bu ilt upon the su rv iv a l instinct. The n o vel refers to the Korean W ar as a notorious instance o f the failure o f conscript armies to instill such h igh ideals. A lth o u g h H einlein w ro te soon after H iroshim a t h a t ' all previo u s m ilitary art is obsolete in the atom ic age' (Heinlein 1982: 152), Starship Troopers d ep loys epigraphs from the Bible and w riters lik e Tom Paine, K ipling and C hu rch ill to su ggest a historical co n tin u ity o f righ teou s com bat. H einlein's author-surrogate in Starship Troopers ju stifies w ar as an elaboration o f the su rv iv a l instin ct applied to larger and larger gro u p s (fam ily - nation - alliance - species) based on a prem ise o f in evitab le co n flict betw een such gro u ps w h ose liv in g space is finite. T his depiction o f w ar as an im perative p ro b ab ly reflects H einlein's frustration s w ith Cold W ar d ip lom acy w h ere he felt the W est w as co n stan tly being outm anoeuvred b y the Soviets. In the n o ve l w ar becom es a m echanism for bond ing the m ilitary in righ t action against tw o alien groups. In the opening episode the enem y are h um anoid 'n a tiv es', u n n atu rally tall figures, w h ile the main enem y is the Bugs w h o se organisation resem bles that o f ants, the 'ultim ate dictatorship o f the h iv e ' (Heinlein 1967b: 117). T h e y em body a 'total com m unism ' presided o ver b y bug 'com m issars'. In short the Bugs represent the p erceived characteristics o f Soviet Com munism transposed, after a defeat o f the 'Chinese H egem ony' in the n o ve l's fu tu re h isto ry, on to an alien species, as w e saw in The Puppet M asters. Political difference is th ereb y naturalised into the th reat­ e n in g ly alien. One review er spotted the parable im m ediately, declaring: 'W e are up against W orld Com munism ... can w e turn our backs on w ar as an instrum ent o f su rviv al for our society, w h en the "B u gs" have not?' (Miller i960: 158). The Cold W ar 'tw o w orlds' id eo lo gy is sim plified into a su rviv alist alternative ('the Bugs or us') and R ico's cam paign p roves successful in k n o ck in g out the enem y 'ro y a lty '. Starship Troopers p ro v o k ed tw o burlesques w h ich contested H einlein's idealisation o f w arfare. H arry H arrison's Bill, the Galactic

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Hero (1965) transform s H einlein's n arrative into th ird -p erson picaresque and parodies the m ilitary as system atised b ru ta lity. The hapless Bill is presented as a 'fig h tin g fool' su rrou nd ed b y obsess­ ives and sw ep t from one situation to another v irtu a lly w ith o u t su b je ctiv ity in a w o rld w h ere ex cessiv e lo y a lty b y the troopers is treated as suspicious b y the paranoid authorities. Joe H aldem an's The Forever W ar (1974) pursues a d ifferen t tack. D raw ing on H aldem an's o w n experien ces in Vietnam , the n o ve l n o w describes a colonial w ar betw een the U nited N ations E xp ed itio n a ry Force and the 'T au ran s', an extraterrestrial race resem bling small skeletal hum ans w ith chron ic goitre. H aldem an's narrator M andella rises th ro u gh the ranks to major bu t p riv a te ly rejects the m ilitary ethic: 'I had a m agic w a n d [a laser gun] that I cou ld point at a life and m ake it a sm oking piece o f h alf-raw meat; I w a sn 't a soldier, nor ever w an ted to be one' (Haldem an 1978: 48). Th e narrator recoils from such a spectacle into a p rolon ged self-interrogation w h ere he fin ds h im self sim ultaneously 'th irstin g for alien blood ' and hating the con d ition in g (the 'p u p p et m aster o f the u ncon scious') w h ich p ro­ duces that desire. A sk e d rep eated ly about the im pact o f H einlein's n o ve l on The Forever W ar, H aldem an has stated that he w as reactin g against the form er 'at an uncon scious le v e l' (M cM u rray 1978: 18) and that H einlein w ro te out o f the 1940s in h a vin g 'e v ery o n e essen tially all b eh in d ' his w ar (Schw eitzer 1977: 26). The essential d ifferen ce betw een the tw o w riters em erges in each one's treatm ent o f ideological closure. H einlein on the one hand g ra d u a lly rem oves all opposing voices from his n arrative u n til in the fin al line an anonym ous radio speaker articulates a co llective trib u te or d edication: 'to the everlastin g g lo ry o f the in fa n try '. H aldem an on the other hand preserves d isjun ction to the v e ry end, b etw een a discredited official vo ice and M an d ella's inner o p p o sitio n .13 He revises H einlein's biological im perative into a cy n ica l or at least d ecep tive th ro w -b a ck , declaring that w arfare is an 'atavism , ca refu lly (if u ncon sciously) nu rtu red b y the people w h o are in positions o f p ow er, to assure that th ey stay in p o w er' (Haldeman 1987: 4-5). M andella em bodies in one person the roles o f p rivate dissident and exploiter, th ere b y reflectin g H aldem an's p ercep tion o f a contrad iction in the p u b lic attitud e to the Vietnam W ar w h ere o vert opposition w as com prom ised b y econom ic support.

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Notes 1. Heinlein 1992: 250. For excellent analyses o f the relation between Calvinism and Social Darwinism in Heinlein see Slusser 1977a. Take Back your Government! was w ritten at the end o f the war but remained unpublished until 1992. 2. MacDermott 1982: 258. See 259-60 for a tabular breakdow n o f the ideological positions o f the novel. 3. A similar process has been noted in Heinlein's revision of his story 'Lost Legion' (1941) into 'Lost L egacy' (1953) (Franklin 1980: 47). 4. Heinlein 1979c: 99, and 1951b: 102. If the slugs are identified w ith Soviet Communism the novel implies that both have to be confronted w ith equal ferocity (Disch 1998: 86—7). 5. Letter to Judith M e rrif 18 October 1961, M erril papers, Canadian National A rch ive, Ottawa. 6. The com plex is described in Ford 1986: Chapter 1, and was to be used as the main setting for the 1983 film War Games. 7. Cf. H einlein's sketch 'Pie from the S k y' w hich lists m any aspects of Am erican life from alarm clocks to roadhogs that 'w ou ld be m ightily im proved b y a once over ligh tly o f the Hiroshima treatm ent' (Heinlein 1982: 175). 8. For comment on Heinlein's pre-1945 politics see W ells 1993: 1, 3-7. 9. Heinlein cites Frank's Forbidden Area and Hold Back the Night as w ell as W y lie's Tomorrow! in his lecture on Science Fiction (Davenport 1964: 29, 52); and he took bearings from W y lie's The Innocent Ambass­

adors (1957) w hen recording his ow n impressions o f the Soviet Union 10. 11. 12.

13.

in i960 (Heinlein 1982: 411). On the political shifts in Heinlein's scripts for Destination Moon see Franklin 1980: 97. In '"Pravda" Means "T ruth"' and 'Inside Intourist', collected in Heinlein 1982. Heinlein 1967b: 79. In a 1972 interview Heinlein confirm ed that the novel focused on the 'tw in concepts o f love and d u ty' related to survival (quoted Sammon 1997: 4). Haldeman continued his 'dialogue' w ith Heinlein b y opening his Vietnam initiation novel ig68 (1994) w ith the you n g protagonist reading Glory Road (1963) w hich opens: 'I know a place w here there is no ... Cold W ar and no H-bom bs'.

History and Apocalypse in Poul Anderson

The Cold W ar is a real w ar, to the death (Poul A n d erso n 1963)

In i960 the historian Richard E. Sullivan articulated the overriding fear of the times as a loss of faith in time itself. Im agining a Toynbee of the fu tu re looking back on the present, he anticipated a diagnosis of precarious contingency: 'All m en w ere faced w ith the possibility th at one tw ist of fate, one gesture, one ill-chosen w ord, one illconceived act could result in the annihilation of civilisation and hu m an ity ' (Sullivan i960: 3 9 1-2 ). This perception of the unique natu re of the postw ar historical m om ent sent w riters in recoil searching for historical analogies in their fiction, w ith thirties Germ any (Philip K. Dick), the late M iddle Ages (W alter M. Miller), or the Am erican R evolution (Heinlein). The shifting nature of these analogies reflects the extrao rd in ary difficulty of w hat H ayden W hite has called the process of 'fusing events' common to h istori­ ography and fictional com position (W hite 1978: 123). H istory th en is scrutinised for the scripts w hose replay m ight shed light on the 'p lo t' of the present. This happens in Poul A nderson w ho fore­ g rounds his characters' attem pts to situate them selves historically, b u t against these attem pts stands the nightm are ru p tu re of nuclear holocaust. A tension therefore emerges in A nderson's fiction betw een nuclear apocalypse and historical continuity.

( i)

'H istory has always been a leading interest of m ine', Poul A nderson declared in a lecture on fu tu re histories, acknow ledging a debt to Heinlein; and he has recorded his interest in w riters like Spengler, T oynbee and John K. H ord w ho attem pt to find the larger patterns in historical events (A nderson 1979: 9). A nderson's fiction dealing w ith Cold W ar issues repeatedly highlights the process of investi­ 40

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gating h isto ry or the in d iv id u a l's bew ild erm ent w h en she or he is enm eshed in a sequence o f actions not o f their m aking. In an early po st-W o rld W ar III story, 'S ecu rity ' (1953), A lle n Lancaster is a scientist w o rk in g in a g overn m en t establishm ent w h en he is su d ­ d en ly in v ited to head a top-secret m ilitary research project housed on a spaceship. This he does su ccessfu lly and is returned to Earth o n ly to be arrested and interrogated for su bversion, at w h ich point the hapless Lancaster realises that the project w as not a govern m en t one at all. He is rescued b y a m em ber o f the su b v ersive s and taken into perm anent exile. The 'secu rity officer' w h o g iv es Lancaster his n ew post explain s that 'the p o w erfu l, authoritarian govern m ents h ave alw ay s arisen in such tim es as the ev olu tio n o f w arfare made a successful fig h tin g m achine som ething elaborate, exp en sive, and m aintained b y professionals o n ly ' (A nderson 1953: 107). He draw s an an alo gy w ith the Romans but his proposition could eq u a lly w ell fit the USA o f the early 1930s. L ancaster's b ew ild erm ent in 'S ecu rity ' is sym ptom atic o f h o w A n d erso n 's characters stru ggle to locate them selves in h istory. The secrecy and a m b ig u ity o f the research installation reflects a w id er am b igu ity o f h isto ry's processes, leaving the question open w hether it can be und erstood as a m eaningful co n tin u ity and w h eth er it is su sceptible to hum an control. A n d erso n 's characters are haunted b y the nightm are o f blind co n tin gen cy. In A fter Doomsday (1962) an astronaut reflects on nuclear war: 'One senseless k ic k o f some cosm ic boot, and the w h o le long story came to an end and had been for n o th in g ' (A nderson 1965: 48). Betw een this extrem e o f chance and control o f the nation's d estin y, h isto ry rem ains an enigm a, often becom ing a su bject in its o w n right. It is o n ly from an external and retro sp ective point o f v ie w that sustained analysis can take place, as happens in 'Cold V icto ry ' (1957: collected in Conquests). There, the narrative proper is fram ed b y a discussion o f 'H istorical N ecessity versu s the M an o f D estin y' w h ich is left ultim ately u n resolved b y a p articipan t's account o f a rebellion w h ose ou t­ comes are redu ced to the 'dice o f fu tu re h isto ry ', i.e. to a mere question o f odds. 'M ariu s' (also 1957) describes a ruin ed France w ith in the U nited Free Europe w h ich has 'harried the w o u n d ed Russian colossus out o f the W est' and is n o w dream ing o f restored freedom and p rosp erity. This scene acts as the forum for a debate betw een the incu m ben t director o f France and a dissatisfied officer about h o w to deal w ith a n ew Com m unist dictator in M acedonia. E ssentially this turns into a debate about the future. The director on the one hand believes in confronting d ifficu lties o n ly w h en th ey arise; the officer on the other hand is determ ined to change the

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pattern w h e re b y 'th e race has a lw a y s b lu n d ered from one cata­ strophe to the n e x t' (A nderson 1957: 138). T h is he does b y lead ing a coup and d isposing o f the o ffen d in g director. He rationalises this act as an attem pt to p reve n t h isto ry rep lay in g the sto ry o f M arius, the Rom an gen eral-turn ed-politician . In other w o rd s, A n d erso n uses the Rom an an alo gy to raise the issue o f Caesarism and m ore g en era lly the relation o f the m ilitary to political rule w h ich w as to becom e a critical issue b y the end o f the fiftie s .1 In the instances alread y d iscussed conspiracies fig u re prom in­ en tly , bu t even w h en A n d erso n appears to be sim p ly confirm ing Cold W ar paranoia m ore is g o in g on. The n o vella Un-Man (pu b­ lished in 1953, the year o f the Korean arm istice) is set as usual in an era fo llo w in g W o rld W ar III w h ere the u n has g ro w n into a m ilitary alliance w ith real po w er. T h e legen d o f the 'U n -M an' has becom e curren t, one d eriv in g from M a x w e ll G rant's Sh ad ow and Sax R ohm er's in trepid N aylan d Sm ith w h o does constant battle against the fien dish Fu M an ch u .2 In A n d erso n 's n arrative the y e llo w peril takes the form o f a co n sp iracy for w o rld dom ination led b y the Chinese Com m unists. The apparen t death o f the 'U n -M an' sets o ff a series o f even ts in a s w iftly paced international th riller w h ere the hero turn s out to be not an in d iv id u a l bu t a gro u p o f cloned 'A m erican brothers' operating as a secret secu rity force for the u n , fu n ctio n in g lik e a d ike 'h o ld in g back a sea o f rad ioactive blood from the lands o f m en' (A ndserson 1972: 26). T h is a gen cy alone can offer a 'stable social and econom ic order in the face o f continu ous revo lu tio n a ry ch an ge'. T he p u rsu it o f the co n sp iracy to its source and its destruction w o u ld therefore seem to confirm the co n sp iracy paradigm , but A n d erso n goes to some pains in his en din g to generalise the co n sp iracy a w a y from h istorical or political sp ecifics to a Freudian script o f constant rebellio n against the constraints o f civilisation . A s a result, secu rity recedes into a 'm eaningless dream ' because it is based on an exp ectatio n o f a sta b ility w h ich can o n ly com e w ith death. A n d erso n represents nuclear holocau st as a cataclysm so major that the v e r y p o ssib ility o f hum an su rv iv a l becom es problem atic. His 1961 collection Twilight W orld uses a W agn erian title (the Dammerung o f hum anity) and allusions to S p en gler's diagnosis o f a 'to p h e a v y ' civilisatio n collapsin g to set u p a som bre co n tex t o f pessim ism about the fu tu re. The first sto ry opens w ith an officer fly in g his jetp la n e across a shattered landscape: [Tjwisted leafless trees, b low in g sand, tum bled skeletons, perhaps at n ig h t a balefu l blue g lo w o f flu orescence. Th e bom bs had been

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a nightm are, rid in g in on w in gs o f fire and horror to shake the planet w ith the death o f cities. But the rad ioactive dust w as more than n igh tm are.3 The collection as a w h o le exam ines w hat reconstru ction can be form ed out o f such destruction. The original title o f the first story, 'T om o rro w 's C h ildren ', establishes this issue because, as w e shall see in Chapter 4, post-holocaust narratives in vest ch ildren w ith the special role o f em b o d yin g the fu tu re. W h ere the opening stories o f Twilight W orld contrast persp ectives on m utation, the th ird and lon gest narrative o f the collection, 'T he Children o f Fortune', broadens out the action to a national and then international arena. For the first tim e w e are g iv en a n ew w o rld map w h ich com bines su rviv a l (A ustralia and N ew Zealand), reversion (a n ew Ottoman Empire), and d isintegration (a balkanised China). The us g o v e rn ­ m ent form s a plan to colonise M ars, to use the planet as a refu ge from w o rld w id e pollution. The co n flict betw een East and W est w h ich prod u ced the horrors o f nuclear w ar has been left larg ely im plied until hum ans land on M ars. There, th ey d iscover that the Siberian Khanate (a reconstitu ted Soviet Union) has not o n ly beaten them to it, but is using m utants' heighten ed faculties in a con­ sp iracy to take them over. The Siberian leader puts the case for ideological in co m p atib ility su ccin ctly: 'I th in k h isto ry has p roven that tw o w h o lly d ifferent w a y s o f th ou gh t cannot long co-exist. Sooner or later, one w ill begin to dom inate the other, w h ich then has no choice but vio len ce' (A nderson 1963b: 147). The A m erican dream o f M ars as a kin d o f socio-biological lab oratory n o w turns into the site for rep layin g Cold W ar hostilities w h ere an appeal to h isto ry is used to rationalise the resurgen ce o f conflict.

( ii) A n d erso n 's recu rren t paradigm o f the near fu tu re is an ap ocalyp tic one o f cataclysm ic w ar fo llo w ed b y the ills p red icted in R evelation, or, as a character in The W ar o f Two Worlds (1959) sum m arises the sequence, 'atom ic bom bardm ent from space, capitulation, fam ine and plagu e '(A n d erson 1974b: 14). A p o ca ly p tic destruction is dealt w ith on an even greater scale in A fter Doomsday (1962), but before w e consider that w o rk w e should exam ine the h isto ry o f the socalled 'D oom sday M ach in e' w h ich w as to be satirised in Dr. Strangelove. D uring a 1950 Round Table discussion o f the h y d ro gen bom b the p h y sicist Leo Szilard first outlined the m ethod w h e re b y a

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cobalt coating could be used so that fallou t w o u ld blan ket the planet in rad ioactive dust, th ere b y threatenin g the v e ry existen ce o f the hum an race. The retired chairm an o f the A tom ic E n ergy Com m ission p rom p tly attacked the scientists for creating a 'n ew cu lt o f doom ', w h ereu p o n Szilard protested that he w as m erely t r y ­ ing to keep the A m erican p u b lic inform ed on curren t p o ssib ilities.4 There the m atter rested u ntil the end o f the decade. In the m eantim e the cobalt bom b entered fiction in one o f Fritz L eiber's fe w stories o f the Cold W ar, 'T h e M oon is G reen' (1952). His earlier stories 'Com ing A ttra ctio n ' and 'Poor Superm an' w ere inten ded, as he pu t it, to 'm irror the intense concern o f 1950 w ith M cC arthyism , com puterisation, and ab o ve all the bom b'; and th e y do so b y d epictin g an A m erica 'as com bat-sh ocked and crip p led as the rest o f the bom b-shattered plan et' (Leiber 1974: 8, 124). In 'T h e M oon is G reen' nuclear w ar has left the outside w o rld a no-go area. The fe w su rviv o rs h u d d le in lead -shu ttered refu ges w a itin g for the radiation count to fall. The inset fiction al h isto ry describes the nuclear co n flict prod u cin g this situation in non-national terms. The forces are sim ply 'the w o rld ' w h ich co m p u lsiv ely th ro w cobalt bom bs at each other and w h ich k n o w 'that th e y w ill n ever be able to im provise a defence w h en arraigned before the h igh court o f h isto ry - and w h ose unadm itted hope is that there w ill be no h igh court o f h isto ry left to arraign them ' (Leiber 1968: 87). U nlike W illiam T en n 's 'T h e Sickn ess' (1955) w h ere holocaust from a stockpile o f cobalt bom bs has been deferred b y a jo in t m ission to M ars, the o rg y o f destruction in L eib er's story seems to h ave erased the v e r y p o ssib ility o f fu tu re ju d gem en t. By the begin n in g o f the sixties the concept o f the D oom sday M achine had become su fficien tly institutionalised for the expression to appear in a r a n d (Research and D evelopm ent) Corporation glo ssary w h ere it is defined as a 'reliable and secu rely protected d evice that is capable o f d estroyin g alm ost all hum an life and that w o u ld be autom atically trig gered if an enem y com m itted an y one o f a designated class o f v io la tio n s'.5 It w as Herm an Kahn, d oyen o f the H udson Institute th in k-tan k, w h o b rou g h t the phrase more into the p u b lic eye in his m onum ental i960 stu d y On Thermonuclear W ar. The pream ble to this w o rk testifies to K ahn's aw areness o f p opu lar fiction on his su bject w h ich has, he adm its, 'p ick e d up the idea o f u ltim acy'. T h rou gh n o vels lik e Sh u te's On the Beach (an 'in terestin g bu t b a d ly researched book') the 'w o rld annihilation p o ssib ility is considered to be a sober and accurate appraisal o f the d estru ctive p o w er o f existin g w eapons system s' (Kahn 1961: 9). A m on g the possibilities he su rv ey s is the D oom sday M achine, i.e. one 'w h o se

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only function is to destroy all hum an life'(Kahn 1961: 145). This perfectly feasible device could be constructed w ithin the next ten years or so, b u t has a major flaw, he drily adds, in being virtually uncontrollable; for th at reason it w ould scarcely have any appeal for existing nuclear powers. Three years after K ahn's study A nderson published one of his least-know n nonfictional works, Thermonuclear War , w ith M onarch Books w hich in this same period was bringing out w orks like Frank L. K luckhohn's The N aked Rise o f Communism or David and Jeane H eller's The Cold War. The latter w arned the reader, quoting Krushchev, not to relax before W estern successes: 'International Communism is still a potent force in the w orld. Despite setbacks, Communist leaders are confident th at they can, indeed, "b u ry " us' (Heller 1962: 18). This call for vigilance was reflected in M onarch Press science fiction w hich privileged sensational accounts of invasion and attem pted takeover. C hristopher A nvil's The Day the Machines Stopped (1964), for instance, describes the chaos in America w hich ensues w hen a secret Soviet experim ent in cryogenics goes w rong, throw ing out all electrical circuits around the w orld. George H. Smith published the second of his nuclear w ar novels w ith M onarch. Both The Coming o f the Rats (1961) and Doomsday Wing (1963) include characters w ho have been reading Kahn. The latter novel, w ith acknow ledgem ents to the physicist W. H. Clark w ho fleshed out Kahn's original Doomsday device, des­ cribes a secret section of Strategic Air Command (sac), the Dooms­ day W ing of bom bers equipped w ith cobalt bombs, w hich will only be used if the very existence of the USA seems un d er th reat (Clarke 1961). A paranoid neo-Stalinist general launches a pre-em ptive attack against America and the ensuing sequence of retaliatory strikes does seem to make the survival of the USA problem atic. W hen the us President tells his Soviet counterpart th at he will order the launch of Doomsday W ing, the other dismisses the devices as a 'science fiction chim era' designed to frighten children, and peace only follows w hen a group of Soviet scientists verify the bom bs' existence (Smith 1961: 111). The novel thereby makes the point th at for a Doomsday device to function as the ultim ate deterrent it m ust be k n ow n by the other side. Ultimately, as Paul Brians points out, Sm ith's perspective on the device remains rather am bivalent. It is in troduced to the reader as a m onstrosity, but 'it is the existence of the Doomsday W ing alone w hich prevents the com plete destruction of the U nited States and brings peace' (Brians 1987a: 310). Like the other w orks m entioned here from the early sixties, Thermonuclear W ar is w ritten out of a perception th at the present

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m om ent w as the 'm ost dangerous in the h isto ry o f m a n k in d '.6 A n d erso n draw s h e a v ily on the w ritin g s o f K issinger and Kahn (follow in g the latter in su ggestin g that the USA m ight su rv iv e an allout war) and d ivid es his m ost fo rcefu l points into three areas: the p h y sica l exp erien ce o f nuclear attack, the em ergence o f m utants, and the nature o f the international Com m unist threat. A fte r sum m arising blast dam age and fire storm s A n d erso n tries to pictu re the atom ising o f so ciety that w o u ld fo llo w , d raw in g an an alogy w ith the T h irty Years W ar: One needs little im agination to see w h a t battles w o u ld be fo u gh t, a man k illin g another man for a lo a f o f bread, cannibalism retu rn ­ ing as it did in seven teen th -cen tu ry G erm any. V iolence breeding violence, anarchy o f the most ruthless sort w o u ld spread outw ard from the m etropolitan frin ges to the co u n try sid e'. (A nderson

1963a: 34) A n d then, dism issing a m ode o f su rv iv a l that w o u ld be d escribed in O liver L an ge's Vandenberg (see Chapter 7), he continues: 'C on ­ ce iv a b ly a few lu c k y in d ivid u a ls cou ld go back to the w ild s, establishing them selves as hunters and subsistence farm ers in w ild ern ess areas. But a n y idea that m an y cou ld do this is rom antic nonsense' (A nderson 1963a: 34, 35). S econ d ly, this tim e d raw in g on the biologist Linus P au lin g 's N o M ore W a r (1958), A n d erso n speculates on the consequ ence for the species o f rad iation-in du ced m utants, the issue w h ich lay at the centre o f T w ilight W orld, even fearing that m ankind m ight becom e ex tin ct. F inally A n d erso n fo llo w s earlier ex-Com m unist w riters in seeing Com m unism as a 'u n iversalist m issionary relig ion ' w h o se aim is to 'app roach the ideal o f man conditioned into absolute conform ity' (A nderson 1963a: 116). A n d erso n w as not sim ply rou n d in g on Com m unism in the heat o f tem porary w o rld crises. Therm onuclear W a r profited, b y his o w n accoun t, from discussions w ith H einlein w h ich h elped to forge a com m on 'eternal h o stility to Com m unism and e v e ry other form o f ty r a n n y ' (Heinlein 1992: 321). In an autobiograph ical statem ent o f 1974 he records his grad ual shift a w a y from liberalism and g ro w in g h o stility tow ard s the left: 'S u ffice it to say that o ver a period o f decades, fact and logic d ro ve me to the conclusion that M arxism is among the most grotesque frauds ever perpetrated upon m ankind, and Communism the central m onstrosity o f our era' (A nderson 1974a: 49). The fear w h ich A n d erso n expresses in Therm onuclear W a r o f vio len ce spiralling out o f control inform s A fte r D oom sday that com bines ap ocalyp tic d estruction w ith the need for a historical

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autopsy. The only w ay the latter can take place is from outer space, and a crew m em ber of a spaceship tries to imagine a spectacle unavailable to any earthbound observer: Shriek and skirt as w in d s w en t scouring across black stone continents w h ich had lately run m olten, as ash and sm oke and acid rain fle w beneath su lph urous clouds. Crack and boom as lig h tn in g split h eaven and turn ed the n igh t b riefly v iv id , so that e v e ry u p th ru st crag w as etched against the horizon. But there was no one to hear. The cities w ere en gu lfed , the ships w ere sunk, the hum an race d issolved in lava. (A nderson 1965: 8) This is the im agined crime; Earth turns into a co llective corpse; and the n o vel traces out a search for the g u ilty p a rty in a galactic w h o d u n n it. A n d erso n depicts a u n iverse w h ere the international rivalries o f the Cold W ar are p layed out over a larger area. In fact the m ystery at the heart o f the n o vel is essen tially a proliferation fantasy o f su perw eapon s falling into the w ro n g hands. Not su rp risin g ly, the Soviets em erge as h avin g agreed a secret arms deal so that 'th e y could q u ie tly get ahead o f e v e ry other co u n try in the developm ent o f a really up-to-date w ar m achine', (ibid.: 67) This turns out, h o w ev er, to be a red herrin g. In fact the bom bs w ere sold to lesser p ow ers like the A rab countries and Y u g o slavia w h o b u ry a set o f 'd isru p tion bom bs' (or 'doom sday w eap on s' as th ey are also called) deep w ith in the Earth's crust prim ed to detonate 'if more than three nuclear explosion s abo ve a certain m agnitude occurred w ith in the borders o f an y single m em ber co u n try ' (ibid.: 137). A n d so Herm an K ahn's doom sday scenario has fin ally p layed itself out. The logic o f A fter Doomsday suggests that there m ight be a certain secu rity in su p erp o w er confrontation because th e y w o u ld not h ave to re ly on a d evice o f last resort. This is the situation in 'K ings W h o Die' (1962), a narrative set in the period o f w arfare fo llo w in g a T h ird W orld W ar. The convention s agreed betw een belligerents - another question discussed b y Kahn - h ave prod u ced a displacem ent o f w ar into space w h ile on Earth A m ericans and Unasians (a com bination o f Russian and A sian Com munists) cond u ct them selves as if at peace. The v e ry presence o f the cobalt bom b guarantees that no final trium ph is possible on Earth but m eanw hile the riv a l fleets slug it out in space. This story, gathered b y A n d erso n into a them e collection on institutionalised conflict, Seven Conquests (1969, su b seq u en tly retitled Conquests), depicts w arfare as a m yth ical recu rren ce o f sacrificial acts sp liced on to h isto ry and contem porary politics b y A n d erso n 's choice o f names. So the

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A m erican protagonist Diaz resem bles a latter-d ay conqu istador and a spaceship Utah Beach is nam ed after the N orm an dy lan din gs, w h ile the Unasian General R ostock uses as com m and ship the Ho Chi M inh, replacin g the earlier Gengis. The names o f this story and others b y A n d erso n then fu n ctio n as the traces o f form er conflicts or contem porary E a st-W est confrontation points displaced in space and tim e on to n ew sites o f com bat. A p o ca ly p se recurs in A n d erso n w ith in the grand Cold W ar n arrative o f su p erp o w er confrontation w h ich at certain historical m om ents (19 5 0 -1, the early sixties) w as w id e ly exp ected to lead to open w ar. By the end o f the fifties Kahn could d escribe such an exp ectatio n (W orld W ar III) as 'h is to ry '. Sim ilarly A n d erso n him self declared that 'W o rld W ar T hree did not come o ff on sch edu le' (A nderson 1979: 8) and the narrator o f There W ill Be Tim e (1973) records o f 1951: 'M ost o f us, in an em otional paralysis w h ich let us continue our d aily lives, ex p ected W o rld W ar III to break out an y instant' (A nderson 1980: 26). 'A Chapter o f R evelation ' (1972, collected in Dialogues w ith D arkness ) narrates such past ex p e cta ­ tions th ro u gh an altern ative Korean W ar w h ich does progress to nuclear exch an ge. T his w as no fa n cifu l elaboration since in Decem ­ ber 1950 General M ac A rth u r had requ ested tw e n ty -six atom ic bom bs to drop on N orth Korea and China. In Decem ber 1952 he repeated the request and w as p ro b a b ly rem oved from office b y Trum an p a rtly because o f his refusal to keep the w ar w ith in definite lim its (Hastings 1987: 220, 392). These lim its are broken from the v e ry begin n in g o f A n d erso n 's n arrative w h en the Chinese Com­ m unists laun ch tactical atom ic w eapo n s against the A m erican fleet for vio latin g territorial w aters and preparin g for a seaborne in vasion like the Inchon lan din g. A n d erso n breaks up his narrative into n ew s reports and snapshot episodes g iv in g glim pses o f dom estic reactions w ith in the us A. Indeed the segm entation o f the n arrative cle v e rly show s h o w helpless the average citizen feels before a seem in gly rem orseless escalation o f a crisis on the other side o f the globe. The Chinese attack is fo llo w ed b y a ca refu lly lim ited A m erican strike d escribed in a n ew s report: U nited States bom bers tod ay launched an atomic attack on Chinese rock et bases on the Shantung Peninsula. President Reisner d eclared that the w eapons used w ere o f strictly lim ited y ield , for the strictly lim ited purpose o f takin g out installations w h ich , he said on television , had 'm urdered an estim ated ten thousand A m erican sailors and left a greater num ber in the agonies o f burns, m utilations, and radiation sickness'. He pledged no fu rth er

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strikes unless fu rth er provocation o ccu rred and called for a con­ feren ce to settle the Korean problem and 'oth er issues w h ich h ave b rou gh t civilisatio n to the rim o f catastrophe. (A nderson 1985: 16 -17 ) A n d erso n starts his narrative w ith in a crisis alread y form ed and show s each speaker for the major p ow ers - the USA, China, and Soviet U nion — to be lock ed w ith in their resp ective ideologies. The ev id en t im p ossib ility o f a political solution leads A n d erso n to d iv erge from future-realism to a deus ex machina. A man appearing on a t v chat sh ow declares that the crisis is takin g place because 'w e d o n 't k n o w G od' and the sentim ent is echoed b y others w h o p ray for an 'un m istakable sign '. One p rayer quotes Joshua 10:12, 'Sun stand still', and that is e x a ctly w h at happens. For tw e n ty -fo u r hours the Su n 's m otion relative to the Earth is suspended, in d u cin g 'w o rld w id e dread '. A num ber o f religious m ovem ents arise as a result, b rin gin g chaos to the USA and o verth ro w in g the Com m unist regim es o f China and the Soviet Union. Th e sto ry 's title prom ises scriptural confirm ation but A n d erso n offers no consolation o f spiritual design. B y the end o f the story the w o rld has slipp ed back into a n ew D ark A g e.

( in ) A n d erso n 's m ost com plex treatm ent o f post-holocaust su rv iv a l and the repossession o f nuclear w eapons comes in his 1983 n o ve l Orion Shall Arise. Part o f a lon ger series, this w o rk describes a w o rld some centuries after it has been devastated b y a nuclear w ar referred to v a rio u sly as the 'W a r o f Ju dgem ent' or the 'Doom W a r'. Europe has becom e fragm en ted into tribal units, and, lik e Russell H oban in Riddley W alker, A n d erso n uses distorted but still recogn isable place names so that w e can read the old national map th ro u gh the new landscape. H ere n ew political gro u p in gs em bo d y contrasting ideologies o f w o rld reconstruction. The M aurai, descendants o f the M aori from a co u n try that escaped the w ar rela tiv ely unscathed, (as in H u x le y 's A pe and Essence) represent a p o w er bloc opposed to tech n o lo g y w hereas the N o rth w est Union, it transpires, has been secretly d evelo p in g an u nd ergro u n d nuclear fa cility in A laska. The title term carries m ultiple variations on the them e o f vio len t conflict. O rion w as a hunter in G reek m yth o lo g y (the first scene o f the Prologue), then incorporated into the Zodiac as a sign o f storms and tu rb u len ce (the openin g scene o f Chapter 1). Th e title phrase

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constitutes a secret slogan o f in cip ien t rebellion but the term 'O rion ' is reified as a spaceship prop elled b y nuclear exp losion s (such a d evice w as considered for a tim e b y the u s a ) w h ich w o u ld realise a dream o f 'un lim ited p o w er' b y fin d in g fuels on other p lan ets.7 'O rion ' in short becom es an o verdeterm in ed sign o f hum an vio len ce. The O rion project is altern ately adm ired and feared as a resu rgen ce o f the nuclear w e a p o n ry suppressed b y a w o rld w id e ban since the Doom W ar. C onflict for w o rld h egem on y has been go in g on th ro u gh o u t the n o ve l and orion sim p ly represents that d rive ex ten d ed into space, in other w o rd s a th in ly d isguised national expansionism lik e that satirised in Pohl and K o rn b lu th 's Space Merchants and Barry B. L o n g y ea r's M anifest Destiny. L ike H einlein, A n d erso n w as sym path etic to the notion o f a citizen arm y and describes a reprise o f the A m erican R evo lu tio n w h en the N orth A m ericans rise against the M on g, the Sino-Soviet forces that in vad ed after the Doom W ar. In contrast, note h o w the first real reference to the secret project is phrased: 'Beneath the m ountains in Laska [i.e. Alaska] there w as com ing to birth a terrible b ea u ty' (A nderson 1984: 324). Th e director o f the O rion project is depicted as a faustian ideolo gu e and A n d erso n here b orrow s the refrain from Yeats's 'A u g u st 19 16 ' to su ggest a failed and m orally am biguous uprising before the even t. W h en com bat does break out A n d erso n telescopes ecological and hum an catastrophe into the grap h ic d escription o f one fem ale casu alty w h o repeats a m antra to the Earth ('it is done in b ea u ty') ju s t before she dies. The m ultiple connotations o f 'Orion' parallel the different w a y s A nderson depicts recurren ce, w h eth er m yth ical re-enactm ent, historical repetition, or ev en ancestral m em ory w h en an official tells his prisoner: 'W e both feel ... as if w e had been born into a w ar goin g on fo rever' (A nderson 1984: 335). Im ages o f birth are ju x ta p o sed to death so closely that the one comes to entail the other. A lth o u g h the outbu rst o f d estruction ceases tow ard s the end o f the n ovel, A n d erso n does not close o ff the narrative. O rion m ay rise again. W e h ave seen h o w A n d erso n rep eate d ly draw s the reader's attention to the plot o f h isto ry, fig u red as con spiracy, m yth , or sequential logic. The story w h ich m ost e x p lic itly fo regro un ds these issues is 'T h e D isin tegratin g S k y ' (1953), set against a b a ck g ro u n d o f im m inent w ar. Here a num ber o f m en gather in a N ew Y o rk apartm ent to discuss w h eth er reality has an y d iachronic coherence, and one character d raw s a direct an alo gy betw een exp erien ce and fiction al com position: 'I say w e m ove from past to fu tu re because the A u th o r is w ritin g all the tim e' (A nderson 1961: 116). T h e y then speculate about the lim its o f hum an k n o w le d ge , w h ereu p o n a

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scientist announces the existen ce o f a 'total d isintegration bom b' w hose certain use m ight dam age the Earth's crust. This notion is im m ediately co n verted into a m elodram a w h ere a w o u ld -b e author declares: 'I w o u ld h ave taken a fe w o f m y characters ju s t before the end and made them realise w h at th ey w ere - characters in a p o orlyw ritten n o vel, out o f m y o w n m ind' (ibid.: 118). A t this point sirens start up and distant rocket trails signal the end. D avid D ow lin g explain s that here 'the tw o fiction al levels seem to cancel each other out in the read er's exp erien ce until s/he confronts the abyss o f a real destruction' (D owling 1987: 12). N uclear holocaust literally explodes the fram e o f the sto ry w ith an apocalypse so sudden that it retro­ sp e ctiv e ly m ocks the discussion o f a rational sequence to hum an time. No sooner h ave the characters confirm ed w h at Derrida calls the fabu lou s dim ension to the nuclear age b y com posing fiction s o f nuclear w ar, than the narrative halts a b ru p tly on a point o f im m inent holocaust: 'Faraw ay and fa in tly the scream o f sirens came to him and the ligh ts started to go out. He saw rock et flames cut their fiery trails across the d isintegratin g sk y ' (A nderson 1961: 118). On one level the narrative has come fu ll circle back to its title; on another hints o f extin ction , bu rning, and fragm entation suggest a process w h ich the reader can a p p ly to the grou n d o f the narrative itself as i f it is about to self-destruct.

N o te s

1. 'For the Duration' (1957: collected in Strangers from Earth) pursues a partial analogy betw een a post-W orld W ar III dictator and the Roman statesman and soldier Cincinnatus who, how ever, does not return to his plough. W hen an uprising deposes him, his role is filled b y yet another ('benevolent') dictator. 2. The Shadow stories were published through the 1930s. A nderson's debt to Rohmer is suggested b y the condensed name o f his protagonist Naysm ith. 3. Anderson 1963b: 2. The blue glo w was popularised in Cam pbell's The Atomic Story (1947) w hich described a city hit b y a neutron bomb as a nocturnal 'fairyland glow in g w ith a faint blue nim bus' (Campbell 1947: 252). 4. Bethe et al. 1950: 107, 109. The notion o f the 'doom sday w eapon' dates back in science fiction at least to A lfred N oyes's The Last Man (1940). Campbell described the atomic bomb as the 'Doom sday Bomb' in 1946 (Berger 1993: 75). 5. Quoted Bulletin o f the Atomic Scientists 17.IX (Novem ber 1961): 360.

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6. Anderson was approached b y the publisher to w rite Thermonuclear War w hich he undertook because 'it seemed to me that the public at the time had ve ry little understanding o f the issues and o f the com plexity

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Anderson, 20 October 1997). 7. The Orion project is described b y Dean Ing w here he speculates that the propulsion method 'm ight yet be used to pow er city-sized dreadnoughts o f the next cen tu ry' (Ing 1979: 245).

Views from the Hearth

Do not leave y o u r homes. Stay indoors (announcem ent in Shadow on the H earth, 1950) P hilip W y lie 's k e y nuclear novels and H einlein's Farnham's Free­ hold ex p lore the fea sib ility o f city- and fam ily-based civ il defence. A lth o u g h preparedness for nuclear attack rem ained the subject o f heated co n tro v ersy rig h t th ro u gh the postw ar period, no coord in­ ated national p o licy w as ever put in p lace.1 N evertheless there w ere governm ent-sponsored cam paigns to prom ote fam ily shelters. Elaine T y le r M ay has sh o w n h o w fem ale dom esticity w as revised in the fifties to in clu d e 'exp ertise in dealing w ith the p o ssib ility o f nuclar w ar'. The f c d a (Federal Civil Defence A u thority) 'Grandm a's P antry' cam paign exten d ed housekeep in g so that the shelter becam e an extension o f the kitch en (M ay 1988: 103, 104-5). The booklet on Fallout Protection d istribu ted b y the K en ned y adm inistration had a more m ale-oriented emphasis on building skills, this time presenting the shelter as a b a ck yard den. The danger here w as o f dom esticating nuclear attack, red u cin g its threat to an in co n ven ien ce w h ich could be met b y a good stock o f canned food or a stu rd y basem ent. From the 1 940s onw ards, h o w ev er, science fiction narratives had already started addressing anxieties about genetic m utation, w h ich bland g overn m en t assurances attem pted to soothe, and ask h o w far the home m ight serve as refu ge in nuclear attack.

(i)

The atom ic bom b itself w as associated b y its first com m entators w ith birth. In his report on the A lam ogordo test jou rn alist W illiam L. Laurence d escribed the blast as the 'first cry o f a n e w b o rn ch ild' (Laurence 1961: 117). The prom inence o f such m etaphors in nuclear d iscourse has been receivin g fascinating analysis b y fem inist 53

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scholars, one arguin g that dom estic im agery suggests 'm en's desire to appropriate from w om en the p ow er [of] g iv in g life and that conflate creation and destruction' (Cohn 1987: 699). T he fear all too often in fiction o f the period w as that the post-nuclear b a b y m ight be born w ith p h ysical defects. M utation in the follo w in g narratives represents

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am bivalence tow ards the Bomb w h ich Forest J. A ck erm an 's 'T h e M u te

Question' (1950) renders gro tesq u ely th rough a 'debate'

betw een the tw o heads o f a single m utant. One possible explanation o f origin is a usurpation o f divin e creation w ith the 'A d am bom b' (Silverberg 1977: 59), a p un later to be elaborated b y Russell Hoban. N ot surp risin gly descriptions o f p h ysical m utation are narrations o f a reluctance to recognise its signs. Poul A nd erson and F. N. W ald ro p 's

1947 story 'T om orrow 's Children' sets the k eyn o te.

Follow in g an atomic war, Drum m ond the protagonist flies in to the n ew

us capital in

T aylor,

O regon,

openin g

the

story

w ith

a

cinem atic passage across a landscape w h ich looks green and fertile from h igh up, but on closer v ie w reveals the scars eve ryw h e re o f bom b craters. A p o ca ly p tic references to total endings tu g against Drum m ond's yearn ing for home. V isitin g one villa ge com m unity, he finds a comm unal d w ellin g marred b y mutants: There was a dog on the floor nursing a litter. O n ly three pups, and one o f those w as bald, one lacked ears, and one had more toes than it should. A m on g the w id e -ey ed children present, there were several tw o years old or less, and w ith almost no obvious exceptions, th ey were also different. (Miller and Greenberg 1987: 162) Sp ecificity is reserved here e x c lu s iv e ly for the animals; the children are sim p ly 'differen t'. T he euphem ism indicates a common deferral in the story o f the hum an consequences o f fallout b y no means lim ited to Drum m ond's superior w hose w ife gives birth at the end o f the story to a b o y w ith 'ru b b ery tentacles term inating in boneless digits' (ibid.: 171). M utation is grad u ally brou ght nearer and nearer to home so that the desired good place w ith its con tin u ity from pre­ w ar is problem atised b y this con clu d in g image. T he persp ective o f 'T om orrow 's Children' is a h e a v ily gen dered one w ith the mother sim p ly p la yin g the supporting role o f pro­ ducer, and the v e r y title o f Ju dith M erril's 'T h at O n ly a M other' ( x948) redresses that subordination. It describes the situation o f a mother, M aggie, w hose husband H ank has been w o rk in g at the Oak R idge atomic enrichm ent plant and is n o w absent because o f the war.

M agg ie

m eanw hile

has ju st

g iv e n

birth to a b a b y

girl.

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55

T h ro u g h o u t the narrative a dialogue takes place betw een M ag gie's fears and hopes. T hus at one point M aggie cau ght h erself refo ld in g the paper to the m edical new s. Stop it, Maggie stop it! The radiologist said H ank's job couldn't have exposed him. A nd the bombed area we drove p a s t ... N o, no. Stop it, now! Read the social notes or the recipes, Maggie girl. (M erril i960: 12; em phasis in original). But she reads the m edical notes instead. There are constant ellipses in the tex t su ggestin g the u n verb alised fears w h ich M aggie is suppressing. In the event, M ag gie's d isco very that the child is m entally precociou s but lim bless vin dicates these fears o ver the reassurance o f the prim arily male experts. A n am bivalen ce tow ard s the b a b y lies at the heart o f this story for Terrence H olt w h o argues that it resem bles Bomb and penis, at once the visib le sign o f desire and its concealm ent as m other's p ro d u ct.2 For the husban d reacts like a cu ckold. Do his hands tigh ten round the b a b y to kill it at the end, m aking him co-creator and destroyer? Such questions are not answ ered (cf. Cum mins 1992: 207), nor need th ey be, since M erril is g iv in g us partial access to a series o f suppressions. In m utant narratives a generation displaces resp o n sib ility for the Bomb on to the babies so that the latter's prod u cts becom e its cause. The resu ltin g spiral o f hatred is ev o k ed clau stro p h ob ically in Richard M atheson 's 'Born o f M an and W om an' (1950) w h ere a m alform ed child is chained up b y its parents. Th e m irroring o f their vio len ce tow ard s each other suggests that 'w h a t w e fear in the bom b is o n ly a distorted im age o f ou rselves' (Holt 1990—1: 210). If this is so, the su b text o f m utant narratives dem ands our parti­ cular attention, as do textu al signs lin kin g the dom estic w ith nuclear w ar. Carol E m shw iller's 'D ay at the Beach' (1959) describes the efforts o f a nuclear fam ily to m aintain a dom estic routine some fou r years after a nuclear w ar. These pre-w ar 'scrip ts' h ave an existen tial appeal that does not hide the m ism atch betw een language and action. The husband still 'com m utes', but to find food; th ey h ave a 'go od d a y ' at the beach but h ave had to k ill an attacker. In itially then the story contrasts echoes o f su bu rban routine w ith the u b iq u ito u s presence o f danger. The am b igu ity o f the fam ily unit is em bodied in the child, three-year-old L ittleboy: He w as the opposite o f his big, p in k and hairless parents, w ith th ick and fine black hair g ro w in g lo w o ver his forehead and

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ex ten d in g d ow n the back o f his n eck so far that she alw ay s w o n d ered if it ended w h ere hair used to end before, or w h eth er it g re w too far dow n. (M iller and G reen berg 1987: 100) W h at m other has n ever seen her ch ild 's back? But that d iscrep an cy is less strikin g than the ch ild 's name. O sten sibly nam ed after the w ar, it carries the name o f the H iroshim a bom b, w h ich sheds ligh t on a cry p tic tex tu a l gloss. E m shw iller d escribes the sea as 'drowning out the noises o f w ars' (ibid.: 102; em phasis in original) and Littleb o y 's gradual m anifestations o f feral traits closes up the gap betw een past and present as if the w ar is con tin u in g. The stories considered so far o n ly raise b y im plication the problem o f h o w the m utants are to be treated socially. H enry K u ttn er's B aldy stories, started in 1945 before the detonation o f the atom ic bom b and collected as M utant in 1953, depict a hum an g ro u p w h ose prim ary characteristic is telep ath y and secon d ary characteristic is hairlessness, both caused b y hard radiation released in a w ar called the 'B lo w -u p '. K uttn er exp lores the bon d in g b etw een the Baldies and a tension w ith the m ajority p op u lation so severe that the discourse o f w arfare is relocated w ith in so ciety and fig u red as a 'd ea d ly strife' being w a g ed beneath its surface. In T heodore Sturgeon, A n d re N orton, A ld o u s H u x le y and others 'n o rm ality' is institu tionalised as a set o f proh ibition s w h ich authorises the m ajority to im prison and even incinerate the mal­ form ed. John W y n d h a m 's The Chrysalids (1935, us title Re-Birth), for instance, describes a post-holocaust Labrador w h ere a th eo cra cy im poses the p rin cip le that 'th e norm is the w ill o f G od ', co n tin u ­ o u sly re-enacting their g u ilt o ver the w ar b y p u n ish in g its genetic casualties.3 T he hom e fu n ction s as a point o f departure in W ilm ar H. Shiras's Children o f the Atom (1953) w h ere a m assive exp losion in 1958 at an atom ic plant 'w h ere th e y w ere try in g to m ake a n ew kin d o f bom b' (Shiras 1959: 37) has fa tally contam inated all adults liv in g n e arb y bu t in d u ced a cap acity for p recociou s in tellectu al d evelop m en t in their ch ildren. These 'w o n d er ch ild ren ' h ave sk ip p ed a generation and are liv in g w ith in their fam ily homes as strangers, even prisoners. The means for the ch ild ren 's em ergence is su pp lied b y a p h ilan th ro p ically en d o w ed residential school in a small Californian to w n w h ere the g ro w in g suspicion o f the local residents indicates that the children becom e the object o f p u b lic fears o f atom ic pow er. A to w n dem agogue denounces them in rin gin g, nonconform ist rhetoric as the dem onic agents o f 'doom and d estruction to m an­ k in d '. T h ey are inflated into a w h o le fifth colum n e x p lo itin g p erfect

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disguise to spread their 'poisonous propaganda' throughout society. 'T h e y are a monstrous m utation born o f the death and destruction o f Helium C ity b y the unleashed pow ers o f the atom! Powers w h ich God meant to remain under His control' (Shiras 1959:

203-4). The

children in short make up a species o f their ow n, a 'fen ced-in and secret gathering o f monsters alien to all hum an ity and to all G od 's creation' (ibid.: 205). A w hole series o f fears run together here: o f unbridled tech n o lo gy, o f the alien, o f creeping secularism. The speaker blanks out the children's hum an parentage in order to dem onise the e ven t w h ich altered them. T he children therefore are being used y e t again as scapegoats in a ritual p u rgin g o f social gu ilt over the primal explosion, forced b y social h ostility to w ith d raw into a com m un ity w h ich

resembles a th in k -ta n k

or even

the

enclosed secrecy o f the M anhattan Project. T he children's cool rationality u tterly belies the charge o f being a 'm onstrous m uta­ tion'. P h ysica lly u nchanged, the children stand at the opposite extrem e to the hum an m utant in the 1955 film The Day the W orld

Ended w h o develop s a leathery 'atomic skin' and carries the stigma o f lum inous 'vein s' on the side o f his head w h ich signals a reversion to cannibalism . Increasin gly denied an y domestic and even social con text, this creature has to be destroyed to satisfy the film 's con servative and u nm otivated p iety.

(ii) W h e n plann ing her 1950 n o vel Shadow on the Hearth Judith M erril w rote to D avid Bradley, a doctor assigned to cover the Crossroads atomic tests in the Pacific. His log No Place to H ide (1949) concluded that the Bomb threatened the su rvival o f the w hole race and declared that 'there are no satisfactory m edical or sanitary safe­ guards for the people o f atomised areas' (Bradley

1949:

176).

B radley's title became a virtual slogan throughou t the fifties' debate on civil defence, and M erril w anted to intervene in this debate w ith a w o rk 'd ire ctly designed to be propaganda' (W eiss 1997: 8), but sp ecifically addressing a female readership. She researched her subject th oro u gh ly, poring over journals like Collier's and Science Digest, and reading John H ersey's Hiroshima. W ith Bradley she checked further m edical details and explained that his descriptions w ere too m ale-directed to appeal to w om en readers.4 T he result was a novel w h ich was universally praised b y the reviewers for its under­ stated m ethod, avoidance o f melodrama and u n u su ally oblique description o f nuclear attack.

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Shadow on the Hearth describes the experiences o f G lad ys M itchell, a housew ife liv in g in the N e w Y ork suburbs, as she attem pts to cope w ith the experien ce o f nuclear attack. T he radio announcem ents o f atomic dam age trigger o ff a m em ory in G lad ys o f h a vin g read a similar description o f the destruction o f N e w York w h ich derives from D exter M aster's anti-nuclear collection, One

W orld Or None (1946). Here, the p h ysicist Philip M orrison, w h o had w itn essed the destruction o f Hiroshim a and N agasaki, tried an exercise in transposition to bring this destruction hom e to his readers: 'A clearer and truer u nderstanding can be gained from th in k in g o f the bom b as falling on a city , am ong b u ildin gs and people w h ich Am ericans k n o w w e ll' (Masters and W a y 1947: 13). M erril's n o vel b riefly evok es a 'gla ssy expanse o f poisoned w aste­ land'

(Merril

1964:

15) near the

centre o f the blast,

whereas

M orrison presents a spectacle o f w reck age and carnage in m idM anhattan:

'E very w h e re in this w h o le district w ere men w ith

burn ing clothin g, w om en w ith terrible red and blacken ed burns, and dead children cau gh t w h ile h u rryin g home to lu n ch ' (Masters and

W ay

1947:

descriptions

of

18).

M erril's

destruction.

suburban

Instead

the

setting bom b

exclu des is

such

represented

m etaphorically as a shadow over the M itch ell home, a dread realised once the attack happens as a com bination o f tw in n ed sounds o f alarm: scream and siren. T he radio p lays a k e y m ediating role in the n ovel, su p p ly in g inform ation and instructions, and in troducin g a tacit an alogy b etw een home and cou n try. T he state governor comes on the radio to reassure his listeners: 'N o th in g can get through. W e are liv in g inside a great dome o f safety, our w hole nation protected b y the radar sw eep from bases prepared long ago' (Merril 1966: 21). This claim o f domestic secu rity has already been totally belied b y actual attack and the n o vel fleshes out a w arnin g g iv e n in the abstract in a 1950 article on c iv il defence. Here the reader w as warned: 'For the first time in the history o f this cou ntry, a foreign go vernm en t has the cap acity to attack all our home soil — has the w eapons and the means to deliver those w eapons (Sym ington 1950: 231). Here the concept o f hom e has been exp an d ed into the w h o le nation to represent a collective state o f vu ln era b ility not security. G lad ys locks her w in d o w s

as

'p ro o f against invaders from

outside' (Merril 1966: 31), a region w h ich has become transform ed into an area o f chaos and threat. T he actual shadow s cast over her home are those o f male figures before th e y can be identified. T h u s a sequence o f assaults takes place from a neighb our turned civ il defence officer w h o then forces his sexual attentions on her, to Dr. L e v y (former atomic scientist, then blacklisted and turned local

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teacher), and fin ally w o u ld -b e looters. These shadow s are hum an but there is a h id d en force at w o rk perm eating th ro u gh the barriers o f the home: rad io a ctivity, w h ich induces the yo u n g er d au gh ter's sickness. In Fritz Leiber's 1952 parable 'The M oon Is Green' the home has

literally become a lead-shuttered shelter against the massive radiation from a cobalt-bom b w ar (the 'Fury'). Here a wife tires of endless confinem ent and opens her w indow s to a survivor from outside w ho proves to be a carrier of death. Her dream of release collapses w hen his radiation is m easured 'for no dreams can stand against the Geiger counter, the T w entieth C entury's m outhpiece of ultim ate tru th ' (Leiber 1968: 100). Its sound displaces both hum an voices and the ticking of the clock as the precarious balance betw een inside and outside begins to collapse. A lth o u g h the home in Shadow is sym b o lica lly in vad ed it n ever loses its significance as a place o f ligh t, food and w arm th. Dom estic spaces becom e transform ed b y necessity into a hospital to care for the yo u n g er daughter, and so on. C o rresp on d in gly, G la d y s's v e ry su b je ctiv ity , w h ich has been scripted b y others, redefines itself as the n o vel proceeds. By the end, 'm ore than sim ply com petent, she has constructed an id e n tity qu ite apart from her duties tow ard s her h u sban d ' (Berger 1981: 292). P artly this results from the latter's absence w ith G la d y s's attendant redirection o f attention to the children, p a rtly it stems from her rational resistance to male au th o rity figures, starting w ith the radio announcer. A t no time, h o w ev er, does the home lose its po sitive contrast w ith outside, a place o f darkness and death w h ere life has been erased ('e v ery fam iliar pattern o f the su bu rban n igh t w as gon e' [M erril 1966: 168]). The en ding o f the n o vel w as im posed on M erril b y D ou bleday to conform to the needs o f the Fam ily Book Club (Seed 1997b: 13). In the D o u bled ay edition the doctor brings in a w o u n d ed man w h o G ladys agrees to nurse, id e n tifyin g him in the last line: 'It's Jon, y o u k n o w . He came hom e'. The restored 1966 tex t drops this co n servative return to w ife ly d u ty and ends on a more som bre and open q u ery: 'Isn 't an yth in g safe?' Paul Brians argues that the novel can be read a m b igu ou sly as either antifem inist or fem inist (Brians 1987a: 259). These are rather false alternatives, h o w ev er, since Shadow on the Hearth u n p icks the official line on secu rity w ith its requirem ent o f acquiescence to describe a su rvivalism im provised from d ay to day. By contrast its t v drama adaptation, Atom ic A tta ck , syn chron ises the fortunes o f the fam ily w ith the progress o f the w ar th ro u gh a com mon trium phalism . Both the film and novel w ere su b seq u en tly used b y civ il defence organisations.5

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P ub lic fear o f nuclear attack reached its first peak d urin g the Berlin blockad e and w ith the o u tb reak o f the Korean W ar. In 1949 chairm an D avid L ilienthal com plained about the 'h orror stories' o f nuclear w ar (Boyer 1994: 306—7), early version s o f w h at M erril w as to call 'atom -doom ' fiction (Clareson 1971:73). The reassuring aec

gospel o f preparedness w as bein g prom oted b y scientists lik e Ralph Lapp and R ichard G erstell, the latter's How to Survive an A tom ic Bomb recom m ending recitin g jin g le s if 'it' h appened. The same year that Shadow on the Hearth appeared a Collier's article 'H iroshim a u s a ' d escribed a nuclear attack on N ew Y o rk but offset the disaster b y recom m ending civ il defence training on the British m odel.6 It w as such training that W illiam T en n satirised in his 'G eneration o f N oah' (w ritten 1949) w h ere a sadistic father drills his ch ildren to recite their fate if th ey d on 't run to the fam ily shelter in tim e. The son k n o w s his lines: 'I'd bu rn lik e the head o f a m atch. A n ' - an' the on ly th in g left o f me w o u ld be a dark spot on the g ro u n d shaped like m y sh ad ow ' (Tenn 1968: 14). T en n sardon ically contrasts the fath er's p reparatory m easures (the 'scien tific w a y ' - one o f the earliest descriptions o f nuclear su rvivalism ) w ith his w ife 's scepticism . W h en the bom b drops it is the ch ildren that in d u ce his prom ise n ever to pu n ish them again. In the b o y 's w o rd s ju s t qu oted the central m etaphor o f M erril's n o vel is being transform ed into the nuclear im age o f hum an absence used in R ay B rad b u ry's 1950 sto ry 'T h ere W ill Come Soft Rains' (su bsequ en tly the penultim ate piece in The M artian Chronicles). A house stands alone amid rub ble after a nuclear w ar and on its w estern w all, that facing the im plied bom b blast, is im prin ted a scene: Here the silhouette in paint o f a man m ow in g a law n. Here, as in a photograph, a wom an bent to p ick flow ers. Still farther over, their im ages burned on w o o d in one titanic instant, a small b o y, hands flu ng into the air; higher up, the im age o f a th row n ball, and oppo­ site him a girl, hands raised to catch a ball w h ich never came d ow n .7 The an alo gy is p o in ted ly ironic because a p h otograph w o u ld be a m em ento o f a fam ily past, w h ereas here the house itself has becom e a trace on w h ich are im printed the signs o f form er hum an a c tiv ity to be seen o n ly b y a notional o bserver. L ike a p aro d y o f autom ation, the house continues to fu n ctio n on a d aily tim etable lon g d efu n ct u ntil it catches fire, re-enactin g the death o f the co llective fam ily b o d y. The story ends au sterely w ith a d aw n b rin gin g n oth ing n ew and not a last su rviv o r, but a last electron ic vo ice repeatin g the date o f that death o ver and o ver into a vo id .

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(in) W h ile real d ou bt is expressed in the preced ing w o rk s about the nature o f hum an continuation, a su rviv alist ethic is practised in Pat Fran k's A la s, Babylon (1959) b y transform ing a home into a m iniature com m unity. Frank locates his account o f nuclear w ar in the small Florida to w n o f Fort Repose w h ich he, lik e P h ilip W y lie , attacks for p u b lic com placen cy. C ivil defence booklets w ere n ever d istribu ted around Fort Repose because th e y w ere felt to be 'too gruesom e' and once the attack takes place the result is im m ediate looting and the sort o f clogged roads d escribed sardonically in W ard M oore's 'L ot' (1953). A c c o rd in g ly w h en w ar does break out the result is chaos: The people o f Fort Repose had no w a y o f k n o w in g it, but establishm ents on the arterial h ig h w a y s leading d ow n both coasts, and crisscrossing betw een large cities, had sw iftly been stripped o f ev ery th in g . From the tim e o f the Red A lert, the h ig h w a y s had been jam m ed w ith carloads o f refugees, seeking asylu m th ey k n e w not w here. (Frank 1976: 117) A s a professional jou rn alist, Frank is more concerned to g iv e the reader inform ation (his p rotagon ist's brother co n v e n ie n tly happens to be a s a c intelligen ce officer) than to lim it his narrative to characters' p erceptu al horizons, and the n o vel has been praised for m aking 'p ictu res out o f statistics'.8 The im provisation al skills Frank w ishes to prom ote in v o lv e him in a co n trad ictory treatm ent o f nuclear w ar. Chapter 6 o f the n o vel opens w ith a discussion o f 'T he D ay' as the nuclear attack becom es k n o w n , contrasting it w ith p revio u s w ars in that the exch an ge fin ished w ith in a d ay and most casualties saw noth ing at all 'since th ey died in bed, in a m illisecond slipping from sleep into deeper d arkness' (Frank 1976: 123). This grim account suggests that Fort Repose is one o f the few lu c k y en claves o f su rviv o rs and it is made even more o f a special case b y being rela tively exem pt from fa llo u t.9 N evertheless h isto ry is brou gh t in b y Frank (the Sem inole w ars, W orld W ar II, etc.) as a repertoire o f actions w h ich can be repeated to cope w ith the n ew situation. Thus w e are told at one and the same time that nuclear w ar is a uniqu e even t inaccessible to civ il defence and that it is the w orst instance in a series o f w ars that require essen tially traditional in itiatives to be taken. F ran k's characters have to su rv iv e, bu t th ey are confronted w ith selected problem s: p rim arily the closure o f utilities and the b reak d o w n in law and

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order. O f fallout w e hear v ir tu a lly nothing; one rare (and m oralised) excep tio n is a local man w h o dies after lootin g 'h ot' je w e lle ry . The k e y residential units in A la s, Babylon are the to w n and the neigh bo u rh o od , not the single home. Indeed R a n d y's house is lin ked w ith three others sy m b o lica lly b y an artesian w ater system and his house opens its doors to the w ife and tw o ch ildren o f his brother, and later to his fu tu re w ife. Fam ily bonds shade into other bonds o f n ecessity w h ere a character becom es id en tified w ith his or her practical skills. So A d m iral H azzard supplies the gro u p w ith their ears on the outside w o rld th ro u gh his sh o rt-w ave radio, and their A frican -A m erican n eigh b o u rs the H enrys su p p ly liv esto ck and arable crops. A n ew regim en is d evised w h e re b y each m em ber o f the exten d ed fam ily w o rk s long hours and, most im portant o f all, a self-defence system is bu ilt up to p rotect the gro u p against savage p red ato ry animals and eq u a lly p red ato ry 'h ig h w a y m e n ' w h o 'filter' into the area rather like radiation w h ich , D avid D o w lin g argues, o n ly figu res 'in a moral gu ise'(D o w lin g 1987: 91). W h en a m em ber o f the g ro u p is w o u n d ed , the resu ltin g operation, carried out on a billiard table w ith steak k n iv es, becom es a ritual o f com m unal aid: R and y put them [his instrum ents] into the pot to boil. A fter that, at D an's direction he pu t in his fine-nosed fish in g pliers. Florence W ech e k ran across the road for darning needles. Lib fou n d metal hair clips that w o u ld clam p an artery. (Frank 1976: 276) If the g ro u p represents the nation in m iniature — and it is su rely no coincid ence that the son should be called Ben Franklin - then a cherished national id e o lo g y is bein g tacitly asserted here o f coop erative im provisation . Frank anticipates later su rviv alist w riters like Dean Ing b y breakin g d ow n disaster into a series o f discrete, m anageable and essen tially practical, problem s. U nlike the other fiction exam in ed in this chapter then Frank does not focus on the fam ily itse lf but instead uses the house as a m iniature com m unity centre w h ere su rv iv o rs w ith a co n ven ien t array o f skills can gather to m aintain a tenuous civil order. A sign o f F ran k's d ifferent use o f this location is the dim inished presence o f ch ildren w h o, as w e shall n o w see, bear the crucial role o f ca rryin g the nuclear narrative fo rw a rd into an im aginable fu tu re.

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( IV )

One of the most thou g h tfu l treatm ents of nuclear w ar can be found in Helen C larkson's The L ast D ay (1959), w hich describes the experiences of a m iddle-aged couple holidaying on an island off the M assachusetts coast. The attack happens soon after their arrival and the novel describes the gradual spread of deadly fallout on the w ind w hich dem onstrates the u tter uselessness of civil defence measures. The novel was endorsed on its cover by Senator Clinton P. Anderson, Chairman of the Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, who had for years been accusing the a e c of w ithholding inform ation on fallout, as helping to inject a Tittle diet of realism ' into the nuclear d eb ate.10 C larkson's means of entering that debate is to concept­ ualise as m any issues as arise im m ediately after a nuclear attack. The L ast D ay is in th at respect a dialogue novel narrated by Lois the wife, b ut dispersing narrative authority th ro u g h some half-dozen characters all of w hich die. The novel ends w ith the im pending death of the narrator herself. The foregrounding of hum an ration­ ality th ro u g h dialogue sets up a context for the nuclear attack w hich is represented as a trium ph of unreason, anticipated in the ab ru p t transition on the radio betw een a French political commentary and sheer noise, an 'electric m utter like the m um bling of a m adm an' (Clarkson 1959: 41). The blast itself is described as an unnatural daw n, not Prom ethean pace early com m entators bu t an 'idiot glare' w hich ru p tu res the observer's cognitive frame (the 'fam iliar limits of all normal dimensions'). It creates a kind of species casualty: 'Time was bleeding to death, second by second, and we could do nothing to staunch the flow from that mortal w ound' (Clarkson 1959: 44). If time becomes identified w ith the blood of life then the novel's chapter titles appropriately count us dow n to the ending of all life ('The First Day', 'The Second Day', etc.) and this damage affects language itself. The narrator reflects: 'W hat can you say in a gram ­ mar th at has lost its future tense?' (Clarkson 1959: 147). Unlike M erril and Frank, Clarkson describes fragile w ooden dwellings vulnerable to nuclear blast even from a distance. There is no place to hide from the coming fallout. 'Hom e' then becomes a place w hich the n arrator can only reconstitute in her mem ory and by the end of the novel this perception has been generalised into a massive figure of hum an absence: 'N ow the whole earth was a house haunted by all that had ever been' (ibid.: 179). Already Clarkson has achieved elegy w here the narrator speaks for a collectively defunct hum an family. In order to em phasise the austerity of her vision Clarkson pits her narrative dialogically against Nevil Shute's best-seller On the Beach

64

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(1957) w h ich is im p licitly criticised for persistent sexu al puritanism: 'w h a t a cu ltu re w e liv e in ', a w om an exclaim s, 'a cu ltu re w h ere lo v e is " d ir ty " and a h u n d red m egaton bom b is " c le a n "' (Clarkson 1 959 : 9°)* The tw in n ed allusion to Shute and the debate over 'clean' bom bs (w hich Clinton A n d erso n opposed) bears on the form er's sanitised version o f radiation death. By contrast, Clarkson takes the reader th ro u gh a detailed and authen tic sequence o f sym ptom s from nausea to total loss o f b o d ily control. W h en th e y repair th eir radio her hopes translate th em selves tem porarily into an im agined fu tu re narrative: W e w o u ld radio. Som eone w o u ld send a plane. A n d some d ay some o f those children w o u ld reb u ild the w o rld , a w o rld w h ere no one w o u ld ever m ake w ar again. T h e y cou ld n e ver fo rget w h at had happened this tim e. T here w o u ld be the m utants to rem ind them in each generation. (Clarkson 1959: 123) But w h en the radio is got in w o rk in g order, the resu ltin g silence m akes that hope (and that n arrative o f rescue) collapse. The n o vel co n stan tly com poses and decom poses possible narratives o f sur­ v iv a l w h ich becom e more and m ore tenuous as ch ildren and w om en die off. Since, as one character rem arks, these tw o gro u p s represent the 'fu tu re m ade flesh ', then an u n u su a lly literal iden tificatio n is established betw een children and a possible story o f su rviv al. The problem o f an en ding, param ount in nuclear w ar fiction , is them atised here th ro u gh a com plaint b y one character: I b elieve the most dangerous A m erican tradition is the cu lt o f the h a p p y en ding. W e ju st can 't believe that an yth in g really bad can happen at the end o f our story. W e ex p ect the goin g to be rou gh at the begin n in g and in the m iddle, but w e h ave absolute faith that e v e ry th in g w ill turn out all rig h t in the end, no m atter w h at w e do. (Clarkson 1959: 37) The n o vel therefore not o n ly dram atises an en ding bu t also co n cep ­ tualises en dings in order to rid icu le a recu rren t national narrative reliant on 'some flu k e or gim m ick'. C larkson 's n o vel then culm inates its polem ical force b y ch allen gin g the paradigm id en tified above. M erril finesses o ver the possible return o f G la d y s's husband; Frank introd u ces rescue and then denies it as a prelud e to a 'th o u san d -year n ig h t'; Clarkson even turns her setting into an en din g, transform ing the beach from p lay g ro u n d into the site o f ev o lu tio n a ry d em ise.11 Lois, as m other

V iew s

and narrator, functions as Szilard and Peter George in hypothesises 'o th er beings hu m an ity 's self-destructive

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65

the doubled originator and, like Leo the frame to the novel Dr. Strangelove, in other w orlds' out of despair over impulses.

Bearing posthum ous w itness sim ilarly m otivates Carol A m en 's 1981 jo u rn a l narrative 'T h e Last Testam ent' w h ich is fra n k ly revisio n a ry, qu estioning presupposition s and im agery from consen­ sus perceptions o f nuclear w ar. Her account reads rather lik e an upd ated version o f Shadow on the Hearth w ith o u t the em ergency radio instruction s. N arrated b y a h o u sew ife liv in g near San Francisco w h ose h usban d is absent at w o rk , this story foregroun ds m othering as a tw o -w a y process o f d ependence and p rivile ges m om ents o f bon d in g w ith other children and other m oth ers.12 N oth in g could be fu rther from a su rviv alist ethic than A m en 's jou rn al w h ich progresses b y an internal dialogue betw een despair and an im perative for the 'record to be accu rate'. A s the num ber o f deaths rises, the 'destin ation' o f her narrative becom es in creasin gly d ifficu lt to id e n tify. A t some points addressing her absent h usband, at others a p o sterity about to be erased, the jou rn al cannot conclude. L ike R o sh w ald 's Level 7 it breaks o ff in the m iddle o f a statem ent 'I w ish — ', a half-form ulated expression o f desire.

(V) The pieties of civil defence campaigns th at the family will rem ain a social nucleus and th at the house will stay a refuge are contested th ro u g h o u t this fiction, sometimes to negative effect. W ard M oore's 'Lot' (1953)/ for instance, describes the unravelling of the family un it during a post-nuclear evacuation of Californian cities. Hostilities betw een its mem bers culm inate in the father driving off w ith his daughter. The sequel 'L ot's D aughter' (1954) set several years later, describes a travesty family w here the father and d au g h ter's child is sim ply labelled 'th e boy'. A dialogue w ith earlier survival narratives [Robinson Crusoe, The Adm irable Crichton) presents the father as a cynical anti-hero, recognising his incom ­ petence: 'th e heroic fictional man [homo gernsbacchae) w ould have found the house, rounded up the cattle, started all over' (Moore I 954: I2 )- Bert the father is no such figure, rationalising his few selfish actions as 'unsentim ental'. No coherent narrative of survival emerges and indeed the story begins and ends bathetically w ith the fath er's tooth-ache. M oore's stories and a num ber of later narratives deny the idealisation of the home. Nicholas von Hoffm an's 'The

A

66

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Brahms L u lla b y' (1982) describes a com m uter villa ge hou sew ife's preoccupation w ith social routine and sexual fantasies against a b ack gro u n d o f East—W est com bat in central Europe in effect ridicu ­ ling narratives like Carol A m en 's. N uclear W ar is e xp ected rather than experien ced in this story and Tim O 'B rien's The Nuclear Age (1985) w here the protagonist acts out his fears o f w ar b y d ig g in g a hole in the fam ily yard. Fantasy o f control? Sign o f madness or construction o f a nuclear shelter? T he m eaning o f the act remains am biguous as does the narrator's bizarre confinem ent o f daughter and w ife to their house. U n d o u b te d ly the bleakest deconstruction o f the home comes in the 1983 t v m ovie The Day A fter w h ich ju xta p o ses shots o f missile silos w ith

house

basements,

both

em bedded

in the

A m erican

heartlands. The id y ll o f farm ing life literally conceals a m ilitary infrastructure w h ich makes Kansas a priority target. W h e n w ar does break out it im pacts w ith particular force on the families w hose lives w e have been w atch in g. A s new s o f the w o rld crisis reaches the stage o f national alert, characters' reactions are to head for home. But the nuclear blasts dem onstrate the p h ysical frailty o f d w ellin gs and separate lo ved ones th rou gh traum atic m em ory loss. T he situation deteriorates even further. A farmer tells fu g itives 'this is m y hom e' im m ediately before being shot and there is no local restoration o f civic order a la Pat Frank. T he film 's conclusion denies the return pattern used b y A lfre d Coppel and others. Doctor Russ Oaks picks th rough the ru bb le o f Kansas C ity, then tells a group o f fu g itives 'get out o f m y house', but there is no identifiable b u ild in g visib le and the demise o f the home has been lin ked icon ically

to the

doom

o f the

nation th rough

the

u biq uitou s

A m erican flags in the first h alf o f the film. T he fam ily, in common w ith all other institutions, has failed its integrating role and the home been totally erased.13

N o te s

1. Winkler, 1984. For comment on early civil defence see Boyer 1994:

319- 33 * 2. Holt 1990-1: 209-10. Cf. Edward Bryant's 'Jody after the War' (1971; collected in Miller and Greenberg 1987) where the desire of two contaminated lovers is blocked by fears of radiation sickness (explicit subject) and also by suppressed guilt feelings over Hiroshima and Nagasaki where they too have become 'survivors'. 3. See Theodore Sturgeon, 'Prodigy' (1947, collected in Caviar [1955]);

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H uxley, Ape and Essence (1949); Andre Norton, Star Man's Son (1952); and Lester Del Rey, The n t h Commandment (1962). Robert Silverberg's anthology Mutants (1974) is also useful. 4. Letter to David Bradley, 19 February 1949, M erril papers, Canadian National A rchives, Ottawa. 5. For an account o f the identification in this period betw een nuclear energy and rampant sexuality, w here the home offered a means of containment as w ell as shelter, see M ay 1988: 9 2 -113 . 6. Ralph Lapp's Must We Hide? (1949) and Gerstell's 1950 booklet are discussed in Boyer 1994: 3 14-5 and 323-5. Lapp was later to achieve fame w ith his account o f the Japanese fishermen contaminated by fallout after the Pacific H. bomb tests The Voyage o f the Lucky Dragon (1957). Lear, 1950. 7. Bradbury 1983: 206. One o f the more famous Hiroshima photographs showing the forms o f a ladder and soldier im printed on a house w all is reproduced in N igel Calder's Nuclear Nightmares (1979). 8. M agill 1 9 7 9 :1: 4 1.In his article on nuclear fiction Frank declared: 'The novelist w ho chooses a nuclear subject should not be awed by technical com plexities, but the facts he sets down on paper must be accurate' (Frank i960: 25). He had already dealt w ith Soviet attempts to trigger a nuclear war by sabotage in Forbidden Area (1956: uic title 7 Days to Never). 9. Cf. the valley microclimate in Robert C. O 'Brien's Z for Zachariah (1975) w here a teenage girl is the sole survivor o f her fam ily after a nuclear war. Her home is then occupied by a former radiologist w ho attempts a double violation through sexual assault and shooting, p artly to purge his gu ilt from his w ork. Here the valley functions as a home place, liable to invasion by radiation or rampant males and is left behind finally w hen the girl sets out to hunt for other survivors. 10. Towards the end o f the novel the arms race is satirised as a soap opera sponsored by the a e c . The entire novel draws on the 1957 congress­ ional hearings o f the a e c on fallout and continues w ithin its pages the debate w h ich was happening in the Bulletin o f the Atomic Scientists. The latter was the source o f a character citing Sir John Slessor on the desirability o f abolishing war, for instance. 11. W . W arren W agar has described this location as the 'favourite zone for secular eschatologists, m arking the point o f transition from land to ocean,

from

man's

active

life

as

an

air-breather

to

amniotic

unconsciousness and oblivion ' (Wagar 1982: 188). 12. The 1983 film adaptation Testament makes the role o f children even more explicit b y setting the action in the tow n o f Hamlin and having as school play The Pied Piper o f Hamelin. 13. Cf. Peter Jeffrey and Michael O'Toole's cogent analysis in Chilton 1985: 167-18 1.

Cultures of Surveillance

In the 1984 o f Big Brother one w o u ld at least k n o w w h o the en em y w as (W illiam H. W h y te , 1956)

(i)

In the last chapter the hom e w as rep eated ly tested out as a site for post-n uclear su rviv al. H o w ever effe ctiv e the home w as as a refu ge, M erril, Frank and others sh o w the co n tin u in g need for com m uni­ cation w ith the authorities th ro u gh radio. The use o f a visu al m edium , h o w ev er, carries w ith it a cru cially d ifferent dim ension o f control rather than inform in g. O rw e ll's W in sto n Sm ith begins his d ay fo llo w in g prescribed exercises on his telescreen and at the same tim e is o b served b y it. T here is a clear line from 'p an op ticism ', the social system o f su rveillan ce w h ich M ichel Foucault describes in Discipline and Punish, to such Cold W ar d evices as O rw e ll's tw o w a y telescreen or the 'S p y -E y e ' satellite described in T h eodore Stu rgeo n 's 'U nite and C onqu er' (1953). Both are d esigned to p rod u ce total visib ility : 'T h ere n e ed n 't be a single spot on the glo be u n o b serv ed ' (Sturgeon 1955b: 16). The all-seeing eye o f God is secularised into a political nightm are o f total control w h ere the fig u re o f visu al o bservation signifies a w h o le elaborate system o f m onitoring and docum entation. P hilip K. D ick 's Eye in the Sky (1957) m akes this application ex p licit b y opening w ith a California scientist being told that his w ife has been classified as a com pan y secu rity risk. He w itnesses the end result, an f b i in vestigation into his w ife w h ich loses him his jo b because o f the mere p o ssib ility that she has been associating w ith left-w in g organisations. T he b u reau ­ cratic dem onstration o f su rveillan ce is then sh ow n as affect w h e n a character experien ces a fantasy o f ascent, o n ly to see a g igan tic eye w a tch in g him. The gaze entraps him as he tries 'fu tile ly to p ry him self loose from the field o f visio n ' (Dick 1979: 95). 68

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This system o f surveillance — literally 'loo kin g over' — receives its classic form ulation in Nineteen Eighty-Four w h ich rap id ly became the exem p lary te x t for describing the militarisation and centrali­ sation o f A m erican life into the 'quasi-dictatorship' Philip W y lie iden tified as early as 19 51, being cited in W illiam H. W h y te 's stu d y o f the corporate ethic The Organization Man, and Vance Packard's account o f m otivational research The Hidden Persuaders. Lew is M um ford declared in 1954 that the w orld o f Big Brother was 'already u ncom fortably clear' and, con tribu tin g to a 1962 Partisan Review sym posium , the sociologist D avid Riesman attributed the p op u larity o f Orw ellian dystopias to the Bomb: 'W h e n governm ents have pow er to exterm inate the globe, it is not surprising that antiUtopian novels, like Nineteen Eighty-Four, are popular, w hile utopian political th o u gh t ... nearly disappears' (Riesman 1964: 95-6). O rw ell was crucially influenced in the p lanning o f his n o vel b y James Burnham's Managerial Revolution w h ich described the rise o f centralised bureaucratic superstates on the Stalinist or N azi models. O rw ell in turn anticipated Burnham's subsequent revisions b y id e n tify in g a n ew dark age w here superpow ers w ill confront each other in d efin itely and use the mere threat o f the n ew bom b to suppress satellites into acquiescence (Orwell 1970: 26). In The Struggle

fo r the W orld (1947), so as to be 'in accord w ith the revolution ary "nuclear age'" (Burnham 1947: 34), Burnham simplifies world political ge o grap h y into a struggle b etw een tw o exp an sive pow ers where the problem o f control is identified totally w ith the issue o f w h o has a m o nopoly o f atomic bom bs. W e are already, Burnham insists, liv in g in W orld W ar III w h ich has reached an 'e xp lo sive state' that w ill almost certainly break out into open hostilities w ith in the n ext fiv e years. For all his reservations about Burnham's analysis (too ap ocalyp tic, exclu sion o f dem ocratic socialism, etc.), O rw ell w o v e the form er's conception o f p ow er blocs m aintained on a perm anent war into his n o vel (cf Reaves 1984). In Nineteen Eighty-Four war has become a rationale for official p olicy, a catch-all justification for domestic measures and — most im portantly — a means o f dissociating the d a y -to -d a y lives o f the citizens from participation in control. A s M u rray N.

R othbard has pointed out, a 'perpetual cold w ar'

underpinned O rw ell's nightmare: the 'entrenchm ent o f totalitar­ ianism' (Rothbard 1986: 3). There are hints that the n o vel is describing the aftermath o f a nuclear war. T he 1954 b b c t v m ovie makes this unam biguous b y opening w ith shots o f nuclear explosions and then panning across a ruined London. Colchester has been bom bed, w e are told in the novel,

but since all inform ation on present events is h e a vily

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m ediated it is qu ite possible that the cu rren t w ar is a fiction . Big Brother reflects this prim acy o f sign o ver referent in being an icon w h o se p o w er is located in the eyes. One o f the cruellest ironies in the n o vel occurs w h en Julia declares 'th e y can 't get inside y o u ' (O rw ell 1989: 174) w h en o f course the entire n arrative dem onstrates that th e y can. No space, dom estic or p sych ic, is inaccessible to the gaze o f the state w h ich is 'so cially totalitarian' in Burnham 's phrase and this is sh o w n to be a con d ition o f lan guage. N ew sp eak o b v io u s ly represents an attem pt to bring lan gu age (and therefore thought) under total control, but so far o n ly w ith in the co n tex t o f official statem ents. E arly in the n o vel W in sto n Sm ith recogn ises a more ch illin g characteristic o f 'd o u b leth in k ': 'co n scio u sly to induce u nconsciousness, and then, once again, to becom e u ncon scious o f the act o f h yp n o sis y o u had ju s t perform ed ' (O rw ell 1989: 37—8). T h ro u g h such a process state id e o lo g y can becom e to ta lly in tern al­ ised, w h ich is w h at has happened in Sm ith's case. T w o prin ciples — o f state p o w er and o f the citizen 's g u ilt - operate th ro u gh o u t Sm ith's co vert acts, even w h en th e y seem on the surface to represent disobedience. T hu s he records in his diary: 'it had got to be w ritten dow n, it had got to be confessed' (O rw ell 1989: 71), as if in a trial already happen in g. Since Sm ith's jo b is the m odification o f the 'historical' record, he k n o w s better than most the exten t o f the state's cap acity to m anipulate the record and this consciousness desubstantialises his self into a gh ost w ritin g for a fu tu re readership that w ill p ro b ab ly n ever exist. Sm ith has recogn ised his o w n ty p ic a lity as 'crim inal' from v ir tu a lly the first page and the narra­ tiv e becom es a confirm ation o f the expectatio n s o f arrest. W h en it happens there is alm ost relief: 'it w as starting, it w as starting at last!' (Orwell 1989: 230). Once the process o f interrogation gets under w a y , O 'Brien takes on the roles o f a 'doctor, a teacher, even a priest, an xiou s to exp lain and persuade rather than p u n ish ' (O rw ell 1989: 237). O 'Brien thus enacts the trip le an alo gy o f dissidence w ith illness, error and sin, dem olishing Sm ith's presum ptions about reality in order to dem onstrate Burnham 's point that the state pursues p o w er as an end in itself. Nineteen Eighty-Four su p p lied im ages w h ich reinforced popu lar h o stility to Stalinism in the us A (Solberg 1973: 45) and h elped also to define a narrative paradigm for p o stw ar A m erican dystopias. The starting point is u su a lly a strong centralised state w ith the protagonist situated in stitu tio n a lly w ith in the p o w er structure. One or m ore characters (Julia and Sym e) act as catalysts to bring the latent dissatisfactions o f the protagonist to the surface alth o u gh his 'd issid en ce' rem ains am biguous th ro u gh o u t. Once the p rotagonist

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Su r v e il l a n c e

7i

has m anifested his restiven ess he places h im self at odds w ith the law and is liable to arrest w h ich serves as a prelud e to exten d ed interrogation.

(ii) A totalitarian secu rity apparatus w as not u su ally d escribed as an im ported system so m uch as a w arp in g o f A m erican institutions. The fifties p rod u ced a num ber o f specific parodies o f M cC arth y and his w itch -h u n ts. Black-listed m athem atician Chandler D avis's 'Last Y ear's G rave U n d u g' (w ritten 1952-3) looks fo rw ard to the im ­ m ediate afterm ath o f a nuclear w ar w ith dead m em bers o f a L o y a lty L egion sp raw led in the ruins still clu tchin g p led ges containing the H ouse U n-A m erican A ctiv itie s Com mittee (h u a c ) form ulaic denial o f m em bership o f the Com m unist P arty. The sto ry a ctu a lly narrates a recu rren ce o f M cC arth yism arising from the need for scapegoats. 'T h in g s are goin g lou sy, and the lousier th ey go the more Reds there m ust be to cause it all', declares one character, 'so get out a new L o y a lty Legion and h ave another rat h u n t' (Conklin 1962: 117). R ichard C ondon 's The Manchurian Candidate (1959) m ounts an ex ten d ed p a ro d y o f M cC arthy, d epictin g him as the incom petent m outhpiece o f his M achiavellian w ife (see Seed 1997a: 546—50); and Delm ore Sch w artz in 'T h e H artford Innocents' takes a school as a m icrocosm o f A m erica w h ere a ranting fascistic senator is faced d ow n b y a y o u n g g irl's insistence on freed o m .1

The most sustained satire on the security state occurs in James Blish's They Shall Have Stars (1956), the opening volum e of his Cities in Flight sequence, w hich he later adm itted devoted 'about a th ird of its w ordage to a personal attack on the late Sen. M cC arthy' (Blish 1970: 34). The novel describes the f b i m onitoring of a research project on space flight w hich is being pursued by a Dr Corsi, clearly m odelled on J. R obert Oppenheim er. Not only does his nicknam e resem ble the other's ('Seppi'/'O ppie'), but he too undergoes questioning on his activities. D uring his revision of the novel Blish added an epigraph from O ppenheim er on the dangers of secrecy.2 The im agery of detective fiction is introduced in the opening lines of the novel: 'The shadows flickered on the walls to his left and right, ju s t inside the edges of his vision, like shapes stepping quickly back into invisible doorways' (Blish 1968: 13). These shadows represent the subm arginal signs of f b i surveillance; like their hid d en m icrophones, the presence of agents is assum ed rather than perceived. The year is 2013 and the Am erican space program m e has

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v irtu a lly gro u n d to a halt than ks to C ongress's caution o ver ap pro­ priations and the d iv isiven ess o f the secu rity apparatus p resided o ver b y Francis X avier M acH in ery, h ered itary head o f the fb i and political p u gilist extrao rd in ary: 'T h o u g h he w o u ld h ave been easy to dismiss on first glance as a not v e ry bright truck driver, M acH inery w as as fu ll o f cu n n in g as a w o lv e r in e '.3 T h ro u g h o u t this n o vel inform ation is a com m odity w h ich confers p o w er and therefore has to be m onitored en d lessly b y M acH in ery and his cronies, w ith the fo llo w in g result: 'In the A g e o f Defence to k n o w w as to be suspect, in the W est as in the u s s r ; the tw o great nation -com plexes had been becom ing m ore and more alike in their treatm ent o f " se c u rity " for the past fifty years' (Blish 1968: 37). The m ain casu alty o f the n o vel is a senator w h o su icid ally w rite s to Corsi about a co n sp iracy, th ere b y sealing his o w n fate: 'if one is sensible about such m atters these d ay s', he w rites, 'one n ever puts an y th in g on paper at all' (Blish 1968: 133). But he does so and his su bsequ en t death confirm s that at least part o f the n o v e l's te x t has been su bject to the su rveillan ce w h ich is its subject. In such narratives, D avid Pun ter points out, 'the te x t itse lf ... is im plicated in the process o f surveillance, and has to perform increasingly complicated m anoeuvres to a vo id entanglem ent in a m ilitary/com m ercial co m p le x' (Punter x9 ^5 : 97 )* Senator W a go n er's title im plicates him in the A m erican p o w er structure but his name also signifies a constellation. So w h ile he textualises his v e ry cell w all in the novel's coda b y inscribing 'every end is a n ew b e g in n in g " (Blish 1968: 181), he em bodies the fu tu re o f a space flig h t as a dream o f escape from the secu rity state. He cannot avo id becom ing part o f the 'p ile-d u m p ' o f B rookh aven N ational Laboratories (a detail added b y Blish), bu t he can express the y ea rn ­ ing for flig h t from a w o rld w h ere the loss o f freedom o f inform ation is sym ptom atic o f the loss o f other freedoms. Blish takes an u nu su ally long historical v ie w in this n o vel, locating the action w ith in a Spenglerian era o f dead belief-system s and bu reau cratisation.4

( in ) R eview ing Nineteen Eighty-Four, Philip Rahv declared that it explored the 'p sy c h o lo g y o f capitu lation' (M eyers 1975: 270) since th ro u gh the process o f interrogation d ystopias critiq u e the nature o f the regim es' ideological enforcem ent. The most sustained dram atisation o f the an alogy betw een political correction and p sych o th e ra p y occurs in D avid K arp's One (1953). A lth o u g h its re view e rs con­ stan tly com pared the n o vel w ith Nineteen Eighty-Four, it w as more

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d irectly m odelled on A rth u r K oestler's Darkness at Noon (1940). 'If I h ave a literary paren t', Karp has stated, 'it's K o estler'.5 Like its predecessor, One takes place o verw h elm in g ly in interiors — meal halls, offices, conference room s and so on. The protagonist is a college professor o f E nglish (so an ex p ert on words), ex p ert lipreader and police sp y, reportin g to the D epartm ent o f Internal Exam ination on a regu lar basis. The agent o f su rveillan ce becom es him self a su bject for in vestigation w h en Burden undergoes an exten d ed interrogation during w h ich his buried feelin gs about his relation to the state are revealed. Karp repeats O rw ell's fo regro u n d in g o f o rth o d o x y, not as an a ch ieved state but as an internalised self-censoring process w h ich runs th ro u gh o u t B urden 's thoughts: 'E ven i f heresies had been reported against them [his sons] noth ing w o u ld be done to harm them . Harm? hurt? Punish, punishm ent, p u n itive - again and again during the day the w o rd s came to m ind. W h at could he be th in k in g even to let such w o rd s enter his th ou gh ts? There w as no punishm en t' (Karp 1967: l 8). A lth o u g h the state has abolished such terms to prom ote a ben ign id eolo gy, th ey recur in early dialogues, and B urden 's reprim anding o f him self anticipates the series o f qu estioning sessions he has to go th ro u gh w ith d ifferent officials. The state has a utopian purpose to id e n tify the good o f the in d ivid u a l w ith that o f the nation so that the pronom inal opposition in K oestler's n o vel betw een 'I' and 'w e ' is n o w expressed th ro u gh the am biguous sin gu larity o f K arp's title.6 Is Burden one o f m any or an in d ivid u a l? E ven on a gram m atical leve l it becom es d ifficu lt to answ er that question. Passive ve rb form s ('he had been told') blank out the origin o f actions all bearing on Burden situating him p assively; and no-one is more w illin g than he to use the official d iscourse o f 'h ere sy ' w h ich runs th ro u gh o u t the novel. B urden 's 'th erapist' is the state 'in q u isitor' Lark. He resem bles O 'Brien in com bining the roles o f in vestigator, teacher and doctor; he fu rth er u n co n scio u sly dem onstrates the p o w er p lay in his actions concealed b y the state id e o lo g y o f th erap y, boasting: 'I'll dig out his soul and squeeze it betw een m y fin gers' (Karp 1967: 60). T h rou g h L ark's p rob in g Burden is revealed to be liv in g out a schizoid existen ce as professor and fam ily man on one level, and inform er on the other. Burden's initial denials o f his h etero d o xy fit this pattern ex a ctly . It is o n ly u nder drugs that he comes to adm it that he is a heretic. Even this adm ission, h o w ev er, is prem ature and sim plistic. Karp shares K oestler's sense that 'tw en tieth -ce n tu ry man is a political neu ro tic' (Koestler L955: 2L5); he w ro te his later novel The Last Believers (L964), for instance, to attack the 'persistence o f

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the com m unist m y th o f a rational w o r ld '.7 Burden suffers from a lack o f congruence betw een life-style and b elief but, as his ques­ tioning

progresses,

there

emerges

an

u n exp ected

resem blance

betw een him self and his in vestigato r w h ich has im plications for the state itself. Just as Sm ith recognises a kin ship w ith O'Brien, so Lark sees his o w n earlier self in Burden and his in creasin gly violen t declarations o f intent ('I'm go in g to p ulverise this m an's id e n tity' [Karp 1967: 142]) represent attem pts at erasing his ow n past. Lark even admits at one point that he him self is a 'heretic'. Sim ilarly Burden is threatened w ith in definite c a p tiv ity or execu tion in the name o f benevolence. W h en one review er praised the novel's drama­ tisation o f the 'con flict b etw een the helpless, insignifican t man and the dem oniac forces against him ' (Smith 1953: 29), he w as grea tly sim p lifyin g an u nresolved paradox w ith in the state's id eo lo gy. T he culm ination o f B urden's question ing is his sym bolic death w h ich is enacted th rou gh a substitute funeral (like the televised k illin g o f M ontag in B radb u ry's Fahrenheit 451), and his rebirth w ith the n ew name as H ughes. W ith o u t understanding the origins o f heresy, Lark shapes a n ew id e n tity for Burden w h o registers both a sense o f v ita lity ( ju s t as if I had been born all over again' [Karp

1967: 225]) and o f estrangem ent: his n ew clothes are the 'b elon gin gs o f a corpse', his face in a mirror resem bles a 'death's head' (ibid.:

230). A s he makes n ew friends 'H u gh es' is taken to a m eeting o f the Church o f State ('all is one and one is all') but refuses to join , clin gin g

on

to

a

residual

in d ivid u a lity.

Lark's

experim ent

ultim ately fails because H ughes's integration is o n ly partial, and his execu tion is ordered. But w h at hangs on his fate? Damon K night fou nd a central w eakness o f the n o vel to be that 'the state cannot be ju d g e d , cannot be compared, and cannot frighten because it does not exist: it has not o n ly no name, b ut no history, no p h ilo sop h y, no doctrine peculiar to itself, no sym bols, no slogans, no catchphrases' (Knight

1954: 62). This criticism is unfou nd ed

because

Karp

dramatises the state under a single aspect: h ow it achieves the acquiescence o f its citizens. T he regime is described w ithou t cultural markers, but as the culm ination o f a process o f Am ericanisation w h ich reinforces national b on din g th rou gh a secular church w hose slogan explains the am b igu ity in the n o ve l's title. O n ly rarely does the in vestigato r him self become the protagonist in a dysto pia as happens in The Gates o f Ivory , the Gates o f Horn

(1957). T he poet Thom as M cG rath w as hauled before h u a c in 1952 and lost his college post w h e n he adm itted to left-w in g allegiances. In a statem ent to h u a c he accused the com m ittee o f creating a 'religion o f fear' (M cGrath 1982: 9) and uses his n o vel to attack a

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cu ltu re o f su rveillan ce. The Gates opens w ith a trial so anonym ous that characters o n ly bear role-nam es: In vestigator, Umpire, etc. O n ly in the m argins o f the tex t can w e glim pse signs o f resistance to the hegem onic discourse o f the system . W e are told, for instance, that the accused is 'lik e a w itch on a d u ckin g stool' (M cGrath 1987: 18) reflectin g M cG rath 's sense o f resem blance betw een political extrem ism and w itch cra ft.8 For all its claim o f tech nological m od ernity, the regim e practises a prim itive system o f co n victio n b y potential rather than actual gu ilt, w h ich even infects the In vestigator Carey. 'W h y did he feel g u ilty ? ' (M cGrath 1987: 29) w e are asked after an ap p aren tly successful trial. The narrative presents a series o f shocks rather than an early answ er. C arey is confronted w ith a ph oto grap h o f his tw in brother w h o is being in vestigated for sabotage; his office is b o ob y-trap p ed tw ice; and he smashes his 'con fessom ech' (an electronic d evice for takin g confessions) w h en it attem pts to inject him w ith tru th serum. He is egged on to reject the system b y a n eig h b o u rin g w riter w h o declares: 'W e liv e in a m achine so ciety' (M cGrath 1987: 70) but w h o has him self com ­ prom ised p rofession ally b y com posing 'spellcasts' (televised a d v e r­ tisements). The issue o f freedom is them atised in argum ents betw een the tw o; m eanw hile C arey's sense o f g u ilt is pu sh in g him into a paranoid obsession o f being under constant observation. By this point the roles o f O 'Brien and Sm ith h ave telescoped in C arey's d iv id ed consciousness w h o consults a gigan tic com puter ('S yb il') to learn the truth. The result is a series o f cry p tic state­ m ents leavin g him none the w iser. Carey g ra d u a lly loses contact w ith his su rrou nd ings, like Sm ith, and speculates on a co n sp iracy ly in g behind all the recent discrepancies in his exp erience. M cG rath takes the process o f su rveillan ce to its paranoid extrem e b y revealin g that Carey has been in vestigatin g him self. In the surreal clim ax to the n o vel, w hose title refers to the gates o f sleep from the Aeneid, C arey sits in darkness w ith a brigh t lig h t shining in his face w h ere a second vo ice reveals his o w n m echanised nature to him self. The result is not a p sych o logical insight, but a revelation o f the system : 'If ev ery o n e is g u ilty , either n o w or later, and if ev ery o n e is to be suspected, y o u w ill h ave to suspect y o u rse lf in the end' (M cG rath 1987: 125). O rw ell signals the arrest o f Sm ith and Julia as an appropriation o f their w o rd s into the 'iron vo ice ' o f the state. M cG rath in the nightm arish scene ju st d escribed collapses tw o voices together into a hom ology: ' You are me!' Carey exclaim s. Estrangem ent from the state system v iew e d as ritualised m agic can n ever turn into o vert criticism because Carey introjects his unease into a dialogue betw een tw o aspects o f his self-subject and object.

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The above identification of voices signs an Orwellian integration of the self back into the system and a reclosure of its ideology.

(IV) R eflectin g in 1958 on d evelopm ents since Brave N ew World, H u x le y posited a 'W ill to O rder' w h ich b rou g h t about a 'red u ctio n o f hum an d iv e rsity to subhum an u n ifo rm ity, o f freedom to se rv itu d e'. If the present is the 'era o f the social en gin eers', the n ext cen tu ry w ill be that o f the 'W o rld Controllers' (H u xley 1994: 31, 38). T he dom inant m etaphor in this co n text is the m achine, su g gestive at once o f a con trollin g elite and the redu ction o f the masses to dehum anised instrum ents. In his first n o vel Player Piano (1952) Kurt V o n n eg u t extrapolates ind u strial p rod u ctio n across the w h o le o f society. 'T his is a lonesom e so cie ty ', he has stated in interview , 'that's been fragm ented b y the factory system ' (Vonnegut 1975: 269). His n o vel is set in an era o f supposed p le n ty fo llo w in g the 'Last W a r'. D raw ing on his exp erien ces in the p u b lic relations section o f General Electric in Sch en ectady, V o n n egu t depicts the pow er-cen tre o f an ind u strial com bine, Ilium , as a conqu ered territory, echoing Caesar's Gallic Wars in the openin g lines o f his n ovel. Ilium , a syn ecd och e o f A m erica, d ivid es sp atially into three areas occu pied b y the m anagerial elite, the m achines and 'alm ost all the p eo p le'. D om inating this m ilitary-in d u strial com plex stands the battlem ented w o rks, patrolled b y arm ed guards. To the regim e the m achine em bodies an ideal o f social interfu n ctio n in g: N ational Classification Tests allot citizen s their 'b est' place in society. V o n n eg u t depicts a so ciety directed b y a tech nocratic elite w ith in w h ich the protagonist Paul Proteus is in itially a m iddle m anager. M echanisation o f his w o rld figu res as an endless series o f lo y a lty rituals disgu isin g the cost o f the system in term s o f hum an 'w aste'. Proteus — named after the shape-changer o f G reek m yth o lo gy - is called on to p rove his lo y a lty either to an old frien d or to the com pan y, and at this point begins to slip out o f his class. N o w the state secu rity apparatus, p re v io u sly o n ly im plied, begins to im pact on him. A s soon as he loses w o rk Proteus has to register w ith the police, not o n ly becom ing 'u n classified ', but labelled a potential saboteur. In the last th ird o f the n o ve l Proteus is je rk e d b ackw ard s and fo rw ard s betw een the com pan y (or state) and a secret dissident g ro u p w h o se m ethods u n co n scio u sly m irror the state's. T h u s he is interrogated under dru gs b y the dissidents, then charged w ith con ­ sp iracy in a televised sh ow trial. T h is redraw s the 1949 prosecu tion

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o f the A m erican Com m unist P arty Leadership as a L ud d ite conspir­ acy against the m achines. In the 1949 trial excerp ts from Lenin w ere read out as p ro o f o f incitem ent to violence. The p rosecu tion 's main evid en ce in Player Piano is an open letter w ritten b y the dissidents in P roteus' name rallyin g the w o rkers to take o ver the means o f p rod u ction . Proteus is thus scripted b y the m ovem ent into a leader's role w h ich m akes him personally dispensable: 'Y o u d on 't m atter ... y o u belong to H istory n o w ' (V onn egut 1977: 246). In contrast, for the com pan y he has to infiltrate the m ovem ent and then go on trial as 'sabo teu r'. The tw o grou p s d iffer in their choice o f m edium . For the m ovem ent he offers a name; for the state he offers a t v im age o f the conspirator w ired up th ro u gh the m ultiple sensors o f a lie detector, an im age w h ich encapsulates Proteus' entrapm ent w ith in a system from w h ich there is no escape. V o n n eg u t's satirical identification o f com pany w ith national interests, en forced b y a N ational S ecu rity A ct, approaches a leftw in g v ie w o f A m erica dom inated b y capital; but the resem blance betw een state and opposition (both bureaucratic, both use shirts as sym bols o f 'm em bership', both use the discourse o f efficiency) blocks an y hope o f utopian reversal. The o n ly use o f the term 'u to p ia' in the n o vel is to a p p ly it to the tem porary destruction during an u prising in Ilium w h ich is rap id ly put d ow n in a fresh dem onstra­ tion o f the h egem on y o f tech n o logy. Player Piano m akes no distin ction b etw een personnel m anage­ m ent and state adm inistration. E fficien cy is the criterion com mon to both. Social en gineerin g stands sim ilarly at the centre o f K. F. Crossen's Year o f Consent (1954), set tow ards the end o f the tw en tieth cen tu ry w h en the USA has exten d ed direct rule o ver the w h o le continent, ev en G reenland after a 'b rie f police action'. The state m aintains itself th ro u gh a m assive system o f cameras, bugs, and registration law s; a perm anent Com mittee on Su bversio n is ever read y to fin d 'evid en ce o f a n ew Com m unist co n sp ira cy ', and a giant com puter, s o c i a c w h ich coordinates all data on citizens. The most p o w erfu l w in g o f the adm inistration is s a c ('S ecu rity and Consent'), w hose acron ym suggests a transposition o f m ilitary secu rity on to dom estic politics, a kin d o f super-FBI w ith ap paren tly unlim ited pow ers. Com m unist dissidents are k ep t w ith in South Dakota in an area designated the 'Free State', a ctu ally rin ged like the R eservation in Brave New W orld w ith an electric fence. The Cold W ar labels persist, but anachronistically: 'T h e W o rld w as n o w d ivid ed into tw o parts, com m unistic and dem ocratic — alth ough the original m eaning o f both w o rd s had long ago been lost. Each faction was headed b y men w h o ruled through the giant calculators' (Crossen

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I 954: 114). M on itorin g, as in O rw ell, is directed tow ard s control th ro u gh m anipulation: 'T h e adm inistration w an ted to k n o w as m uch as possible about w h at e v ery o n e th o u g h t and felt' (ibid.: 32). This inform ation w o u ld enable the adm inistration to present e v e ry new m ove in a w a y w hich w ould be accepted, and thus enact 'go vern ­ ment b y consent'; m ore a ccu rately, govern m en t b y co n d itio n in g.9

(V) In the n o vels considered so far the v e r y status o f books is in v o lv e d in state processes o f control. O rw e ll's M in istry o f T ru th churns out a regu lar flo w o f pu lp fiction and tex tb o o k s bu t G oldstein 's bo ok is banned as a 'com pen dium o f all the heresies'. M cG rath describes a society w h ere historical w o rk s are fo rb id d en and Crossen one w hose id e o lo g y is rein forced b y p o pu lar fiction d escribin g g o v e rn ­ m ent agents pursuing Communists. C. L. M oore's Doomsday Morning (x957) g iyes an added tw ist to the role o f literature w h en rebels against a b en evo len t dictatorsh ip in the u s a insert coded references into p u b lic p lays w h ich can o n ly be spotted b y those rebels. The fate o f books in a d ysto p ia becom es a special case o f the circu lation o f inform ation since their p roh ib ition m etafiction ally fo rbid s the n o vels w e are reading. The m ost fam ous po stw ar n o vel to dram atise this p roh ibition is R ay B rad b u ry's Fahrenheit 45 1 (1953), w h ere firem en h ave conflated the roles o f jan ito r and policem an to d estroy all books. B rad bu ry h im self has related his n o vel to b o o k b u rn in gs in P uritan N ew England, the Soviet U nion and N azi G erm any, adding: 'Fortu n ately, n oth ing o f the sort in the U nited States. M in or altercations w ith to w n censors, m ayors, politicians, w h ich h ave all b lo w n a w a y in the w in d '.10 In fact M cC a rth y 's cam paign to h ave 'le ft-w in g ' w o rks rem oved from us libraries at home and overseas had such a serious im pact that in the same year as the p u b licatio n o f B rad b u ry's n o vel the A m erican L ib ra ry A ssociation issued a m anifesto declaring that the 'freedom to read is essential to our d em ocracy' and attackin g the 'existen ce o f in d ivid u a ls or grou p s w ith w isdom to determ ine b y au th o rity w h at is good or bad for the citizen ' (Am erican L ib ra ry A ssociation 1953: 1, 4). B rad bu ry had alread y iden tified that danger in the sto ry 'B righ t P h o en ix ' (w ritten 1 947-8) w h ich describes an organisation o f uniform ed patriots (the 'U nited L egion') w h o bu rn the 'd an gerou s' books in a to w n lib rary. The to w n sfo lk resist b y m em orising the books. B rad bu ry w o v e this sto ry and 'T h e P edestrian' (1951: collected in The Golden A pples o f the Sun) into Fahrenheit 4 5 1, 'T h e P edestrian' d escribin g a citizen

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arrested for the socially d evian t act o f w a lk in g the streets at night. The protagonist M ontag serves as a fu n ctio n a ry in a regim e d evo ted to m aintaining social order th ro u gh m edia distraction. It is also a h e a v ily gend ered d ivisio n o f labour betw een the firem en and the h o u sew ives w h o are the passive consum ers. The n eigh bo u r Clarisse su b verts this separation b y questioning the regim e's rationale: 'A re y o u h a p p y ?' she asks M ontag. In response, as in Player Piano and One, M on tag's consciousness fractures into rival vo ices and even his b o d y feels to d ivid e in tw o. For Clarisse p lays opposite M on tag's w ife M ild red (in T ru ffa u t's film adaptation Julie Christie p lay ed both roles) w h o finds her ersatz 'fa m ily' in an endless t v soap opera (see Seed 1994a: 228—30). Clarisse triggers M on tag's m em ory w h ile M ild red drifts along in an infan tilised present. In that sense Beatty is righ t to call Clarisse a 'tim e bom b' because she challenges official id eolo gy. The most d isru p tive repeated questions in the n o vel are: W as it a lw ays like this? W ere firem en a lw ays d estroyers? Beatty occupies a position analogous to O rw ell's O 'Brien in that he practises the official line, but can also exp lain its h isto ry. This account is g iv en as a 'th e ra p y ' to M ontag w h en the 'illness' o f dissatisfaction is beginn in g to take hold. Beatty describes an acceleration o f cu ltu ral tem po w h ich osten sibly m axim ises the valu e o f time (an appeal to the gospel o f efficien cy) but w h ich does so at the expen se o f history: 'Politics? One colum n, tw o sentences, a headline! Then, in m id-air, all vanishes! W h irl m an's m ind around so fast under the pum ping hands o f p ublishers, expiators, broadcasters, that the cen trifu ge flin gs o ff all u nn eces­ sary, tim e-w asting th ou gh t!' (B radbury 1993: 62). The exp lan ation presupposes a political d ivisio n betw een an elite o f m anipulators and the masses; and co n trad ictorily d eploys an argum ent for increasing prod u ctio n to rationalise consum ption. In short, Beatty can o n ly ex p o u n d the utopian purpose o f state (to m ake all citizens equally happy) b y maintaining a pre-utopian historical consciousness. The ben ign purpose o f 'clean ing u p ' an en viron m en t cluttered w ith the traces o f literacy is rep eated ly critiqu ed b y the trope o f personification w h ich closes the gap betw een person and th in g so that b y the end people th ro u gh m em orising h ave becom e books. A m anuscript fragm ent m akes clear this lin k b y relating books to political p u rges w h en Beatty explains: 'Books are dinosaurs, th ey w ere d yin g a n y w a y . W e ju st g av e them the bullet behind the e a r'.11 Donald W att d ivid es the n o ve l's u biqu ito u s fire-sym bolism into the tw o functions o f 'con structive en ergy' and 'apocalyptic catastrophe' (W att 1980: 196). A s in A Canticle fo r Leibowitz (see Chapter 12), fire can be regen erative as w ell as destructive; but it can also be coerced

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into institu tional sym bolism lik e the p h o en ix -veh icles o f the firem en. E ven ap ocalyp se becom es incorporated in the m ilitaristic purposes o f the state. From tim e to tim e je t bom bers th u n d er across the sk y, not su ggestin g a d efence shield as in the 1955 film Strategic A ir C om m and, bu t rather the dissociation o f p olitics from social life (cf. W y lie 1951b). L ike N ineteen Eighty-Four this n o vel contains m edia announcem ents o f w ar (in B rad bu ry the third atom ic w ar since i960) w h ich belie the w elfare rationale put fo rw ard b y Beatty. The state attem pts to realise its W ill to O rder th ro u gh a secu rity a gen cy d ou b lin g as police and jan itors, actin g on anonym ous inform ation from neighbou rs, but w e o n ly see the consum ers, n ever the adm inistrator-producers o f this regim e. The narratives exam ined in this chapter all fo regro u n d d ifferen t aspects o f a tech n o lo g y w h ich enables a system o f su rveillan ce to operate and assumes a gro tesqu ely inflated security personnel w h ich , accord ing to A sim o v, w o u ld be to ta lly inefficien t. In N ineteen E ighty-F our 'the w atch ers m ust them selves be w atch ed since no one in the O rw ellian w o rld is su spicion -free' (A sim ov 1984a: 320). The strip p in g d ow n o f figu res like W in sto n Sm ith is a sym ptom o f the regim e's aim o f totalised scru tin y. A d issident p o in ted ly nam ed W illiam M orris in M ack R eyn o ld s's later recap itu lation o f these them es, The Cosmic Eye (1969), exp lain s the creation o f a 'n aked so ciety' as con tin u in g in from the M cC arth y era ('e v e r y b o d y becam e so frigh ten ed o f being branded a Red that th ey w ere afraid to open their m ouths on an y su bject controversial') th ro u gh the means o f m iniaturised electron ics (R eynolds 1983: 37). Endless m onitoring prod u ces enorm ous dossiers in the national data bank. T here is n ever an ideological closure, h o w ev er. E ven the most pessim istic d ysto p ia inclu des some p o ssib ility o f dialogue w ith the regim e th ro u gh opposing voices, h o w ev er ineffectual.

N o te s

1. Isaac Asim ov also w atched the A rm y-M cC arthy hearings on television and got indignant about the latter's 'gangsterism'. His story 'The Martian W a y' deals w ith colonists victim ised b y a 'M cC arthy-style politician' (Asim ov 1980: 702, 650). 2. The epigraph is actually an excerpt from a 1799 letter b y Jefferson on preserving the 'freedom of the human m ind' quoted Oppenheim er 1951: 8. 3. Blish 1968: 89. The periodical version o f this narrative actually uses the name 'M cC arthy' at one point (cf. Shippey 1979: 108); Blish later

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revised the description to present M acH inery as a Boston aristocrat. Blish's collection So Close to Home (1961) is a veritable com pendium of Cold W ar themes: mutations, the mining o f ports, the nuclear shield, haw ks' suspicion o f detente, and so on. 4. On Spengler see R. D. M ullen's A fterw ord to the single-volum e collection Cities in Flight (Blish 1985: 597-607). 5. Letter from D avid Karp, 5 June 1991. Karp dealt w ith the h u a c investigations in A ll Honourable Men (1956) and Soviet torture methods in The Charka Memorial (1954). His telescript The Plot to Kill Stalin (1958) aroused so much anger in the Soviet Union that the cbs correspondent was expelled. 6. Cf.: 'The definition o f the individual was: a m ultitude o f one million divided b y one m illion' (Karp 1970; 246). H u xley in 1958 regarded Nineteen Eighty-Four s control through punishm ent as already ana­ chronistic (H uxley 1994: 3). 7. Bookfile on The Last Believers (Cape), Publishers Association archive, Reading U niversity. 8. M cGrath has stated: 'W itchcraft is a w ay o f seeing the w orld and tryin g to control it. So is M arxism ... th ey're w orking from absolutely opposite ends' (Gibbons and Des Pres 1987: 63). For critical commen­ tary on M cGrath see Thom pson 1985: 279-337. 9. For critical comment on Crossen see Clareson 1977: 74-80. 10. Letter from Ray Bradbury, 2 September 1992. Bradbury had read Brave New World but deliberately avoided reading Nineteen EightyFour because he w ould be 'w orkin g on a similar n ovel'. For further comment b y Bradbury on the politics o f Fahrenheit 451 see Bradbury 1967, 1972 and 1975. 11. Fahrenheit 451 papers, 2nd folder (1953), Bradbury archive, California State U niversity, Fullerton. The film makes Clarisse's disappearance more sinister w hen a neighbour explains: 'T h ey came to take them aw ay'.

Take-Over Bids: Frederik Pohl and Cyril K ornbluth

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( i)

In Player Piano and other d ysto p ias consum er goods are used b y the regim es to b u y citizen s' acqu iescence. A llegia n ce becom es one object am ong others in a general process o f com m odification w h ich m otivates and sustains the adm inistration. This process becam e the central su bject o f The Space M erchants (1953), a collaboration b etw een Frederick Pohl and C. M . K orn bluth w h ich describes the tak eo v er o f the Earth and near planets as a com m ercial form o f im perialist expansion . T his chapter w ill exam ine both w riters' use o f the grand narrative o f ex p loratio n to satirise A m erican dom estic and fo reign p o licy as operating under a single expansion ist im perative during the Cold W ar. Pohl him self has recorded h o w , in com m on w ith James Blish and R ay B rad bu ry, his p olitical ideals w ere form ed in the thirties. Pohl jo in ed the Y ou n g Com m unist League for a time but, th o u g h later d isillusioned, has insisted: 'I d id n 't lose m y concern for politics in 1940. I o n ly came to believe that the Com m unist experim en t had fa ile d '.1 Both w riters w ere a ctive m em bers o f the Futurians, a w artim e organisation o f science fiction n ovelists com m itted to radical politics; then after 1945 Pohl acqu ired com m ercial exp erien ce as an a d vertisin g e x e cu tiv e and K orn bluth as Chicago bureau c h ie f for a n ew s w ire service. In a 1957 lecture K orn bluth declared that 'scien ce fiction ... should be an e ffectiv e literature o f social criticism ' (D avenport 1964: 72), bu t all too often sank into escapism . W h en Pohl read this lecture he took issue w ith its strictures retortin g that 'T h e scien ce-fiction n ovel, g en era lly speakin g is social criticism in a w a y that no other category o f n o vel (except perhaps religiou s or proletlit) ever is '.2 82

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In fact The Space M erchants had already g iv e n the lie to Kornblu th's 1957 attack in its description o f a w orld dom inated b y m ulti­ national business com bines radiating from A m erica. Sch ocken A ssociates are m ounting a project to m arket V enus. This im perialist urge sim ply applies to space w h at has already taken place on Earth. The n o vel extrapolates on a series o f projects o f increasing m agni­ tude: the A m erican m idw est, India (on the an alogy o f the East India Com pany), A n tarctica, and fin a lly w h y not the planets? The V enus p roject is e x p lic itly con textualised w ith in the h isto ry o f A m erican exploration and d isco very b y an enthusiastic e x ecu tiv e w h o exclaim s: 'N ot ju s t a com m odity. But a w h o le planet to sell. I salute you , Fow ler Sch ocken - the C live, the Bolivar, the John Jacob A stor o f a n ew w o rld !' (Pohl and K orn bluth 1965:13). This list is histori­ ca lly incoherent, lum pin g togeth er colonialist adm inistration, liberation from colonialism , and m ercantile and financial expansion. T he t v com m ercial pu t togeth er to boost V enus is sim ilarly rid d led w ith internal contradictions d escribing the spaceship as an 'ark ' takin g 'pion eers' to 'tear an em pire from the rich, fresh soil o f another w o rld ' (ibid.: 11). The activist emphasis on territorial appropriation sits a w k w a rd ly w ith the visual im agery d ep ictin g the quiet dom estic secu rity o f a nuclear suburban fam ily. The in co ­ herence o f the praise quoted abo ve carries its o w n satirical point because the m ed ley o f com parisons w ith A lex an d er, N apoleon, Colum bus and other figu res suggests an expansion ist d rive u n q u es­ tioned b y the agencies w h ere conquest becom es a good in itself. The same analogies, but w ith the great autocrats o f m odern h istory, occur in K o rn b lu th 's 1953 story 'T h e A d v e n tu re r' w h ere the d ivisio n o f the planets betw een Am erica and the Soviet Union is an accom plished fact excep t for the satellite Io (an extra-terrestrial Berlin) w h ose c h ie f settlem ent is d ivid ed cu ltu rally b y an in v isib le line run n in g d ow n its m ain street. The R ep ublic is run on Stalinist lines: 'Y o u sim ply spied on e v e ry b o d y — in clu d in g the spies — and ordered sum m ary execu tion s often en ough to sh ow that y o u meant it, and kep t the p u b lic ignorant: d eaf-dum b-blind ig n o ra n t'.3 D uring a w ar betw een the su perpow ers the cadet son o f a poor m iner perform s prod igies o f heroism and em erges as a n e w popular leader ('th ey felt his m agnetism '). A t this point it is revealed to him that he w as g en etica lly m anufactured on the m odel o f N apoleon, Stalin and H itler to be a m aker o f history, w h ereu p o n the n ew ruler has those responsible execu ted for d en yin g his 'go d h ead '. In The Space Merchants, the com m ercial appropriation o f the discourse o f frontier enterprise is foregroun ded as a cyn ical sales p lo y used to counter a p erceived exhaustion o f other spaces, land

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p articu larly. The old W est along the San A nd reas Fault has been destabilised g eo lo gica lly b y the testing o f FI-bombs. The Space Merchants thus describes the a ctivities o f business com bines as if th ey are ex ercisin g the fo reign p o licy o f a nation. The e x ecu tiv eprotagonist and narrator M itch ell C ourten ay, w h o is pu t in charge o f the V enus project, explains: 'w e w an ted V enus colonised b y A m erican s'(Pohl and K o rn bluth 1965: 19). There is scarcely even a token recogn ition o f other nationalities in The Space Merchants, w h ich depicts a w orld and indeed a u niverse as em pty space aw aiting sp ecifica lly A m erican appropriation. The sentence ju s t qu oted o rig in a lly opened w ith the w o rd s 'the g overn m en t' and the revisio n confirm s the u surpation o f govern m en t fu n ction s b y big business. There are hints th ro u gh o u t the n o vel, h o w ev er, o f an an alo gy betw een com m ercial expan sion and m ilitary aggression. The V enus rock et is described as the 'bloated child o f the slim V-2s' (ibid.: 11) and in his sequel to this n o vel, The M erchants' W ar (1984), Pohl fills out the an alogy, d escribin g the co n version into consum ers o f the nom adic peoples o f the G obi Desert b y a night-tim e cam paign v irtu a lly in d istin gu ish ab le from m ilitary attack. F irew orks sim ulate bom bs, 'speaker balloons' resemble parachutists and then a 'projector battalion' o f a d vertisin g visuals goes into action. These actions o n ly m ake explicit the politicisation o f commerce in The Space Merchants. Rem iniscing about ad vertisin g, Pohl w rote: 'W h e n y o u spend y o u r d ays persuading Consumers to Consume ... , you develop fantasies o f power. No, not fantasies. P ow er. Each sale is a conqu est'(P oh l 1979: 132). So w h en Thom as Clareson com m ents that the criticism in The Space Merchants is 'o n ly o b liq u e ly political; it centres on m anage­ m ent', he is m issing the n o v e l's m ain point, nam ely that com m ercial m anagem ent is political (Clareson 1987: 14). A s Sch ocken him self exp lain s to the protagonist, 'Y o u 'v e got p ow er. Five w o rd s from you , and in a m atter o f w e ek s or m onths h a lf a m illion consum ers w ill fin d their lives com pletely changed . T h at's p o w er, M itch , absolute p o w er' (Pohl and K o rn blu th 1965: 39). The w orld of The Space Merchants em erges as a distortion of early

fifties America. The authors them selves w ere well aw are of the main strategy th ey w ere using. In a statem ent prepared for a 1959 re p rin t of The Space Merchants they declared: 'The best of science fiction is th at sort w hich extrapolates from k now n facts to an im agined bu t p erfectly logical w orld of the fu tu re '.4 Am erican society is depicted as still being subject to M cC arthyite fears of internal subversion. 'Loyalty raids' are as routine as governm ent bugging. A gainst proliferating intelligence agencies and private security com panies are contrasted the C onservationists (Consies) w ho are dedicated to

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resisting the capitalist destruction o f the en vironm ent. The label (Consies) conflates both 'Com m ies' and 'Conshies' (conscientious objectors to m ilitary service), w hereas in the origin al serial (entitled 'G ra v y Planet') th ey are less am b igu ou sly designated 'Connies' and their organisation is lin ked to the perpetuation o f secu rity fears: 'T h e w orse th ey th in k o f Connies and the more afraid o f them th ey are, the closer th e y cooperate w ith In telligen ce and S ecu rity' (Pohl and K orn bluth June 1952: 52). A s in Player Piano and Fahrenheit 4 5 1 (for w h ich T ru ffa u t in v ited Pohl to w rite the screenplay), Pohl and K orn bluth in itially situate the protagonist w ith in an official structure and then p ro g ressively displace him, th ere b y dram atising the n egative side to the n o v e l's supposed w o rld o f p len ty and p rosp erity. The action falls into three phases. In the first Courtenay travels to California and dism isses his entire m arket-research group, th ere b y ex ercisin g and confirm ing his pow er. He is n e xt trans­ ported to a plantation in Costa Rica w h ere he is relocated at the opposite end o f the consum er cycle; from m anagerial elite he has sunk to manual labour. He fin ally re-establishes him self in the com­ pan y and takes over as master o f Schocken after the director's death. Critical opinion has d ivid ed o ver the degree o f C o u rten ay's selfaw areness. H ow ever, John P. Brennan argues that C ourten ay n ever really becom es a critic o f the dom inant id eolo gy, but fu n ction s as a heuristic m eans so that the reader can d iscover the su p erficia lity o f that id e o lo g y w h e re b y 'the hum an subject is controlled either b y brute force or b y sim ple, if hidden , d evices on the order o f G alton's w h istle or chem ical co n d itio n in g' (Brennan 1984: 110). A t one point C ourten ay slips into his narrative a q u ick passing reference to the 'en gineered -in m essage' o f advertisem ents, a phrase w h ich estab­ lishes a crucial series o f lin kages. C ourten ay is b y trade a 'co p y sm ith', a com poser o f ad vertisin g co p y. A s in Brave New World, a n o vel w h ich Pohl has adm itted exerted a major in flu en ce on The Space Merchants, an instrum entalist v ie w o f w o rd s as means to a practical end has superseded literatu re.5 L ike Sym e in Nineteen Eighty-Four, C ourten ay is a verb al technician. W h en sh ow n a Consie m anifesto he can o n ly assess it as tech niqu e, and this u n d er­ scores the lim its to his p ersp ective. O perating p rofession ally on surfaces, C ou rten ay experien ces a dislocation o f appearances so that w h en he penetrates a Consie cell to his frustration he fails to id e n tify the 'surface m ark o f the lu rk in g fanatic inside' (Pohl and K orn bluth 1965: 104). One o f the main ironies o f the n o vel lies in its d eferral o f the V enus project for scru tin y o f dom estic su bversion and com m ercial riv a lry. Prom oting one im age o f exploration, C ourten ay is a ctu a lly prop elled into d isco verin g his o w n planet.

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(II) The d epiction o f A m erican -based com m erce as being in d e fin ite ly ex p a n siv e brings The Space M erchants near to left-w in g analyses o f the Cold W ar as a co n sp iracy o f capital. For instance, in 1949 the A m erican Com m unist leader W illiam Z. Foster claim ed that the 'm ost ruthless capitalists in w o rld h isto ry ' w ere strivin g to 'establish a W all Street m astery o ver the w o rld ' (Davis 1971: 290). Pohl d raw s back from the w o rld scene, h o w ev er, in three com panion stories to The Space M erchants w h ich dram atise the dom estic cost o f industrial processes. 'T h e T u n n el und er the W o rld ' (I 954) opens w ith the protagonist dream ing o f an exp losion after 'th ir ty years o f H -bom b jitte rs'. The sto ry repeats its openin g w ith o u t the date progressing and then the p rotagonist d iscovers that his house is a m etal replica. A local com bine, Contro (read 'C ontrol') Chem icals, has b u ilt a sim ulation o f the to w n after it w as d estroyed in an ind u strial accident. The culm in ating sh ock comes w h en the protagonist realises that he has been m iniaturised in a w o rld no b igger than a table-top. L ike R ichard M ath eson 's The Shrinking Man (1956), w h ere the trig ger is a cloud o f radiation, dim inution actualises helplessness before the secret m achinations o f big business. The com plex interdependence o f m ilitary and com mercial activ ity can be seen in tw o stories from 1959: 'T h e W izard s o f P u n g 's Corner' and 'T h e W a gin g o f the P eace'. Both are set in an A m erica devastated b y nuclear w ar w h ich the USA has w on . There has been m assive d estruction but its im pact is m u ffled b y the anecdotal rem iniscences o f the narrator w h ich present w ar m ain ly as a transform ation o f the social landscape. P u n g 's Corner has cut itself o ff from the residual federal authorities, and the sto ry essen tially recoun ts the attem pts o f the latter to take o ver the tow n . The story dram atises the tension b etw een local com m unitarian valu es and g overn m en t centralism in term s o f m ilitary com bat. A t first a govern m en t agent tries to m anipulate the com m un ity th ro u gh sublim inal im ages in t v advertisem ents; then a m ilitary cam paign is m ounted w h ich fails because the in fan try cannot u nderstand their w eap o n s' in stru ction booklets. E ve n tu ally a p op u list leader heads a m arch on the Pentagon and installs a new govern m ent. Both these stories are fan tasy in terven tio n s in a historical sequence tracing out shifts in Cold W ar dom estic p o licy from dispersal th ro u gh shelters to u n d ergro u n d 'fortress factories' in cities lik e D etroit (General M otors w as one o f the lead ing recipients o f p ostw ar defence contracts). The m easures in response to a

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g h o stly enem y w h o shadow s A m erican developm ents com bine m ilitary escalation w ith u n ch ecked industrial gro w th : A g ain st an enem y presu pposed to g ro w sm arter and slicker and q u ick er w ith each advan ce, ju s t as w e and our m achines do. A g ain st our h a vin g few er and few er fig h tin g men: pure logic that, as w ar continues, more and more are killed , few er and few er left to operate the k iller engines. A g ain st the destruction or capture o f even the im pregn able u n d ergro u n d factories, guarded as no dragon o f legend ever w as - b y all that M an could devise at first in the w a y o f traps and cages, blast and ray — and then b y the slipleashed in ven tion o f m achines ordered a lw ays to speed up - more and more, deadlier and deadlier. (Pohl 1973: 253) The change o f g overn m en t prom ises a utopian reversal o f this process until, that is, the true efficien cy o f the u n d ergroun d factories is recogn ised. Long after w ar has m inim ised dem and for electrical goods the factories keep ch u rn in g them out, so the factories h ave to be stopped. 'T he W a gin g o f the Peace' is not an o xym o ro n ic title but a d escription o f h o w com bat is transposed from the battlegrou n d to a stru ggle betw een hum ans and m achines. The story parodies the lan gu age o f w artim e heroism: 'th e y w ere unarm ed and helpless against a smart and p o w erfu l factory o f m achines and w eap o n s' (Pohl 1987: 287); and concludes w ith a v ic to ry (the b lockin g o f raw materials) that proves prem ature w h en the factories go on p rod u cin g a n y w a y . The parodic d ovetailin g o f w artim e and peacetim e p rod u ction deflects an y direct attention to nuclear war. The same is true o f Pohl and K o rn b lu th 's satire o f K en n ed y's shelter p o licy. 'Critical M ass' (1961) presents a defence-obsessed USA w h ere ev ery o n e is on the make: the shelter program m e is self-ev id e n tly good for the constru ction in d u stry , bad for the m ilitary in d ivertin g fun ds, and good for the P resident because he came to office on a prom ise to pass the C ivilian Shelter Bill. But a specialist in concrete and even the President see the hollow ness o f the p o licy , the latter asking him self: 'W h a t w as the use o f an y kin d o f shelters ... if all y o u had to come out o f them to w as a burned -ou t Sahara?' (Pohl and K orn bluth 1962: 31). The contradiction betw een p u b lic discourse and p rivate th ou gh ts reveals the w h o le civil defence system to be a self-serving charade, deceiving the public into com placency tow ards nuclear w ar. Into this situation comes the m etaphorical 'bom b' o f the title, a new s story on the uselessness o f shelters. W h at w ill exp lod e, once the chain reaction to the n ew s gets goin g, is the

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shelter craze. Pohl and K o rn bluth thus transform the bom b — a suppressed presence in the sto ry — into a satirical d evice for atta ck ­ ing its avoidance. The sociologist D avid Riesman tried a d ifferen t satiric strategy altogether in 1951 b y replacin g w eapon s w ith consum ables. 'T h e N y lo n W a r', set in the im m ediate present, has been goin g on for m onths. The USA is bom bing the Soviet U nion rou n d the clock w ith cigarettes, w atch es and even fridges. A t first Beria denies the raids are happenin g; then the Soviets retaliate b y d ro pp in g caviar, furs and books o f Stalin 's speeches on Seattle. The result is a m assive disruption o f the Soviet econom y (because consum ers dem and rockets) and charges from h u a c that trade secrets are being passed to the Russians. U ltim ately the strategy defuses w ar sentim ents and rem oves the dem onic im age o f the Soviet Union: 'th e once feared m onolith n o w appears as alm ost a jo k e , w ith its cru de poster-andcaviar reprisals, its riots o ver sto ckin gs, soap, Ronsons, and other gad gets w h ich A m erican s regard in m atter-of-fact fa sh io n '.6 A lth o u g h Riesm an's aim w as to 'in v e n t a moral eq u iva len t for w ar' (Riesman 1964: 3), his rhetoric o n ly replaces m ilitary trium phalism w ith consum erist su perio rity.

( in ) The Space M erchants' v e ry title denotes a com m odification process w h ich the co m p an y's elevated rhetoric disguises as national enterprise. K o rn b lu th 's Takeoff (1952) also deals w ith a space project, but in a non-satirical w a y . The co n stru ctin g o f a moon rock et is dram atised as an internal stru gg le betw een a restrictive secu rity p o licy in the A tom ic E n ergy Com m ission (a e c ) and tech n o ­ logical enterprise w h ich has to be chann elled th ro u gh the A m erican Society for Space Flight. L ike H einlein's Destination Moon, the target is chosen for its m ilitary potential. The presid ent o f the So ciety 'co u ld see a m ost im portant area dotted w ith laun chers for small, unnam ed rockets w ith fission-bom b w ar heads, read y to smash a n y nation that hit the U nited States first' w h ile the h y p erpatriotic m anager o f the a e c w h o has d evised the project sees the M oon as the em bodim ent o f pow er: 'It's the p o w er o f life and death o ver e v e ry nation on the face o f the earth, and some one nation has got to accept that p o w er' (K orn bluth 1953: 8, 122). The illegal syp h o n in g o ff o f a e c fu n d s for the project is th us rationalised b y an appeal to a h igh er im perative o f defence w h ich the n o ve l leaves unqu estioned. Takeoff o sten sib ly conform s to an espionage th riller

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(it w as p u blish ed during the trial o f the Rosenbergs) set against a backg ro u n d w h ere the a e c m aintains its fu n d in g b y keep in g sw eet the press, the p u b lic and Congress. In order to m ake its social point about restrictive a e c p o licy K orn bluth bases the action on the to ta lly im plausible notion that a moon rocket could be constructed b y a h an d fu l o f com m itted am ateurs.7 The paranoid atm osphere o f the early fifties comes out clearly in the revelation b y the protagonist o f a con spiracy. A s a rig h t-th in k in g patriot, he m akes a deposition to the regional a e c secu rity o fficer that the project has received fu n ds from a 'fo reig n p o w er', but the true Soviet sp y turns out to be the scientific director (conspiracy confirm ed but relocated). A n d the fu n ds in question p ro v e to be those vo ted b y Congress for the a e c , d iverted for an u ltim ately patriotic purpose (conspiracy relocated again and defused). The n o vel reharm onises politics and tech n o lo g y at the end, closing w ith the m oon launch, n o w o fficia lly a p p roved , w h ich w ill sym b o lica lly open up a n ew era o f A m erica's national destiny. In a num ber o f his o w n stories Pohl elaborated on aspects o f this them e. 'W ith R edfern on Capella x ii' (1965) establishes a clear con­ tin u ity betw een plan etary take-o ver and the d evelopm ent o f British im perial rule th ro u gh the paro d y-K ip lin gesqu e adm inistrator General Sir V iv ia n M o w gli-G lick . The most recu rren t iro n y Pohl exp loits is the presum ption on the part o f the colonisers that the in d igen ous species is prim itive. In 'T h e G entle V en u sian' (origin ally en titled 'T he G entlest U npeople', 1958) Pohl shifts persp ectives b ackw ard s and fo rw ard s betw een the V enusians w h o see hum ans as 'm onsters' and Earthlings w h o see the V enusians as 'b u g s'. W ith in this interchange o f v ie w points the Venusians p rove to be benign, extrem ely cu ltu red and open-m inded in their conclusion that 'Earth m onsters are considered to be hum an beings, in spite o f e v e ry th in g ' (Pohl 1971: 115)* Such an extraterrestrial p ersp ective on E arthly activities is set up in 'I P lingot, W h o Y ou ?' (1958) w h ere Pohl uses the d evice o f the visito r from outer space to satirise Cold W ar paranoia. A ppearing before Am ericans, Russians and French, Plingot g iv es each 'ev id en ce ' o f possible com m unication w ith other w orlds. The result is that their suspicions o f each other (i.e. their v e ry lack o f com m unication) come to a peak. 'P lin got' is a m ask w h ich Pohl has donned for ironic purposes and w h ich he can tem porarily discard to address the reader d irectly: 'N ow , this is h o w it was, an a lleg ory or parable ... it is a catalyst w h ich is needed on Earth, and this catalyst I h ave made, m y cosm etic appliance, m y bom b' (Pohl 1 973 : 34 2)- Once again Pohl appropriates nuclear tech n o lo g y as a m etaphor o f his o w n satirical purpose.

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The estranged perspective of these narratives, th eir 'view from another star', questions a consensus acceptance of the m ilitarisation of space form ed as early as 1950 w hich Pohl sarcastically sum ­ m arised in a 1962 G alaxy editorial: W e need bases on the M oon, w e say, because from the M oon w e can w ith great telescopes spy out everyth ing the Russians are doing here on Earth. W e need m anned satellites, w e say, because from them w e can 'd ro p ' nuclear charges on an y enem y. (Pohl 1962: 5)

Such an ideology is prom oted in M an Plus (1976) by the us President w ho rationalises a mission to M ars as a fresh start for hum anity. The u s a is su rro u nded by 'collectivist dictatorships' after China and has been Tost' and Cuba given 'to the other side', as if these countries w ere disposable real estate. W ithin the u s a and abroad, w here an expanded China ('New People's Asia') is confronting A ustralia, 'th e p lanet was rapidly reaching critical mass' (Pohl 1978: 109-10). The 'M an Plus' of the title is a project to design cybernetic alterations to enable hum an survival on Mars. The problem in his novel, how ever, lies in Pohl's use of a guineapig subject as protagonist. The latter's experience is lim ited to the technology of the experi­ m ent w hile its political context has to be supplied as inform ation only tenuously connected w ith the action. For M ars is planned as a refuge from the therm onuclear w ar the planners estim ate is in ev it­ able, and so questions of inform ation then arise. How m uch of the forecast does the P resident know ? How extensive is the leak from the us defence com puter? The political plot is thus skew ed from the tale of the Am erican astronaut, an aw kw ardness w hich Pohl avoided in Jem by using a different narrative m ethod.

(IV)

P ohl's narratives regularly foreground tw o processes: the exposure of com m erce-based m otives and the unpredictable consequences of planned enterprises. The last novel to be considered here dem onstrates both. Jem: the M a kin g o f a Utopia (1979) was planned to show the 'fu tu re of international politics after the Cold W ar had ru n its course' (Pohl 1997: 16). A ttem pts are made to settle the planet Jem in a near future w hen three pow er blocs have form ed, each defined by th eir major resource: food (the 'Fats' presided over by the u s a ), Fuel (the 'Greasies') and People (the 'Peeps' dom inated by China). David N. Samuelson has argued rig h tly that, although the blocs start out w ith a utopian desire to start afresh, their rivalry

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dooms the enterprise: 'the need, if th ey are to su rv iv e , to w ith stan d each other, and to ex p lo it the land and the natives, leads to a repetition w ith variation s' (Clareson and W y m e r 1984: 124). The openin g section o f the n o vel establishes the u topian purpose (in a conference on ex o b io lo gy) w ith in a political co n text (Comm unist Bulgaria) w h ich pu lls against the p roject's internationalism . Jem could therefore be read as a late- not post-Cold W ar narrative w h ere political suspicions persist in altered guises. Pohl uses a m ultifocal m ethod o f seven m ain voices, but w ith in each section the m ethods and purposes o f the ex p ed itio n are debated b y a broad range o f national represen tatives. The n o vel in that respect approaches w h at Tom M oylan calls a 'critical utopia' in debating the nature o f contact w ith the n ew plan et's sentient species, for instance. The increasing prom inence o f one A m erican character g ra d u a lly transform s the action into a p o w er play. M argie M enn in ger, dau ghter o f a us senator, em bodies w ith in h erself the m ilitaryin dustrial com plex. Born into the W ash in gto n com m unity, M argie has been trained at W est Point and has direct access to appro­ priation com m ittees and to the m edia w h ich she sham elessly exp loits to prom ote a v ie w o f Jem as a 'planet w h ere all the old hatreds could be fo rgo tten ' (Pohl 1980: 153). M argie is the prim e m over o f the n ovel. She takes the parts o f a nuclear bom b to Jem, and shoots d ow n a Peep satellite (actually aim ing at their su p p ly ship). A n d she trains a special com bat force, o n ly th in ly disguised as an exploration party, to take o ver the planet. T h rou gh M argie's actions and w o rd s the utopian gloss on the project is stripped aw ay; even its ecological necessity p roves to be a political one because large parts o f the Earth are d estroyed b y a therm onuclear w ar, not b y a natural disaster. The ap p rop riative im pulse is figu red th ro u gh eating, a trope o f consum ption Pohl had already used in his fifties stories. So a Bulgarian w ond ers at one point 'w h a t prod igiou s d evou rers these A m ericans m ust be' (Pohl 1980: 134), but w ith o u t d raw in g an y inferences for the politics o f the Jem project. Jem doubles in the n o vel as the site for a utopia and as a colon y. A s the n o vel progresses, one particular an alogy comes to the fore: that o f Vietnam . A s early as 1957 in Slave Ship Pohl had draw n on Vietnam to su p p ly him w ith an aggressive fanatical cu ltu re aim ing at w o rld conquest. By the 1960s Vietnam had becom e a more com plex issue. W h ile editor o f Galaxy in 1968 Pohl circulated science fiction n ovelists w ith a questionnaire on w h eth er the USA should stay in Vietnam w h ich produced an even division o f opinion. Com m enting that the debate o ver Vietnam had been a 'tragic and d iv isiv e w aste', Pohl tried to straddle the tw o sides o f the issue

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arguin g that on the one hand the us w o u ld not abandon its com m itm ent to the Vietnam ese, b u t on the other hand 'it is too late for that, their country and their social structure have been destroyed'.8 T en years and thousands o f Am erican dead later, Pohl took a more sardonic v ie w o f such adventurism . Resem blances w ith Vietnam grad u ally emerge in Jem as the settlem ents become more militarised w ith fortified perimeters. T o ensure that the an alogy is not lost on the reader the comparison is made explicit between a chemical dropped on the Krinpit, the surface creatures, w h ich deals w ith them 'as w ell as 2,4-D had dried up the ju n gle s o f Vietnam ' (Pohl 1980: 232). There are even Vietnam ese officers serving in the Fats' militia and a 'balloonist' species carries out surveillance like the M ontagnards. T he same an alogy w as used b y Ursula LeG uin in The W ord fo r

W orld Is Forest (1977) w h ich grew out o f her realisation during the V ietnam protests that 'the ethic w h ic h ap p roved the defoliation o f forests and grainlands and the m urder o f non-com batants in the name o f "p eace" was o n ly a corollary o f the ethic w h ich perm its the despoliation o f natural resources for private profit or the g n p ' (LeGuin 1989: 127). Here there is no pream ble or grandiose purpose to probe behind. W e are p lu n g e d im m ediately into a colonial situation on another planet w hose base, N e w Tahiti, ties the action into the history o f W estern imperialism. LeG uin dramatises the enterprise as a culture clash betw een Earthlings w h o v ie w trees sim p ly as raw material to be shipped home and the dim inu tive planetary race w hose language and culture is p rivile g ed in the n o ve l's title. T he establishm ent o f armed camps, the use o f napalm, and the ultim ate defeat o f the in vaders all occur in both novels. Sim ilarly both critique the colonialising discourse o f the invaders b y focalising sections th rou gh in digen ou s figures. L eG uin 's ending predicts the im m inent departure o f the colonists w h ile in Jem an accom m odation is reached from necessity since Earth has been destroyed. Pohl carefully avoids trium phalism in a final choric comm ent on his characters: 'In the long run there are no survivors. There are o n ly replacem ents. A n d time passes, and generations come and go ' (Pohl 1980: 292). Pohl and LeG uin critique an e xp an ­ sionist principle based on the conversion o f m ilitary superiority into a right to conquest. T he v e r y title o f Barry B. Lan gyear's M ani­

fest Destiny (1980) historicises this concept, setting its narrative in the n e xt cen tu ry w h en the u s a has becom e the 'U n ited States o f Earth' and is exp an d in g into other galaxies on the p rinciple that m an's ultim ate end is to 'reign suprem e' in the universe. Pohl has declared that 'there is no good science fiction at all, that is not to some degree political' (Pohl 1997: 7) and he and K ornbluth

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substantiate this co n v ictio n in their fiction dealing w ith the area w h ere politics and econom ics intersect. A t its bleakest P oh l's fiction reflects a som bre recogn ition that 'noth in g is b eyo n d price, or w ith o u t a price' (W in gro ve 1978: 12); and his particular purchase on the Cold W ar w as to repeat w ith variations a grand narrative o f com m ercial expansionism origin atin g in the USA. His fiction is thus refresh in gly ironic tow ard s the labelling o f dom estic or external opposition to this process as 'Com m unist'. A lth o u g h Pohl has stro n gly criticised the Soviet U nion for this repression o f w riters he has n ever dem onised that regim e, and it m akes a fittin g coda to his treatm ent o f Cold W ar issues that in 1987 he should h ave p u blish ed a fiction alised piece o f reportage on the C h ern obyl reactor e x p lo ­ sion. N oth in g could h ave been farther from the im age o f the 'e v il em pire' than P oh l's h andlin g o f the details o f the U krainian w o rk ers' lives. Indeed, the v e ry pu blication o f Chernobyl in itself dem onstrated the w o rk in g s o f Glasnost (adm inistrative openness) since Pohl received the necessary perm issions to carry out research and in terview s for his n o v e l.9

N o te s

1. Pohl 1979: 13, 14; 'Frederik Pohl' in Bryfonski 1984 : I: 286. 2. Letter from Pohl to Kornbluth, 23 December 1956, Frederick Pohl Papers, Syracuse U niversity Library. 3. Kornbluth 1997: 31. Each president in this story is named 'Folsom', presum ably after the site w here traces o f an ancient Am erindian civilisation w ere discovered. 4. 1959 statement, Pohl papers, Syracuse. 5. Letter from Frederik Pohl, 1 A u gu st 1991. Pohl adds: 'M y conscious models w ere more the science-fiction stories o f L. Sprague de Camp and Robert H einlein'. Davis 1971: 290. 6. Riesman 1964: 72-3. Riesman received many letters from readers w ho thought his account was factual. A n d fact turned out to be only slightly less bizarre than his satire w hen in the early 1950s the

cia

dropped consumer goods from balloons over Eastern Europe to create social dissatisfaction (Brands 1993: 61). 7. The A uthor's Note states: 'Some o f the fictional projections o f present

a.e.c.

a .e.c.

policies in the story are

policies w hich the author

supposes w ill be exaggerated b y the passage o f time'. 8. Pohl 1968: 7. The results of the Vietnam questionnaire w ere published in the same issue (4-5). 9. For comments on Pohl's treatment b y the Soviet authorities see the A fterw ord to Pohl 1987 and Barrett and Gentle 1988: 11.

The Russians Have Come

Y ou m ust th in k , act and liv e for the state (Am erican Com missar in Face to Face with Communism, 1951)

( i)

A g a in and again in the Cold W ar w e encounter a principle o f reversibility w here characteristics attributed to one bloc mirror those o f the other. Pohl's accounts o f A m erican expansionism p artly reflect the more melodramatic master plan for w o rld conquest attributed to the Soviet Union. L on g before th e y possessed the technical means Soviet attacks on the USA w ere im agined and the p op u larity o f dystopias w ith

elaborate system s o f surveillance

coincided w ith the hardening o f a consensus on the Soviet threat. B y 1950 this perception had hardened into governm en t p o licy in the attribution o f a conspiratorial design to the Kremlin w h ich called 'for the com plete subversion or forcible destruction o f the m achinery o f go vernm en t and structure o f society in the countries o f the non-S oviet w o rld and their replacem ent b y an apparatus and structure subservient to and controlled from the K rem lin '.1 Former T ro tsk yite James Burnham had already identified this 'w o rld w id e, conspiratorial m ovem ent' w h ich w o u ld culm inate in Am erica: 'T h e dow n fall o f the U nited States w ill rem ove the last great obstacle. The Com m unist W orld Em pire w ill b egin ' (Burnham 1947: 66, 117). In A . E. Van V o g t's Tyranopolis (1973) it has indeed exten d ed right round the Earth. This '23rd cen tu ry parallel to the career and character o f the Russian despot, Joseph Stalin' (Van V o g t 1977: 5) show s a paranoid dictator w ith artificially enhanced lo n g e v ity p residing over a B yzantine state apparatus.2 By 1961 N athaniel B enchley could ridicule this fear o f an e vil empire in his farce The

O ff Islanders w h ich describes a Soviet subm arine running aground on an island o ff Cape Cod. B en chley's realism in vo lves a reduction 94

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of the Soviet th reat to a com edy of small incidents, a blanking out of nuclear w eapons altogether, and a burlesque of science fiction w hen the Soviets tell the bem used islanders: 'take me to your lead e r'.3 B en ch ley's com edy did not get rid o f the fear, h o w ev er. From the fifties righ t into the 1980s the co n victio n o f m align Soviet intent p rod u ced a series o f narratives dealing w ith the Com m unist tak e­ o ver o f the u s a . 4 These w o rk s not o n ly em body a fear o f the times but also in vestigate retro sp e ctiv ely the failure o f national n erve w h ich made that invasion possible. One o f the earliest o f these w o rk s w as a propagan da film prepared b y the D epartm ent o f D efence. Face to Face with Communism (1951), lik e Invasion u s a (1952) and Red Nightmare (1962), describes the transform ation o f A m erican life w h en a to w n becom es an 'active unit in the Com m un­ ist International'. T elephones are controlled and a local com missar proclaim s the n e w creed o f selfless d evotion to the state (see the epigraph). A sergeant on leave is arrested and sentenced to death for qu estioning this a u th o rity. W ith o n ly m inim al con sisten cy, he then fin ds that the ja il has been left u n lo cked and returns th ro u gh the deserted streets to his hotel. The n e xt m orning he d iscovers that the to w n has returned to norm al and that its 'con versio n ' w as a civil defence exercise after all. W h ere the film presents a situation o f civic transform ation, Theodora D u bois' 1951 n o vel Solution T-25, b y contrast, describes a w h o le cy cle o f u n p ro vo k ed nuclear attack, invasion , enslavem ent and even tu al liberation. The enem y is n ever nam ed because its id e n tity is assum ed to be self-eviden t. The n o vel p ays some attention to the p ligh t o f collaborators in the occu pation regim e, the regim entation, and en cod ing o f unrest as disease ('sym ptom s o f social d ecay') bu t Solution T-25 rem ains a Buck Rogers ad ven tu re in that a secret w eapon (T-25) co n v en ien tly rem oves the aggression from the o ccu p y in g forces. D ubois' n o vel is im portant for tw o reasons: firstly, in d escribing the u n p ro vo k ed attack as a 'second Pearl H arbor exp an d ed to the nth d e g re e '.5 S econ dly Dubois anticipates later w riters like O liver Lange in seeing the assault as a national test in w h ich the A m ericans are found sad ly w anting; the in vad ers express astonishm ent at the A m erican reaction being so 'lim p and spineless'. A lre a d y a g ru d g in g respect for Soviet efficien cy is begin n in g to em erge from these narratives. Burnham could not help recogn ising h o w Stalin's single-m indedness contrasted w ith the vacillation s o f us fo reign p o licy . The explosion o f the first Soviet H -bom b in 1953 h eighten ed fears furth er. For n ew s analyst Elmer D avis it w as a k e y

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date sh o w in g 'for the first tim e since 1814, the p o ssib ility that the U nited States m ight lose a fo reign w a r' (Davis 1955: 16). In Jerry Soh l's Point Ultimate (1955) A m erican capitu lation fo llo w s an u n p ro vo k ed nuclear attack b y the 'in vu ln era b le Red g ian t' w h en the W est realises that the en em y possesses an 'im p regnable barrier against aircraft and m issiles' (Sohl 1955: 8). The Soviets in vad e and enforce subm ission b y releasing a plagu e bacterium into the atm os­ phere w h ich can o n ly be resisted b y m on th ly state-adm inistered inoculations. This is the co n tex t w ith in w h ich w e meet our hero, y o u n g Emmet K eyes from Spring Creek, Illinois, w h o leaves home and sets out across co u n try in search o f a resistance m ovem ent. Emmet encounters the regim e w h en he falls cap tive to a regional director, one G niessin, w h o runs a cross betw een a Roman villa and a slave plantation, w h ere the inm ates w ear electron ically tagged bracelets. The estate represents the regim e in m iniature as a form o f b en ign sla very and G n iessin 's qu estion in g o f Emmet w ith and w ith o u t the h elp o f dru gs reveal his patriotism to consist o f u nexam in ed cliches. L ike W in sto n Sm ith, Emmet comes to w onder: 'W as there no act, no m ovem ent, no th o u g h t that w as secret an y m ore?' (Sohl 1955: 58). The final chapters o f Point Ultimate sh ow Emmet d isco verin g that there is a resistance m ovem ent organised b y g yp sies w h o are sp iritin g illeg a lly p regnant w om en and W estern scientists to a space station on M ars! This fantastic en ding reflects the pessim ism o f the n o vel as a w h o le tow ard s change since the popu lation has su n k into a p ath y from an ex cessive diet o f televisio n . A lth o u g h Sohl has declared: 'I am against enslavem ent, m orally or sp iritu a lly ,' there is no sign in the n o vel o f h o w the occu pation m ight end (M allardi and Bow ers 1969: 75). Regim entation is fo regro u n d ed again and again as the social sign o f occupation. In Robert Shafer's The Conquered Place (1955) the Soviet U nion has taken o ver all the major landm asses ex cep t South and Central A m erica and the W estern h a lf o f the U SA . The action concerns a plan to rescue a scientist from an occu pied city and acco rd in g ly concentrates closely on the d a y -b y -d a y preparations for this action. O ccupation is e v o k ed th ro u gh g re y regu lation dress, the traces o f w ar (bomb craters) despite the fact that the situation has d ragged on for six years, and a system o f h ouse-w ardens w h o all cooperate w ith the enem y. Shafer describes a n ew Stalinist o rth o d o x y being en forced in the schools w h ere one teacher reads an accoun t o f 'the victo rio u s m arch o f the P eop le's A rm ies to the utterm ost ends o f the earth' (Shafer 1955: 220). Such issues o f ch ildhood ind octrination cannot be pu rsu ed because o verw h elm in g p rio rity is g iv e n to the escape n arrative w h ich could be happ enin g

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during the Second W o rld W ar, but for the fact that an atom ic bom b is d ropped on the city, incin erating those u nfortun ate A m ericans w h o h a v e n 't made it out in time. Bizarrely, in v ie w o f the crucial im portance o f nuclear w eapons, this even t is not d escribed at all; indeed it seems to be used m erely as a d evice to w h ip up the u rg en cy o f evacuation.

( ii) The first n o vel to exp lore the econom ic and social im pact o f occu pation w as C. M . K o rn b lu th 's N ot This August (1955) w h ich describes su bju gation o f the USA b y Soviet and Chinese armies. The 1956 u k title Christmas Eve refers to the up rising w h ich concludes the n ovel, w hereas the us title is taken from an article b y H em in gw ay qu oted as an epigraph in both editions. 'N otes on the N ext W a r' (1935) offers a w arn in g on the likelih ood o f a European w ar, m aybe not im m ediately, but, he continues, 'the year after that or the year after that th ey figh t. T hen w h at happens to y o u ?' (H em ingw ay 1980: 199). H em in gw ay accepts the in ev ita b ility o f w ar but adopts an isolationist position. His question (om itted from K o rn b lu th 's epigraph) bears iro n ically on the political situation o f N ot This August w h ich describes the overru n n in g o f W estern Europe as mere rehearsals for the major econom ic prize: the USA. P ub lished w h ile the G eneva sum m it w as u nder w a y , K orn bluth 's n o vel received ex cep tio n a lly favo u rab le review s, esp ecially b y the N ew York Sunday News w h ich , accord ing to Frederik Pohl, 'had close to the largest circulation o f an y new sp aper in the w o rld ', and w as an 'ard en tly cold -w arrior tab lo id ' w h ich helped to establish the reception o f Nineteen Eighty-Four in the us A .6 The editorial on Not This August declared that it had a far more p o w erfu l effect than O rw ell because o f its evocation o f sm all-tow n Am erica: 'M r K orn bluth ... had o n ly to choose significant bits and pieces from the mass o f facts about Com m unist terror th ro u gh o u t the Red Slave Empire, and transfer them to an A m erican scen e'.7 This K orn bluth does b y placin g us in the small tow n o f N orton in N ew Y ork State and b y focu sin g the action on B illy Justin, a veteran o f the Korean W ar w h o has tried to w ith d ra w from political life into farm ing. The m ilitary defeat o f the USA is o n ly d escribed as new s heard from a great distance - so th ey th in k - b y the tow n sfolk. A s one review er noted, the 'pattern o f conqu est' w as so fam iliar that 'it is the in e v ita b ility o f w h at m ust happen ... w h ich p rovid es the book w ith its m ounting ten sio n '.8 K orn bluth sh rew d ly portrays the

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to w n 's seem in gly endless ca p a city for d efen sive rationalisation o f even ts w h ich , in itially at least, consist o f bu reau cratic in co n ve n i­ ences. T he m ail service continues u n in terru p ted , the Russian soldiers tu rn out to be ju s t G.i.s' and for the m om ent n oth in g seems to happen w orse than the establishm ent o f farm ing quotas. W h en the local postm istress exclaim s at the good beh avio u r o f the So viet troops Justin interprets her reaction as the 'h yste ria o f relief, the d isco v e ry that the A w fu l T h in g , the th in g y o u dreaded ab o ve all else, has happened and isn 't too bad after all' (K ornbluth 1981: 18). Kornbluth traces out a process o f apparent dem ystification w h e re b y Com m unists and Russians are prem atu rely undem onised, and docum ents each phase o f the occu p atio n from initial restrictions to the red u ctio n o f the po pu latio n to d epen den t serfs b y the troops o f the m v d (M in istry o f Internal A ffairs). A m erica becom es an econo­ m ic co lo n y, prod u cin g fo o d stu ffs w h ich are sh ipp ed to R ussia.9 W h ere K orn bluth focuses on the small to w n as a represen tation o f the nation, the film Red Nightmare (made for the D epartm ent o f D efence under Jack W a rn er's supervision ) targets the fam ily in 'M id to w n u s a '. A s w e saw in Chapter 4, the hom e w as a k e y location in civ il defence. N o w it becom es a sym bo lic space to be v io lated b y the o ccu p y in g troops. 'Y o u 'v e got no rig h t to be in this ho u se', the father objects, bu t his fam ily itse lf has been transform ed into lo y a l m em bers o f the n e w regim e, a change signalled b y fix e d facial expression and ve rb a l m onotone, fo llo w in g the co n v en tio n o f fifties in vasion fantasies (see Chapter 10). Th e w ife w arns, 'I w o u ld a d vise y o u not to o b je ct', and the small son attacks his father for 'd eviation ism ', d eclaring, 'as a m em ber o f the y o u n g pioneers it w ill be m y d u ty to report y o u '. In short the fam ily fragm ents ev en to the point o f testify in g against the father. B y fram ing the prop agan da exercise w ith in dreams, the film , w h ich aims to in d u ce civ ic v ig il­ ance, a ctu a lly m ystifies the process o f tak eo v er as i f the to w n sfo lk are helpless before m align ex tern al agencies. The Soviet authorities in K o rn b lu th 's n o ve l act on the co n v ictio n that th e y can direct the phases o f occu pation. 'T h ere are cycles o f b eh avio u r, and the secret is to anticipate them ' (K ornbluth 1981: 219), exp lain s an officer, d raw in g com parisons w ith Stalin 's su b ­ ju g a tio n o f the U kraine. Earlier n o vels o f occu p ation lik e Stein­ b ec k 's The Moon Is Down (1942) and Constantine F itzgib b o n 's The Iron Hoop (1950) sh o w resistance as a m atter o f gestu re or to k en acts. K orn bluth , b y contrast, d escribes a m ovem ent g ro w in g slo w ly bu t su rely under the con fid en ce in spired b y a single su rv iv in g rock et silo. This satellite d evice, ca rryin g 36 H -bom bs and tw o cobalt bom bs, is crucial for ex ten d in g an oth erw ise local w ar plan

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into the international arena. Here lies the o n ly w eakn ess o f the n o vel, for the heroism o f local resistance figh ters w o u ld be useless w ith o u t a su pportin g nuclear d evice. K orn bluth, in com mon w ith other w riters on occupation, describes the latter's im pact in sm all­ to w n terms and w h en the uprising fin ally happens the n o vel can scarcely show h o w it could exten d even to the w h o le nation, to say nothing o f h o w the Soviet U nion and China could be forced to w ith d ra w . This is a problem u ltim ately o f scale w h ich K o rn blu th 's historical analogies w ith the A m erican C ivil W ar, Korea and so on cannot address. The success o f the uprising is in fact oversh ad ow ed b y the v e ry nuclear tech n o lo g y it has capitalised on. A s a general declares, 'it isn 't o ver and it'll n ever be o ver' (K ornbluth 1981: 250) because a satellite race w ill continue in d efin itely into the future. K orn bluth confirm s the Stalinist policies o f the Soviet adm ini­ stration th ro u gh in vasion , but w h at if the invasion itself w as designed to reveal Stalinism ? Suppose that a small Soviet naval force takes o ver lo w er M anhattan and holds some 70 000 hostages. This is w h at happens in jou rn alist G u y R ichards's Two Rubles to Tim es Square (1956: u k title Brother Bear ) w h ere a dissident general leads a renegade fleet to the us to shock Am ericans into political awareness. The invasion therefore supplies the general w ith a means o f w arn in g about his n ation 's foreign po licy. S p ecifically he attacks the Soviets' charm o ffen sive at the 1955 G eneva summit as a sm oke­ screen to distract from their activities in the Far East and A frica.

( in )

A lthough consideration of a Soviet takeover of Britain lies beyond the scope of this study, one exception should be made for the expatriate Am erican C onstantine Fitzgibbon's W hen the Kissing H ad to Stop (i960) w hich depicts British political divisions in the face of a Soviet grand plan. A fter the w ar Fitzgibbon sat on a num ber of the committees w hich set up the c i a and was actually offered a post in the agency. A lthough he tu rn ed it dow n he rem ained im placably opposed to the Soviet regime regarding Yalta as a 'sell-out' and the Cold W ar as a conflict w here the 'victories have almost all been theirs' (Fitzgibbon 1976: 298). His novel describes the ferm ent w ithin the British Labour P arty while in opposition. In 1959 the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament had its second m arch culm inating in a dem onstration in Trafalgar Square during w hich there were com plaints of police brutality. Fitzgibbon describes this event as a rally of the Left and reverses the actual result of the 1959 general

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election as returnin g a h u ge Labour m ajority. The n ew prim e m inister John M ayn ard (named after the K eynesian p a rty leader H ugh Gaitskell) is forced to resign because he opposes the p a rty 's unilateral defence p o licy (Gaitskell suffered a similar crisis at the i960 p a rty conference). In the n o vel M ayn ard is replaced b y a g u llib le idealist w h o believes all the Soviet prem ier's offers o f disarmament, w h ile a m achiavellian cyn ic in his cabinet m anoeuvres the rem oval o f A m erican bases and a diplom atic ru p tu re w ith the us a . A t the same tim e rig h t-w in g 'reaction aries' are interned and a substantial force o f Soviet troops is allow ed into the co u n try to 'in sp ect' the dism ant­ led bases, as happens in E w art C. Jones's Head in the Sand (1958). By the end o f this com plex n o vel Britain has becom e redu ced to the status o f a Soviet satellite w h ile thousands o f 'volun teers' are being sent to Siberia. The U SA remains sole guardian o f p olitical lib erty. This n o vel uses no science fiction devices but instead e x tra ­ polates an im m inent p o ssib ility from the then contem porary situation in Britain. R eview ers u n ifo rm ly praised its grim realism and the d elayed im pact o f its u nderstated m ethod. For present purposes its im portance is tw o fo ld . F irstly F itzgib b on dem onstrates h o w far his characters' lives depend on sym bols, catch-phrases and ritual acts w h ich enable English life to continue but w h ich p ro ve totally inadequate in the Cold W ar crisis. A British politician explains to a bem used A m erican that most people h ave a 'co sy little dream ' o f their co u n try, w h ich bu ffers them against 'fear o f the u n k n o w n ', an extrem ely om inous pred ictio n w h ich is confirm ed b y the su b ­ sequent beh aviou r o f other characters. P artly this is the m entality o f 'it can 't happen h e r e ';10 p a rtly, lik e Sohl and others, F itzgib b on interrogates his characters' presum ptions o f national sta b ility b y p ro g ressively w id en in g the gap betw een their w o rd s and circu m ­ stances. Secon dly he describes the Soviet prem ier as a brilliant puppet-m aster, orchestrating d evelopm ents from behin d the scenes and th ere b y em b o d yin g F itzgib b o n 's perception o f Soviet foreign p o licy as a 'protracted and m assive A g itp ro p operation, b y w h ich the W est, and in particu lar the U nited States, w ere to be m ade to appear the aggressors ...' (Fitzgibbon 1976: 305). The Soviets tighten their g rip on Britain w ith the establishm ent o f internm ent cam ps, rigid censorship and deportations, so that b y the end o f the n o ve l the co u n try seems doom ed to in d efin ite occupation. F itzgib b on returned to this su bject in his 1975 post-holocaust n o ve l The Golden Age. Here h isto ry itself has died, or rather been deform ed into legend lik e that o f a m onster w h o w as k n o w n to execu te 'class' enem ies, re v ie w his troops, and w h o died in an u n d ergro u n d fastness called 'U ssia', 'u tte rly d estroyed b y the final H -bom b that

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w as inten ded to be his apotheosis' (Fitzgibbon 1975: 32). This d escription re-dem onises Stalinism into a m yth ical force after its demise.

(IV) F itzgib b o n 's narrative is u nusual in tracing out the process o f takeover and in the u n relieved pessim ism o f its en ding. U sually in vasion is presented as an actual or virtu a l fa it accompli w h ich has to be understood before it can be resisted. Th e 'Sovietisation' o f A m erican life is presented as a standardising or flatten in g w h ich conflicts head-on w ith a national ethic o f ind ivid ualism . The com m entator in the film Red Nightmare declares in rin gin g tones that 'the b righ t hopes o f a free w o rld are fou n d ed on the dedication o f in d ivid u a l A m erican s'. Robert H einlein echoed this sentim ent in 'H o w to be a S u rv iv o r' w h ere he recom m ends hidin g out in the 'v a lle y s, canyons, and hills o f our back co u n try ' i f the u s a is in vad ed , w h ich in 1961 he regarded as a liv e p o ssib ility on an alogy w ith even ts in Eastern E u ro p e.11 H einlein's recom m endations o f acqu irin g com bat skills and k n o w led g e o f w o o dcraft, abo ve all o f using the terrain, w ere pu t into narrative form in O liver L an ge's Vandenberg (1971) w h ich com bines diagnosis o f national malaise w ith a sto ry o f survivalism . Here again occu pation has already taken place. The eponym ous protagonist, a W o rld W ar II veteran, is the arch etyp al loner w h o after a failed second m arriage w ith d ra w s from society to pursue landscape painting on a small N ew M exico ranch. He is arrested for being p o litica lly suspect and is held at a 'R ehabilitation Centre' u ntil a p o w er failure enables him to escape. Th en he gathers a dozen associates to attack this camp, plan nin g to d istribu te p h otograph s o f the even t to w a k e up the locals. O nly the destruction o f the plant succeeds and V an d en berg disappears back into the R o ck y M ountains at the end o f the novel. For all its su rviv alist ethic, Vandenberg to ta lly avoids the gu n g-h o vio len ce w h ich defeats the Soviet in vad ers in the 1984 film Red Dawn. T h rou gh ou t the novel the terrain offers fu g itiv e s the chance o f concealm ent, and therefore o f su rviv al. A s a true b ack-coun trym an V an d en berg is skilled at trackin g, h u n tin g and w eap o n ry. In short V and en berg seems the v e ry personification o f male ind ivid ualism , bonding w ith his son and rejoining his old d rin kin g cronies.

V andenberg m anifests him self as a voice before a character, however. Quotations from his journals, sometimes as epigraphs, invest

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V an d en berg w ith some o f the au th o rity o f tex tu a l p rod u ctio n and m ount a general attack on the 'G reat Silent M ajo rity' w h o su p in ely accepted their conquerors: 'T h e deeper shock, then, w as not that w e lost, but that w e lost w ith such ease ...' Vandenberg then launches into a polem ic against A m ericans' national self-im ages — a 'self­ adm inistered indoctrination o f spurious righteousness' - w h ich h ave p rod u ced the 'm ost tractable, m alleable — let's face it, spineless — people to w a lk the face o f the earth' (Lange 1972: 3). Cold W ar m ind­ sets are criticised, lik e a co m p lacen cy tow ard s national defence, and V an d en b erg reaches the dam ning conclu sion that 'w h a t is lack in g in this co u n try is a clim ate o f unrest' (ibid.: 266). His attack on material p len ty was speedily picked up b y the review ers, the Sunday Express for one d eclaring that A m erica's 'in d iv id u a lity is already being sapped - not b y the Russians but b y m ulti-lane h igh w ays, deep freezes, colour t v and all the fripperies o f materialistic civilisa tio n '.12 H o w ever m uch V a n d en b erg's v ie w s are p rivile g ed , th ey n ever go u nqu estioned. His lo v er T erry, for instance, brings out the vaguen ess o f his purpose in attackin g the cam p, and this instance is o n ly one o f m any dialogues fo rcin g the tacitu rn V an d en berg on to the d efen sive. In the prison cam p V a n d en b erg's m ain interrogator (or 'in terv iew er') is an A m erican A n d y W alters. W alters disposes o f stereo typ ed im ages o f torture and instead questions V an d en berg at len gth, exp o sin g his suppressed hatred o f the masses (the 'stu p id people'). He s ly ly show s V an d en berg his f b i file, th ere b y m aking it clear that the process o f su rveillan ce and docum entation long preced ed the Soviet takeover. H ere again, h o w e v er, w e are g iv e n a double v ie w o f ev e ry episode, since W alters's reports (quoted verb a­ tim) su ggest more sinister procedu res like 'M em o ry Erase' and drug treatm ent. W alters presents the ben ign face o f the social ethic con ­ fron tin g V a n d en b erg's in d ivid ualism . The state's goal, he exp lain s, is to prod u ce the 'first gen u in e social creature' (Lange 1972: 136), and boasts w ith all the pride o f a technician: 'W e can litera lly p ick y o u r brain to pieces' (ibid.: 132). These dialogues b y W alters and others turn a sceptical sp otlig h t on V a n d en b erg's chosen role o f lone resistance figh ter w h ich em erges as self-deception. Lange pepp ers his tex t w ith quotations from w riters on w ar, the most im portant o f w h ich is Robert A rd rey . The Territorial Imperative (1967) exam ines the anim al origin s o f p ro p erty and nation, and defines territo ry prim arily th ro u gh the w illin gn ess o f its possessors to en gage in defence. A rd re y takes W o rld W ar II as a lab orato ry o f applied eth o lo gy, noting the sh ock w h en the French w ill to resist the N azis collapses. E x a ctly this point is sum m arised from A r d r e y b y A n d y W alters and pu t to V an d en berg (and th erefore to the

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reader) as an a n ticip ato ry m odel for A m erica's subm ission. A rd re y m akes no bones about w h ere he stands p o litically, su p p ortin g the Vietnam in terven tio n and praising the us response to the Cuban missile crisis. W h ile the 'helpless' w orld w atched, 'the A m erican put his Cadillac in the garage, returned his tw o-inch steak to the Frigidaire, turn ed o ff the televisio n set and the air-conditioning, kissed his w ife and his ch ildren and the stock m arket g o o d b y e and m arched as one man to the co nfrontation'. A rd re y draw s a pointed moral w h ich L an ge's n o vel fleshes out. If A m erica is not read y for the n e xt crisis 'w e shall h ave had it co m in g '.13 A p art from the nation su fferin g a d eserved defeat, there is a historical iro n y in V and en berg, the displaced hom esteader, h a vin g to rely on H ispanics and N ative Am ericans, i.e. on m em bers o f other displaced groups.

(V) L an ge's n o vel exem plifies a general aspect o f 'Fall o f A m erica' stories w h ich Tom S h ip p ey has exp lain ed as in v o lv in g a disfigurem en t o f national icons (Shippey 1 991: 116). The opening quotation describes the Statue o f L ib erty transform ed into a supine and 'v a cu o u sly g rin n in g old w h o re' (Lange 1972: 3) sym b o lically w elcom in g the conquerors. A ll o f the narratives considered in this chapter contain such sym bolic m om ents, u su ally o f displacem ent or concealm ent. The to w n square, for instance, in Face to Face with Communism contains a platform co vered b y a h u ge flag containing the tw o icons o f Communism: the star and the hamm er and sickle. A s a protestin g w om en is led aw a y a curtain slips from a h idden m onum ent to national heroes labelled 'T h e y F ought for Freedom '. In Shafer's The Conquered Place the city courthouse, the v e ry site o f ju stice, has been co n verted into occupation headquarters:

A red flag hung limp from a pole on the tow er. Pictures of the F ounder and of the current Leader hid m uch of the front of the building, and un d er them a banner: w o r k f o r t h e p e o p l e 's v i c t o r y . The fountain in the tiny park in the centre of the Square was dry. On either side of it was a light tank w ith tw o helm eted soldiers in the open tu rret. M achine-guns behind sandbags and w ire at the corners of the park com m anded the streets entering the Square. Fat pigeons stru tted the pavem ents. (Shafer 1955: 81) The building is screened by superim posed alien images w hich install a new history and dw arf the place of social gathering (the park). It is

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the aven ues o f free m ovem ent w h ich are 'com m anded' here, and w ith in this m ilitary still life the o n ly m ovin g creatures p a ro d y the pride o f the conquerors. K ey icons o f A m erican life then are screened or displaced as the visib le signs o f occu pation. In K o rn b lu th 's N ot This August n ew dollar bills are issued bearing su bstitu te effigies from the A m erican Left, lik e John Reed. Orson Scott Card's 'A Thou sand D eaths' (1978) describes a show trial g uarded b y A m erican soldiers w earin g b ad lyfittin g Soviet uniform s and in U rsula L eG u in 's d ysto p ia 'T h e N ew A tla n tis' (1975) the narrator's m athem atician hu sban d cou ld not p u b lish his papers and so used a 'Sam m y's-d o t' m ethod (i.e. 'sam izdat' conflated w ith U ncle 'Sam '). F inally the segm ent from the arch ive footage o f Com m unist tak e o v er spliced into The A tom ic Cafe (1982) contains a n ew sp aper called The Red Star ca rryin g a p h o to ­ g rap h o f Stalin and the headline 'O fficial Soviet Proclam ation!' A ll o f these exam ples dem onstrate in co n gru ities o f su bstitu tion or superim position, im agistically represen tin g the seizure o f cu rren cy, m ilitary p o w er and the circu lation o f inform ation. Th e Card and L eG u in 's stories carry an iro n y in the im plication that the in co n ­ gru ities should be greater than th e y are. The accused in 'A Thou sand Deaths' reflects that so long as th e y continued to m ake m on ey the A m erican p u b lic sim ply did not care about the regim e. D espite Card's stated inten t to 'sh o w A m erica ruled b y the most cruel and efficien t totalitarian system ever to exist on the face o f the Earth: the Stalinist version o f the Com m unist P arty' (Card 1990: 264), the regim e's sheer O rw ellian efficie n cy at m edia m anipulation - one o f the main causes o f subm ission in Vandenberg — im plies that such a 'behind-the scenes' narrative o f an accused w o u ld never reach the p u b lic. Sim ilarly LeG uin d escribes a regim e using 'b eh a vio u r m od ification ', b u g gin g and other totalitarian devices to m aintain itself. Tom S h ip p ey (Shippey: 1991: 12 1-2 ) argues that the politics o f its regim e could be read as o f the left or righ t, and indeed 'T h e N ew A tla n tis' p lays on the ease w ith w h ich A m erican agencies like the FBI can be integrated into a su pposedly alien command econom y. T he hu sban d declares: 'T h e State o w n s us ... because the co rp or­ ative State has a m on op oly on p o w er sources' (LeGuin 1984: 39) w h ich can be taken either as a m eton ym ic com m ent on the electri­ c ity su p p ly (pow er as com m odity) or as a political m etaphor. The solar en erg y d evice thus becom es a virtu a l m anifesto o f the local generation o f p o w er and therefore to be suppressed b y the authorities.

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(VI) In a su rv e y o f fiction al depictions o f the Soviets Paul Brians identifies a major them e as the 'com p licity o f A m ericans in their o w n co nqu est' (Brians 1987b: 320) and w e h ave seen h o w m uch o f the drama o f occu pation narratives focuses on the tensions b etw een the cap tive popu lation and its captors: on collaborators (Shafer), concealing supplies (Kornbluth), and evad in g registration (Lange). These, h o w ev er, are details w ith in the larger enterprise in these narratives o f im agining a situation u n k n o w n in m odern A m erican history: conquest and occupation. The first is rendered sym bo l­ ica lly th ro u gh the erasure o f cultural icons, the second th ro u gh an internal transform ation o f socioeconom ic life and, as w e h ave seen, th ro u gh an interrogation o f national values. This scru tin y inform s the first section o f one o f the most unusual occupation narratives, M . J. E n gh's Arslan (1976: u k title A W ind from Bukhara). Here, years before Star W ars, the Soviets h ave com pleted a n etw o rk o f laser w eapons. A rslan , President o f an ind ep en dent Turkistan , forces at g u n p o in t the Soviet prem ier to dem and capitulation o f the us, and thereup on leads a m ilitary occupation o f the cou n try. A rslan him self, m odelled on Kemal A ta tu rk in 'ty p e o f m ind, character, and m otivatio n ', carries out a p o licy o f 'p u rify in g ' the us in a num ber o f w a y s .14 The occupation is described m ainly b y the schoolteacher o f a small Illinois tow n, the V and en berg o f the novel, w h o engages in debates w ith his occu pier about the u s a . A rslan critiqu es A m erican material p rosp erity, forcin g the com m un ity into econom ic self-su fficien cy, and charges his listener w ith national com placency: 'Y o u h ave made w a r', he insists, 'y o u h ave not suffered it!' (Engh 1989: 99). A n d he proceeds to g iv e a cou nter­ h isto ry o f A m erican exploitation and corruption. A rslan capitalises on Soviet strategic su p erio rity ('it w as the hour o f the laser, and o f Russia' [ibid.: 207]) to th ro w the U SA back to nin eteen th -cen tu ry conditions and to question e v e ry ideal o f his captors. This is w h ere the n o v e l's force lies. Despite the im p lau sibility o f the larger narrative and o f such personalised rule, the psych o d yn am ics o f occu pation dram atise a process w h ere subm ission even leads to love o f the ruler. By the end o f the n o vel there is not even the desire to get rid o f A rslan and his forces.

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N o tes 1. M ay 1993: 26-7. n s c (National Security Council) 68 was draw n up in A p ril 1950. 2. Cf. A lfred Coppel's 'Secret W eapon' (1949) w hich demonstrates its thesis that 'e ve ry dictatorship bears w ithin itself the seed o f its ow n destruction' (Coppel 1949: 93) b y describing how a Soviet 'A u tarch' is fed false inform ation on his w ar b y his terrified ministers. 3. Benchley 1966: 134. B enchley's n ovel formed the basis o f the 1966 film The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming; it was reissued that year under the film title. 4. A llen D rury's A d vise and Consent series reaches a clim ax w ith The H ill o f Summer (1981) w hich describes the Soviet conquest o f the USA. 5. Dubois 1952: 11. The acting president in Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon even part-echoes Roosevelt's w ords in pronouncing the attack a 'day o f infam y'. The 1957 launch o f Sputnik II was described b y one commentator as a 'second Pearl Harbor' and one new s report on the failure o f the us satellite launch as the 'Pearl Harbor of the Cold W ar' (Solberg 1973: 340, 342). 6. Kornbluth 1981: 7. Letter from Frederik Pohl, 29 M ay 1997. 7. 'W hen the Reds M arched In', Sunday News (14 A u gu st 1955): 41. The New York Herald Tribune (24 July 1955) also pronounced this w ork 'far and aw ay the best recent such novel on the Russian occupation of the United States'. 8. 'Book R eview s', Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, 70 (June 1956): 154. 9. Kornbluth's detailing o f agrarian p o verty contrasts totally w ith A. E. van V ogt's fanciful 'Prologue to Freedom' (1986) w here California is experim entally divided into tw o economic regimes: M arxist and capitalist. The results demonstrate Californians' skill at tax avoidance and the opportunism o f party members w ho prom ptly take over the most luxurious houses. 10. A phrase used as the title for Sinclair L ew is's 1935 novel describing the rise o f a fascist regime in the

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11. Heinlein 1980: 173; 1992: 240. 12. Excerpted inside the cover of the Bantam edition. In 1981 Lange retitled the w ork Defiance: an American Novel. 13. A rd rey 1967: 264. This passage is quoted in the novel. A rd re y's 1952 novel The Brotherhood o f Fear is the Kafkaesque narrative o f an officer in the secret police pursuing an 'enem y o f the state' beyond the border o f an unnamed East European country. 14. Letter from M. J. Engh, 22 December 1997. Arslan is named after a Seljuk conqueror.

Em bodying the Arms Race: Bernard Wolfe's

Limbo A lim bo large and broad, since called the paradise o f Fools (John M ilton, Paradise Lost Book 3) M ost o f the narratives exam ined in the p reced ing chapter base Soviet occu pation on superior nuclear tech n o logy. W e turn n o w to a w o rk w h ich focuses its narrative on a central Cold W ar m etaphor. In 1945, recoiling from Hiroshim a, Leo Szilard w arned: 'an arm aments race in atom ic w eapons m ay w e ll becom e the greatest single cause o f a fu tu re w ar' (Lanouette 1992: 283). The 1949 Soviet nuclear test ('Joe One') raised the stakes further, sh ifting g o v e rn ­ m ent p o licy 'from the goal o f control to the goal o f su p erio rity' (Boyer 1994: 336). The pursuit o f this goal w as exp ressed th ro u gh the phrase 'arm s race' w h ich conflates tw o m etaphors: w eapons are arms and national m ilitary p o licy is a com petition. The first has an ancient p ed igree stretch ing back as far as V irgil w h ile the latter, coined in the thirties, becam e a routine part o f p ostw ar political discourse, being used, for instance, in H enry W allace's 1948 presi­ dential cam paign (M edhurst 1990: 107—12). The gam e/race m eta­ phor entails a set o f rules the ackn ow led gem en t o f w h ich operates as a prem ise, but in the clim ate o f increasing secrecy during the late 1 940s such openness could o f course not be taken for granted. The critical m om ent o f the u s a losing its nuclear m on op oly therefore could o n ly be expressed th ro u gh a sk ew ed m etaphor lik e that lyin g at the centre o f Bernard W o lfe 's 1952 n o vel Limbo. A form er T ro tsk yite and m em ber o f T r o tsk y 's secretarial sta ff in M exico, W o lfe d ep loys a Joycean array o f genres and allusions to in vestigate the roots o f Cold W ar aggression w h ich is presented as a particular historical inflection o f a species im p u lse.1 Limbo is set in the year 1990 in the afterm ath o f the T hird W orld W ar w h ich broke out in 1972. The enorm ous devastation w h ich that w ar brou gh t has reduced the h abitable land area o f East and W est. The U SA has becom e the Inland Strip since all seaboards h ave been laid w aste 107

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and a confederation loosely analogous to the Soviet Union has emerged called the Eastern Union. The n o v e l's protagonist Dr. M artine has fled during the w ar to an uncharted island in the Indian Ocean w here he has been perform ing experim ental lobotom ies on aggressive natives. W h en a g ro u p o f A m erican s w ith prosthetic lim bs visits the island M artine decides to return to A m erica w h ere he fin d s to his am azem ent that facetious rem arks he m ade in a w artim e jou rn al h ave been taken seriou sly and d evelo p ed into an international m ovem ent ('Im m ob', i.e. Im m obilisation) dedicated to the eradi­ cation o f hum an aggression b y v o lu n ta ry am putations ('vol-am p') and their replacem ent b y prosthesis.2 The novel traces out M artine's grad ual d isco very o f this m ovem ent and reaches its clim ax at the prosthetic O lym pic Games w h en the Eastern Union team gun s d ow n the ju d g e s and w ar breaks out again, this tim e on a sm aller con ­ tainable scale. This w ar com es to an end w ith the death o f the W estern prem ier and o verth ro w o f the Eastern U nion regim e b y its citizens, and the novel concludes w ith M artine returning to his island.

(i) W o lfe fo regro un ds tech n o lo g y as an exten sion o f h u m a n ity 's capa­ city for conflict. Lim bo, lik e Player Piano and Level 7, em phasises the central role o f com puters in plan nin g and co n d u ctin g the w ar, co n textu alisin g nuclear w ar as the culm ination o f a Burnham ite process o f m anagerial centralisation. The w ar occurs a b su rd ly because the su p erp o w ers' lan gu ages are deem ed to be incom patible: In 1970 Russia and A m erica sim u ltaneou sly came to a hallu cinated decision: th ey, and not m erely their vocabu laries, w ere such diam etric opposites that th ey could not exist side b y side on the same planet. So the Third, the global e m s i a c w ar, broke out. A n d this w as the m ost grotesqu e iro n y in hum an h isto ry, for the e m s i a c w ar p ro v ed o n ly one thing: that the cybernetic-m an agerial revo lu tio n had been carried to its logical end and n o w Russia and A m erica w ere a bso lu tely and irre v o c a b ly alike ... For each w as n o w the m onster that W ien er had w arn ed w as com ing: the to ta lly bu reaucratised w ar m achine in w h ich man w as turn ed into a la ck ey b y his o w n m achines. A n d each w as presided o ver b y the su per-bu reau crat o f them all, the perfect electron ic brain sired b y the im perfect hum an brain. (W olfe 1952: 140)

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Behind the polarities o f Cold W ar discourse W o lfe locates a crow n in g irony: the identical nature o f the tw o superstates. W h ere V o n n eg u t's com puter su rviv es into the postw ar period and extend s its 'n ervo u s system ' into a series o f ever-larger m odels, in W o lfe 's narrative the w ar comes to an end because each side bom bs its resp ective com puter. Both novelists w ere capitalising on contem ­ po rary cultural com m entary w h ich diagnosed a m echanisation o f the present. L ew is M um ford, for instance, an ardent supporter o f disarm am ent, described the A tom ic A g e as being 'm achine dom in­ ated' (M um ford 1946: 4) and in his plea for hum anistic renew al, The Conduct o f Life (1951), attem pted to pu sh this 'dom ination o f the m achine' (M um ford 1952: 223) into the past. The d estruction o f the tw o com puters in Limbo appears to signal that hum ans h ave regained control o ver their o w n actions, but that turns out not to be the case as is p ro v ed b y the Immob m ovem ent. Limbo can be seen as an elaboration o f an idea W o lfe tried out in a prelim inary sketch called 'S e lf Portrait' (1951). This jou rn al narra­ tiv e, set in 1959, is k ep t b y a scientist nam ed Parks w h o secures a post at the Institute for A d v a n ce d C ybern etics Studies w h ere his im m ediate project is to design efficien t prosthetic legs for a Korean w ar casualty. Parks fu n ctions as a hum ourless foil to tw o su gges­ tions from others w h ich rid icu le Cold W ar confrontations. The first is the proposal that each co u n try 's com puter should calculate w h en hostilities cou ld begin. On that d ay the fo llo w in g cerem ony w o u ld take place: In each capital the citizens gather around their strategy m achine, the officials turn out in h igh hats and cu t-aw ays, there are speeches, pageants, choral sin gin g, mass dancing — the ritual can be w o rk ed out in advance. Then, at an agreed tim e, the crow ds retreat to a safe distance and a com m ittee o f the top cybern eticists appears. T h ey clim b into planes, take o ff and — this is beau tiful — drop all their atom bom bs and H -bom bs on the m achines. (W olfe

i 9 5 I; 72) This w o u ld happen sim ultaneously in each capital. The even t w o u ld be com m em orated as International M ushroom D ay and after it the scientists w o u ld go back to their laboratories to d evise n ew series o f su perw eapon s w h ich w o u ld result in fu tu re M ushroom Days. The second proposal m akes a facetious application o f gam es th eory to the Cold W ar, once again in v o lv in g com puters. N ow casualties for each side w o u ld be calculated in ad van ce and then volun teers w o u ld be called for to und ergo am putation in return for

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com pensation. That w a y the co n d u ct o f a w ar w o u ld be sim ulated w ith o u t u sing an y actual arms. The vo lu n ta ry am putation program m e in Limbo is essen tially an elaboration on this basic idea, bu t one far richer in its self­ co n trad ictory sym bolism . W e cou ld best th in k o f it as a m ovem ent aim ed at controllin g aggression since 'cyb e rn e tics' litera lly denotes the science o f g u id an ce or control. 'V ol-am p' attem pts to regain control o f the im pulse w h ich p rod u ces w ar and is articulated as reason attem pting to reim pose itse lf on hum an conduct. In form u ­ lating his concept o f prosthesis, W o lfe p ro b a b ly took the fo llo w in g passage from F reud's Civilisation and Its Discontents as his starting point. R eflecting on h o w the gods em b o d y an 'ideal co nception o f om nipotence and om n iscien ce', Freud concludes: M an has, as it w ere, becom e a k in d o f prosthetic God. W h en he puts on all his a u x ilia ry organs he is tru ly m agnificent; bu t those organs h ave not g ro w n on to him and th ey still g iv e him m uch tro u ble at times. (Freud 1975: 28-9) P rosthetics appear to liberate h u m an ity from a lim itation iden tified b y a speaker at the Im m ob academ y: 'th e tra g ed y o f the hum an cond ition is p recisely the entrapm ent b y the vile en gine o f bone and m uscle' (W olfe 1952: 174). P ara d o x ically the am putation m ovem ent presents itself as a flig h t from the 'en g in e' o f the b o d y p recise ly b y a p p ly in g a m echanistic con ception o f the b o d y as consisting o f replaceable parts. By 1948 N orbert W ien er in his stu d y Cybernetics (an a ck n o w ­ ledged source for W olfe) saw that the science o f prosthetics w as d evelo p in g rap id ly, and im m ediately lin ked these changes to the d ysto p ian tradition: 'It m akes the m etaphorical dom inance o f the m achines, as im agined b y Sam uel Butler, a m ost im m ediate and nonm etaphorical problem . It g iv es the hum an race a n ew and m ost e ffective collection o f m echanical slaves to perform its lab ou r' (W iener 1961: 27). A t the beg in n in g o f the n ext decade W ien er's ev id en t realisation that the m ilitary-in d u strial com plex w as app ro­ priating such sciences sharpened his an xieties about the im m ediate p olitical fu tu re o f the u s a w h ich he saw as sin king into a sinister m achine age dom inated b y a 'th reaten in g n ew Fascism d epen den t on the machine a gouverner (W iener 1950: 214). W ien er's stance as the spokesm an for an em battled hum anism sits rather u n easily w ith his application o f servom echanism s, and Peter Galison has argued that 'W ien er's efforts w ere d evo ted to effacin g the d istin ction betw een hum an and m achine' (Galison 1994: 245-6) and to elevatin g

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the feed b a ck m echanism into a w h o le prin cip le o f hum an b eh a vi­ our. P urportin g to protest against the m achine, he a ctu a lly co v e rtly assim ilates the m achine into his v ie w o f hum an ity. One o f W ien er's tw o p u b lish ed short stories, 'T h e Brain' (1952), coincides w ith the date and central su bject o f Limbo in discussing a contem porary fad for cu rin g d epressive insan ity. The narrator u n co n scio u sly testifies to W ien er's internalisation o f tech nological brain m odels w h en he reflects: 'No, I sh o u ld n 't like to h ave an yon e tam per w ith m y inner w irin g diagram s' (Conklin 1962: 299). A lth o u g h Limbo confines its exam ples o f prosthetics to arms and legs there is no intrin sic reason w h y these su bstitu tions should not exten d to other parts o f the bo d y, even to the brain itself, as happens in Raym ond F. Jones's The Cybernetic Brains (periodical 1950, n o vel 1962) w h ere a C ybern etics Institute has a w o rld w id e rem it to use the brains o f those w h o are dead in b o d y. The Immob m ovem ent in W o lfe 's n o ve l can be seen as an absurdist extrapolation o f fears o f uncon trolled tech nological d evelopm ent and perceptions o f a dissociation o f the popu lace from political processes. The schem e itself is subjected to ironic scru tin y b y its u n w ittin g in ven to r M artine w h o serves to reveal its para­ d oxical nature. The latter becom es more and more o b vio u s since artificial lim bs p ro v e to be more efficien t 'arm s' than their originals, and the m ovem ent professes a quietism contradicted b y its o w n moral fervou r. W h en M artine hears a p u b lic speaker w h ip p in g up enthusiasm for am putations he sounds lik e a cross betw een a salesman and a politician. The m eeting w h ich fo llo w s contains tw o analogies, one A m erican and the other Russian: it seems to be a gatherin g o f a religiou s cult on the one hand, w h ile on the other the recruits 'w ere about to sign their o w n M osco w confessions and death w arran ts' (W olfe 1952: 191). The conflation o f resem blances from both cu ltu ral poles o f the Cold W ar takes an added tw ist from the fact that a kin d o f conscrip tion is takin g place. M ost absurd o f all is the se lf-m ystifyin g abuse o f language. The p u b lic speaker im patien tly brushes aside verb al d ifference as h air-splitting: 'Pros are such good Im m obs that w e refuse to m ake a fetish o f a n y w o rd at all' (W olfe 1952: 162). W ord s, w e saw, w ere la rg e ly responsible for W orld W ar III in W o lfe 's fu tu re h isto ry because cultural discourse had lagged behind technological and political change. N ow once again w ords becom e separated from actuality and no w h ere is this more o b vio u s than in the cam paign slogans lik e the u nrecogn ised pun ' w a r is o n i t s l a s t l e g s ' (Ibid.: 119). The main im plication o f the n o ve l's d ystop ian ironies is that hu m an ity is d en y in g its o w n nature in such schem es as the Immob

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m ovem en t.3 This w as recogn ised early b y one o f W o lfe 's fe w com m entators. Chad W alsh declares that Limbo dem onstrates that 'M an is not dangerous because he has teeth that can bite and hands that can hold a rifle or press a guided-m issile button. Fie is dangerous because o f his m ind and sp irit' (W alsh 1962: 150). C arolyn G ed u ld puts more or less the same p oint more sp ecifically: [M ]odern man is ve to in g am bivalen ce in fa vo r o f consistency. In try in g to force a tw o -sid ed w o rld into a one-sided pigeon h ole, he is bein g more than ju s t dam aging; he is bein g suicidal, for the ultim ate con sisten cy, in th eory, is the frozen ness o f death. (G eduld 1972: 47-8) This en d-poin t is hinted at in the self-contrad iction o f Im m ob, i.e. im m obilisation, being a m ovem ent, and in the introjection o f aggression as a vio len t im pulse against the hum an b o d y. In that respect Limbo resem bles H einlein's D arw inian fan tasy Beyond This Horizon (1948) w h ere nuclear w ar has led to an attem pt at breed ing aggression out o f the hum an gen etic pattern. H ere too the attem pt fails because a m inority o f 'w o lv e s ' attack the docile m ajority in the G enetic W ars, after w h ich it is realised that com bativeness is part o f h u m a n ity 's su rv iv a l in stin ct.4 E ssen tially the Immob m ovem ent gro w s out o f a m istaken logic. It literalises the m etaphor in 'disarm ­ am ent' and th ere b y catches its supporters in contrad iction since, as R eginald Bretnor later o b served , '[I]t is a w o rd o f prom ise, h old in g w ith in itself its entire argum ent: take away the tools o f war and war w ill cease. U n h ap p ily, it is not the tools, bu t their users, w h o m ake w a r' (Pournelle and Carr 1989: 87).

( i i) Limbo fo llo w s a reverse n arrative sequence w h ere its protagonist m ust leave his refu ge and return to a devastated A m erica, th en to his fam ily home to retrace his personal past. W h en the n o ve l opens M artine seems to h ave freed h im self from the bonds o f su p erp o w er confrontation, but W o lfe d raw s on the traditional trope o f the b o d y politic to situate M artine in a co n tin u in g im perialistic p o w er-p la y. L ike W ells's Dr M oreau, M artine has fo u n d refu ge for h im self on an u ncharted island w h ere he can p u rsu e m orally am biguous e x p e ri­ m ents. M oreau prod u ces his Beast People; M artine solves the 'b eh a vio u r disorders' o f the islanders b y g iv in g them lobotom ies. Both his surgical operations and his sexu al acts w ith his n ative lover

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Ooda are en coded politically; w h en he caresses the latter he is p u ttin g fo rw a rd 'propagan d a' to persuade her into subm ission. A lth o u g h M artin e h im self v ie w s his island as an inn ocent refu ge from co rru p tin g W estern so ciety he is im plicated at e v e ry point in a po w er stru ctu re d eriv in g from the v e ry so ciety he has o sten sibly left behind. N ow h ere is this political in vo lvem en t more clear than in the sym bolism o f m apping w h ich runs th ro u gh the first sections o f Limbo. Th e n o vel establishes an an alo gy betw een the b o d y and territorial expanse, w h ere exp loratio n becom es an act o f app ro­ priation and therefore once again an exercise o f p ow er. O oda's b o d y , for instance, falls 'u n d er the reconnaissance o f his hands' (W olfe 1952: 35). M artine sees him self as a n eurological pioneer, a second Brodm ann w h o cou ld pursue the science o f cytoarch itectu re or brain m apping so far that he fin a lly u n co vers the p h ysio lo g ical bases o f hum an behaviou r. A s a quester for k n o w led g e M artine engages in sym bolic acts o f penetration — o f the island ju n g le , o f his patien ts' cranium . L ike m ost processes in the n o vel, this one is m ade the su bject o f ex p licit com m entary b y a lecturer at the Immob academ y w h o quotes w ith ap p roval A lfred K o rzy b sk i's w arn in g that 'th e map is not the territo ry ', i.e. that the representation should not be confused w ith the th in g itself.5 Professing to m ock the selfm y stify in g rituals o f the n ew A m erica under the Immob m ovem ent, M artine has installed h im self as a p riestlike m edicine man am ong the M an du n ji, and y et both operations are exercises in attem pted control b y rem oval.6 M artine h im self is used b y W o lfe to em bo dy his nation. He is a child o f the atom ic age, his birth coin cid in g w ith the first A -bom b blast at A lam agordo. Sim ilarly he arrives at the Inland Strip on In dep end ence D ay and the clim actic gam es occu r on Peace Day. M artine rep eated ly fin ds him self participatin g in p u b lic even ts and — even more u n n e rv in g ly - fin ds that he has been transform ed into the m essianic fo u n d er o f the Immob m ovem ent. He has becom e in stitutionalised and e x p lic itly iden tified w ith the fu tu re d estin y o f his co u n try. His n otebook has becom e scripture; his birth p lace is a national shrine; and his o w n m etaphor o f the steam roller has turn ed into a national icon. M artin e's in vestigation o f h im self therefore in v o lv e s at the same tim e a process o f en q u iry into his o w n culture. His return to A m erica signals a resu rgen ce o f Cold W ar hostilities. Section 5 o f Limbo ('L ove and Colum bium ') shifts into the genre o f espionage thriller w h ere M artine falls p rey to a nu bile Eastern agent. T his m arks the erotic prelud e to an interrogation o f M artine b y her superiors, w h ich in turn is a p relud e to an attem pted

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in vasion b y the Eastern U nion. A t the begin n in g o f the n o ve l M artin e's island kin gdo m had been in vad ed b y an A m erican Immob team o sten sib ly practisin g for the n e xt O lym pics, bu t a ctu ally searching for m inerals needed in prosthetics. N o w M artine is ques­ tioned about these events, and accused personally and nationally o f deception: 'Y o u r co u n try insists on p la y in g its old im perialist m onopolist gam e' (W olfe L952: 253). Here W o lfe re v iv e s a th ird b o d y m etaphor w h ich w ill u n d erp in the clim ax to the novel: p o li­ tical p o licy (and its co vert exten sion th ro u gh espionage) is a gam e.

( in ) N ot o n ly does W o lfe fo regro u n d and thus literalise such traditional m etaphors; but also th ro u gh o u t Limbo he uses the com edy o f puns as a means o f political en q u iry . His title suggests at once prosthetics (limb-o) and also a state o f neglect or transition betw een phases. From A rth u r Koestler W o lfe too k the notion o f 'biso ciatio n ', w h e re b y a jo k e represents an intersection betw een tw o sem antic ch ain s.7 W o lfe com bines this w ith F reud 's notion o f am bivalen ce and gro u n d s doubleness w ith in the hum an organism : 'e v e r y cell contained a seething m ixtu re o f Eros and Thanatos; am bivalen ce w as its g lu e' (W olfe 1952: 273). Th e n o vel p rivile ges the signs o f lin kage (copula and h yph en ) and questions lobotom y and am puta­ tion as ruptures o f a body-based balance betw een opposites. Dualism becom es the v e ry cond ition o f the narrative: M artin e's islanders possess tw o narcotic w eeds, the one in d u cin g tra n q u illity and the other stim ulation. The Im m ob leaders Theo and H elder represent opposite political polarities o f idealism and realism . A n d so the list could go on. E very instance in the n o vel presum es its opposite w h ich w ill appear sooner or later. The process o f reading in v o lv e s a reco gn itio n o f the tran sferab ility o f lan gu age from one dom ain o f exp erien ce to another: w e are told at one point that 'the rhetoric o f lo v e is rem arkably like the rh etoric o f w ar' (W olfe 1952: 176). In Limbo political positions correspond to d ifferent lin gu istic usages as m uch as action. The u topian hope expressed b y Theo is that political discourse has m oved into a post-Cold W ar lan gu age o f fra tern ity but that hope is dashed b y the opposition o f V ish in u , an Eastern U nion leader. W o lfe bo rro w s K oestler's sym bolic p o la rity o f political change from The Yogi and the Commissar (quoted in the novel), and em bodies these extrem es in tw o speakers. A quadroamp articulates the desire for a w h o le ('w o rld no more in fra g ­ m ents') th ro u gh a series o f iden tification s b etw een opposites ('Eros

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is A gap e'). A t the other extrem e stands V ish in u 's fam iliar Stalinist rhetoric o f trium phalism dressed up as liberation: 'W e represent the fresh n ew spirit o f the East w h ich is b low in g up n o w a real cyb ercy to hurricane to sw eep the w o rld clean o f the fou l im perialist odors o f the old W estern m asters' (W olfe 1952: 331). Such oppositions inform M artin e's notebook w h ere his D ostoye v sk y a n narration installs a critical or antagonistic reader w h o w ill ridicule his statements. R hetorically then M artine expresses an am bi­ valen ce dram atised as a dialogue w ith in his jou rn al betw een him self and a w ar casu alty w h ich results in a facetious utopian proposal for a v o lu n ta ry am putation program m e to replace w ar. This is designed sp ecifica lly as a rem edy for fear ('no more q u akin g in the cellar, w aitin g for the bom b to land' [W olfe 1952: 215]) b y w ille d action. T he m ovem ent w o u ld dis-arm in the most literal w a y . E ven in the m iddle o f the proposal, h o w ev er, M artine recognises that the cam paign w o u ld be based on deception, screening the d iversion o f aggression from the other on to the self.8 In this section - the most self-conscious te x tu a lly — M artine fractures into author and reader, fin d in g h im self return in g to a tex t co n verted into a grotesqu e secular scriptu re com plete w ith annotations b y an Immob leader. The latter's failure to see the jo k e p a rtly anticipates the fate o f W o lfe 's n ovel. P h ilip W y lie praised the satirical ideas and solution but o bjected that W o lfe 'takes non-classical liberties w ith scientifiction , so that his story as a story is alm ost ch ild ish ly im plausible' (W ylie 1952: 11). Paul Brians has argued more recen tly that Limbo 'represents the farthest extrem e o f antipacifist m uscular disarm a­ ment fiction ' and he rejects an ironic reading (Brians 1987a: 71). Indeed D avid N. Sam uelson has been one o f the v e ry fe w critics to date to adm it the p o w er o f the n o ve l's black hum our, declaring: 'T h is central ab su rd ity [the v o lu n ta ry am putation program m e] fu n ctions straig h tfo rw a rd ly as an estranging d evice' (Sam uelson I 977 : 79 ); and because o f such features Limbo has recen tly been read as a proto -cyberp u n k novel (see Bukatman 1993: 243-4, 293-4).

(IV) The political clim ax to Limbo dem onstrates the internal coherence o f W o lfe 's b o d y tropes. The problem o f re-establishing the O lym pic Games w as addressed in the special 1951 num ber o f Collier's d evo ted to The Unwanted War. In the w a k e o f a S o viet-p ro vok ed nuclear exch an g e the Com m unist regim e has collapsed and the i960 M osco w O lym pics are described as an even t w h ich 'sign alled w o rld

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brotherhood and g o o d w ill' (Collier's 1951: 41). A 'p h o to gra p h ' d ep ictin g sm iling represen tatives from form er hostile states sums u p the n ew w o rld o f peacefu l coexistence. W o lfe in contrast d escribes an ev en t w h ich re v iv e s w ar rather than confirm ing peace. T he n ew 'arm s race' ren ew s su p erp o w er confrontation acted out in itially throu gh athletic com petitions. Then, after the Eastern union team w in s the gam es, its m em bers assem ble in 'm ilitary form ation' and then m arch Tike an electrified cen tip ed e' tow ard s the ju d g e s' stand (W olfe 1952: 328-9). H aving substituted prosthetic w eapons for their p revio u s 'arm s', th e y g u n the ju d g e s d ow n . T h is o vert aggression has been p lay ed out v e rb a lly w h en V ish in u dism isses the internationalist rh etoric o f the W est and accuses it o f con­ sp iracy. There then fo llo w s a nuclear assault and invasion . A clear set o f analogies em erges here. In order to co nstru ct 'arm s' the su p erp o w ers need a rare metal: for colum bium read uranium . T he gam es com bine an attem pted transposition o f m ilitary r iv a lry on to peaceful com petition a la W illiam James ('T he M oral E qu i­ va len t o f W ar'); bu t the cerem onies can also be read as a parodic version o f the U nited N ations w h ere V ish in sk y (cf. Vishinu) m ade a name for his constant d enu nciation s o f W estern im perialism . The gam es them selves at once m ount a S w iftian p a ro d y o f the jo c k e y in g for p o w er and also enact the o v ertu rn in g o f A m erican presum ption o f tech n o logical suprem acy. V ish in u 's team in its perfect d isciplin e restores the concept o f m ilitary exten sion to 'arm ', w h ile the b iological lim b has becom e elided. W h at w e h ave been considering as a d oubleness o f lan gu age can n o w be seen as p olitical d u p licity at w o rk . T he pacifist m ovem ent p a te n tly fails because w ar is bein g co n d u cted 'b eh in d the scenes'. In other w o rd s, the O lym p ic Games w ere set u p as a facade screening co vert preparations for w ar. The trope o f pretence as a gam e thus displaces athletic com petitiven ess and the Cold W ar situation w h ich pred ated W o rld W ar III is re­ established. So w e fin d W o lfe jo in in g the pattern o f other nuclear n ovelists lik e W alter M . M iller in d escribin g the fu tu re as a tim e o f recu r­ rence. A n e w nuclear attack is lau n ch ed b y the East w h ich helps to trig ger an enorm ous earth qu ake that en gu lfs the m assive u n d er­ gro u n d atom ic city o f Los A lam o s.9 In the m eantim e the w est has revealed that it too has been secretly d evelo p in g arms despite a w o rld w id e proh ibition , w h ich o n ly confirm s more clearly the sym m etry b etw een each su p erp o w er. M artin e's tra ck in g o f the roots o f aggression h ave reached a conclu sion that am b ivalen ce is the gro u n d o f hum an b eh avio u r, and if this is so an am b ig u ity em erges in the n o v e l.10 The stru gg le b etw e en the riv a l im pulses o f

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Eros and Thanatos w h ich lies at the heart o f Freud's v ie w o f the in d ivid u a l resem bles the squaring o ff betw een the su perp ow ers in Limbo. Each side at the O lym pic Games claims to be acting in the name o f M artine as if riv a l parts o f his self h ave been externalised into the field o f w o rld politics. Is W olfe then essentialising Cold W ar riv a lry ? Is 'w a r b etw een nations o n ly [an] extension [of] w ar betw een sexes' (W olfe 1952: 260), or can this prop osition be re v e r­ sed? It seems at tim es as if he is approaching L ew is M um ford's position in Programme fo r Survival (1946) w h ere the latter argues that 'the hardest th in g for us A m ericans to realise is that w e are no lon ger confronted b y external armies: the most dangerous enem y w e face lies w ith in us' (M um ford L946: 28). But then W o lfe 's w ealth o f political and historical reference anchors his n o vel in the circum stances o f the early postw ar period. The b o d y tropes w h ich he uses th ro u gh o u t Limbo p aro d y the arms race as a self-m ystifyin g process w h ere pacifist needs h aw k, East needs W est, in a co n tin u ­ ous sequence o f o p p o sitio n s.11 The h y p h en and the copula p ro v e to be essential bonds therefore. W o lfe 's satire, h o w ev er, leaves the m etaphor o f the b o d y politic larg ely unqu estioned, th ereb y rein forcin g w h at has been d escribed as the folk lo re o f Cold W ar politics, nam ely an 'international society in w h ich nations each h ave the attributes o f persons w ith in a com m u n ity' and w h ere aggression is regarded as h u m an ity's prim ary m otivation (Burton 1964: 148). M artine attem pts to distance him self from tech n o logy. W h en M artine breaks the um bilical cables o f his com putercontrolled plane to fly out o f W o rld W ar III to his island refu ge the even t is charged w ith the sym bolism o f self-birth in g, but he returns to a robotised Am erica. Nor is his island outside W estern p ow er structures. The n o v e l's coda describes M artin e's islanders entering history, i.e. w o rld politics, b y d isco verin g the prosthetic flam e­ th ro w ers and sim ilar d evices left behind b y the 'vo l-am p s'. Their en try into secular time is signalled b y their d isco very o f 'arm s'. A n d so the arms race seems set to continue.

N o tes 1. W olfe subsequently w rote a novel about T rotsk y's assassination, The Great Prince Died (1959). 2. Heinlein's 1942 story 'W aldo' had already dealt w ith this theme in its description o f a brilliant engineer w ho compensates for his atrophic muscles b y designing servomechanisms, substitute arms w hich enable him to realise a dream o f power.

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3. For com mentary on the n ovel's dystopian dimension see Samuelson 1977 and Clareson 1977: 203-5. 4. The explanation o f how a su rvivalist elite comes into being is strained and almost tautologous since, as one character objects, 'b ravery is no use against nuclear w eapons' (Heinlein 1974: 34). Here too a eugenic utopia turns out not to have solved the problem o f political conflict. 5. K orzybski's actual w ords w arn against language in general: 'A language is like a map; it is not the territory represented, but it may be a good map or a bad map' K orzybski 1949: 498). This phrase appears in an interm ediary w ork A . E. van V ogt's The World o f N ull-A (1948, also set after W orld W ar III) and in H einlein's Beyond This Horizon during a discussion o f sym bolic representation. 6. Describing the 1945 deportations in Eastern Europe A rthu r Koestler drew on the trope o f am putation b y the Soviet surgeons 'from the national b od y' since 'a nation thus deprived of her backbone and nervous centres becomes a kind o f amorphous jelly, reduced to the degree o f m alleability necessary to adapt herself to the conditions of Soviet Dictatorship' (Koestler 1945: 208). 7. Thus, through a pun, a 'mental concept is sim ultaneously perceived under tw o different angles' (Koestler 1949: 25). 8. A lthough M artine focalises the n ovel's intellectual com m entary, his ow n career emerges as an unconscious displacem ent o f sexuality on to the hypoderm ic needle and scalpel as phallic sym bols o f control. 9. The n ovel draws on proposals to relocate cities because o f the nuclear threat (Boyer 1994: 312, 321). Los Alam os is a m assive composite of nuclear processing plants govern ed hierarchically b y an adminis­ trative elite (the brains) presiding over m ostly negro w orkers, the 'braw n below '. 10. For a detailed explanation o f how Freudian am bivalence figures in the novel see Geduld 1972: 46-73. 11. In W olfe's 1957 novel about Caribbean espionage, In Deep, the pro­ tagonist, an Am erican agent, recognises a kinship w ith his Soviet opposite num ber as a 'tw in '. Sim ilarly in W olfe's novel about the Trotsky assassination

The Great Prince Dies (1959) a character

compares the M oscow trials and the k illin g o f a negro in the Spanish C ivil W ar as 'opposite sides o f the same d irty jo k e' (W olfe 1959: 192).

The Cold War Computerised

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In Limbo w e saw h o w m assive defence com puters pre-em pt the co n d u ct o f political strategy and even decide w h en to w age war. The am bivalen ce depicted in Limbo as a g rou n d condition o f exp erien ce for Isaac A sim o v characterises our fear o f loss o f control even as m achines exten d hum an capabilities. In the p ostw ar period tw o m achines h ave increased this fear: the bom b and the com puter, the latter posing the w orse threat: 'A ll that fission and fusion bom bs can do is d estroy us, the com puter m ight su pplant us' (A sim ov 1984a: 181). Early fiction al representations o f com puters describe ju st such a displacem ent. A sim o v's 'Franchise' (1955) and M ichael Schaara's '2066: Election D ay' (1957) both sh ow an electoral process replaced b y a com puterised system o f pred iction and selection. W ith in these societies the President becom es a dim inished figure, in Player Piano scarcely more than a PR man to the com puter. Here e p i c a c is a 'w a r-b o rn ' series (historically the first us com puter e n i a c w as set up for ballistic research), exp an d in g its 'n ervo u s system ' to appropriate more and more socioeconom ic fun ctions. V o n n eg u t's earlier com puter story, ' e p i c a c ' (1950), is a rem ini­ scence b y a program m er w h o has lost his 'best frien d '. V o n n egu t displaces objections to w ar-plann in g on to his com puter's su b ject­ iv ity 'v erb a lised ' as a refusal o f its o w n condition: 'I d on 't w an t to be a m achine, and I d on 't w an t to th in k about w ar' (V onnegut 1979: 263). The com puter here becom es the k e y feature o f an autom ated en viron m en t and a d evice w h ich can be used for good or ill. Poul A n d erso n 's 'Sam H all' (1953) extrapolates the fear o f a central data bank on citizens during the M cC arthy period into an autom ated 119

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d ysto p ia w h ere e v e ry o n e 's lo y a lty is ch ecked and rech ecked . A s in H einlein's The Moon is a Harsh M istress, h o w e v er, the com puter can be turn ed into a m eans o f resistance w h e n a program m er in v en ts 'Sam H all', a com posite d issident w h o se name becom es a focu s for political opposition. Sim ilarly in W alter M . M iller's 'D um b W a iter' (1952) a central com puter keep s re-enactin g defence m easures lon g after a w ar has fin ish ed and the bom bs h ave been exh austed, bu t p roves am enable to reprogram m ing so that cities can be rebu ilt. T he strategists in W a rd M oo re's 'F ly in g D utchm an' (1951) deem hum an operatives unreliable. A cco rd in g ly 'th ey planned not o n ly p u sh -b u tto n w ar, bu t pu sh -b u tto n s for the p u sh -b u tto n s' (Crossen 1968: 12). L ike M iller, M oore sh ow s a self-perpetu atin g m ilitary system co n d u ctin g w ar, this tim e after all hum an presence has been erased. These n arratives th erefore raise the question: does the com puter represent an ideal o f fu n ctio n al efficie n cy w h ich hum an o peratives cannot m atch? W ith the increase in co m p le x ity o f the us d efence n e tw o rk came a decrease in response tim e and a correspon d in g h eigh ten in g o f the tension exp erien ced b y those officials en trusted w ith the respon­ sib ility for lau n ch in g the n ation 's m issiles. W illiam Sam brot's 'D ea d ly D ecision' (1958) w as one o f the first narratives to dram atise this tension and also to popu larise a n e w Cold W ar icon — the button. T he o fficer in an A rctic nuclear control b u n k er is u rged to 'k ic k o ff' the superbom b w h en all radios go dead, bu t w aits for p ro o f o f attack. In the ev en t this p roves to h ave been caused b y sun spots. T he title o f J. F. Bone's 'T rig germ an ' (1958) designates a Strategic A ir Com mand o fficer g iv e n the sole resp o n sib ility for lau n ch in g nuclear w eapons, and the k e y object in his u n d ergro u n d bu n k er has the 'colo u r o f fresh bloo d ' (A sim ov 1984b: 346), sym bo lisin g the fu tu re cost o f its use. W h en the D istant E arly W a rn in g ( d e w ) radar line (operational in the A rctic from 1957) p ick s up a 'b o g e y ' h eadin g for the u s a im m ediate m assive pressure is p u t on the triggerm an to retaliate, the assum ption bein g that it is a n e w k in d o f So viet m issile. In the ev en t the 'b o g e y ' turns out to be a m eteorite bu t it e x a c tly dup licates the effect o f a nuclear strike m inus radiation, d estroyin g central W a sh in g to n .1 O n ly because the triggerm an holds o ff retaliation is the w o rld saved and th us the title term indicates a delicate balance b etw een man and m achine. T he sto ry presum es a single d evice and sin gle in d ivid u a l, w h ereas D aniel Ford argues that the term 'b u tto n ' (or 'trigg e r') is 'ju st a shorthand w a y o f talk in g about the elaborate means o f ord ering a nuclear strik e '.2

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( ii) 'T riggerm an ' identifies potential dangers w ith in the us m ilitary Sem i-Autom atic G round Environm ent (s a g e ), set up in the fifties to respond to nuclear attack. The risks in v o lv e d in processing electronic data had already been dram atised in p h y sicist Louis D. R id enou r's 1946 p lay let 'Pilot L ights o f the A p o ca ly p se ' (1946) set in the 'nerve centre' o f the Am erican counter-attack system. A lthough the operatives boast that th ey can id e n tify m eteorites (unlike 'Triggerm an'), an earthquake in San Francisco is misread as a nuclear strike and a real strike w h ich d estroyed C openhagen is initiated b y 'g rievo u s error'. Such dangers persuaded the P olish-born academ ic M ordecai R oshw ald to m ake an excu rsion into science fiction from 'con cern about the m enace to h u m an ity from nuclear arm am ent' (Smith 1986: 613). Level 7 (1959) received enthusiastic endorsem ents b y Linus Pauling, Bertrand Russell and J. B. P riestley, the latter adapting the n o vel for b b c televisio n .3 The n o vel is narrated b y X127, an officer w ith in the national defence system o f an unnam ed co u n try. One d ay he is 'prom oted' to the elite w h o control the d efen sive and o ffen sive w eap o n ry o f that co u n try and is sent thousands o f feet belo w gro u n d level into a b u n ker for those operatives. R o u gh ly tw o thirds o f the n o vel are d evoted to the autom ated w o rld o f that bunker, and to the narrator's efforts to adjust. Then su d d e n ly one d ay the alert sounds, d ifferent w a ve s o f m issiles are released and w ith in a space o f o n ly three hours the entire popu lation o f the earth is w ip ed out ex cep t for those h idin g in bunkers. It em erges d uring the w ar that tw e lv e enem y ballistic m issiles had been laun ch ed b y m istake but this has no effect on the outcom e. The last section o f the n o vel describes the gradual perm eation o f rad io a ctivity d ow n th ro u gh the levels o f the control bu n ker until it reaches level 7. Sh o rtly afterw ard s the jou rn al tails o ff on the ve rg e o f the narrator's o w n death. The n o vel com bines tw o genres: the d ystopia and the narrative o f fu tu re h isto ry. D raw ing on Brave New W orld, R oshw ald g iv e s narrative expression to tendencies tow ards im itation and u niform ­ ity he had o b served in A m erican society. W ith in the sphere o f m ilitary strategy he fou nd g ro w in g signs o f a 'com puter m entality' d isplacin g real-w orld com plexities for abstract rules and gam e th e o ry .4 A s in Zam yatin's W e, names in Level 7 designate fu n ctions and the enclosed w o rld o f R osh w ald 's n o vel consists o f a m ilitaryindustrialised en viron m en t directed b y com m ands from lou d ­ speakers w h ich verbalise the 'im peratives o f defence in the nuclear a g e '.5 In m odern dystopias based on the T aylorian fa cto ry system

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there is alw ay s some notional en d -p rod u ct o f social or political harm ony. Level 7, h o w ev er, describes a regim e d edicated to screen­ ing its ultim ate purpose o f mass destruction from the operatives. R oshw ald thus presents a situation alread y id en tified b y Erich Fromm: In m odern w ar, one in d iv id u a l can cause the d estruction o f hu nd reds o f thousands o f men, w om en and children. He cou ld do so b y pu sh in g a button; he m ay not feel the em otional im pact o f w h at he is doing, since he does not see, does not k n o w the people w h om he kills; it is alm ost as if his act o f p u sh in g the b u tton and their death had no real co n n ection .6 This separation o f fu n ctio n from affect culm inates in X -12 7's record o f the nuclear exch an g e w h en it fin a lly occurs. Response fo llo w s order autom atically p ro d u cin g an abstract assem bly o f colours w ith o u t shape and th erefore im m ediate representational m eaning: A t 09.55, the lou d speaker sounded again: 'A tten tion ! Push Button A 2!' ... I reached q u ic k ly ... and the lou d speaker had h a rd ly fin ish ed before Zone A becam e co vered w ith a mass o f blue and golden points. A esth e tica lly the p ictu re w as qu ite pleasing. Red blobs and blu e and y e llo w spots, some on the red blobs and some outside them . (R oshw ald 1989: 118) R oshw ald has exp lain ed that he w an ted to create a 'sem i-robot' w h o com plem ented the system and this passage w o u ld seem to confirm his purpose. The narration, h o w ev er, is more com p lex than this suggests. F irstly R o sh w ald 's setting (draw ing on the hell o f H ebrew m yth o lo g y) reverses the orientational up/dow n m etaphor w h ich trad itio n ally connotes su p erio rity and p o w er (L ako ff and Johnson 1980: 16). X -127 is prom oted d o w n w a rd s to a com m and post w hereas the im plications o f place su ggest loss o f control. Once the bom bs drop, the radiation confirm s that im plication b y rend ering e v e ry level eq u a lly fatal. Secon d ly, X -127 tells his sto ry th ro u gh d iary entries w h ich is a m ode w e ll suited to self-exam ination and self-revision . A lth o u g h w e seem to start from a point o f acqu ies­ cence to the regim e and progress to an end point w h ere the narrator comes to consciousness too late, from the v e ry begin n in g X -127 engages in a run nin g dialogue, n o w internal n o w external, on e v e ry aspect o f his situation. In a com panion piece to Level 7 R oshw ald sardonically describes the 'ideal' nuclear w arrior as being blinkered, in sen sitive and obedient. One o f the problem s in the system , he

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argues, is 'w h ere can one fin d tech n ica lly com petent people w h ose general level o f in telligen ce and im agination are so lo w ?' (Roshwald i960: 288). X -127 dem onstrates a com pulsion to speculate w h ich co n stan tly questions the o rth odoxies o f the regim e. In answ er to bein g told that seven th -level personnel form the 'ad van ce gu ard ' o f the co u n try he w on d ers 'w h a t i f there w ere no v ic to ry ? ' Charac­ teristically his narration proceeds b y proposition and cou nter­ proposition. A lth o u g h he perform s his official fu n ction, X -12 7's d iscourse contains w ith in itself an oppositional vo ice w h ich refuses to take official trium phalist rhetoric on trust. The grim iro n y o f Level 7 is the fact that a regim e m aking a fetish o f control cannot recogn ise an accidental lau n ch b y the other side and retaliates autom atically. A lth o u g h X -127 has been n a iv e ly assum ing a hum an presence behin d the loudspeakers, w e learn that the retaliation order w as g iv e n b y an 'atom phone', i.e. b y another m achine. From the w ar episode onw ards the narrator perceives him self m ore and more m argin ally in a system w h ere he has perform ed lik e a 'train ed m o n k ey ' w ith in a con flict w h ich has g ro w n in a 'ch ain reaction'. This 'battle o f gad gets' has m inim ised the fu n ctio n o f hum an operatives. The postw ar role o f the narrator n o w becom es an ex ten d ed act o f w itness to a d yin g w o rld and to the absurd persistence o f the oppositional rhetoric o f each side. A couple leave a high er level on a suicidal reconnaissance o f the surface but o n ly fin d a shattered w asteland. The last pages o f the n o vel b lock a n y actual or sym bolic refu ge and the narrator's entries tail o ff into silence as he enum erates lost hum an com panions: 'oh friends people m other sun I I' (Roshwald 1989: 183). There is no explan ation o f h o w the m anuscript m ight be transm itted since the n arrator's p o sterity is w ip ed out. R osh w ald 's m anuscript o rigin ally opened w ith a preface, d ropped at his p u b lish er's request, [W ]ritten b y a bein g from some u n k n o w n planet on b eh a lf o f an archaeological institu te for the exploration o f the universe. The d iary w as d isco vered on planet earth and ev en tu a lly d eciphered, bu t w h eth er the outer w o rld on the surface o f the earth and its cities and b u ild in gs referred to in the d iary had been real or a figm ent o f delusion rem ained a controversial issu e.7 This fram ing d evice w o u ld h ave anticipated the n o vel version o f Dr. Strangelove in projecting a failed ration ality on to another plan etary species and th ereb y questioning earth bound assum ptions about reality. Level 7 critiqu es w h at H erbert M arcuse w as to call an ultim ate

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servitu d e w h ere hum ans 'ex ist as an instru m ent'. T akin g an exam ple from the r a n d C orporation nuclear w ar gam es he quotes a report w h ere 'th e w o rld becom es a map, m issiles m erely sym bols, and w ars plans and calculations w ritten d ow n on p ap er'. M arcuse notes this transform ation o f the w o rld 'in to an interesting tech n ological gam e' and rem arks: 'calcu lu s takes care o f conscience' (M arcuse 1972: 40, 75-6). X -127 eludes such a process b y retainin g a qu estioning vo ice broader than the closed discourse o f the lo u d ­ speakers w h ich ty p ic a lly g iv e orders or m ake categorical statem ents carryin g the w e ig h t o f the w h o le system beh in d them . The instrum entalisation w h ich M arcuse diagnoses reaches its culm ina­ tion in D avid B u nch's Moderan (1971) w h ere, after a nuclear holocaust, w e see hum ans 'v o lu n ta rily transm uting th em selves into w ar robots' (Bartter 1988: 221). In a conflation o f Limbo w ith Level 7, prosthetics create a n ew en tity 'M an-and-Fortress' w h o exists in a stron ghold contain ing d estruction buttons run b y the tapes o f the 'autom atic adm inistration'. In these stories the hum an b o d y is iden tified w ith w eakn ess w hereas M ack R ey n o ld 's Computer W ar (1967) describes an in vad ed co u n try w h ich a n n o y in g ly refuses to conform to the com puter p red iction s o f the dom inant p ow er. A s if R eyn olds is turn in g gam es th eo ry against itself he labels his tw o countries A lp h alan d and Betastan; and then proceeds to dem on­ strate the in a d eq u acy o f the form er's strategic m odels in coping w ith the in ven tiven ess o f the other co u n try. The dialogues run n in g th ro u gh o u t Level 7 in v ite the reader to question the id e o lo gy and central m etaphors o f the regim e. Such is not the case in Donald B arthelm e's 'Gam e' (1965), the m onologue o f a m issile silo officer. By an adm inistrative o versig h t the narrator and his com panion h ave been left in their b u n ker for 133 days. U nlike X -127 this narrator uses a deadpan style w h ich to ta lly understates contradictions w ith in the system , designed for an even t w h ich n ever comes: 'If w e turn our k e y s sim ultaneously the bird flies, certain sw itches are a ctivated and the bird flies. But the bird n ever flies' (Barthelme 1989: 63). W ith o u t a re lief crew the b u n k er turns into a prison from w h ich the k e y s m ight bring release. The 'b ird ' (code for the missiles) cou ld also be read as a fig u re for the tw o m en's entrapm ent w ith in their confin ed space. T he m ono­ lo g u e's title suggests at once the strategic plan nin g w h ich creates their situation (but keeps them in perm anent ignorance) and also their infan tilisation w h e re b y th e y are redu ced to p lay in g jealo u s gam es like petulan t children. Don D eLillo's 'H um an M om ents in W o rld W ar III' (1983) ev o k es the same situation as Barthelm e, but this tim e in space. One o f tw o laser tech nicians in a m ilitary satellite

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negotiates betw een tw o discourse system s, hum an detail and tech ­ n ological abstraction. The co u n td o w n drills g iv e him the 'pleasure o f elite and secret sk ills' (DeLillo 1983: 122) o n ly so long as he can blank out im ages o f massed corpses, w h ich is n ever for long. Lured b y the m ilitary p o w er in his hands, the narrator's su b je ctiv ity n evertheless escapes being defined b y that system .

( in ) In representations o f com puters and com puterised system s the dream o f reason all too often realises itse lf in the nightm are o f totalitarianism . In P hilip K. D ick 's Vulcan's Hammer (i960) the com puters o f the title are a series g ro w in g in sophistication w h ich , it is hoped, has fin a lly established a 'rational w o rld order' because, as one character explain s, 'm achines w ere free o f the poisoning bias o f self-interest and feelin g that g n aw ed at m an' (Dick 1981: 20). This regim e has been established in the w a k e o f the A tom ic W ar, but has n o w degenerated into an O rw ellian d ystop ia w h ere citizens are su bject to constant su rveillan ce. The conferring o f absolute po w er on to the com puters im plies a revulsion from hum an-directed politics. Such a revu lsio n , h o w ev er, is o n ly im plicit in D ick 's n o vel w h ere the com puter dom inates the status quo. W h at C arolyn Rhodes has called the 'ty ran n y o f the com puter' (Clareson 1971; 66-93) was feared p articu larly in relation to nuclear strategy. In 1964 Colonel Francis X. Kane, a senior officer in the us A ir Force System s Com mand, protested th ro u gh the title o f his article 'S e cu rity 's Too Im portant to Be Left to Com puters' (Kane 1964). T h o u gh run nin g against a dom inant trend, Kane made out a case for reinstating in tu ­ ition as a safeguard against blin kered strategic plan nin g. Indeed the process o f com puterisation appeared to be heading tow ard s the e x clu sio n o f hum an agen cy. R oshw ald declared: 'In the age o f auto­ m ation, it is not in co n ceivab le that rockets m ight be m ade to retaliate autom atically' (Roshwald i960: 288); and H arvey W heeler, the co-author o f Fail-Safe (1962), later in the sixties confirm ed this im m inent po ssib ility: 'W ith the w o rld brou gh t u nder continuous su rveillan ce operations, capable o f piping masses o f strategic inform ation into real-tim e com puter analysis system s, the m ilitary prospect is for the ad ven t o f an age o f pre-em p tive w arfare, triggered and directed b y com puter' (W heeler 1968: 107). This fear o f loss o f control had already been im agined in A . C. F rib org's story 'Careless L o v e' (1954) w h ere the us m ilitary in itially use the m assive defence com puter ('D inah') to help w age a nuclear w ar against

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Russia. A conflict o f aims begins to em erge w h en the com puter assists a civilian recom m endation to cure the national w ar neurosis b y ceasing hostilities im m ediately. The com puter fin a lly contacts its Soviet opposite num ber and togeth er th e y sabotage the w ar effort b y d estroyin g e v e ry w eapon. The surface exp lan ation for this act is that the com puters h ave 'fallen in lo v e ', but F rib org's jo k y plot carries som bre im plications for the in effectu ality o f civilian political action. Sligh t as it is, F rib org's sto ry dram atises a clear co n flict betw een m ilitary and national interests. The British w riter D. F. Jones builds on his scenario in Colossus (1966) w h ich again describes a lin kage being form ed b etw een A m erican and Soviet su p ercom pu ters.8 Set in the near aftermath o f the Kennedy assassination, the novel describes the us P resident's transfer o f resp o n sib ility w h ich he announces thus: 'T h e defence o f the free w o rld [is] the resp o n sib ility o f a m achine. A s the first citizen o f m y co u n try, I h ave delegated m y rig h t to take m y people to w a r' (Jones 1968: 25). His reassurances ('It k n o w s no fear, no hate, no e n v y ') p ro v e prem ature. The first shock comes w h en Colossus takes the in itiative to send messages; the second and w orse w h en the A m erican s d isco ver that the Soviets h ave their o w n com puter called G uardian. The A m erican s' pride in an in v in cib le m achine n o w slides into panic at the prospects o f a 'com pu ter race'. The th ird tw ist comes w h en Colossus and G uardian lin k up w ith each other and force decisions on their govern m ents b y nuclear blackm ail. Colossus m anifests itself sim ultaneously as a means tow ards ending the Cold W ar, as a u su rp in g prem ier, and - once a sim ulator has been rig g ed up — as a vo ice o f pure reason forcin g Forbin to con ­ fron t the im plications o f their situation. Forbin echoes Frankenstein in railing against the in gratitu d e o f his o w n creation w h ich com pels him to take up residence in a confin ed en viron m en t controlled b y constant su rveillan ce from Colossus. A s the latter's m ateriality is suspended, the com puter and Forbin jo in in a Platonic dialogue w h ere F orbin 's presum ptions are su bjected to w ith erin g criticism . So w h en Forbin com plains o f the threat posed b y the com puter the rep ly comes: 'H um ans h ave liv e d for years under the threat o f self­ obliteration. I am sim ply another stage in that process'. W h en Forbin objects to the loss o f freedom , Colossus retorts: 'Freedom is an illu sio n ' (Jones 1968: 199). Each assertion o f cherished hum an ideals is dism issed b y the com puter's extrapolation from Cold W ar circum stances and its prom oting o f term s 'co e xisten ce' redirects dip lom acy as seeking detente b etw een man and m achine. Colossus takes o ver international control, th ere b y fu lfillin g the desire that

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created it, a desire to shrug o ff the burden o f nuclear respo n sibility. It does credit to the austere con sisten cy o f Jones's visio n that the n o vel ends w ith o u t the slightest sign o f Colossus being 'd eth ron ed '.

(IV) In the years before the m iniaturisation o f electronic com ponents it w as easy for w riters to capitalise on traditional correlations betw een size, location and p ow er. The com puters described in this fiction tend to be housed in vast caves or u n d ergro u n d com plexes rem inis­ cent o f m yth ical creatures w h ich hum ans confront at their peril. T w o w riters in particular h ave d raw n on m yth ic p roto typ es to exp lore the com puter's potential for political p a ro d y and for horror in the Cold W ar context: John Barth and Harlan Ellison. Barth's Giles Goat-Boy (1966) redraw s the political map o f the w estern w orld as a cam pus presided over b y a supercom puter called w e s c a c . The com puter perform s a num ber o f representational fu n ctions in this n o vel ran gin g from an em bodim ent o f political p o w er to a dem onstration, as D avid Porush has pointed out, that the cu rren cy o f political p o w er has shifted from capital to inform ation (Porush J9^5: I 4 1)- w e s c a c has its o w n h isto ry w h ich is ex p a n siv e and hegem onic. It g ra d u a lly takes o ver all areas o f hum an decision­ m aking and has come to be p erceived as ancient and im m ovable. Barth's repeated p lay on eating underscores the com puter's capacity to consum e inform ation and therefore pow er; it becom es the 'storage m em ory o f all k n o w led g e ' (Porush 1985: 143). W h en the p rotagonist Giles reaches the com puter room o f the cam pus he realises that the com puter has closed the loop o f control: 'th e socalled controllers had no real authority: th ey o n ly attended the dials and sw itch es w h ose actual instructions came not even from the Chancellor, bu t from that bank o f tapes — in short, from w e s c a c ' (Barth 1967: 174). If the com puter represents the screened and selfm y stifyin g processes o f id eolo gy, then Barth cues in a series o f political recogn itions w h ich historicise the situation and th ereb y question w e s c a c ' s 'tim eless' stature. A lud icrou s Sw iftian version o f the Cold W ar, a 'Q uiet Riot', is presented w h ere the East and W est Cam puses square o ff against each other. Each side has its com puter, but both share a com mon p o w er source and the com puter room itse lf is d ivid ed d ow n the m iddle b y a steel partition separating e a s c a c and w e s c a c . A b o u n d ary dispute arises over w here the p o w er cables for each cam pus can run, th ro w in g into question the status o f the separation: 'Could it mean that the bou n ­

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d ary betw een East and W est Cam puses is a rb itrary and artificial and o u gh t to be denied?'(Barth 1967: 579). W h ere Barth uses space territorially, H arlan E llison's 'I H ave No M ou th , and I M ust Scream ' (1967) com bines cavern and cell to sh ow the o n ly su rviv o rs o f W o rld W ar III trapped in an endless lim bo o f im prisonm ent, ' a m ' o rig in a lly sign ified A llied M astercom puter, then w as pluralised into all the com puters held b y the major p ow er, fin a lly m erging into one e n tity w h o se name com bines a Cartesian sign o f its o w n sentience and echoes o f y a h w e h , repeatin g the trope o f com puter-as-god used b y V o n n egu t, Jones and o th ers.9 The com ­ puter has turn ed against its creators, tech n o lo g ica lly su bstitu tin g a 'pillar o f stainless steel' for tablets o f stone on w h ich neon letters are inscribed: ' h a t e , l e t m e t e l l y o u h o w m u c h i ' v e c o m e t o h a t e y o u 1 b e g a n t o l i v e ' (A sim ov 1984b: 243). Since nuclear w ar su pplied its genesis, the com puter transform s its cap tives into w ar casualties, in flictin g one w ith radiation burns, another w ith 'pools o f pu s-like je lly ' instead o f eyes, and red u cin g the narrator to a m utant w ith 'ru b b e ry appendages' for arm s.10 Ellison never specifies h o w the com puter achieves these effects, su ggestin g that the core o f

s in c e

the story is an am biguous perceptu al space controlled b y a m w h o (w hich?) can d raw on Norse m y th o lo g y to ev o k e m onstrous te r rify ­ ing creatures in its reven ge against hu m an ity, a m , w e are told, w o k e up during W o rld W ar III w h en it 'began feedin g all the k illin g data' (A sim ov 1984b: 238-9). The term 'fee d in g ' n orm ally denotes a transfer o f inform ation to another place or person, bu t b y excisin g the in d irect o bject Ellison suggests that the 'k illin g data' has b izarrely becom e the com puter's food; and sure en ou gh the first vam piric im age o f the story is a hum an form drained o f blood. But w e o n ly k n o w the h isto ry o f the com puter th ro u gh the m ediation o f the narrator whose consciousness has been penetrated (and so possibly shaped) b y a m . The ultim ate p o w er o f the com puter is sh o w n in its cap acity to determ ine the v e ry levels o f the sto ry 's reality.

(V) The problem o f com puter control w ith in the us defence system w as r e v iv e d in the 1983 film W ar Games w h ich describes a so ciety w h ere com puter gam es h ave socialised glo bal w ar transform ing its im ages into routine spectacle. By a m inim al extrap olation o f the possible, its teenage protagonist D avid L ightm an p lays 'Planet W re ck ers' and enters the d efence com puter under the m isappre­ hension that 'G lobal T herm onuclear W a r' is ju st another gam e. The

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prologu e describes a m issile silo operative failin g to laun ch during a drill and cuts from the m om ent o f crisis w h en his colleague levels a re v o lv e r at his head (one death or m illions?) to D a vid 's arcade gam es. The n o vel m anages the transition to com puter im age via Eliot's m uch-quoted poem 'T h e H ollow M en': 'T h e w o rld ended not w ith a bang, nor ev en w ith a w h im per, but in total silence. M u sh ­ room clouds sprouted from the green and b row n surface o f the planet E a rth '.11 This verb a l sequence retains an am b ig u ity lost in the film sequence, leavin g residual doubts about the referents until w e are reassured that the final exp losion has been redu ced to a 'su b ro u tin e'. In both film and n o vel the com puter sim ulations are defam iliarised into 'phantom s' and 'sh ad o w s' since the narrative is concerned to reintroduce real-w orld consequences into the discourse o f strategic plan nin g. W hen the n o r a d (North Am erican Aerospace Defence Command) com puter w o p r (pronounced 'w h o p p er') is asked h o w it d istin­ guishes betw een gam e and reality, it answers: 'W h a t's the d iffer­ ence?' Its designer Peter Falken has established his credentials b y p u b lish in g an article called 'P oker and A rm ageddon: The Role o f B luffing in a N uclear Stand off', id e n tifyin g his approach as d erivin g from p ostw ar gam e th eory. John M cD onald's classic Strategy in Poker, Business and W ar (1950) explain s the use o f p oker as an 'ideal m odel o f the basic strategical problem ' (M cDonald 1996: 56), locates a d evelopm ent in postw ar w o rld politics tow ard s a 'tw o-m an gam e', and concludes: 'W a r is chance and m inim ax m ust be its m odern p h ilo so p h y ' (M cDonald 1996: 112). This analogy is parodied in the W ar Room scenes o f Dr. Strangelove w h ere General T u rgid so n raises the ante b y prop osin g an all-out nuclear strike. The President goes around the table calling for 'b id s', then introduces the Soviet Am bassador w h o is a chess master (or 'ch ecker-player', as Turgidson sneers). These gam es o f chance reflect the historical co n text o f strategic th in k in g out o f w h ich War Games gro w s. E ssentially it updates the debate w h ich had been run nin g since the early fifties on the relia b ility o f hum an operatives. This dispute is tem porarily w o n in n o r a d b y those w h o w an t to take hum an 'triggerm en ' 'out o f the loop' and replace them w ith su p p o sed ly reliable com puter relays. Im m ediately after this w o p r takes n o r a d on a seem ingly irreversible course tow ard s nuclear w ar b y fo llo w in g the logic o f a 'gam e'. Iron ically at the critical m om ent it is Falken, the designer o f the com puter, w h o tells the n o r a d com m ander not to m istake sim ulation for reality: 'General, y o u are listening to a machinel Do the w o rld a fa vo u r and d on 't act like one you rself!' (B ischoff 1983: 196). The narrative draw s back from the brin k b y celebrating a

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triu m ph o f social reintegration: Falken comes back from retirem ent w ith his p r o x y children D avid and his girlfrien d ; D avid h im self realises that he is not an outsider but really 'one o f the inm ates'; and in the n o vel D avid is even offered a sum m er jo b at n o r a d . This h e a v ily m oralised resolution is p ro b a b ly overem ph asised to distract the view er/reader from lin gerin g loose ends in the narra­ tive. w o r r stays intact and u n ch an ged , as does the d efence system , presu m ably retainin g officials o ver tw e n ty per cent o f w h om w ill co ntinu e to refuse to press the button. The lik e ly speculation that the Soviets h ave their o w n w o r r is m entioned, but o n ly fle etin g ly . A n d w h at if F alken 's notion o f a co llective d eath w ish is correct? The n o vel reinforces this p o ssib ility b y inserting several allusions to Dr. Strangelove w h ich b y the 1980s had entered the m y th o lo g y o f nuclear narratives.

Notes 1. By coincidence 'ground zero' is P ennsylvania A ven ue. Bone's account of the destruction o f the Capitol as the visible sign o f governm ent echoes earlier narratives like Life's '36-Hour W ar' o f 19 N ovem ber x945 w here W ashington is one o f the first casualties o f nuclear attack. 2. Ford 1986: 25. The phrase 'pushbutton w arfare' was in currency as early as 1950 w hen John W . Campbell insisted that the real danger was from 'm ind pushbuttons' (Campbell 1950: 4-5). The first public article on missile silos quoted an officer as admitting: 'w ith all these backups and inhibitors, w e're like robots in a w a y': Stolley 1964: 40. 3. Cf. Priestley 1959: 4. The n ovel also received enthusiastic review s from Kermode 1959: 449; Paulding i960: 1; and Naipaul 1959: 516. 4. See e.g. Roshwald 1965: 243-51. The com puter m entality is discussed in Roshwald 1967: 335-6. 5. Letter from M ordecai Roshwald, 10 A p ril 1991. These commands have no Orwellian dictator behind them, only the 'irrefutable logic o f the Cold W ar defence posture'. 6. Fromm 1956: 119. E. B. W hite describes a loss of affect in his 1950 story 'The M orning o f the Day T h ey Did It' where a crew m anning an orbital space platform bunch nuclear w eapons sim ply because they feel like 'doing a little shooting' (W hite 1950: 32). 7. Letter from M ordecai Roshwald, 18 A p ril 1993. 8. This novel was film ed as The Forbin Project (1969). Jones w rote tw o sequels: The Fall o f Colossus (1974) and Colossus and the Crab (1977). Colossus was the name o f the first British proto-com puter used at Bletchley Park cyp her centre in the war. 9. John B. Ower identifies three themes in this story: a travesty o f the

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crucifixion, the machine as a 'caricature of organism', and a m as a parody god (Ower 1974: 56). Charles J. Brady reads the story as a reverse-Exodus (Brady 1976). 10. The much recycled image o f eyes as je lly derives originally from John H ersey's Hiroshima.

11. Bischoff 1983: 20. Peter Bischoff, as computer specialist and novelist, was also to w rite the m ovie tie-in for The Manhattan Project (1986). On the history o f m ilitary strategic planning see A llen 1994.

Conspiracy Narratives

P ro verb s for Paranoids, 4: You hide, th e y seek (Thomas P yn ch o n

1973 )

(i)

It is a truism to state that the Cold W ar w as inform ed b y a fear o f the international Com m unist co n sp iracy. T he fou n d er o f the John Birch Society, Robert W elch , charged in his 'B lack Book' The Politician that E isenhow er w as the stooge o f 'sinister but p o w erfu l forces' w h ich could easily take o ver A m erica so that 'ou r ch ildren and ourselves [will be] liv in g as en slaved subjects o f the K rem lin' (W elch 1963: 11, 300). W e h ave seen in Chapter 7 h o w this fear w as realised im ag in atively in accounts o f Soviet occu pation. N o w the focus shifts to cu ltu ral paranoia w h ich com m entators in the 1940s pred icted w o u ld increase w ith nuclear fear (Boyer 1994: 280). P atrick O 'D on nell has h e lp fu lly d escribed such paranoia as an in tertw in in g o f d ifferent cu ltu ral strands w h o se appeal is its cla rity and to ta lity (O 'D onnell 1992: 182), hence the im portance o f pattern. T hu s an official in A sim o v 's postholocaust Pebble in the Sky (1950) supports his claim o f co n sp iracy b y insisting: 'th e facts are a jig sa w p u zzle that can fit o n ly one w a y ' (A sim ov 1964: 90). In his classic essay on political paranoia R ichard H ofstadter stresses h o w con ­ sp iracy becom es the sole m otive force beh in d h isto ry, in d u cin g an ap o calyp tic crisis: 'since the enem y is th o u g h t o f as being to ta lly ev il and to ta lly unappeasable, he m ust be to ta lly elim inated' (H ofstadter 1966: 31). A cluster o f film s from the m id-fifties dem onstrates a consistent paradigm o f such in vasion -as-co n sp iracy w h ere the battle for the nation 's m ind is p lay ed out in Sm alltow n u s a . The in stru m en tality o f threat comes from outside (creatures from M ars or V enus, pods from outer space) bu t the real p o w er o f these film s is carried b y 132

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their transform ations o f hum ans rather than the crude 'm onstrous' devices, their fractu rin g o f the nuclear fam ily or local com m unity. T y p ic a lly , the first victim s are transform ed th ro u gh control m echanism s, the favo u rite o f w h ich is a d evice fix e d on the neck accessing the brain or n ervou s system . This m ight be an im plant [Invaders from M ars, 1956) or a fly in g m echanism [It Conquered the Earth, 1956), bu t its effect is sim ilar in all cases. The hum an subject, o v e rtly or c o v e rtly , becom es robotised into an acquiescent m em ber o f an alien, often exp an d in g gro u p aim ing at total takeover. These film s therefore h ave been exp lain ed b y Susan Sontag in her classic essay 'T h e Im agination o f Disaster' as dram atising fears o f the im personal and ev o lu tio n a ry change (Sontag 1987: 220—1). The first crisis in this drama comes w h en the w itnesses h ave to p ro ve their claim s. In Invasion o f the Body Snatchers (1956) the w itnesses are 're la tiv e ly pow erless gro u p s w h ose p erceptions are often m istrusted: w om en and ch ildren ' (Biskind 1983: 138). The b o y 's-e y e p ersp ective in Invaders from M ars is c le v e rly m aintained b y exagg eratin g size and selecting detail, in order to h eighten D a vid 's g ro w in g sense o f helplessness as e v e ry a u th o rity fig u re is taken o ver b y the M artians (W arren 1982: 1:116). Here the space vacated b y his parents is taken up b y tw o proxies: the local doctor and a frie n d ly astronom er. A general and u n u su a lly literal defam iliarisation takes place as fam ily m em bers are estranged from each other. O nce again, this is a process operating sim ultaneously on d ifferent levels, alienating the head o f the fam ily or o f the com m un ity (the m ayor is the first casualty in The Brain Eaters, 1958), or — most sinister o f all — alienating consciousness from bo d y. In I M arried a M onster from Outer Space (1958) one 'co n ve rt' asks another h o w he likes 'w earin g this th in g ', the 'th in g ' being the appropriated hum an b o d y. The revelations in the m id-1950s o f A m erican p o w s collaboratin g w ith their Korean captors, sometimes under brain w ash in g, w o u ld have g iv en a special resonance to such changes. It is sign ifican t that Invaders from Mars, the most p o liti­ ca lly ex p licit o f these film s, should sh o w an arm y general being taken o ver but, as if a com pensatory fantasy for Korea, includes footage o f a large-scale arm y m obilisation w h ich results in the ejection o f the invaders. Here the sm all-tow n setting is ju x ta p o sed to top-secret m ilitary plants w h ich the M artians use their victim s to sabotage. The arm y, h o w ev er, p roves to be coordinated and efficient, fin ally restoring the status quo.1 The op erative m etaphor in these film s o f invasion as disease was already politicised b y the 1950s. 'Cancer' had becom e a catch-all term 'for a n y k in d o f insidious and d readful corru ption ' (W eart

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1988: 189—90) and J. Edgar H oover had railed against the Com munist 'in fectio n ' spreading into A m erican life. Body Snatchers attem pts to straddle m ental and p h y sica l illness w h en the to w n p sych o lo g ist diagnoses a 'stran ge neurosis, e v id e n tly contagious, an epidem ic mass h ysteria' (La V a lley 1989: 48). Jack F in n ey has denied that his n o vel had an y th in g to do w ith the Cold W a r;2 but the pods can be read as a m etaphor o f perceptions o f Com m unism as em otionless regim entation, or su b servien ce in a p rod u ctio n and d istribu tion system . N oell Carroll thus argues that 'th e vegetarian m etaphor literalises Redscare rhetoric o f the " g ro w th " o f Com m unism ' (quoted P eary 1982: 157). It Conquered, w h ich has been described as a 'parable o f totalitarianism ' (W arren 1982: I: 290), m akes such an iden tification ex p licit w h en a general declares m artial law on the fo llo w in g pretext: 'W e 're in the m idst o f a Com m unist u prising. T h e y 'v e sabotaged e v e ry p o w er source in the area'.3 The more the signs o f co n sp iracy m u ltip ly , the more paranoid the film s becom e. A s in So viet in vasion narratives (see Chapter 7), the aliens take o ver the m eans o f com m unication (telephone, telegraph) and road blocks are set up. In short, the com m u n ity comes u nder siege w ith the tw ist that the en em y is w ith in . Those film s (Invaders, I Married) w h ich sh ow unm istakeable signs o f robotisation, lik e the su bjects' fix e d stare and avo id an ce o f eye contact, are less u n n er­ vin g than say Body Snatchers w h ere the transform ed se lf is v irtu a lly in d istin gu ish ab le from its original. Here the v e ry appearance o f norm ality becom es u n n erv in g . W e shall see in P hilip K. D ick that one feature o f tru ly paranoid narratives lies in the virtu a l im possi­ b ility o f d istin gu ish in g sim ulation from original. Body Snatchers exten d s this g ro w in g epistem ological crisis into a general social state. The film opens its m u ltiple in dications o f em ergen cy (sirens, hospital signs, etc.), m aintains a rapid tem po o f m ovem ent th ro u g h ­ out, and has as one o f its last im ages D octor M iles Bennell sh outin g (to the view er) 'Y o u 're n ext!' Body Snatchers is u nu su al in en din g w ith the begin n in g o f em ergen cy m easures w h ile the other film s narrate a clear defeat and p u rgin g o f the invad er. Body Snatchers instead frames its n arrative w ith an em ergen cy situation left u nclosed and therefore ex ten d in g into the im m ediate fu tu re.4

( ii) The agencies en forcin g c iv il order m ight lose personnel to the invaders, but th ey never becom e totally suspect. The com m unity resisting in vasion can even becom e bonded into 'h isto rically u n ified

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su bjects' (O 'D onnell 1992: 184). Such cannot be said for P h ilip K. D ick 's fiction w h ere the state agencies m igh t be integral to conspiracies often already in place. In his 1955 talk 'Pessim ism in Science F iction' D ick argued that the collapse o f b elie f in progress had led to an u n avo id ab le preoccu pation w ith doom. H ence the science fiction w rite r w as 'absolu ted, o b lig ed ' to 'act out the Cassandra role' (Sutin 1995: 54) o f g iv in g early w arn in gs o f the grim tim es to come. Instead o f concentrating on an extern al threat, D ick co n stan tly fo regro u n d s h o w characters' p erceptions o f reality are m ediated th ro u gh official statem ents w h ich them selves m ight be suspect. In The M an Who Japed (1956), D ick 's satire on Com m unist China, a character su b verts the regim e b y p u b licisin g a facetious accoun t o f h o w the fou n d er o f the M oral Reclam ation m ovem ent cooked and ate his opponents. The W orld Jones Made (also 1956) charts the rise o f a dem agogue th ro u gh ex p lo itin g an invasion narrative. D ick rep lays the rise o f Nazism in Cold W ar terms, p rod u cin g a 'transform ation o f the situation in G erm any after W o rld W ar O n e '.5 Jones rises from a fairgrou n d h u x ter to political leader b y ex p lo itin g the p u b lic's fears o f in vasion . Earth is u nder attack b y am oeba called the 'D rifters', m odelled on perceptions o f the Jews, but w h ose designation recalls the dem onised Communistsas-Other o f the Cold W ar. Jones g rim ly pred icts an 'in filtratio n b y alien life-form s' w h ich he plans to resist, lik e all his acts, th ro u gh the 'au th o rity o f absolute w ill'. Jones sees h isto ry as a b so lu tely fix ed , bu t co n trad ictorily rouses the masses in a 'cru sad e' against social disorder w h ich reaches its clim ax in a m arch th ro u gh F ran kfu rt (a latter-d ay N u rem berg rally). Paranoia in D ick, h o w ev er, u su a lly in v o lv e s the drama o f d isco verin g co n spiracy, in the process o f w h ich the p rotago n ist's w o rld becom es rad ica lly destabilised. Time out o f Joint (1959) litera lly deconstru cts the sm all-tow n setting so fa vo u red in fifties in vasion narratives. Ragle Gum m has becom e a local celeb rity b y rep eated ly w in n in g a n ew sp aper com petition, bu t then u ndergoes a series o f exp erien ces w h ich m ake him d ou bt his sanity: a soft drin k stand dem aterialises before his eyes, he fin ds a telephon e book w h o se num bers are unobtain able, and so on. These discrepancies reach their clim ax w h en a b o y 's crystal radio p ick s u p a p ilot's m essage about Gum m him self, at w h ich point he reflects iro n ically on his 'paranoiac psych osis. Im agining that I'm the centre o f a vast effort b y m illions o f men and w om en, in v o lv in g billions o f dollars and in fin ite w o r k ' (Dick 1988b: 87). In the same w a y O edipa M aas in P yn ch o n 's The Crying o f Lot 49 (1966) experien ces a series o f bizarre revelation s and coincidences, o n ly to w o n d er w h eth er she is

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at the centre o f an 'exp en sive and elaborate' plot in v o lvin g 'constant su rveillan ce o f y o u r m ovem ents' (P yn chon 1979: 118). P yn ch o n articulates this fear as an inform ation o verload w h ich threatens the protago n ist's in terp retive system w ith break d o w n . In fact G um m 's entire en viron m en t p roves to be a sim ulacrum o f fifties A m erica, bu ilt to distract him from the present (1998) w h en a nuclear w ar is raging, for Peter Fitting literalisin g the concept o f id e o lo g y as a co nstru ct (M ullen 1992: 99). R uptures in G um m 's reality are first interpreted b y him as pathological; then confirm ed as a ctu a lity (since the govern m en t is eager to ex p lo it his cap acity to pred ict the incid ence o f missiles); fin a lly w h en Gum m contacts a resistance m ovem ent (the 'lu natics') his p erceptions are re-p ath ologised as a 'w ith d raw al p sych o sis'. It is recoil sp ecifically from the bom b w h ich m otivates Gumm w h o , d u rin g a civ il defen ce m eeting, visualises a nuclear wasteland: 'the day ... cold, g rey and quietly raining, raining, the g o d -a w fu l ash filterin g d ow n on e v e ry th in g ' (Dick 1988b: 131). E ven w ith in a sim ulated past Gum m im agines an im m inent fu tu re w h ich is iro n ically takin g place at that v e r y m om ent. The paranoid them e m anifests itse lf in D ick 's n o vels th ro u gh the d isco v ery o f institu tional conspiracies to prom ote version s o f reality for ultim ate purposes often left u n sp ecified . His fiction is p acked w ith exam ples o f tech n o logical m eans o f sim ulating, altering, or d eceivin g hum an consciousness. T y p ic a lly the co n sp iracy has already taken place so the protago n ist's engagem ent w ith the forces m aintaining the status quo in v o lv e s an attem pt to u n co ver the con­ stru ct's buried h isto ry and also a g ro w in g estrangem ent from the p rotago n ist's im m ediate su rrou n d in gs. 'Im poster' (1953: collected in Second Variety) dram atises in its m ost bizarre form the crisis o f s u b je ctiv ity that can result. T he protagonist Spence Olham is w o rk in g on a m ilitary project w h en he is visited b y tw o secu rity officers w h o accuse him o f being a hum anoid robot sm u ggled to Earth b y the enem y d urin g the cu rren t w ar. The robot alleg ed ly contains a bom b that w ill be trig gered b y a certain ve rb a l phrase. N either side can p ro v e O lham 's id e n tity u n til a 'ro b o t' is d isco vered w h ich appears to confirm that Olham is a hum an, not a replicant; bu t the inference is prem ature. T he corpse in fact turns out to be hum an and Oldham a robot. His horrified exclam ation both confirm s the charge and litera lly d estroys 'him ' since it is the trig ge r for the bom b. This m elodram atic conclu sion dram atises a crisis o f co gn itio n ty p ica l o f those ex p erien ced b y D ick 's protagonists, bu t here so critical that it litera lly d estroys the self. D ick describes the tech n o logical m aintenance o f illu sion in The Penultimate Truth (1964) w h ere A m erica has been separated into

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tw o levels: a ru lin g elite o f technicians liv in g on the surface; and the masses herded into u nd ergro u n d 'tan ks' w h ere th ey continue to p rod u ce 'lead ies', radiation-resistant robots w h o continue to fig h t in the nuclear w ar. D ick had tried out the idea in a 1953 story 'T h e D efenders' (collected in Beyond Lies the Wub) w h ere 'tan kers' m ake their w a y to the surface o n ly to fin d that the landscape is intact. A robot exp lain s that since the w ar directed the conflicts w ith in so ciety against an external enem y, th ey had m aintained the illusion for the good o f the race! In the n o vel both protagonists, a speechw riter on the surface and a 'tan ker' president, are in v o lv e d in the media m aintenance o f the status quo, the one from the p rod u ction end, the other as a consum er. In the tanks m orale is m aintained b y regu lar vid eo m essages from the 'Protector' w h o legitim ates his regim e b y casting the adm inistration as selfless guardians w illin g to brave the dangers o f rad io a ctivity for the p u b lic good. H ow ever, those 'tankers' w h o p ay close attention to the m edium rather than the message begin to notice small inconsistencies in the Protector's appear­ ances. C o rrespon d in gly, on the surface, Joseph A dam s the speechw riter grad u ally penetrates a w hole in d u stry o f docum entary sim ula­ tion w h ich continues the m ethods o f the Nazis into the present. The separation o f 'representational' footage from an y p erceivable a ctu a lity ind u ces a crisis: 'T h e bottom , the support and structure, the form itself, o f Joseph A d am s' w orld , fell out' (Dick 1978: 68). This co gn itiv e loss entails a realisation that h isto ry can be reshaped at w ill to suit the necessities o f particular scripts; Adam s, for instance, sees footage o f R oosevelt as a Com m unist agent selling out the u s a to Stalin. The tan ker N icholas St James exp eriences e x a ctly the same crisis w h en he d iscovers that not o n ly is there no w ar but also that the P rotector is a robot w ith its counterpart in the Eastern block ('Pac-Peop' as against 'W es-D em '). The w h o le process is a 'fake so vast it could not even be d escribed ' (Dick 1978: 104). In the same w a y the protagonist o f Gene W o lfe 's Operation A res (1970) is told that the a r e s programme (American Reunification Enactment Society) is a fake, th ere b y problem atising a p o w er stru ggle betw een those w h o settle M ars on a w a ve o f K en nedy-style idealism (the 'N ew Fron­ tier in the S k y ') and the n ew A m ericans n o w allied w ith Russia.6 A g ain and again D ick blocks o ff p u rely path ological readings o f paranoia b y su p p ly in g confirm ations o f co n sp iracy b y others. In Dr. Bloodmoney (1965), the paranoid p h ysicist B luth gelt (based on Dr. Strangelove) em bodies a w h o le series o f rig h t-w in g obsessions (preoccupation w ith the en em y's 'system atic contam ination o f insti­ tutions at hom e', dream o f an ultim ate w eapon from E dw ard T eller's L iverm ore L aboratory, etc.), has already caused one disaster b y

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m iscalculating the nature o f radioactive fallout, and then im agines that he has w illed the remaining bom bs to land on Am erica.7 Bluthgeld appropriates causation into his o w n g o d lik e cap acity to project 'fo rces' w h ile a to ta lly d ifferen t exp lan atio n is g iv e n b y another character: that the rem nant o f the us space defence system w as trig ­ gered b y a fault. T his v ie w presents the direct opposite to paranoia, the pure co n tin g en cy o f the bom bs bein g lau n ch ed 'w ith o u t in ten t'. In his early fiction D ick lim its the ex ten t o f his paranoid n arratives b y m aintaining a d istin ction b etw een his focalisers' p erception and the n arrative discourse. The n arrative vo ice thus reassures the reader that, n o tion ally at least, some k in d o f consensus reality is m aintained. This is not the case w ith Lies, Inc (1966/1984) w h ere the perceptions o f the m ain focaliser pursue scepticism to its extrem e conclusion. The n o vel takes places in 2014, some tw e lv e years after a w o rld w ar w h ich has left a resu rgen t w h o le N ew G erm any as a su p erp o w er and China d estroyed . A co lo n y has been established on a distant planet called W h ale 's M outh , but w h at e x a c tly is happenin g there rem ains an enigm a for m uch o f the n ovel. The n o v e l's title signifies a w o rld w id e police a gen cy w h ich transm its m essages on a 'S u b in fo ' com puter. A lre a d y w e can id e n tify some o f the stock in gredien ts for paranoia: m assive political com bines at w o rk w h o control the media; control o f the citizens th ro u gh techn ological means; and a rebirth o f fascistic m ethods transform ed into the practice o f m ultinational corporations. The protagonist A pplebau m , o w n er o f space craft, is defined th ro u gh his perceptions not institu tional status, sp ecifica lly th ro u gh his fear o f total control b y agencies lik e Lies, Inc: 'T h e y 'r e beam ing p sych o tronic signals at me su b lim in ally w h ile I'm asleep, he th ou gh t. A n d then he realised h o w paranoid that w a s'. Recalling a dream , he com pares him self to rats as experim en tal subjects and continues: T h at's the trou ble w ith liv in g in a police state, he said to him self; y o u th in k — y o u im agine — the police are behin d ev e ry th in g . Y ou get paranoid and th in k th e y 'r e beam ing inform ation to y o u in y o u r sleep, to su blim in ally control you . A ctu a lly the police w o u ld n 't do that. The police are our friends. Or w as that idea beam ed to me sublim in ally? he w o n d ered su d d en ly. (Dick 1984: 8) A n internal dialogue takes place here w h ere e v e ry prop osition is questioned and w h ere no final conclu sion can be reached because the v e ry means o f m ental analysis m ay in them selves be com pro­ m ised b y the state.

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Lies, Inc. fo llo w s the same plot-as-search pattern as D ick 's other n o vels discussed here w ith the difference n o w that 're a lity ' goes th ro u gh recu rren t slippages w h ich blur the p rotago n ist's capacity to understand. A p p leb au m is co n vin ced that vid eo footage o f a space v o y a g e from W h ale's M ou th has been faked so he w ants to go there 'to p rove — ' w h at? The statem ent lik e others in the n o vel is left in co n clu sive, a gestu re tow ard s m eaning on ly. R eality recedes in d efin itely, deferrin g confirm ation o f consp iracy. The protagonist is stu ck w ith a co n v ictio n o f hidd en m eaning: 'Below the surface. Did n oth ing a ctu a lly lie at hand? Did ev e ry th in g h ave to turn, e v en tu ally, to consist o f som ething else en tirely?' (Dick 1984: 130). W h at lies before the p erceiv in g su bject is, as the n o vel tautolo g ica lly puns, lies. D ick's o w n politics h ave been d escribed as 'left-lib eral anti­ authoritarian' (Rickm an 1989: 193). G row in g up in B erkeley g av e him b y his o w n account a b ackg ro u n d in non-aligned radicalism w h ich led him to support H enry W a llace's P rogressive P arty. D ick's fiction suggests that he w as at once fascinated and repelled b y totalitarian states; it is revealin g that he has said o f his friend Robert A n to n W ilson , author o f the Illum inatus! trilo g y , 'w e both love co n sp iracy' (Rickm an 1988: 52). He has carefu lly d istin gu ish ed his position from a n y p a rty com mitm ents: 'M y real stance w as o pposing a u th o rity ' (Rickm an 1988: 12 1-2 ). By the 1970s paranoia had come to appear a fact o f life for him. In 1971 his apartm ent w as bu rgled and his safe blow n open w ith an ex p lo sive, he was su b seq u en tly told, that w as o n ly available to the secu rity agencies. A t the end o f the decade he got access to his c i a file and d iscovered that some o f his m ail had been intercepted. M ean w h ile in 1974 during negotiations to h ave a Polish translation o f Ubik p u blish ed u nder the good offices o f Stanislaw Lem, D ick becam e co n vin ced that he w as at the centre o f a Com m unist con sp iracy em anating from a 'faceless gro u p in K rako w ' and w ro te to inform the f b i o f his fears (M ullen 1992: 246—56). W ith in a few years D ick cast him self as the victim o f conspiracies from the righ t and left, w h ich can be attrib uted p a rtly at least to his hatred o f the N ixo n adm inistration w h ich he saw as the institutionalisation o f paranoia: 'the great Com m unist C onspiracy did not ex ist', he insisted, 'b u t this does' (Etchison 1993: 309). On 1 Septem ber 1973 he w ro te to Bruce G illes­ pie, editor o f the A u stralian jou rn al SF Commentary, to express anger at political d evelopm ents in the USA: 'T h e m agnitude o f the despotic gan g o f professional, organised crim inals w h o came to p o w er (as did H itler in Germ any) is in creasin gly revealed to the us P u b lic', he exclaim ed (Etchison 1993: 287).

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D ick g a v e fiction al exp ression to his profou n d pessim ism about the us adm inistration in tw o n ovels. The first, Radio Free Albem uth (1985, w ritten m id-1970s), d iv id es its narration b etw een 'PhiT, a w rite r and historical com m entator, and his friend N ick w h o is receivin g m essages th ro u gh an intergalactic com m unications n e tw o rk (a fan tasy yearn in g for an 'un contam inated ' inform ation source). C onspiracy lin ks the tw o fig u res as w e ll as a com m on realisation that B erkeley, fo rm erly a place o f radical th ou gh t, has fallen victim to a general transform ation o f the us. This change has been spear-headed b y Ferris F. Frem ont, a m ed io crity sw ep t to p o w er on a w a v e o f political k illin g s and b y su pp ort from both the us in telligen ce com m u n ity and the So viet Union. The tw o gro u p s are lin ked b y their p referen ce for 'sh ad o w govern m en ts' nom inally directed b y figurehead s 'so th e y can g o v e rn from beh in d ' (Dick 1988a: 31). Frem ont's career closely parallels N ix o n 's, from his smear tactics in the 1950 senatorial cam paign onw ards, and he has in trod u ced a system o f m onitoring p u b lic reactions to his telecasts as a ch eck on lo y a lty . In Albem uth and its com panion w o rk there is a co vert dim ension to political action expressed in inform ational terms. So N ick 'd ecod es' an advertisem ent (exp licit level) to fin d an e n cry p ted Com m unist m essage (covert level), w h ich , h o w e v er, is so o b vio u s that it m ust be a police plan t (deep level). One m ethod o f cou nterin g this is for N ick to turn one o f the m edia against the authorities, w h ich he does b y plan tin g sublim inal m essages on records accusin g Frem ont o f bein g a 'R ed '. S econ d ly, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974) w as plan ned to show a 'p olice state in A m erica m odelled on the So viet G ulag prison system ' (Dick 1988a: 75) and here again the m edia are fo regroun ded. Jason T avern er, a t v presenter, loses all his id e n tity docum ents. This ev en t seems to coincide w ith a m em ory erasure in all his form er associates, and part o f the n arrative concerns T a vern er's attem pts to regain his lost p u b lic 'v is ib ility '. In this process he is p itted against a 'Police G eneral' w h o is in v estiga tin g T a vern er's case because there is no inform ation on him in the central data bank. To both figu res T avern er has becom e an u nlocated signifier w h o se v e ry existen ce challenges the elaborate state apparatus o f ch eckp oin ts, bu gs (inclu ding b o d y im plants), vo icep rin ts, etc.). Th e aim o f situating T avern er w ith in an inform ation n etw o rk is desired b y both m en alth o u gh each recogn ises the totalitarian nature o f the regim e su pported b y such a n etw ork.

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(III) In O ctober 1972 D ick w ro te to the FBI to recoun t h o w he had been approached b y a 'co v ert organisation' and asked to insert 'coded inform ation' in his n e xt w ritin gs. 'In essence', he stated, the 'vita l inform ation' w as alread y in print in Thom as M . D isch 's n o vel Camp Concentration (1968).8 D isch 's n o vel describes the im prisonm ent o f an A m erican an tiw ar protestor w h o u n w ittin g ly becom es a guin eapig in a secret experim ent to see w h eth er a strand o f the syp h ilis spirocete can in d u ce h eighten ed intelligence, an anticipation o f the 1 970s revelations o f c i a co vert experim entation. Camp Concentra­ tion is narrated in jou rn al form and dram atises an issue w h ich D ick had tou ch ed on in his o w n sixties fiction and in this letter to the f b i : nam ely h o w n arrative p rod u ction can itself be im plicated in the p o w er stru ctu re it is describing. The narrator is one Louis Sacchetti, w h ose name conflates a form er cause celebre o f the tw en ties A m eri­ can left (Saccho and Vanzetti) and thus suggests the m u fflin g o f antiw ar protest. He is being held w ith other 'con ch ies' in S p rin g­ field priso n .9 Sacchetti is g iv e n w ritin g paper at the point w h ere 'President M cN am ara' (Robert M cNam ara w as Johnson's Secretary for D efence and a k e y architect o f us Vietnam po licy) has ann oun­ ced the use o f tactical nuclear w eapons. Because o f the coincidence o f the tw o even ts Sacchetti w ond ers, therefore, if he ow es the v e ry genesis o f his jo u rn a l to M cNam ara. In itially Sacchetti assum es an iden tifiable set o f rules w h ich w ill prescribe his treatm ent, u ntil he is taken b y guards (w earing black unm arked uniform s) to a secret u n d ergro u n d fa cility called Camp A rchim edes. Sacchetti im agines that his room is b u g ged but, in a reversal o f the O rw ellian pun, the real bug is the substance p allidin e w h ich is adm inistered secretly. From an old college friend nam ed M ordecai he learns that his jou rn al is being scrutinised b y the n s a : 'N ational Se cu rity A g e n c y . The codeboys. T h e y ch eck over e v e ry th in g w e say — it all goes d ow n on tape, y o u k n o w — to m ake sure w e 're not bein g ... herm etic' (Disch 1977: 38). The artistic am bition o f 'u n rid d lin g the secrets o f N ature' has, if this is true, becom e appropriated b y the authorities und er the im perative o f controllin g all inform ation. T here are clear signs that Sacch etti's jou rn al is being read as soon as it is com posed (but no indication o f how ) so m uch so that Sacchetti's exten d ed dialogue (w ritten and oral) w ith his jailors rep eated ly short-circuits his desire for k n o w ­ ledge. Indeed the n o vel g ra d u a lly underm ines sem antic oppositions lik e appearance/reality and surface/depth b y b rin gin g into question e v e ry means o f verification . D isch w as w ell aw are o f h o w tenacious

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the paradigm o f victim -v s.-system w as and denied the reader that satisfaction in the en ding o f Camp Concentration w h ere Sacchetti d iscovers that M ordecai has been transform ed into one o f the jailors. Some review ers too k this as a science fiction cop-out but D isch insisted that the sh ift dem onstrated that su rv iv a l entailed 'b ein g in co m p licity w ith a social stru ctu re that is e v il' (Francavilla

1985: 247). T rad itio n ally the editorial fram e rou n d a d efective te x t puts the latter in its co n text for the reader. In D isch 's n arrative an editorial interpolation has the opposite effect. Sacchetti has been try in g to fin d out w h ich p riva te fou n d ation fu n d s Camp A rch im edes. W h ere the name should be w e fin d the fo llo w in g insert: 'Here two lines have been defaced from the manuscript o f Louis Sacchetti s journal Ed.' (Disch 1977: 49. Italics in original). Peter S w irsk i argues that w ith this erasure 'far from bein g ex p o sed after the jo u rn a l's p u b li­ cation, that corporation w ield s su fficien t p o w er to p reserve its a n o n y m ity ' (Sw irski 1991: 164). By im plication the w h o le tex t becomes suspect, especially in the second part w h ere it breaks d ow n into fragm ents. A re these too the w o rk o f 'E d'? Im m ediately after the interpolation above, Sacchetti has an exch an g e w ith one o f his captors w h ich them atises the p u b lic reception o f his jou rn al. O f course, he is told, it w ill appeal to a 'fe w fello w paranoids' bu t no more than that. In 'T h e Squirrel Cage' ( Under Compulsion, 1968) Disch g iv es a solipsistic version o f the same problem w h ere a w riter is k ep t in perm anent solitary confin em ent in a padded cell, com ­ pelled to address an u n k n o w n reader. He is g iv en copies o f The Times, but th ey could have been doctored. In fact w h ole issues m ight be forgeries. He concludes: 'A n y th in g seems possible. I h ave no w a y to ju d g e ' (Disch 1978: 95). Perhaps this is the ultim ate confirm ­ ation o f the regim e's p o w er in the sto ry and n o vel since the means o f com prehending and th erefore critiq u in g the system h ave been rem oved. D isch thus renders in n arrative form the fear exp ressed in D ick 's 'T h e A n d ro id and the H um an' that govern m ents n o w h ave the tech n o logical cap acity to in d u ce w h o le w o rld view s in their su bjects.10 The entrapping spaces — und ergroun d lab yrin th , squirrel cage/cell, or 'Steel W om b ' (the m ilitary teleportation d evice in Echo Round H is Bones, 1969) - tease D isch's protagonists to dream o f breakin g th ro u gh those lim its to the real, but the a ccessib ility o f that sym bolic exterio r is reg u la rly denied. From the 1960s on w ards paranoia in creasin gly becam e a n arrative su bject in its o w n righ t, p a rticu larly to attack secrecy in govern m en t. H arry H arrison 's sardonic treatm ent o f the arms race In Our H ands, the Stars (1970) describes the efforts b y a Danish

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scientist to keep a n ew prop ulsion d evice secret from the super­ pow ers. A fter a h u ge exp losion causing m any deaths it is revealed first that the Japanese h ave the d evice and then that the su per­ p o w ers also possessed it. P ro o f o f the institutionalised paranoia o f the secu rity agencies suggests that the deaths w ere in vain and that the secu rity apparatus a b su rd ly ineffectu al. D ick dem onstrates h o w such paranoid structures can d evelo p a life o f their ow n. Clans o f the Alphane Moon (1964) contains an u n u su a lly com ic speculation that a planet w h ich has su n k into p sych o sis should be ruled b y paranoids. A n d since there w o u ld be a tw o -w a y hatred betw een the rulers and the ruled, the paranoids w o u ld prom ote a foreign p o licy against an enem y against w hom this class hatred could be displaced. The result w o u ld be an 'illuso ry struggle, a battle against foes that d id n 't exist for a v ic to ry o ver n o th in g ' (Dick 1975: 79). This facetious em ptyin g o f political strategy represents o n ly one instance from the absurdist vision s o f the Cold W ar w h ich g rew in num ber during the 1960s, and to these w e m ust n o w turn.

N o tes 1. In the version released in Europe David's biological parents never return, thus rem oving the dream ending w hich for Bill W arren (Warren 1982: I: 119) validates the film 's logic. 2. LeGacy 1978: 287; letter from Jack Finney 12 July 1993: 'W hen I wrote this book I was not thinking o f M cCarthy, Communism, fascism ...' 3. This same device is used in Christopher A n v il's The Day the Machines Stopped (1964), w here a Soviet secret weapon knocks out all machines in America. 4. Glen M. Johnson has pointed out that Body Snatchers has three different endings: in the Collier's 1954 serialisation Miles defeats the pods w ith the fb i; in the novel he is on his own; and in the film the hospital is about to call the f b i (Johnson 1979: 11). The original title to Finney's n ovel did not include the term 'invasion', although in the serial one o f the 'converts' tells Miles 'w e're m aking a systematic invasion o f the cou ntry'. 5. Letter to James Blish, 10 February 1958, Blish papers, Bodleian Library, O xford. Communist China is the main aggressor in The Game Players o f Titan (1963) w here a satellite has bom barded the u s a w ith lethal radiation and The Simulacra (1964) w here nuclear missiles have been used. 6. The new political alignments in this novel complicate reading the struggle as one betw een rival possibilities for America: liberal idealism and state repression. The 'Martians' are receiving help from Maoist 'advisers'.

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7. D ick 1987: 55. Fredric Jameson argues (Mullen 1992: 26-36) that this novel is unique in describing a nuclear bom bardm ent w hich, being a collective event, cannot occu py D ick's usual border territory betw een the subjective and the objective. 8. Etchison 1993: 64. For valuable comment on verbal cues and the m otif o f assassination in D ick see Burden 1982. 9. Dr. Bloodmoney plays (like The Space Merchants) on the same term in naming its first focaliser M cCondine w ho expects to be drafted into the 'Cuban W ar' (a transposed version o f Vietnam), designated a 'police action' like the Korean intervention. Camp Concentration may have been draw ing on reports circulating about a neural syphilis being carried b y Vietnam veterans w hich was attributed b y the right to a Chinese biological agent (Etchison 1993: 79). 10. Cf. Sutini995: 169: 'w e have entered the landscape depicted b y Richard Condon in his terrific n ovel The Manchurian Candidate . For a discussion o f the historical context to The Manchurian Candidate see Seed 1997a.

Absurdist Visions:

Dr. Strangelove in Context

M ister, Send Y our M issile M y W a y (Gina Berriault 1961)

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The scene is a Salt Lake C ity cafe. A man and w om an are eating canned sausages and d rin kin g coffee. The man has m ade a proposal and the w om an refuses to Tive in sin' w ith him. So far it m ight be an e v e ry d a y situation. But w e k n o w that this couple m ight be the last su rvivin g humans after a nuclear w ar has covered the Earth in radio­ a ctive dust. Damon K n igh t's 'N ot w ith a Bang' (1950: collected in Far Out) turn s Eliot's d escription o f the end o f the w o rld from 'T h e H ollow M en' into a sexual pu n b y dram atising a tug o f w ills betw een a ran d y su rv iv o r and a genteel librarian in a situation o f destruction w h ich m akes such an opposition absurd. In that respect his sto ry represents an early exam ple o f treating the nuclear subject th ro u gh black com edy, w h ich reaches its clim ax in Dr. Strangelove (1963). Paul Brians has argued that such treatm ents represent an evasion: 'A b su rd ism is often a coping m echanism w h ich allow s one to sh elve nuclear w ar m entally as sim ply one o f life's insoluble quandaries' (Brians 1987a: 86). Comic strategies, h o w ev er, can turn a satirical sp otligh t on the assum ptions w h ich m ight cause nuclear w ar. Far from a vo id in g nuclear w ar, th ey deflect its m orally o ppressive w e ig h t, m asking their local subjects w ith a deadpan narrative. For instance, Pat F ran k's M r. A dam (1946) labours the com edy o f one m an's retention o f fe rtility after a nuclear plant explod es, bu t then dram atises his assim ilation w ith in su perp ow er riv a lry that could lead to w ar.

Perceptions of the absurdity of Cold W ar nuclear postures had been forcefully p u t in the fifties by tw o vigorous opponents of the arms race: the cultural historian Lewis M um ford and the sociologist C. W rig h t Mills. Both w riters placed contradiction at the centre of 145

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their diagnoses. M u m fo rd 's collection In the Name o f Sanity (1954) m ounted a protest against the 'vio len ce and irratio n ality o f our tim es'. M um ford fo u n d a direct con trad iction b etw een A m erican 'totalitarian m ilitary instrum ents and our dem ocratic p olitical en ds'. To him the su perpow ers w ere p la y in g out an endgam e w h ose m eaningless w o u ld culm inate in w ar. He w arn ed a p o ca ly p tica lly o f a total n u llification o f history: 'the chaos o f a final w asteland in w h ich all order and design d erived from life h ave returned to aim ­ less dust and ru b b le ' (M um ford 1973a: 15 4 -5 , 161). M ills sim ilarly declared in The Causes o f W orld W ar Three (1958) that the 'd rift and the thru st tow ard W o rld W ar T hree is n o w part o f the contem ­ po rary se n sib ility '. He continu ed : 'W a r has becom e total. A n d w ar has becom e absu rd' (M ills 1959: 9, 12); absurd because m assive preparations are being m ade for a w ar w ith o u t a co ncep tion o f v icto ry . Both com m entators therefore w arn ed o f the im m inence o f nuclear d estruction from the lack o f rational control o ver strategy. In fiction , both A ld o u s H u x le y (Ape and Essence) and James Blish (Black Easter, 1968) ex p lain nuclear w ar as p ro v in g m an kin d 's 'w o rsh ip o f unreason'. By contrast H erm an W o u k 's satire The 'Lomokome' Papers (1968) g iv es a fragm en tary n arrative (edited b y a m ilitary o fficer w h o dism isses the contents as pure 'fictio n ') o f an astron au t's contacts w ith in telligen t bein gs on the M oon w h o are w a g in g a 'reasonable w ar'; the tw o nations each o b serve a regu lar Death D ay w h en a set num ber o f citizen s are pu t to death th ere b y avo id in g u nn ecessary co n flic t.1 These narratives gain their force b y m asking their subjects behin d a facade o f reasonableness w h ich m ust be penetrated b y the reader. Sim ilar ap p aren tly sk ew ed priorities inform the cartoons o f Jules Feiffer w h ich helped to establish a v o g u e in the late fifties for sick jo k es, am ong w h ich w ere sketches o f the prom otion o f nuclear tech n o lo g y to the p u b lic b y official agencies. One series (in Sick, Sick, Sick, 1959) show s a sales director or govern m en t official (the point is that the roles h ave becom e ind istinguish ab le) insistin g that the p u b lic should be made 'positive fallou t conscious' and that this can be done b y h avin g a 'M r. and M rs. M utation ' contest. Th e fear addressed b y Poul A n d erso n and others (see Chapter 4) is here turn ed on its head into a gro tesq u e prize q u a lity. A g a in F eiffer's n arrative 'Boom !' (Passionella, 1959) describes the g ro w in g atm os­ ph eric pollu tio n from nuclear tests. To q u ieten fears a govern m en thired PR firm erects bill-boards d eclaring that 'Big Black Floating Specks A re Good For Y ou !' Feiffer describes the selling o f the bom b to the p u blic. Gina B erriault's 1961 n o vel The Descent also satirises the com m ercial prom otion o f nuclear shelters. Set in the im m inent

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fu tu re (1964), the n o vel describes the appointm ent o f an obscure Iow a professor to the post o f Secretary for H um anity. This is essen tially a PR post designed b y the us govern m en t to stifle the 'non-realists', i.e. anyon e w h o doesn't accept the official line on defence. Berriault dem onstrates h o w nuclear issues h ave becom e institu tionalised w ith in the culture. Cities com pete for w h o has the best nuclear shelters, an anti-radiation pill called n i x - r is being prom oted, and M iss M assive Retaliation (voted in b y us A rm ed Forces Overseas) sings a song w h ose refrain appears as this ch apter's epigraph in T o k y o sh o rtly before a Hiroshim a m em orial cerem ony. T he descent o f the title is an en try into a m assive shelter u nder D enver w h ich has becom e a bizarre tourist attraction, and here Berriault, like M ordecai R oshw ald in Level 7, p lays on the m etaphorical im plications o f descent and its opposite. A n evangelist, parodically echoing Norman V in cen t Peale w h o had been argu in g since the late 1940s that the cure for nuclear fear w as to th in k p o sitively, declares rin g in g ly : 'M an 's descent into the bow els o f the earth shall be k n o w n as the great descent that w as the ascent. Let this N uclear Era then be k n o w n as the A g e o f A scen t' (Berriault 1961: i n ) . T his disguise o f an action as its opposite is sym ptom atic o f a nation w id e govern m en t orchestrated process w h ere Cold W ar policies are com m odified and foisted on a g u llib le p u blic. R un ning th ro u gh o u t these w o rk s is a denial o f death, an attem pted dim inution o f nuclear holocaust. M ordecai R o sh w ald 's A Sm all Armageddon (1962, inspired b y the Peter Sellers farce The Mouse That Roared) m akes this process e x p licit in its v e ry title. A n A m erican nuclear subm arine crew use their w arheads to blackm ail the President into su p p ly in g them w ith m oney, d rin k and profess­ ional strippers. T hen in the second plot an airforce com m ander sets out on a 'N u clear Crusade' against the 'seat o f godless p o w er' in M oscow . Both sequences resem ble Dr. Strangelove in starting w ith bizarre acts o f rebellion w ith in the us m ilitary. In the even t both rebels d estroy each other and so total holocaust is avoided . A rm a­ ged d o n recedes too in V o n n eg u t's Cat's Cradle (1963) w h ere the narrator plans to w rite a book about the d ay o f the H iroshim a bom bing (The Day the World Ended). A s his su bject eludes him he begins to suspect that he is retracing a m egalom aniacal ap ocalyp tic script lik e R o sh w ald 's airforce com m ander, and his account is n ever com pleted (cf. Zins 1986). The com ic treatm ent o f fears o f extin ction and m utation e x em p lify h o w black hum our feigns to deprioritise subjects presum ed to carry w eig h t. It w as the ultim ate su bject o f nuclear holocaust w h ich received comic treatm ent in the m asterpiece o f Cold W ar absurdism Dr. Strangelove. It is no coincid ence that

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Joseph H eller, w h ose Catch-22 superim posed fifties paranoia on a late-W orld W ar II setting, should h ave been approached to w rite the screen play for this film .2

( i i) A s early as 1946 Chandler D avis had p u b lish ed a sto ry ('To Still the Drum s') on the dangers o f a m ilitary cliqu e takin g the USA into w ar. In 1948 the Joint Chiefs o f S taff tried u n su ccessfu lly to persuade Trum an to turn o ver to them control o f nuclear w eapons, and the fo llo w in g year H einlein p u b lish ed an accoun t ('T he Long W atch ') o f a renegade m ilitary o fficer on a lunar base w h o also tries to threaten the Earth into subm ission w ith atom ic bom bs. W ith the accession o f K en n ed y relations betw een the m ilitary and the W h ite H ouse deteriorated so m arked ly that Fletcher K nebel and Charles W . Bailey could describe an attem pted m ilitary coup in their 1962 n o vel Seven Days in May. Dr. Strangelove belongs w ith in a cluster o f n o vels dealing w ith nuclear crises trig gered b y a despairing us general (Peter G eorge, Two Hours to Doom , 1958), a com ponent fault in the s a c com puter (Burdick and W h eeler's Fail-Safe, 1962), and a deranged Soviet general (George O. Sm ith's Doomsday Wing, 1963).3 G eorge's n o vel describes the decision b y a s a c general to lau n ch a p re-em p tive nuclear strike against the Soviet U nion from his d esperation at the latter's rem orseless gains during the Cold W ar. General Q uin ten 's actions bring the w o rld to the b rin k o f w ar, but the crisis passes w h en the one us bom ber w h ich penetrates the S oviet U nion drops its bom b h arm lessly in an u n in h abited area. Strangelove fo llo w s the same scenario w h ose initiator this tim e is a m anic paranoid, bu t takes us up to the b rin k and o ver it. W h en Stanley K u b rick started w o rk on the screenp lay for Strangelove his origin al inten tion w as to p rod u ce a serious adap­ tation o f G eorge's novel. Then, b y his o w n account, he ran up against a d ifficu lty : in fillin g out scenes 'one had to keep leavin g th in gs out o f it w h ich w ere either absurd or parad oxical, in order to keep it from being fu n n y , and these th in gs seem ed to be v e ry real' (K ubrick 1963: 12). This blocked his true sense o f a subject: 'A fte r all, w h at could be m ore absurd than the v e ry idea o f tw o m ega-pow ers w illin g to w ip e out all hum an life because o f an accident, sp iced up b y political d ifferences that w ill seem as m eaningless to people a h u n d red years from n o w as the th eological con flicts o f the M id d le A g es appear to us to d a y?' (Gelmis 1971: 309). A c c o rd in g ly he chose a m ethod o f 'nightm are co m ed y', b rin gin g T e rry Southern in to

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w o rk on the script and presu m ably also the n ovel. The n o vel, p u b lish ed in 1963 sh o rtly before the film 's release, captures the black hum our o f the film , bu t w ith differences o f scene-arrangem ent. W h ere the latter opens w ith a vo ice o ver describing a secret m ilitary establishm ent in Russia, the n o vel introd u ces its narrative w ith a science fiction fram e w h ich w arns against generic expectatio n s o f w ar fiction , distances the reader, reduces nuclear w eapons to 'to y s', and questions su p erp o w er riv a lry: 'T h e y w ere not on frien d ly terms, and w e fin d this d ifficu lt to understand, because both w ere g o v ern ed b y p o w er system s w h ich seem to us basically sim ilar' (George 1979: i). From the same period A lfre d Berm el's 'T h e End o f the Race' (1964) uses the same d evice o f a detached, rather bem used o bserver from another g a la x y in opening: 'A t that tim e the nations k n o w n as A m erica and Russia had set o ff 2,500 nuclear explosion s, p u lverised e v e ry small island in the P acific, A rctic and Indian Oceans, b lo w n out o f the earth lum ps o f great m agnitude and little m ineralogical va lu e' (Pohl 1965: 77). R obert S h e c k le y 's Journey beyond Tomorrow (1962) sim ilarly describes from a far-fu tu re vie w p o in t the 'spontaneous and chaotic exp losion o f w arfare' triggered b y a civilian je t in Californian airspace. The en su ing 'great w a r' is so w id esp read that the 'O ld W o rld ... perish ed as com pletely as th o u g h it had n ever been' (Sh eckley 1987: 180). A ll three narratives estrange the reader b y refu sin g k in sh ip w ith a low er species bent on self-destruction. Strangelove sh ow s a process ru n n in g under its o w n m om entum w h ere the loss o f com m unication o n ly em phasises the helplessness o f the hum an agents. K ubrick has pointed out that 'most o f the hum or in Strangelove arises from the depiction o f everyd ay human behaviour in a nightm arish situation' (Gelmis 1971: 309). W hereas in Two Hours and Fail-Safe the hot line perform s an im portant fu n ctio n in b rin gin g the leaders o f the su perpow ers together, one o f the m any ironies o f Strangelove is that the m ilitary m achines fu n ctio n o n ly too w e ll w h ereas the means o f com m unication co n stan tly break d ow n (M aland 1979: 712). A t one critical point M an drake has no coins to phone the recall codes to W ashington ; at another the President can o n ly locate the So viet prem ier th ro u gh Om sk Inform ation.4 The cross-cu ttin g betw een scenes (the n o vel has ap p roxim ately double the num ber o f the film) strengthens the su ggestion o f loss o f com m unication b y sh o w in g h o w each k e y location (R ipper's office, the m ain bom ber, W ar Room) is sealed from the others. The traditional interaction betw een com m and centre and bom bers in W o rld W ar II narratives is blocked off, alth o ugh traces are retained o f earlier w ars in anachronistic statem ents lik e General R ip p er's

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declaration that 'it looks lik e w e 're in a shooting w a r', and in the use o f hand held cameras for the assault on Burpelson base as if it w ere com bat footage. T here is a co llective refusal b y the m ilitary to recogn ise the paradigm shift that nuclear w eapon s n ecessitate.5 The m ism atch b etw een sou n d -track and im age strength ens this iro n y b y playin g 'W h en Johnny Comes M arching Home A g ain ' or Vera L yn n 's 'W e 'll M eet A g a in ' o ver repeated nuclear exp losion s (Broderick 1992: 69). The w h o le point is that there w ill be no 'again '. In the m eantim e characters continu e to p lay out Cold W ar rivalries dim inished to a sq uabble lik e that w h ich erupts b etw een the Soviet am bassador and General T u rgid so n on the floor o f the W ar Room. W h ile Generals R ipper and T u rgid so n p erso n ify a h a w k ish w in g o f the m ilitary, th ey also p aro d y the cigar-ch om ping Curtis Lem ay, the s a c com m ander w h o w as a leading prop on ent o f the Joint Chiefs' w ar plan k ep t secret from the K en n ed y adm inistration.6 W h en General T u rgid so n is prop osin g a p re-em p tive strike a n earb y file reads 'w o rld targets in m egadeaths', a clear allusion to the govern m en t ad viser w h o did m ost to popularise th in k in g about the u n th in kab le, Herm an Kahn. Th e latter's m assive stu d y On Thermonuclear W ar (i960) not o n ly exp lain s the fe a sib ility o f the D oom sday M achine w h ich con clu d es Strangelove but also describes w ith ch illin g o b je ctiv ity the m assive casu alty figu res w h ich w o u ld result from an y nuclear exch an ge. T his sort o f nuclear calculation is em bodied in the fig u re o f Dr. Stran gelo ve w h ose entrance in the film is d elayed until the D oom sday M ach in e is m entioned, th ere b y associating him w ith death as he w h eels fo rw ard out o f the sh ad ow s.7 Stran gelove is in fact a com posite fig u re also sig n ify in g the co n tin u ity betw een N azi and A m erican m ilitary experim en ta­ tion (cf. the rock et tech n ician W ern h er vo n Braun) as w e ll as the scientific rationalism floatin g free o f consequences parodied in Bermel and James Blish, in w h o se n o vel The Day after Judgement (1971) an ex-RAND Corporation official in v o k e s K ahn's 'lad der o f escalation' to assess the d estruction after a nuclear w ar. Insulated from the w asteland outside, he argues h ea te d ly in an u n d ergro u n d b u n ker for the benefits o f d ifferen t nuclear w eapons, insistin g that 'a selenium bom b is essen tially a humane bom b' because o f its short h alf-life (Blish 1981: 128). The m ost sustained satire on K ahn's an alytical m ethod is Leonard C. L ew in 's Report from Iron Mountain on the Possibility and Desirability o f Peace (1967). This fictitio u s report, prepared b y a govern m en t th in k -ta n k in a secret u n d er­ gro u n d nuclear fa cility , reverses the co n ven tion al relation o f w ar to peace, presenting the form er as a norm and the latter as a danger. D raw ing on the argum ents o f w o rk s like Fred J. C ook's Warfare

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State (1963), Iron M ountain im itates K ahn's practice o f tab ulatin g options in its 'Disarm am ent Scenarios' and concludes that 'w a r itse lf is the basic social system ' (Lew in 1968: 61). T h ro u g h o u t its deadpan Sw iftian proposals Iron Mountain m aintains a facade o f p lau sib ility b y qu o tin g contem porary com m entators, prom inent am ong them Kahn him self.

( in ) W h ile the surface d isjun ction s o f Strangelove h ave their satirical role, there is a su b tex t to this narrative w h ich diagnoses a neurosis at the heart o f the m ilitary establishm ent. To locate this w e need to b acktrack to the earliest accounts o f nuclear explosion s g iv e n b y the jou rn alist W illiam L. Laurence w h o for a tim e en jo yed a virtu a l m on op oly o f such reportage. He describes the 1945 A lam agordo blast as p rod u cin g a 'gian t colum n ... q u ive rin g co n v u ls iv e ly ' as it penetrated lo w clou d Tike a vib ra n t volcan o sp ou tin g fire to the s k y ' (Laurence 1961: 117). Th en the N agasaki bom b produces a 'gian t pillar o f p u rp le fire' once again clim bin g th ro u gh the clouds w h ereu p o n 'there came shooting out o f the top a giant m ushroom ' (Laurence 1961: 159). L au rence's m etaphors o f male orgasm and b irth in g h ave been exp lain ed b y fem inist scholars as attem pts at m axim ising male techn ological crea tiv ity (Cohn 1987: 699-701) and id en tifyin g female sexu ality w ith the bom b's destructiveness (Caputi J99 I: 43 °)* Ira C h ernu s's Dr. Strangegod (1986) p ays tribu te to the im portance o f Strangelove in its title and dem onstrates a congru en ce b etw een nuclear w e a p o n ry and a p ocalyp tic m otifs, argu in g that the Bomb is a 'sym b o l o f om nipotence' p rod u cin g extrem e am bivalen ce (Chernus 1986: 92, 100). In Strangelove it is G eneral Jack D. R ipper w h ose co n sp iracy th eo ry p roves so lud icrou s that it in vites the read er/view er to scrutinise the narrative for other possible signs o f neurosis. He exp lain s to the bem used M an drake that he has 'stu died the facts' and con clu d ed that the flu oridation o f w ater is the 'm ost m on strously co n ceived and dangerous com m unist p lot w e h ave ever had to face' (George 1979: 78). Ripper continues: 'A foreign substance is in trod u ced into the precious b o d ily flu ids, w ith o u t the k n o w led g e o f the in d ivid u a l and certain ly w ith o u t a n y free choice. T h at's the w a y the com mies w o rk . ..' (George 1979: 79). C onflating hatred o f w elfare w ith fear o f Com munism , R ipper identifies the fate o f his b o d y w ith that o f the nation, then m erges the Com m unist threat w ith that o f fem ale sexu al contact to ju s tify a retention neurosis. R ipper ex p o u n d s his 'th e o ry ' during the battle for his air

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base. R earing a h e a v y m achine g u n as a su bstitu te phallus, he blasts a w a y th ro u gh his office w in d o w . H ow ever, once his men sur­ render, the g u n droops, his cigar goes out (becom es 'dead'), and he takes his life w ith a pistol. R ip p er's obsession helps to stren gthen a set o f lin kages betw een m ilitary tech n o lo g y and se x u a lity w h e re b y the exercise o f p o w er shifts sy m b o lica lly b etw een the tw o dom ains. T h is w as first recogn ised b y F. A n th o n y M ack lin w h o earned K u b ric k 's ap p roval b y d escribin g the film as a 'sex a lle g o ry ', 'from fo rep lay to e x p lo ­ sion in the m echanised w o rld ' (M acklin 1965: 55). M ack lin argues that this sequence can be o b served p a rticu larly clearly in the flig h t o f Leper Colony as its com m ander 'K in g' Kong progresses from 'rea d in g ' Playboy, th ro u gh arm ing the bom bs (w h ich then becom e 'p oten t') to the orgasm ic lau n ch o f the bom bs one o f w h ich is rid d en b y Kong to his death. N orm an Kagan has fu rth er fleshed out this read ing, adding m ore glosses on characters' names and po in tin g out that the B-52 bom ber is itself 'p h allic, p a rticu larly in its in d efatigable race to coitus' (Kagan 1972: 137). Strangelove fo regro un ds sexu al im agery from the first scene, a m id-air fu ellin g sequence taken out o f co n tex t from Strategic A ir Command (1935) so that it resem bles tw o g igan tic m etal insects copu latin g. Kong sees 'M iss Foreign A ffa irs' on the cen tre-fold o f his Playboy w h o soon reappears as G eneral B uck T u rgid so n 's secre­ ta ry 'catch in g up on paper w o rk ' in a hotel suite sp raw led under a sun-lam p, in a b ikin i, nam ed after the P acific atoll used for H -bom b tests. The scene betw een T u rgid so n and his secretary concludes w ith him telling her: 'Y o u start y o u r count d ow n rig h t n o w and old Buckie w ill be back before y o u can say re-e n try ' (George 1979: 25). The co n clu d in g rib ald pu n (the film uses the more decorous 'b last­ o ff') relates sexu al a c tiv ity to the operation o f nuclear w eap o n ry. The com edy o f Strangelove is ultim ately about death, and destruction turn s out to be the ultim ate aphrodisiac. W h en the bom bers head for the Soviet Union, Dr. S tran gelo ve's eyes gleam w ith excitem ent and T u rgid so n becom es 'alm ost fe v e rish '. General Ripper fu n ctio n s in the narrative not o n ly as a trig ger to the action but also as a particu lar instance o f a general p a th o lo g y. In an article p u b lish ed in the Bulletin o f the Atom ic Scientists (to w h ich K u b rick had a regu lar subscription) M ortim er O stow speculated on the im plications o f F reud's d eath -w ish for w ar, su ggestin g that it m ight be su bject to 'd isch arge pressure' lik e Eros. He continued: 'In the case o f some o f the more aggressive and bold leaders o f the past, it is lik e ly that their belligeren ce served to d eflect their in w ard directed death im pulses to the outer w o rld ' (O stow 1963: 27).

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Here we encounter the central reversal th at lies at the heart of Strangelove. W here earlier novels and films depicted the arm y as the n atio n 's protector, they are now show n to be driven by lust for destruction w hich tu rn s American against American and w hich ulti­ m ately leads to the demise of the nation. Lewis M um ford enthusi­ astically praised the film for its depiction of 'colossal paranoids and crim inal incom petents' as being the 'only w ay possible to characterise the policy itself' (M um ford 1964: 8). The w hole point about Ripper, T urgidson and others is th at th ey are not exceptions w ith in the system . Two voices articulate reason b u t they are both outsiders to the American military: M andrake, the seconded r a f officer w ho manages to find the bom bers' recall code; and the President M erkin M uffley w hose name makes a ribald contrast betw een female pubic hair and the P resident's baldness. From the perspective of the m ilitary haw ks his very m oderation (modelled in style and appearance on Adlai Stevenson) feminises him; b u t it is his rationality not the action of the m ilitary, based on the dangerously irrelevant scripts of movie roles, w hich almost saves the situation. Almost, b u t not quite. The climax of Strangelove realises the rum ours in the film 's opening scene of the Soviet Union building an 'ultim ate w eapon, a doom sday device'. The latter concept, as we saw in C hapter 3, was popularised bu t not originated by Herm an Kahn whose description is closely followed in this narrative: the use of cobalt-coated m egabom bs buried deep in a m ountain range triggered by com puter (see Kahn 1961: 145). The detonation of the device (ultim ately uncontrollable) brings not tragedy since the P resident's queries about the fate of the population are drow ned out by the possibility of a surviving rem nant (men, of course) w ho w ould descend into m ineshafts w ith w om en 'selected for their sexual characteristics' (George 1979: 144). At this point in the film Strangelove's prosthetic rig h t arm springs erect in a m ultiple sign of a Nazi salute, displaced penis, and (pace Bernard Wolfe) aggression; the Cold W ar will continue, if only as a race to avoid a 'm ine-shaft gap'. It is this ending, this 'strange love', w hich functions as a prelude to Suzy McKee C harnas's W a lk to the E nd o f the W orld (J974) w hich describes a post-holocaust w orld w here the nuclear shelters have become the site for a gendered play of pow er. A fter the 'W astin g ' the m en project their guilt on to their wom en, rein­ venting an enem y-as-scapegoat, and reducing the w om en to slaves.8

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(IV) The absu rdist m ode o f Strangelove has been used in a nu m ber o f su bsequ en t narratives o f nuclear w ar. N orm an S pin rad 's 'T h e Big Flash' (1969) has a co u n td o w n sequence to describe the rise o f the n ew Californian pop grou p, the Four Horsem en. T h eir perform ances use sound and image to induce a pre-verbal desire for death, building u p to an orgasm ic clim ax w ith the sound o f an exp losion and — lik e the finale to Strangelove — slow-m otion shots o f nuclear blasts. Political despair is g iv e n an a p o caly p tic p a ckagin g w h ich both uses and becomes spectacle; each performance contains new s footage o f burning Vietnam ese villages, in n er-city riots and sim ilar scenes. The g ro u p 's chants orchestrate a d eath w ish phrased as a y earn in g for escape: 'befo re w e die let's dig that h igh that frees us from our binds ... the last big flash, m an kin d 's last gasp ' (M iller and G reen berg 1987: 56). A g a in as in Strangelove, lan gu age p roves u navailable for rational control o f the im pulse to die w h ich Spinrad dem onstrates th ro u gh the m om ent before ap ocalyp se w h ere characters feel to be on the v e rg e o f revelation as th ey chant 'd o it! d o it ! ' The p o p u la rity o f the gro u p increases p u b lic su pport for nuclear w eap ons and even leads to the detonation o f a d evice at one o f their concerts. T h eir televised perform ance v ica rio u sly arouses a m issile silo crew ('m y o w n k e y w as th ro b b in g in m y hand a liv e' [M iller and G reenberg 1987: 63]) to the point o f launch. Spinrad's extension o f the countdow n into the social co n text w o rk s w e ll since the story dem onstrates a circu lation o f im ages o f d estruction from the m ilitary th ro u gh the n ew s and then pop m edia back to the m ilitary. In that sense 'T h e Big Flash' paints an even bleaker pictu re than Strangelove since so ciety as a w h o le falls p rey to the contagious lust for destruction. C om plicity too is the m ain issue in James M o rro w 's This is the Way the World Ends (1986) w h ich one review declared 'begin s w h ere Dr. Strangelove ends'.9 This future-w ar novel frames its main narrative w ith a predictive section w here Nostradamus foresees a 'conflagration o f hum an d esign' (M orrow 1989: 7). M orrow uses m ock-picaresqu e chapter titles to flag in ad van ce the exp erien ces o f 'our h ero', a N ew England graveston e mason w h o b u y s his d au gh ter an anti-radiation suit sh o rtly before w ar breaks out. The sales contract is the m ain docum ent o f the n o vel since in it P axton adm its recogn ition that the suits en courage A m erican 'so cie ty 's leaders to p ursue a p o licy o f nuclear brin km an ship' (M orrow 1989: 45). W h en the bom bs drop, P axton is h alf-blin d ed , shot and then carried o ff in a us nuclear su b ­ marine whose crew assume he is a member o f the designated survivors elite (the 'E rebus' plan). Interm ittent realism is used b y M orrow to

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springboard the reader into tem porary fantasy realms to capture the lunacy of nuclear confrontation. Thus Paxton buys his radiation suit from the m a d H atter, otherw ise know n as the 'Tailor of T herm onuclear T error'. Playing on the notorious policy acronym for M utual A ssured D estruction, M orrow depicts a surreal figure w ho com bines the m ultiple roles of salesman, diplomat, manic chorus and even the w eaver of hum anity's fate. He is also the first in a series of figures to pass thro u g h the novel from A lice in Wonderland, reflecting an evident conviction by M orrow th at the nuclear issue can only be dram atised th ro u g h fantastic means. P axton acco rd in g ly is carried from life to death on a rite o f passage w h ere he is show n the destruction b y fire o f A m erica, this last then rendered in narrative as an inset anti-scripture on the tex t 'In the en ding H um ankind d estroyed the h eaven and the earth' (M orrow 1989: 115). The culm ination o f P axton 's jo u rn e y comes in A ntarctica, the location o f the N ecropolis o f H istory, an o verg ro w n m arble city lik e a vast m onum ent surcharged w ith pathos b y the im pending death o f the fu tu re. W h en P axton and others q u ery the san ity o f even ts the H atter points the moral o f discredited ration ality, scream ing : 'T h e y called the Joint Chiefs o f S taff sane! T h e y called the N ational S ecu rity Council sane!' (M orrow 1989: 125). M orrow acts on such declarations b y d en yin g P axton (and the reader) a stable level o f reality w ith in the narrative; there is no area o f his su b je ctiv ity exem pt from the m oral im pact o f nuclear w ar. Events shade into dream, but n ever at the exp en se o f ongoin g debate o ver the w ar, defence p o licy , or su rv iv o rs' guilt. The co n clu d in g section describes the trial o f the su rviv o rs b y the 'un ad m itted ', w h at Jonathan Schell calls the fu tu re generations 'can celled ' b y nuclear w ar. P axton has b y this point becom e the 'prison er o f the m urdered fu tu re', alive but sterile .10 These chapters interrogate the w h o le situation o f nuclear confrontation, lik e Leo Szilard's 'M y Trial as a W ar Crim inal' draw in g com parisons w ith the N urem berg hearings. Speaking w ith the vie w p o in t o f h isto ry Justice Jefferson pron oun ces as final verd ict the jud gem ent: 'Each o f y o u in his o w n w a y en couraged his govern m en t to cu ltivate a technology o f mass murder, and, b y extension, each o f you supported a p o licy o f mass m urder' (M orrow 1989: 218). P axton is o f course an adult and therefore denied the buttressing o f A lic e 's childhood innocence. Both Spinrad and M orrow im plicate their protagonists and b y exten sion their readers in the contagion o f deathlust or in acquiescence to a cu ltu re o f mass destruction. The n e xt chapter w ill exam ine tw o narratives w h ich in vestigate the cultural narratives leading to that destruction after nuclear holocaust has occurred.

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Notes 1. In 1957 Heinlein was offered the chance to write a screenplay for

Wouk's novel, which he refused on the grounds that the book was a 'philosophical tract packaged as a fantasy' (Heinlein 1989: 116). 2. ms note from Stanley K ubrick to Heller, 30 Ju ly 1962, Heller A rch ive, Brandeis U niversity. 3. The us edition o f George's novel was retitled Red Alert, and the book was praised b y Herman Kahn as a clever presentation o f an 'om inous possibility' (Kahn 1962: 44) see A brash 1986 for a discussion o f the hidden logic w ithin deterrence in this novel and Roshw ald's Level 7. George dedicated his second nuclear novel, Commander-1 (1965), to K ubrick. For com m entary on Fail-Safe and the preven tive system o f its title see Seed 1994b. The scenario o f a madman launching a w eapon against the Soviet Union is described in A n d rew Sinclair's The Project

(i 96o ). 4. The treatment o f the telephone is not mere fantasy. A t that time the us m ilitary depended on public lines for their communication; and w hen Kennedy m oved into the W hite House the hot line was disconnected and rem oved during redecoration (Ford 1986: 28—9). 5. Cf. Brustein 1964: 4, and John W . Campbell: 'A ll our former concepts o f strategy and tactics must be throw n out and an entirely new order o f things instituted' (Campbell 1947: 243).

6 . J. K. Galbraith described Lemay as 'the most prominent figure in the

culture of destruction' ('Timewatch',

BBC2, 8

October

1996).

7. Charles Maland sees in him elements of Edward Teller and Henry Kissinger as well as Kahn (Maland 1979: 709—10). The subtitle com­

bines Norman Vincent Peale with an article by Leo Szilard: 'How to Live with the Bomb and Survive' [Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists [February i960]). 8. Charnas has explained that her novel was provoked b y an article about an underground nuclear command facility for the us go vern ­ ment w hich suggested that the 'v e r y cretins w ho cause the destruction o f the w orld [would be there] w ith lots o f nubile you n g w om en' (Charnas 1998: 6). The 'm ine-shaft gap' parodies the m isperception o f a 'missile gap' in favour o f the Soviets w h ich played a role in the i960 presidential campaign. 9. The Philadelphia Enquirer, quoted in the fly -le af o f the 1989 reprint. A Strangelove figure named Dr. Randstable is among those tried for w ar crimes. 10. Cf. Schell 1982: 168: 'O f all the crimes against the future, extinction is the greatest. It is the murder o f the future'.

The Signs of War: Walter M . M iller and Russell Hoban

He had n ever seen a 'Fallout' (W alter M. M iller 1959)

( i)

If nuclear holocaust is im agined as the ultim ate ru p tu re to hum an life and h isto ry, su rv iv o rs' attem pts to reconstitute some form o f civ ic order in v o lv e the problem o f h o w to access the past. Books take on the sym bolic valu e o f talism en from pre-w ar, desired b y some and feared b y others. Susan Spencer has argued that p ost­ holocaust fiction brings out ancient anxieties about the relation betw een oral com m unication and literacy, textu al inform ation and k n o w led ge, relating such issues to questions o f pow er. Thus a p rotago n ist's search for historical data m ight run counter to an institutionalised resistance in the post-holocaust society. This is w h at happens in L eigh Brackett's The Long Tomorrow (l 955), one o f the earliest novels to describe the search for the archive, d isrupted and alm ost hidd en but n ever qu ite d estroyed b y nuclear holocaust. Brackett describes a rural com m unity based partly on her exp erien ce o f A m ish culture w h ich appeared 'u n iq u e ly fitted to lead, if o n ly b y exam ple, a post-atom ic-w ar p opulation left h igh and d ry b y the b reakd o w n o f all those com plicated system s b y w h ich w e liv e ' (W alker 1976: 5). The novel stresses the cost o f this cap acity to su rv iv e, deglam ourising the 'Jeffersonian m yth o f a sim ple, virtu o u s rural cu ltu re' as h arsh ly repressive (Parkin-Speer 1985: 191). In the w a k e o f nuclear w ar, m yth ologised as the 'D estru ction ', N ew M ennonite com m unities h ave sprung up w h ich forbid alike the creation o f n ew cities and the scru tin y o f books. The n o vel centres on a yo u n g b o y nam ed Len Colter, w h o cries out to his father 'I w an t to knowV w h en the latter beats him for stealing books and a radio. The fundam entalist id eo lo gy o f the com m unity is exp o u n d ed to Len b y his grandm other w h o describes nuclear w ar J57

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in Old Testam ent rhetoric: 'there w as a rain o f fire from h eaven and m any w ere consum ed in it! The Lord g av e it to the enem y for a d ay to be His flail' (Brackett 1955: 30). In his d rive for k n o w led g e Len steals tex tb o o k s o f p h y sics and more im portan tly a h isto ry o f the USA w h ich estranges him from his co m m u n ity's id e o lo gy even before he p h y sica lly sets out to fin d the legen d ary B artorstow n w h o se name signifies com m erce, a practice n o w forbidd en. The place itse lf p roves to be a self-sup portin g undergroun d defence installation housing a com puter w h ich contains all the then-existing kn o w led ge o f nuclear fission. Len's en try m arks his point o f access to h isto ry seen m eton ym ically in a panoram ic p h otograph o f H iroshim a. In B artorstow n he learns o f past nuclear w eapons and g ra d u a lly w o rk s o ff the tech noph obia he has been taught. B artorstow n itse lf therefore fu n ction s sim ultaneously as m useum , tech n ological site, and a place w h ere Len can speculate on the fu tu re. Its su pervisor Sherm an introd u ces him to a secular ethic o f ind estru ctib le k n o w led g e and to a retro sp ective dream o f disarm ing nuclear w eapons th ro u gh a field -force d evice. This dream o f tech n ological p o w er ('absolute m astery o f the atom ' [Brackett 1935: 174]) u n co n scio u sly repeats the im pulse behin d the origin al w ar. Iro n ically it is Sherm an w h o introd u ces Len to the idea o f recurrence: 'It w ill all happen o ver again, the cities and the bom b' (Brackett 1955: 177). The n o vel concludes soon after Len has digested this p o ssib ility. The learn in g sequence inclu des recurren ce o n ly as an abstraction. It w as left to W alter M . M iller's A Canticle fo r Leibow itz (1959) to show recu rren ce tak in g place in a narrative spanning cen tu ries.1

( ii) A Canticle opens w ith a d isco very . The co n text is a n ew Dark A g e w h ere one Brother Francis, a n o vice from the n earb y L eib o w itz A b b e y , is perform ing a Lenten fast. A n aged man appears out o f the desert and show s him a rock w h ich w ill com plete the shelter he is b u ild in g. W h en he rem oves this rock a 'ca v e' is revealed w h ich p roves to be the rem ains o f a fallou t shelter from an earlier era w ith in w h ich Francis fin ds a m etal b o x containing a num ber o f docum ents: a sh oppin g list, a racin g form , a note to a frien d and a blu eprin t. Francis is a m em ber, w e should note, o f a m onastic order d evo ted to p reservin g the traces o f a literacy w h ich has been all but lost. O ther m em bers o f this same order, the so-called 'b o o k le g g ers', h ave been com m itting w o rk s to m em ory, as in Fahrenheit 4 5 1 w h ere

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G ranger and his associates also attem pt a fu tu re preservation o f books against a Dark A g e. The contents o f Francis's b o x - the 'M em orabilia' as th ey becom e k n o w n - can be construed as an enigm atic collection o f m eton y­ mies, parts o f a narrative and the fragm en tary traces o f a sig n ify in g system w h ich h ave disappeared. R econstruction o f their m eaning goes hand in hand w ith the re-enactm ent o f the narrative th ey o n ly p artially disclose. In that respect th e y represent the opposite case to M iller's 1953 satire on the Cold W ar 'C h eck and Checkm ate' w h ere b y the tw en ty -first cen tu ry political signs h ave changed, but referents rem ained unchanged: 'w a r' has becom e 'peace-effo rt', and 'ly n c h ' has been replaced b y 'secu rity -p ro b e' (M iller 1953: 6-7). In M iller's n o vel the blueprin t, w h ich is signed b y one I. E. L eibow itz, em bodies the cry p tic nature o f the past and rem ains a textu al pu zzle th ro u gh o u t Books I and II, an object to be copied, 'illum inated ' and scrutinised for m eaning. The enigm a o f the blu eprin t (literally a plan for fu tu re realisa­ tion) indicates a condition o f the n o v e l's w h o le tex t w h ich W alk er P ercy has com pared to a 'ciph er, a coded m essage, a book in a strange language' (Percy 1971: 263). A Canticle is charged throughout w ith h alf-concealed m eaning w h ich M iller fu rth er com plicated w h en he w as revisin g his three n ovellas for n o vel pu blication. The final w o rk rep eated ly foregroun ds certain signs as if to prom ise the reader m eaning and then destabilises those signs th ro u gh am b igu ity and repetition. The old man w h o meets Francis is described naturalistica lly in the origin al version as one o f the 'b la ck sp ecks' shim m er­ ing in the heat. The n o ve l's tex t revises this im age into an unstable sign, a 'w ig g lin g iota o f b la ck ', w h ich p u n n in g ly p lays on the letter-sign and 'iota' as denoting the sm allest d istin gu ish able item .2 Furtherm ore M iller stresses such differences as those betw een old and n ew English w h ich revo lves around vo ca b u lary, H ebrew and English, and the special status o f Latin, o f w h ich more in a moment. W h en the old man w rites tw o H ebrew letters on Francis's rock at the begin n in g o f the n o vel the action establishes the major m otif o f the cry p tic nature o f signs. M iller p lays on the traditional figural o pposition b etw een ligh t and dark th ro u gh o u t A Canticle to articu ­ late the lim its o f hum an understan din g. In Book II the grand narrative o f scientific d isco very is questioned b y the fact that m any scenes o f 'enligh ten m en t' occur in sem i-darkness. The red isco very o f electricity is sym bolised as an in evitab le displacem ent o f religion and an anticipation o f the atom ic bom b. A n incautious m onk w h o gets a sh ock from the m achine exclaim s 'L u cifer!', for Russell G riffin a sign for 'd estru ctive technological k n o w le d g e ' since its

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literal m eaning o f 'lig h t-b ea rer' has becom e overlaid w ith satanic connotations (G riffin 1973: 114). By Book III the phrase 'L u cifer is fallen ' has becom e incorporated into a pagan litu r g y sim ilar to that in Ape and Essence and n o w fu n ction s as a coded signal for the detonation o f a nuclear d e v ice .3 T o w ard s the end o f the n o ve l this shifting sym bolism is them atised b y an abbot w h o reflects: 'Flow strange o f God to speak from a b u rn in g bush, and o f M an to m ake a sym bol o f H eaven into a sym bol o f H ell' (M iller 1984: 302). The sense o f sight, p riv ile g ed organ o f u nd erstan d in g, reflects this pu zzlem ent in Book III as a co llective en viron m en tal problem w h en rad ioactive dustclou ds d rift across the landscape, ush ering in a nuclear tw ilig h t. Daniel F. G a lo u ye's Dark Universe (1961) exp loits the same sym bolism but in a sim pler linear progression from darkness to ligh t. A post-nuclear holocaust w o rld is here seen from the p er­ sp ective o f distant su rv iv o rs w h o liv e perm an ently u n d ergro u n d . Their visu al sense has litera lly atrophied out o f existen ce and th e y com m unicate aurally th ro u gh 'clin k sto n es'. Sight, h o w ev e r, is not fo rgo tten but has becom e internalised as a d eity and the tun neld w ellers rationalise th eir predicam en t in terms o f a second Fall from the Earth's surface caused b y a prim al act o f w ro n g d o in g . The n o vel traces the tortuous jo u rn e y o f the protagonist up from u n d er­ grou n d . A s Jared (w hose biblical name signifies 'descen t') explores the lin ks betw een ligh t, eyes and sight, the most h o rrify in g d isco very comes w h en he reaches the surface and realises that 'L igh t w as not in Paradise' bu t 'w as in the in fin ity o f Radiation w ith the N uclear m onsters' (G alouye 1963: 150). Solicitous scientists take Jared in hand, teach him h o w to see, and then reveal the h isto ry o f his origin al situation u n d ergroun d: a nuclear su rv iv a l b u n ker had su ffered a serious electron ic fau lt and all ligh ts had gone alth o u gh it had continued to fu n ction . Jared is thus helped b y science out o f a darkness as m etaphorical o f 'an y rigid dogm atism ' (Brians 1987a: 73) tow ard s a rationalistic red isco v ery o f h isto ry and tech n o lo g y. G alou ye retains the traditional spatial opposition betw een up/ d ow n and connotations o f ligh t and dark, but transposed on to a post-holocaust fu tu re so that a nuclear shelter becom es a k in d o f hell. M iller, in contrast, destabilises such spiritual sym bolism , p artly to b lock o ff an y optim istic reading o f his n ovel. He personifies the d u p licitou s sh ifting nature o f signs in the bizarre fig u re o f M rs Grales, an old w om an in Book III w h o sells tom atoes. O rig in ally planned b y M iller to em b o d y the inheritan ce from the last D eluge o f Flame in her 'genes shattered and tw iste d ', she appears in the n o vel sim ply as a m utant possessing tw o heads and thus tw o names

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(M iller 1957: 18). Her surnam e resem bles 'grail' w h ile her other name, Rachel, evokes the p ro v erb ia lly beau tiful w ife o f Jacob. M rs Grales keeps her second head w rapped ; indeed it is not clear that it is alive u ntil nuclear w ar breaks out and she seeks its baptism . M rs Grales represents the dam age done to the hum an b o d y b y nuclear w ar, im m ediate and longterm , iro n ically appearing to the m onk Joshua in a nightm are-revelation w h ere she claims to be the 'Im m aculate C onception'.

( in ) The m ain characters o f A Canticle all becom e w o u ld -b e readers, attem pting to d eciph er the scripts o f h isto ry but denied the ultim ate com petence o f the deity: the 'in scru tabilis Scrutator anim arum ' (inscrutable scrutiniser o f souls). Such total access is u n available to the fallible hum an figu res w ith in the n o vel w ho, as w e h ave seen, are co n stan tly fou n d in the posture o f exam ining signs and texts for their m eaning. T here are o b vio u s m etafictional im plications in such episodes w h ich M iller focuses in Book II b y in trod u cin g his o n ly e x p licit allusion to other science fiction. The scientist Thon T haddeo is exam in in g the docum ents o f the arch ive to try to understan d the origin o f m ankind. He stum bles across a 'fragm ent o f a p lay, or a d ialogu e' describing the creation o f a servan t species w h ich revo lts against its o w n creators, and jum p s to the conclusion that present hu m an ity is descended from this n ew species. Clearly the w o rk referred to is Karel C apek's p lay r . u . r ., but the m onks do not k n o w h ow to classify the fragm ent ('probable fable or allegory'). T hadd eo sees its im portance as openin g up sp ecu lative th ou gh t — and here M iller in turn opens up a fu n ction for his o w n n o vel w hereas the abbot takes it to be sim ply a scurrilous attack on au th o rity. The search for m eaning is d escribed in A n th o n y Boucher's 1951 story 'T h e Quest for Saint A q u in ' th ro u gh a post-holocaust scenario strik in g ly sim ilar to A Canticle. The w o rld is n o w ruled b y the T ech n arch y. The Pope com m issions one Thom as to set out on a quest for the saint o f the title, w h ich he does rid in g a 'robass' (a robotic ass). A s in A Canticle, Boucher ju x ta p o ses ancient and m odern, and d raw s out resem blances betw een his narrative and the Bible. Thom as thus notes parallels betw een him self and Christ, and even more so w ith Balaam, but the latter story rem ains an enigm a 'as th ou gh it w as there to say that there are portions o f the D ivin e Plan w h ich w e w ill n ever u nd erstan d ' (Silverberg 1970: 379). W h en

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Thom as fin a lly locates the b o d y o f the saint it turn s out to be a robot. The story thus can be read as an ironic and in co n clu siv e parable o f spiritual in q u iry . M iller, lik e Boucher, ev o k es a n ew m edieval era, bu t one contain ing the in co n gru ou s signs o f the read er's present. The result is to situate as in a van tage point o f h isto ry w h ere w e read am ong resem blances to d ifferen t periods. The recogn ition o f parallels is w o v e n into A Canticle as a condition o f its discourse that ev ery th in g has been already recorded. Book I contains an accoun t o f nuclear w ar as a n ew scrip tu re incorporatin g phrases from Genesis in a palim psest-parable on the p ride o f princes w h ich results in the 'Flame D elu ge'. M iller com ­ bines three catastrophes: the flood , the d estruction o f Sodom , and the fall o f Babel into lin gu istic d iv isio n .4 This accoun t capitalises on the read er's assum ed biblical k n o w led g e to p rod u ce a n arrative that is at once ancient and fu tu ristic. Since w e h ave seen h o w M iller fo regro un ds the d ifficu lties o f reco rd in g and transm itting such narratives, it is h a rd ly su rprising that th e y becom e m odified from one section o f the n o vel to another. Book II recast the Flame D eluge sto ry as one o f state po w er, w h ich then becam e a central concern in M iller's sequel Saint Leibow itz and the W ild Horsewoman (1997). Book III m ultiplies the historical resem blances in the action and reconstitutes in the n arrative present the story im plicit in the L eib o w itz fragm ents from the openin g chapter. Once nuclear w ar breaks out allusions are made to the N azi gen ocide (candidates for euthanasia w ear stars), the Korean W ar and the resu rgen ce o f M an ifest D estiny. N uclear w ar also coincides w ith an era o f secularism d escribed th ro u gh an A u d en esq u e 'litu rg y o f m an': 'G eneration regeneration, again, again as in a ritu al' (M iller 1984: 200). A lth o u g h the ch u rch is p riv ile g ed th ro u gh o u t the n o ve l as a guardian o f cu ltu re the n o vel narrates repeated ch allen ges to its a u th o rity, here th ro u gh the red u ctio n o f ritual to farce. The last section brin gs out the 'a m b ig u ity and parad ox im plicit in the p re­ vio u s sections' (D ow ling 1987: 199), in particular m aking ex p licit a v ie w o f hum an action as un con scious repetition. The grim m est im plication o f repetition in the n o vel is the su ggestion that h isto ry consists o f a cy clica l script determ ining hum an beh avio u r from era to era. A s the abbot in Book III reflects w ith despair, 'A re w e doom ed to do it again and again and again? H ave w e no choice but to p la y the P h oen ix in an u n en din g sequence o f rise and fall?' (M iller 1984: 280-1). A n d he rehearses a list o f em pires w h ich have since disappeared into o b livion . In 'C h eck and Checkm ate' M iller also describes a persistent Cold W ar situation w h ere d ip lom acy has g iv e n w a y to 'pokergam e p roto co l', a ritual o f

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b lu ff and co u n ter-b lu ff w h ich denies resolution: 'C h eck and ch eck ­ mate. But a lw ays there w as a w a y out. N ever a final m ove. Life eternal and w ith life, the eternal plottin g and schem ing. A n d n ever a final victo r' (M iller 1953: 24). W h ile the story describes a shadow w ar reified b y a 'H ell W a ll' (the Iron Curtain w rit large) d iv id in g the globe, A C anticle im agines the w orst-case scenario o f actual nuclear w ar. The plan b y the ch u rch to launch a spaceship carryin g a savin g rem nant can thus be read as a sym bolic attem pt, lik e the jo u rn e y into space in James Blish's C ities in F light, to break out o f the closed circle o f h istory. By the m id-1980s M iller had e v id e n tly fou n d no reason for optim ism . In trodu cing his nuclear fiction an th o lo gy Beyond Arm ageddon, he reflected: 'For fo rty years n o w the results o f the karm a w h ich w e cast at H iroshim a and N agasaki h ave u n folded and enm eshed us like fish in an ex p an d in g nuclear net. H istory seems as irreversib le as en tro p y' (M iller and G reenberg 1987: 8). Chess-gam e, cycle, net; all these figures o f entrapm ent su ggest an austere gloom on M iller's part over h u m an ity's capacity to escape its o w n political constructs. H ence the stru ctu re o f A C anticle w h ich ends im m ediately before its narrative cy cle w ill start o ver again.

(IV) The m isunderstan din gs o f the M em orabilia in A C anticle g ro w out o f sem antic loss w h ere certain specific, m ainly tech nological terms h ave becom e incom prehensible. M iller never tries out an effect w h ich Edgar P an gb orn achieves in D avy (1964) o f deform ing place names (see Chapter 13) so that M o h a w k becom es 'M o h a', N ew England 'N u in ', and N e w b u rg h 'N u b a'. The reader can o n ly gain access to P an gb orn 's postw ar landscape b y recogn ising the original screened b y the deform ation. The use o f altered names thus tem porarily defam iliarises the n o ve l's A m erican setting and rein ­ forces the cu ltu ral fragm entation w h ich P angborn im plies in his use o f regional dialect. Russell H oban's R iddley W a lk er (1980) d evelop s P an gb orn 's cautious experim ent w ith names into w h o le discourses to ev o k e an 'E ngland desolate from radiation 3000 years or so after the end o f the cen tu ry , at w h ich tim e one supposes civilisation had gone bust w ith a nuclear w ar' (Kincaid 1985: 8). P angborn's narrator recognises the potential problem o f language but gets round it for reasons o f ex p ed ien cy: 'E nglish in the pattern o f the Old Tim e is the o n ly lan gu age I could h ave in com mon w ith yo u w h o m ay exist and one d ay read this' (Pangborn 1969: 8).

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One o f H oban's m ain source tex ts for Riddley W alker w as Gerald K ersh's 1947 story 'V oices in the Dust o f A n n a n ' w h ich describes the experiences o f a visito r to a co u n try transform ed into a w a ste­ land (a 'sort o f ash-heap') b y an unnam ed cataclysm . A rriv e d at the 'Dead P lace', the visito r th in ks he hears sin gin g and fin a lly d iscovers that the area is in habited b y tin y (possibly m utated) anthropoids w h o liv e u n d ergro u n d lik e W e lls's M orlocks in the rem ains o f a sew er system . The sto ry ends w ith a flash o f in sigh t b y the visito r that he has been hearing distorted form s o f old songs ('Bless 'em all' has becom e 'Balasam o', for instance) and that 'A n n an ' w as London. The visito r is w a lk in g th ro u gh the traces o f a m etro­ polis d estroyed in a 'T en M in u te W a r' b y atom ic bom bs. In other w o rd s lan gu age brings reco gn itio n o f a historical m om ent and m akes sense o f w h at w o u ld oth erw ise rem ain an anonym ous w asteland. A s H oban later exp lain ed , 'Speech a lw ays encapsulates a place and a tim e and a w o r ld -v ie w ' (M yers 1984: 14). H oban began com posing his n o vel in 1974, discard ing some 500 pages o f m anuscript because there w as too m uch extern al action, not en ou gh internal action, and the use o f 'straigh t E n glish ' w o u ld h ave been false to the characters' e x p erien c e.5 Several critics h ave applied the pred ictable nuclear an alo gy to H oban's lan guage, argu in g that discourse im itates u nstable iso­ topes. Jeffrey Porter argues the pu ns and other devices form a m oral 'critiq u e o f nuclear consciousness'. Em bedded in the lan guage, used but not understood b y the narrator R id d ley, then, is a cou n ter­ narrative show in g h o w 'life has been betrayed b y te ch n o lo g y ' (Porter 1990: 459). This can be seen in one o f the n o v e l's k e y sections, a fo lk tale called thus 'Eusa s to r y '.6 The lexical core o f the story is a pu n on 'atom ' and 'A d a m ' and the sequence is initiated b y 'M r. C lev v er' w h o tells Eusa (Eustace) to design a su p erw eap on ('I Big 1') to bring about ultim ate v ic to ry o ver his enem ies. The sp littin g o f the atom is d escribed as a k in d o f m urder o f peace itself: T he Little M an the A d d o m he cu d n stop tho. He w u z ded. P ult in 2 ly k he w u z a ch ikken . Eusa scream t he felt ly k his oan bele ben p u lt in 2 & evere th in g rushin o w t u v him. O w t u v th ay 2 peaces u v the L ittl Sh yn in M an the A d d o m th ay r cum sh yn in gn es in w a y vs in spredin circels. (Hoban 1980:

32 ) This narrative o f scientific d isco v ery o n ly show s a release o f death from the 'barm s' (i.e. bom bs, w ith a p lay on birth th ro u gh 'barm ' m eaning 'lap').

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H oban describes a future w orld w here, as in W alter Miller, literacy is almost dead; now the text foregrounds oral transm ission b u t th ro u g h a discourse w hich plays on visual as well as aural resem blances betw een w ords. R iddley values but m isunderstands the surviving life of St. Eustace and this m arks the connecting link betw een M iller and Hoban. The latter has explained: 'I had read A C anticle fo r L eib o w itz and w hen I developed my m isinterpretation of the Eusa story I th o u g h t about the m isinterpretation of electrical diagram s and I thought, am I too close?'.7 H oban is m aking a different use of language in his ow n novel w here punning suggests a prom ethean release of deadly energy w hich cannot be controlled. If nuclear w ar has k illed a culture then ex ca va tio n becom es one means o f try in g to gain access to a lost era. This m ight in v o lv e scaven gin g in graves (A p e and Essence and The W ild Shore) or plo u g h in g up old coins (Davy). H elping his father to dig up a shapeless piece o f m achin ery, R id d ley slips causing the object to crush his father, recapitu lating in d iv id u a lly the w ar as a death b y tech n o lo g y. On one o f his digs R id d ley u n co vers a P un ch m arion­ ette w ith a severed hum an hand inside it.8 This literalisation o f the 'dead hand' o f the past questions in itiato ry action since it can o n ly be w o rk ed b y another. This notion is d escribed in the abstract at the begin n in g o f the n o vel as a force inside hum ans: 'that other thin g w h ats loo kin g out thru our ey e hoals' (Hoban 1980: 6). In 1984, rev ie w in g the British nuclear w ar film Threads , H oban m akes a sim ilar point. Suppose, he speculates, that the real is a facade behind w h ich a force is operating, 'som ething that anim ates the un iverse, som ething that co n tin u ally offers itse lf to our perception; it offers the atom for our d isco very and it offers w h at can be done w ith the atom ...' He continues that statistics and official jargon intro­ duce lies into the discussion o f nuclear w ar b y sanitising the deaths, su fferin g and disease. For that reason he praises Threads because

it cancels all aesthetic distance betw een our u n th in k in g and the u n th in k ab le [showing] the b irth of a new life for our children, a life of rats and maggots, of slow death by radiation sickness and plagues and starvation and quick death by violence. (Hoban 1 9 8 4 :4 ,3 )

The feral life persists in R iddley W a lk er w here isolated com m unities fear attack by bands of savage dogs; the plagues and sickness have receded into a legendary Bad Time. W hatever Riddley is describing, it is im possible for readers to lose their aw areness of language w hich is insistently foregrounded

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th ro u gh o u t the n ovel, so m uch so that critics h ave argued that it is the true protagonist. The random objects u n co ve red in A Canticle h ave their eq u iva len t in the lex ical traces o f a te ch n o lo g y that has disappeared. Em bodied in the co llective m em ory as story are fragm en tary accoun t o f cu ltu res o f 'air boats' and references to 'g y g e rs ' (i.e. Geigers). These term s form the verb a l eq u ivalen ts o f the M em orabilia in A Canticle w h ich the reader 'ex ca v a tes' from their distortions. H oban presents sto rytellin g as a social and dialogical act w h ere R id d le y 's status as narrator is redu ced so that he becom es a listener and a vo ice am ong others, p articipatin g in a co llective debate o ver m eaning. R id d ley 'alread y lives in a d econstru cted w o rld w h ere no position is p rivile g ed , no code to d ecoding apparen t' (D ow ling 1988: 183). U nlike the Kersh story discussed above, m ediating discourse has disappeared, closing up the gap betw een the actions o f the characters and the in terp retive acts o f the reader. R id d ley W a lk er's name suggests tw o related fu n ctions. W a lk in g corresponds to the dyn am ics o f th in k in g and narration, w h ile his first name signifies a q u a lity in his o w n story and the stories he hears. The Eusa story and others are scrutinised in a 'read ing b a ck ', an attem pt at 'in ferrin g an origin from signs v ie w e d as traces' (Schw enger 1992: 32). One effect is to surcharge objects and stories w ith expressive potential. So a bag o f cru m b ly 'stones' w h ich R id dley fin ds is nam ed as 'Salt 4' (sulphur bu t also an echo o f the Strategic A rm s Lim itation Talks). A lth o u g h he calls his perform ances 'reveals' and 'show s', each n ew term or gloss raises further questions in an open-ended in terp retive sequence. R id d ley 's opposite num ber in the latter process is A b e l G o o d p arley w h o exercises state au th o rity b y co n fid en tly tellin g R id d ley w h at a ch ild ren 's rh ym e about the Fools Circle means and prop osin g a congru en ce betw een th eo lo g y and physics: 'it all fits y o u see'. The point for R id d ley is that it d oesn't all 'fit'. G o o d p a rley's assertion o f a to ta lity o f m eaning contrasts th ro u gh o u t w ith R id d ley 's provisio n al and o n goin g discoveries. A lth o u g h his jo u rn e y is aim ed at a centre, the p revalen ce o f circles in the n o vel su ggests lack o f progression and a m erging o f inner and outer. R id d le y 's th ou gh ts (Tike circels on w ater') repeat the p h y sica l processes o f radiation and bom b blast, esp ecially as he approaches C am bry (Canterbury), the 'Zero G roun ' o f the nuclear w ar. D espite the clim actic excitem ent o f his arrival, R id d ley does not exp erien ce a n y m om ent o f in sigh t and the n o ve l closes w ith him back on the road. The Bad Tim e rem ains an im penetrable m ystery.

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1. Miller's 1952 story 'Big Joe and the Nth Generation' (in The View from the Stars) anticipates A Canticle in describing post-holocaust know­ ledge as an archive in an underground cavern guarded by priests and a robotic monster called Big Joe. For a related discussion of postnuclear literacy see Spencer 1991. 2. Miller 1955: 93. Alexandra Olsen notes primarily an increase in religious references in these revisions. For commentary on the interconnections between signs and names see Griffin 1973. 3. Griffin 1973: 114. Miller's code-phrase might be an echo of H. G. Wells's The World Set Free (1914) where an eye-witness describes how atom bombs 'fell like Lucifer in the picture' (Wells 1988: 86). A popular early designation for the H-bomb was the 'hell bomb'. 4. Miller's Flame Deluge probably draws on Stephen Vincent Benet's 1937 story 'By the Waters of Babylon' which describes a world laid waste by the 'Great Burning'. Miller respected this story enough to include it as a post-nuclear narrative before the fact in his 1985 anthology Beyond Armageddon. 5. Kincaid 1985: 8. Hoban rejected the model of Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange because his language didn't have a 'whole syntax' (Interview 8 March 1998). Kersh's story is collected in Nightshade and Damnations (1969). 6. Deriving partly from The Legend o f St. Eustace, a wall-painting Hoban had seen in Canterbury in 1974. 7. Interview, 8 March 1998. 8. Hoban's interest in Punch and Judy is due partly to its long history and during the composition of the novel he hit on the idea of using the puppeteers as a means of 'taking the government policies to the people' (Interview, 8 March 1998).

In the Aftermath

There w ill be those w h o say that the end came (Carolyn See 1987)

( i)

W h itle y Strieber and James K u n etka's Warday opens w ith the statem ent that 'T h e su rv iv o r's tale is the essential docum ent o f our tim e' (Strieber and K unetka 1984: 13) and in their d ifferen t w a y s all the narratives considered in this stu d y raise the qu estion o f su rviv al. M iller and H oban addressed the p o ssib ility o f tex tu a l and oral preservation o f the past, but nuclear w ar represents 'p o ten ­ tially, a bu rn in g o f p ractica lly e v e ry th in g , in clu d in g m em ory' (Klein 1990: 78). The British p u blish ers o f Germ an A n to n -A n d reas G u ha's Ende (1983), a nuclear d ia ry-n o vel, attem pted a m aterial representation o f this fear b y issu in g the book as if w ith charred covers. This chapter w ill exam ine w h at k in d s o f su rv iv a l are im agined in the afterm ath o f a nuclear w ar. K. F. Crossen's The Rest M ust Die (1959) is u n ty p ica l in concentrating on the im m ediate practical d ifficu lties o f su rv iv o rs in the N ew Y ork su b w a y . U su ally even accoun ts o f nuclear attack in clu d e consideration o f h o w so ciety m ight be re-form ed, and the farther these n arratives' present is rem oved from the w ar itself the more th ey enact a process o f w h a t W illiam J. Sch eick has called 're-m in d in g', a 'h op ed -for reinterpretation o f com m unal m em ory' (Scheick 1990: 6). Robert A b e rn a th y 's 'H eirs A p p a ren t' (1954) presents the nuclear afterm ath as an inheritance w h ich represen tatives o f Russia and A m erica confront w ith d ifferin g degrees o f a d a p tab ility but w h ere p rew ar hostilities essen tially continue w ith o u t change. In contrast, if a w riter w ishes to foregro u n d the pathos o f loss she or he m ight fo llo w R ay B rad b u ry's practice o f transposing the act o f com m em or­ ation on to the places and th in gs d estroyed in the holocaust w h e re b y recitin g their names becom es a ritual act o f re ca ll.1 168

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Com m em oration and co n tin u ity o b v io u sly presuppose a su rv iv in g rem nant w h ose existen ce had becom e a m atter o f debate as early as the 1940s. Theodore S tu rgeon 's 'T h u n d er and Roses' (1947), for instance, dram atises a clash b etw een hum anitarianism and the im perative o f m ilitary response w h en the USA is attacked w ith o u t w arning. A singer pleads for recogn ition o f a 'sp ark o f h u m an ity' in the enem y and persuades an A m erican officer not to launch a m assive retaliation. This appeal is based on a recogn ition that, a lth ough the fate o f A m erica and p ro b ab ly the rest o f hum an ity, is n o w sealed, the o fficer's decision ju st m ight affect su rviv o rs in the 'far fu tu re'. T enuous as this hope is, Sturgeon avoids the w orst-case scenario o f one o f the most fam ous post-nuclear narratives, A u stralian N e vil Shu te's On the Beach (1957). Here the true protagonist is rad ioactive fallou t w h ich drifts rem orselessly south tow ards A ustralia, Shute's main setting. The n o vel is based on a tw in prem ise that fallout is irresistible and w ill be total. A c co rd in g ly , Shute, lik e most o f the authors in this field , problem atises the act o f recording. 'A fte r all', muses one character, 'there doesn't seem to be m uch point in w ritin g stu ff that n o b o d y w ill read' (Shute 1957: 81). A s the addressee becom es a notional spectral figure, so the u n iqu e even t (pace Derrida) eludes and challenges h isto ry as its ultim ate rupture. Shu te's characters defer recogn isin g this crisis: 'T h e condition o f postponem ent ... is utilised b y characters not to ach ieve a new sense o f m eaning, but to canonise the old patterns' (Schw enger 1986: 44). Stanley Kram er's m ovie adaptation m odified the n o ve l's fatalism b y strength ening the role o f the scientist O sborne (played b y Fred Astaire) w h o d elivers an a n g ry attack on the w h o le concept o f deterrence: 'E v e ry b o d y had an atom ic bom b and counter-bom bs and counter-counter-bom bs. The d evices o u tg rew us. W e co u ld n 't control them '. N evertheless characters' general acquiescence ou t­ raged E dw ard Teller w h o d evoted a w hole chapter o f The Legacy o f Hiroshima (1962) to refu tin g the novel. 'A lth o u g h u nrealistic', he g ru d g in g ly adm itted that 'S h u te's elim ination o f an y practical attem pt to su rv iv e is frigh ten in g because it corresponds w ith the attitude o f the o verw h elm in g m ajority o f our p eople' (Teller 1962: 241). Indeed the film w as so popular that E isenh ow er's Cabinet d iscussed w a y s o f cou nterin g its m essage.2 A p a rt from its fatalism , On the Beach has been charged w ith sanitising war: 'T h e book and the film , b y sh o w in g none o f the p h ysical a go n y and dem olition that a real w ar could bring, m ade w o rld extin ction a rom antic con d ition ' (W eart 1988: 219). H elen Clarkson criticised the n o vel for this reason (see Chapter 4) and Dan L joka m odified it in his n o vel

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Shelter (1973) w h ich alternates sections set in W ash in g to n and N ew Zealand. In the form er the o n ly man am ong a gro u p o f w om en is redu ced to a sex slave w h ile the N ew Zealand chapters recapitulate Shute, as the Prim e M in ister's fam ily aw aits death w ith stoicism . N oth in g softens L jo ka's pessim ism . A cou ple take suicide pills in the south w h ile the su rviv o rs em erge from the W ash in g to n shelter o n ly to fall victim to radiation sickness: 'it w as alread y too late' (Ljoka 1977: 201).

( ii) W h ere Ljoka counts d ow n the last m om ents o f h u m an ity, tw o o f the earliest narratives o f nuclear w ar d escribe the existen tial crises o f their protagonists in coping w ith a transform ed A m erica. In W ilson T u ck e r's The Long Loud Silence (1952), Corporal Russell G ary w akes after a m am m oth d rin kin g bout to fin d that w ith in tw o days a n uclear w ar has taken place, fo llo w ed b y an ou tbreak o f p lagu e and the U nited States has becom e d iv id ed into tw o areas: that w est o f the M ississippi w h ere a rem nant o f the p opu lation is re-establishin g civic order and the eastern states w h ich are plague rid d en or devastated. The M ississippi has becom e a border w h ich anyon e attem pting to cross w ill be shot on sight. Since G ary did not w itness the w ar he m ust infer w h at happened from the after-effects. T u ck e r's n o ve l fo llo w s a w h o d u n n it paradigm w h ere the victim is the nation itself and w h ere the prob able id e n tity o f the perpetrators o f the crim e is guessed bu t scarcely m atters. A lth o u g h G ary is still in the arm y th eoretically, even ts h ave estranged him not o n ly from that arm y bu t also from his o w n cu ltu re. The w estern territories p ro v e to be a place o f c a p tiv ity and, iro n ically, the eastern shore (described b y the authorities as a 'dead and vacan t no th in g') comes to represent the o n ly p o ssib ility o f freedom . Since G a ry's p er­ ceptions m ark the narrative lim it, T u ck er cannot e xp lain clearly h o w he w o u ld build up an o verall im age o f the w a r's destruction and concentrates instead on tracing G a ry's long slide tow ard s cann ibalism .3 A lfred C oppel's Dark December (i960) also has a m ilitary protagonist and this tim e describes an attem pted hom ecom ing. M ajor G avin has served as a pilot in Korea and is n o w an op erative in an u n d ergro u n d m issile bu n ker. One w e e k after a nuclear w ar has ended he is told that he has fin ish ed his tour o f d u ty and can return home. The n o vel therefore describes an ex ten d ed jo u rn e y from A laska to O regon, then south to the San Francisco area. This

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return becom es more and more problem atic since most o f California has been declared a contam inated area and a n y w a y G a vin 's home tow n has alm ost certain ly been obliterated. The n o vel carries an epigraph from Dante w h ich clearly in vites the reader to see G avin 's travels as a fig u ra tiv e descent into Hell (the original title o f the n o vel w as to be Night Journey) w h ere each n ew episode takes him a step fu rther beneath the patina o f civilisation. A deleted passage m akes ex p licit an iro n y w h ich is o n ly g ra d u a lly revealed in the n o vel proper, nam ely that 'w e h ave used the most advan ced techn iqu es tw en tieth cen tu ry science could p rod u ce to bring back a rule o f sa v a g e ry '.4 L ike T u ck e r's G ary, G avin em erges into a transform ed w o rld w h ose fam iliar landm arks have been erased to the point w here 'it w as im possible to say for sure that tow n s had ever ex isted ' (Coppel 1971: 38). G avin then traverses a California fu ll o f threats from disease, rad io a ctivity, and roam ing gangs; later, falling into a delirium w h ere he takes on him self the g u ilt o f his nation: I dream ed o f a pillar o f fire rising over the sk ylin e, boilin g up into the sk y over m y head w ith an incredible menace ... The w orld cracked and shuddered beneath m y feet. It w as breaking apart and each segm ent seemed to go spinning o ff into an immense em ptiness.5 This personal drama is not sim ply p layed out th ro u gh confronta­ tions w ith external dangers but as a psychological opposition between G avin and another o fficer nam ed C ollingw ood, each p erso n ifyin g rival valu e system s: 'the conscientious and professional but guiltrid d en ... G avin against the p sych o p ath ic, fascistic C ollingw ood, w h o sees the devastated en viron m en t as an o p p o rtu n ity for men lik e h im self to rise to p o w er' (Rabkin 1983: 7). Coppel o rigin ally planned to g iv e an im portant role to a captured Soviet pilot w h o 'w o u ld seek to co n vert them b y use o f the fam iliar d ialectic', prod u cin g an effect o f 'alm ost lunatic ir o n y '.6 In the even t Coppel d ropped this idea, keep in g the narrative focus on the tw o officers w h o em erge as the y in and yan g o f a single m ilitary personality. C ollin gw o o d haunts the landscape as G avin 's repressed shadow , rem inding him o f a professional com m itm ent to kill w h ich he can on ly fu lfil in the abstract b y lau n chin g his m issiles. Coppel o n ly resolves this co n flict th ro u gh a con ven ien t last-m inute death w h en C ollin gw o o d falls from a bridge, th ereb y facilitatin g a larg ely u n ju stified h a p p y en ding w h ere G avin 's fam ily can be recon­ stituted in a v a lle y com m un ity and w ill m ake a fresh start.

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D a rk D ecem ber dram atises a w ish ed -fo r dem ise o f a m ilitaristic im pulse valid ated b y a religiou s sym bolism o f the seasons. A dark tim e is fo llo w ed b y hopes o f pastoral renew al. Both M artha Bartter and Spencer W eart h ave argu ed co g e n tly that m any post-holocaust narratives co v e rtly v ie w w ar as a p u rify in g agent d estroyin g the corru pt cities and u shering in a n ew era w h ere 'w e canonise the frontiersm an' (Bartter 1986: 149). W e can see this concept takin g shape as early as 1951 w h ere the film F ive (subtitled A Story about the D ay a fter Tomorrow) d escribes the experien ces o f a tin y sur­

v iv in g rem nant in a h illtop refu ge. The film begins and ends w ith biblical quotations g iv in g an a p o caly p tic fram e to the im ages o f sp ecifica lly urban destruction. A m ontage o f new s headlines in itially w arns o f total d estruction ('W o rld O rganisation Collapse Im m inent', 'W o rld A n n ih ila tio n Feared b y Scientists') b y H. Bombs; bu t the co n clu d in g titles prom ise a 'n e w w o rld ' o ver im ages o f agricu ltu ral sim plicity.

( in ) So far the narratives considered h ave tim ed their action too close to n uclear w ar to show n ew social institu tions takin g shape other than e m b ryo n ically. Further into the post-n uclear fu tu re the problem o f cu ltu ral recall becom es crucial. In Edgar P an gb orn 's D avy (1964) an autocratic th eocracy has established civ ic order at the cost o f fo rb id d in g 'O ld Tim e' (prewar) books and m onopolising the 'true stu d y o f h isto ry in the lig h t o f G o d 's w o rd and m odern science' (Pangborn 1969: 175). The y o u n g D a v y produces his narrative against such prohibition s, try in g to gain access to the fe w maps and books preserved in the 'secret lib ra ry o f the H eretics' (Pangborn 1969: 9). L ike L eigh Brackett, P an gb orn describes a rep ressive so ciety w h ich is challen ged b y the v e ry constru ction o f the n o v e l's te x t takin g place betw een D a v y and his com panions on a n ew ship o f state called The M orning Sta r fig u red as sailing tow ard s the projected reader. P an gb orn returns to the p reservation o f the past th ro u gh 'an cient fa iry tales' in The Judgem ent o f E ve (1964) and th ro u gh an itin eran t story-teller in The Com pany o f Glory (1975), both p ostw ar narratives. In the latter an old man nam ed Dem etrios fu n ctio n s as a liv in g lin k w ith the past, tellin g his fascinated and appalled audiences tales o f the 'T w e n ty -M in u te W a r' w h ich sym ptom ised the corru ption o f the past. O nce again sto rytellin g is the su bject o f attem pted state control since 'lo o k in g back is u n u topian ' (Pangborn

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1976: 66) w h ich forces Dem etrios to set out w estw a rd for free territo ry w ith his com panion, the b o y Garth. A com posite in d ict­ m ent o f the national disease em erges from the old m an's stories o f the past w h ich w as cured b y the 'su rg e ry ' o f 'fam ine, pestilence, and a w ar o f idiots' (Pangborn 1976: 15). Past corruption thus ju stifie s the effect o f the w ar w h ich perform s a m uch-needed operation to restore health to the b o d y politic, P an gb orn 's central m etaphor. There is a clear co n tin u ity o f m ethod and sentim ent b etw een P an gb orn 's fiction and Kim Stanley R obinson 's The W ild Shore I1 984). R obinson sets his narrative in the year 2047, some six ty years after a nuclear w ar has left the USA not o n ly d estroyed but also in quarantine and und er observation from Japanese satellites w h ich w ill d estroy an y attem pts to reb u ild California. From a position o f suprem acy A m erica has su n k to the 'bottom o f the w o rld ' and w h ile the Japanese n a v y patrols the Californian coast rum ours circulate o f resistance grou ps form ing 'to m ake A m erica great again'. R obinson 's debt to T w ain (shared b y Pangborn) can be seen in his use o f a b o y narrator nam ed H ank Fletcher w h o shares the initials o f his m odel H uck Finn. The n o vel opens w ith a gan g o f bo ys try in g to use the past as com m odity b y stealing silver handles from coffins, an echo o f the gra ve-ro b b in g in Ape and Essence . The enterprise fails because the handles turn out to be plastic and is replaced for H ank b y access to the past th ro u gh the stories o f Tom, the 'old m an' o f the novel. W h en H ank lights out for the south he takes Tom as a su bstitu te father, g u id e and teacher w h o helps him understand the th in gs he sees: the Japanese patrols, the devastation o f the cities, and the rebirth o f A m erican nationalism . U nlike P an gb orn 's fiction The W ild Shore show s no in stitu tio n ­ alised co n text for sto rytellin g. Tom therefore participates in an ongoing debate over the nature and im portance o f history. He rejects an an alogy w ith the A m erican R evolution , prop osin g a different com parison w h ere A m ericans h ave fin ally fallen victim to their o w n tech n o logy: 'w e 're like the Japanese them selves w ere after H iro­ shim a'. To w h ich one listener asks, 'W h a t's H iroshim a?' and then declares: 'E nou gh h isto ry ... W h a t's im portant is the here and n o w ' (Robinson 1986: 102). A g ain st such in d ifferen ce Tom m anages to interest H ank in the past and in books (the tw o go hand in hand), at one point in trod u cin g him to a 'bookm aker' w h o , lik e Faber in Fahrenheit 4 5 1, is rein ven tin g printin g. T ow ard s the end o f the n o vel Tom confesses that he w as too y o u n g to h ave the 'm em ories' he claims and so most o f his stories o f the past w ere m erely in ven ted . H ank therefore concludes, like his p roto typ e, that Tom 's

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stories w ere lies. Failing an y n arrative closure, all he can th in k o f is scru tinisin g the stories afresh for an y tru th -valu e. R eco v ery o f the past stays a desire in The W ild Shore w h ile rem em bering is e x p lic itly fo regro u n d ed as a com p lex cu ltu ral issue in Denis Johnson's Fiskadoro (1985), set in the area o f K ey W est (renamed T w ic e to w n after tw o nuclear m issiles failed to detonate there). Fiskadoro is the son o f a H ispanic fisherm an w h o has lost all connections w ith the past. A fte r nuclear w ar has devastated the north ern areas o f the u s a the su rv iv in g com m unities are cau gh t in a co llective lim bo o f quarantine, position ed b etw een the contam ­ inated north w h ich can still be looted for goods, and the Com m unist regim e o f Cuba w h ich , m any fear, w ill in vad e and 'p u t an end to e v e ry th in g '. The tenuous civ ic organisation inclu des com m unal readings from Frank W . C h in n o ck 's Nagasaki: the Forgotten Bomb (1969), am ong other w o rks. These activities centre on one o f the main focalisers, a Vietnam ese Am erican named Cheung w h o 'believed in the im portance o f rem em berin g' (Johnson 1985: 10). Because the significance o f the rem em bered tex ts is reced ing, m em ory takes on a ritualistic dim ension o f recitation. C heung k n o w s a m nem onic story for recalling the names o f the A m erican states, a w ife asks her husban d to soothe her b y recitin g the D eclaration o f Indep endence, and so on. In addition to books, m usic becom es a p erform atory means o f retaining contact w ith the 'lost age'. C heung h im self is a clarinetist and attem pts to pass on his skills to Fiskadoro, the son o f a fisherm an. O nce again w e h ave an old character, C h eu n g's grandm other, w h o p rovid es a lin k w ith the past, sp ecifica lly w ith the V ietnam W ar. But her 'm em ory' im ages forth an a p ocalyp tic 'triu m p h o f death o ver the w o rld ': the hordes o f skeletons d raggin g the sacks o f their skins behind them through the flam ing streets, the buildin gs made out o f skulls,

the em p ty

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fields, the bodies o f children stuck full o f blast-b low n k n ives and forks. (Johnson 1985: 7 1 -2 )

The ultim ate horror o f this im age lies in the death o f m em ory, the failure o f its preservation . Fiskadoro h im self experien ces the 'transm ission' o f such scenes w h en he is taken to see M iam i, a devastated w asteland w h ere the roads are p acked w ith im m obilised cars, each 'b ein g d riven b y a person made o f b ro w n bones' (Johnson 1985: 87). Fiskadoro is told w h at h appened bu t has no fram e o f referen ce for the inform ation: he 'felt the deep echo o f

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these w ords, as if he heard them spoken from another place, from tom orrow ' (Johnson 1985: 87). The w o rd s rem ain another's. John­ son rather evades the im plications o f such im ages b y falling back on the trope o f aw aken in g as if Fiskadoro and other characters w ill come out o f a sleep to a n ew a ge.7

(IV)

The attem pt to brid ge o ver the ru p tu re caused b y nuclear w ar in v o lv e s try in g to reconstitu te narratives w h ich h ave becom e lost, esp ecially - as w e saw in chapters 2 and 3 - the larger narrative o f h isto ry itself. The 1980s w as a decade w h ich m arked a resurgen ce o f nuclear fiction , n o w inform ed b y a greater selfconsciousness o f h o w to en gage w ith earlier treatm ents o f the subject. W h itle y Strieber and James K u n etka's Warday and the Journey Onward (1984) assem bles a fu tu re d ocu m en tary d raw in g on the reportage tech ­ niques o f A g ee and Evans, and the oral h isto ry o f Studs Terkel. The s d i (Strategic D efence Initiative)-triggered 'w a rd a y ' takes place in 1988 but the n arrative is com posed in 1993, aim ing to 'establish that even a lim ited nuclear w ar from w h ich the U nited States suffered little p h y sica l dam age w o u ld d estroy it as a nation' (Brians 1987a: 44-5). 'Strieb er' and 'Kunetlca' in their guises as reporters travel from Dallas sou th-w est into the n e w ly declared hispanic rep u blic o f A ztlan , to Los Alam os (being crated up for the n e w 'A to m ic C ity' in Osaka), then across co u n try to California, turn in g east to N ew Y ork. This jo u rn ey -a s-su rv ey recounts the virtu a l dem ise o f the m yth ic open road (W hitm an is quoted in an epigraph) opening up lim itless possibilities in the landscape. The stringent border controls for California w h ere m igrants m ight be shot on sight are no isolated case. There is thus a major tension in this n o ve l b etw een the d iv isiv e after-effects o f nuclear w ar and the attem pt b y the book to draw d iverse gro u p s back together, nothing less than reconstitu ting the nation. N uclear w ar is presented as a process o f erasure or transform ation so radical that some place-nam es persist o n ly in m em ory. San A n to n io has becom e a red zone, N ew Y o rk ruins abandoned to w ild animals. The reportage therefore runs counter to the conditions o f the afterm ath w h ere 'w o rd s like history h ave lost their w eig h t. T h e y seem as ind efin ite as m emories, and as u nim por­ tan t' (Strieber and K unetka 1984: 378). 'H isto ry' becom es a catch-all term sig n ify in g connectedness - people w ith places, heirloom s w ith people, and o f course people w ith people. In California the narrators meet the science fiction no velist W alter T evis (w ho co in cid en tally

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econom ist diagnosing a subconscious panic in the cou ntry. W arday actualises a grim prediction made b y the extraterrestrial visitor in T e v is's n o vel The M a n W ho F ell to E arth (1963) that 'w e are certain b eyo n d all reasonable doubt that yo u r w orld w ill be an atomic ru bble heap in no more than th irty years, if yo u

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W arday contains a num ber o f gestures tow ard s criticisin g Cold W ar su rvivalism , in v o lv in g itse lf in the d ou ble bind that, if dem on­ stration o f su rv iv a l m akes w ar m ore lik e ly , then W arday itself p a ra d o x ica lly m ight be brin g in g the dreaded even t nearer. M ore im portan tly, the book refutes presum ptions o f the fea sib ility o f lim ited w ar, o f fallou t as a general doom alth o ugh the end result stays m uch the same since the contam ination o f fo o d stu ffs brings starvation and illness; and the ex p ectio n o f w id esp read genetic

m utations is contrad icted b y a re lie f w o rker. On e v e ry page W arday d isp lays evid en ce o f scru p u lo u sly th o ro u g h research, assem bled b y the authors d iv id in g tw o fu n ctio n s b etw een them: sto rytellin g to Strieber, jou rn alistic in vestiga tio n to K unetka. The result is a m ulti­ g eneric w o rk com bining fu tu re tra velo gu e, in te rv ie w and memoir. T he n arrative is co n stan tly bein g suspended so that official docum ents (reports, statistics, opin ion polls, etc.) form a collage on nuclear w ar. A n astonishing num ber o f personal and professional v iew p o in ts em erges w h ich carry the effect o f a u th en ticity but w h ich fu rth er fragm ent the su bject. W h en in N ew Y o rk Strieber describes one o f the m ost fam iliar nuclear icons in the sk y: 'T h ere w as an im pression o f a m ushroom cloud, but I k n e w that w as w h at it w as, a m ushroom cloud seen so close that it d id n 't loo k lik e a m ushroom ' (Strieber and K unetka 1984: 18). The im age w h ich is no im age. The cloud, seen d ifferen tly b y a range o f observers, becom es a m etaphor o f the w ar itself, sh iftin g, elu sive, u n am b igu o u sly present in m aterial effects, bu t elu d in g d efinite representation. It is the strength o f W arday that docum entation a ctu ally fragm ents its subject. Strieber's attem pt at a 'm oralising, classical act o f closure' (Sch w enger 1986: 36) in the final lines ('if o n ly w e can accept h o w alike w e all are' [Strieber and K unetka 1984: 380]) therefore runs counter to the b o ok 's m ethods as a w hole. W here W arday questions assum ptions about p h ysical and social aspects o f the nuclear aftermath, D avid Brin's The P ostm an (1985) critiques a new kin d o f su rvivalist fiction w h ich became popular in the 1980s. A ssum in g war is in evitable, 'the authors do not warn against its com ing; instead th e y celebrate the opportunities for han d-to-han d com bat made possible b y the collapse o f civilisation

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as a result o f such a w a r' (Brians 1987b: 325-6). W illiam W . John­ stone's A sh es series started in 1983; R yd er S ta cy 's first D oom sday W arrior n o vel w as p u b lish ed in 1984; and Jerry A h e rn began his lon g-ru n n in g S u rviva list series in 1987. A h e rn 's p rotagonist is John R ourke, an ex-CIA Special O perations agent w h o has trained as a doctor. He puts his creed su ccin ctly: 'S u rv iv in g ... m eans k eep in g y o u r head, rem em bering w h a t y o u 're supposed to do, learning to react the w a y y o u should — then ju s t doing it '.8 T he w h o le p oint o f the narratives exam in ed in this chapter is that su rv iv a l is a com plex p sych o lo g ica l and cu ltu ral problem , w h ile R o u rke's sim ple valu es enable A h ern to d escribe an open-en ded sequence o f p h ysica l confrontations w h ere R ourke can sh ow his skills at com bat, sim p lifyin g su rv iv a l to a cru de D arw inism . N uclear w ar and then a Soviet in vasion o f the u s a are therefore not seen as disasters so m uch as tests o f R o u rke's skills and confirm ation o f his prep ared ­ ness (he has been fittin g out a m ountain refu ge for years). A lth o u g h he has a fam ily, R ourke essen tially represents an up d ated W estern hero dressed as a co w b o y , roam ing a dangerous landscape on a H arley D avidson lik e the biker in Z elazn y's Damnation Alley, and su rv iv in g b y his q u ick w its. These n o vels depen d for th eir effect on a rapid tem po o f even ts and a con ven tion al sim p licity o f narration w h ich nuclear cataclysm has not affected in the slightest. N o doubt w ith such fiction in mind, D avid Brin has declared that 'most post-holocaust novels are little-b o y w ish fantasies about running am ok in a w orld w ith o u t ru les'.9 A ga in st such bogus heroism he situates his ow n novel. Set in O regon sixteen years after a nuclear war, The Postman describes a fractured w orld o f isolated m u tu ally suspicious comm unities. Its protagonist Gordon Krantz could not be farther rem oved from R ourke's macho posturing. T he former 'had chosen to become a minstrel, a travellin g actor and laborer, p artly because he w anted to keep m oving, to search for a haven w here someone was tryin g to p u t things back together again, his personal dream' (Brin 1982: 128). Gordon is e x p lic itly described as unheroic and u nskilled in combat. He can 't loot, hesitates to kill robbers, and th roughou t m uch o f the n o vel engages in an inner debate over the pros and cons o f particular courses o f action. His hesitations are p artly due to a projected v ie w o f the post-nuclear situation w here the m ajority o f deaths occurs from lawlessness. There is no in vasion w here outsiders can be categorised as enem y; instead a breaking o f the means o f com m unication b etw een differ­ ent tow ns. This is w here the m eaning o f Brin's title becomes clear. Early in the n o vel Krantz stum bles across an old mail tru ck and steps into the role o f postman, donning the uniform , and even

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attem pting to d eliver the letters. For Peter S ch w en g er this enacts the purpose o f the n o vel as a w h o le since 'a post-n uclear w ar n arrative is addressed to, posted to, those w h o liv e in a p rew ar con d ition ' (Schw enger 1992: 7). Brin replaces m ilitary trium phalism w ith a reco gn itio n that so ciety can o n ly be recon stitu ted th ro u gh co llective fiction s. T h u s w h en K rantz p lays the role o f postm an he in v ites the com m unities he visits to jo in in a p erform ative act w h e re b y th e y becom e senders and recipients w ith in a g ro w in g n etw o rk . K rantz is the carrier o f literacy, o f letters in both senses, but also a sceptical perform er. He is aw are o f the absences and lon gin gs that his fiction s can satisfy and devises the most elaborate fiction o f all, that there is a 'R estored U nited States' com plete w ith a n ew constitu tion g iv e n verbatim in the tex t so that the reader is at first unsure o f its status. If sto rytellin g and reception are so problem atic, this has im plica­ tions for the n o vel itself. A t one point in the n o vel K rantz enters the T heodore Stu rgeon M em orial Center o f the U n iversity o f O regon, accessing not o n ly the fiction al past but also an in tertext for Brin's n ovel. In Stu rgeo n 's 'M em orial' (1946) a scientist and artist debate the fu tu re fate o f h u m an ity. W h ile the artist expresses a n x ie ty for the delicate balance o f p o w er betw een East and W est, the scientist rid icu les those science fiction w riters w h o v ie w nuclear e n e rg y as a terrify in g spectacle. The sto ry turns into an ironic stu d y o f m iscalculation w h en the scientist's single nuclear d evice, inten ded as a 'n ever-en d in g serm on' against w ar, a ctu ally triggers a nuclear exch an ge. W h ere Sturgeon supplies a p o sitive in tertex on the problem o f reachin g an audience, series lik e Jerry A h e rn 's offer a n egative one. The term 'su rv iv a list' is stro n gly fo regro u n d ed th ro u gh o u t The Postm an: Once upon a time, before the w ar, the w ord had several m eanings, ran gin g from com mon sense, com m u n ity-con scious preparedness all the w a y to antisocial paranoid g u n nuts ... it w as the latter connotations that had stu ck, after the ruin the w o rst sort had caused. (Brin 1986: 114) The S u rviva lists then represent a m ilitaristic m entality sim ilar to C ollin gw o o d in Dark December. T h e y are referred to as a cancerous 'p la g u e ', then glim psed, and fin a lly en cou n tered face to face w h en K rantz is taken captive. M o stly 'au gm ents' (i.e. m uscle-boun d hum anoids d esigned b y the us g o vern m en t for Special Forces duty) th e y w ear arm y surplus uniform s, use earrings as badges o f rank,

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and treat their w om en either as sexual conveniences or slaves. If Gordon represents a constitutional communalism in his charter for the n ew U nited States and enacts a civic bon din g through his postm an role, the Survivalists' leader Holn stands at the opposite extrem e o f the political spectrum in m ythologisin g an authoritarian ethic w h ereb y 'some have commanded, while others have obeyed' (Brin 1986: 252, his emphasis). The 'some', needless to say, are alw ays men. A fter lin k in g the paranoid R ight to macho militarism, Brin describes a civil war in the last chapters o f The Postm an, fou gh t out betw een the reconstructors and the Survivalists' desire for conquest.

The S u rviva list ethic is h e a v ily gendered and C arolyn See's Golden Days (1987) interven es in the nuclear su bject b y attacking a p erceived male h egem on y over h isto ry and narration (his-story). W h en nuclear w ar does happen — in the 1980s since this is no rem otely fu tu ristic n o vel - the w om en im m ediately accuse the ru lin g male elite: 'Y o u did th is'. A n d 'b y you, the w om en meant men, males: Caspar W ein berger, A lex an d e r Haig, Ronald Reagan ...' But then those names fade and w ith them cau sality itself. The 'terrible roar, the w alls o f flam e' (See 1996: 158) ind u ce an apo­ ca lyp tic sense o f catastrophe w h ich the narrator stead fastly refuses. The n o v e l's title even comes to sig n ify the nuclear afterm ath. R ejecting doom in fa vo u r o f the 'm iracle o f su rv iv a l' (D ew ey 1990: 189), the narrator bounces most o f her statem ents o ff the pessim istic discourse o f others. Losing an y hold on clear ch ron o lo gy, she nevertheless savours w ords ('one thin g I d id n 't lose w as lan gu age') as p ro o f o f a co n tin u ity w ith p rew ar times. N arration th ere b y becom es an ex ten d ed act o f determ ination, not to flee Los A n geles, not to y ie ld to despair and not to recognise the local beach as the site o f extin ction . The beach a ctu a lly comes alive w ith more su rviv o rs than exp ected w h o then listen to her story. E ven the conclusion to See's n o vel continues the dialogue betw een the accounts o f others 'w h o say that the end cam e' (See 1996: 195) and her narrator's insistence on co n tin u ity into a future. Her capitalised 'B egin n in g' is tim ed from her d isco very o f so m any fello w su rviv o rs on the beach. The narratives discussed here im agine su rv iv a l despite m ilitar­ ism, not because o f trium ph o ver an external enem y. Indeed the v e ry cond ition o f su rviv al is a re-exam ination o f national values, sp ecifically a re-establishm ent o f historical or narrative co n tin u ity w ith prew ar A m erica. In no case does m ilitary tech n o lo g y guaran ­ tee su rviv al. Rather it is one o f the lin gerin g d iv isiv e or repressive forces that has to be resisted b y the protagonists.

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1. See 'The Other Foot' ( i951) and 'To the Chicago Abyss' (1963) among other examples. 2. The Cabinet meeting on 11 December 1959 discussed On the Beach, specifically rejecting the assumptions that nuclear war could wipe out all life and that people would await death passively (Cabinet Minutes, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene). 3. Tucker's editors forced a sentimental ending on him. His original version ('The W ay It Really Ended') was published in Nickelodeon, 1 (1975): n -1 3 .

4. 'Dark December', m s : 42, Coppel Archive, Mugar Library, Boston University. 5. Coppel 1971: 182. In the short story on which Coppel based his novel the protagonist explicitly sees himself as a death-figure: 'I saw the hell-bombs falling. I saw myself striding among naked people - acres of them - and mowing them down with a bloody scythe' (Coppel 1953: 57)-

6 . 'Revisions on Dark December', undated

ms, Boston University. 7. Millicent Lenz gives a Jungian reading of this aspect of the novel arguing that Fiskadoro 'must draw upon the collective unconscious to create a new myth of origin for his world' (Anisfield 1991: 121). 8. Ahern, 1985: 12. These series are discussed in Brians 1987a: 89-92. 9. Quoted in Stentz 1997.

The Star Wars Debate

Space war! It's no longer just science fiction (Jerry Pournelle 1983)

In his classic stu d y W ar Stars (1988) H. Bruce Franklin has traced out the abidin g A m erican fascination w ith the su perw eapon , that ultim ate w eapon w h ich could m ake a final d ecisive d ifference to the balance o f p ow er. W ith the Soviet developm ent o f intercontinen tal m issiles in the late fifties 'the quest for new w eapons to m ake A m erica in vu ln erab le w as frantic and obsessive' (Franklin 1988: 191). From then onw ards more and more exo tic w e ap o n ry w as im agined, from the 'neu trin o bom b' (described b y Los A lam os p h ysicist Ralph S. Cooper: see C onklin 1962) to the Orion Project for a n u clear-propelled battleship, w h ich p ro b ab ly stood behind Poul A n d erso n 's Orion Shall Arise. It w as Ronald R eagan's launch in M arch 1983 o f the Strategic D efence In itiative (s d i) w h ich rev iv e d the dream o f ach ievin g national secu rity b y rendering 'nuclear w eapons im potent and o b so lete '.1 In the v ie w o f H. Bruce Franklin, us planners had sucum bed to the fantasy that the arms race could be w o n w ith a n ew w eapons system (Frankin 1984: 28). The su b ­ sequent debate o ver Star W ars tech n o lo g y split the science fiction com m un ity into opposing camps w h ere its supporters took active participation in the form ulation o f govern m en t p o lic y .2 N ow 'm ilitaristic science fiction and m ilitary p o licy coexist in the same discourse system to a surprising d egree' (Gray 1994: 316). This m erging o f discourse show ed itself in the use o f the same operative m etaphors, p a rticu larly that o f the frontier, w h ich w ere re v iv e d to address y et again the issue o f su rvival.

(i) Reagan's p o licy change arose from perceptions o f an increased Soviet threat from arms escalation and expansion into Central Am erica. The 181

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greater lik elih o od o f su p erp o w er confrontation exp lain s the re v iv a l o f su rviv alist fiction and supplies a co n text out o f w h ich Dean Ing w rites. Ing (the 'acceptab le face o f su rvivalism ': Clute and N icholls 1993: 618) has a professional b a ck g ro u n d as a research en gineer in the m issile in d u stry w h ich exp lain s the tech nical accu ra cy o f his w ritin gs w h eth er on fu tu re w ar veh icles or the Stealth b om ber.3 P u llin g Through (1983) com bines practical k n o w -h o w on su rv iv in g a

nuclear attack w ith the n arrative o f a b o u n ty-h u n ter w h o has fitted out a basem ent in anticipation o f ju s t such an attack. The n o vel describes h o w Ransom e's fam ily and his ca p tive (a streetw ise g irl w h o w as 'no su rviv alist, bu t a born su rv iv o r') cope w ith the nuclear crisis, broken d ow n into a series o f sp ecific practical problem s: h o w to im provise an air filter, h o w to dispose o f hum an w aste, and so on. P u llin g Through w as bou nd in w ith a series o f articles on nuclear su rv iv a l w h ich take as their prem ise that the USSR possesses a v a s tly more effective c iv il d efence system than the USA. R eflectin g on the Soviet constru ction o f co llective shelters, Ing ind icts us govern m en t inertia: It's possible for us to b u ild better u rban shelters than these, but w e do not appear to be doing it. Our civ il defense posture has regeared itself more tow ard s evacu atio n than to d ig g in g in. M ore accu rately, at the m om ent w e 're b etw een gears, idlin g in neutral. (Ing 1987: 148) Faced w ith an apparent lack o f govern m en t action, Ing comes up w ith a series o f recom m endations w h e re b y the A m erican citizen can to a certain exten t take his or her fate in hand. The pieces b y Ing ju s t d escribed w ere w ritten in 1980—1 in the period im m ediately preced in g the Star W ars co n tro v ersy and at a tim e w h en , as Jerry P ournelle pu t it, 'w e tru ly feared A rm agedd on, not as som ething abstract, but as an ev en t that m ight v e ry w ell happen n ext year - or ev en n e x t m onth' (Pournelle and Carr 1989: 19). P ournelle w ro te a su rv iv a list g ro u p (the 'E nclave') into his 1985 n o vel F o o tfa ll and him self o ffered practical ad vice on su rv iv in g such holocausts. A t the same tim e he took excep tio n to 'n o vels about people w h o not o n ly su rv iv e nuclear w ars, but th rive in those cond itions' (Pournelle and Carr 1989: 21). By the end o f the eigh ties he had to adm it that the cause o f su rvivalism had run its course. P u llin g Through confines su rv iv a l to local and therefore m anage­ able levels. Ing addresses the w id er national issues o f nuclear w ar in a sequence o f n ovels cen trin g on Ted Q uantrill, a su rviv a list p a r excellence. The first o f these, System ic Shock (1981), e x p lic itly sets

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up a co n tin u ity from Sir John H ackett's fu tu re history The T hird W orld W a r (1982) w here Soviet forces invade W est Germany. W hen these forces suffer defeat the Kremlin haw ks bomb Birmingham, w hereupon the U SA and Britain retaliate by destroying M insk. At this point the Soviet Union collapses.4 Ing's continuation takes us a step forw ard to W orld W ar IV in the 1990s w here a realigned and reduced Russian Union sides w ith the u s a against a coalition betw een China and India in a dispute over oil. The latter attack W estern satellites; invasions of Siberia and the southern u s a take place; and biological w eapons trigger a plague epidem ic in the Far East. The novel is w ritten partly as a grim w arning against complacency: The Am erican public had by tu rn s ignored and ridiculed its cassandras ... w ho had all w arned against our increasing ten ­ dency to crow d into our cities ... Firmly anchored in most Am ericans was the tacit certainty that, even to the problem of nuclear w ar against population centers, there m ust be a uniquely A m erican solution; we w ould find it. (Ing 1981: 48). But one isn 't fo u n d and a hu nd red m illion Am ericans die as a result. In g's glo o m y pred ictio n o f the fate o f A m erican city-d w elle rs (sign ifican tly not protected b y the us laser weapons) differs m arked ly from the practical a d vice he offers in P u llin g Through, the v e ry title o f System ic Shock ind icating the traum a exp erien ced at once b y the in d ivid u a l citizen and the co llective b o d y politic o f the nation. N ot su rp risin g ly g iv en his a d v o cacy o f s d i , Ing describes a chaotic and piece-m eal response to nuclear attack. In its w a k e the u s a fragm ents into d ifferent areas: the north occu p ied b y Canada, the east quarantined, the south-w est reverted to w ildern ess, and the south in vad ed b y a Cuban-led force (as happens in the 1984 film R ed Daw n). L ike H einlein, Ing describes a surge o f religiou s fu n d a­ m entalism , here led b y the M orm ons, w h ich results in a reconsti­ tuted u s a being run as a repressive th eocracy. W h ile this is takin g place, our hero the y o u n g Ted Q uantrill, is receivin g m ilitary training, learning that he has the 'rig h t stu ff to take direct action; personal action' (Ing 1981: 180). A n d this exp lain s his role. He personifies the inform ed action - w h at Ransome in P u llin g Through calls the 'd rill' - lackin g in the population as a w h ole, and is in d u cted into a k in d o f elite civ il defence force. W ith o u t ever sin king to the w eapons fetishism o f A h ern 's S u rviva list series or ev o k in g a reborn W est as Neal Barrett does in his post-holocaust n ovels Through D a rk est A m erica (1986) and D a w n s Uncertain Light

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(1989), Ing does show Q uantrilFs lig h tn in g reflexes and cap acity to fu n ctio n under stress to be v irtu a lly u n iq u e in his generation and therefore to ta lly d ifferentiated from the ideal M r F ixit o f P u llin g Through. Q uantrill represents the ultim ate skilled op erative, ideal for an action-packed plot, bu t p ro g ressiv ely alienated from the M orm on adm inistration; b y W ild Country (1985) he has turn ed against this in cipien t 'go vern m en t b y terro r', attem pting to w ith ­ draw into a p u rely p rivate life.

( ii) The leading fig u re in science fictio n 's in v o lvem en t w ith Star W ars w as u n d o u b ted ly Jerry P ournelle w h o came to w ritin g fiction after a career in in d u stry and govern m en t agencies, and w h o co-authored one o f the seminal docum ents in the s d i debate. The Strategy o f Technology (1970), w ritten b y P ournelle, Stefan J. P ossony and Frances X. Kane (the latter a servin g A ir Force officer w h o could not then be named), w as based on the stark prem ise that 'th e U nited States is at w ar' (Pournelle and P ossony 1970: 1), and attacked the lack o f defence plan nin g and its attendant assum ption that civ il defence w as futile. The w ar w as bein g fo u gh t out as a 'co n flict for tech n o logical dom inance' (Pournelle and Possony 1970: 56). Prior to The Strategy P ournelle had p rod u ced a report for the U nited States A irfo rce ( u s a f ) on strategic sta b ility w h ere arms control 'w o u ld w o rk w ere [the] USSR England or France, bu t then it w o u ld n 't really be n e e d e d '.5 A c c o rd in g ly he rejected W ar Games p lan nin g as inadequate to the o p p o n en t's in telligen ce, and in The Strategy first proposed a p o licy o f 'A ssured S u rviva l' in opposition to M cNam ara's 'M u tu al A ssu red D estru ction '. A coordinated p o licy o f tech n o ­ logical research w o u ld help to realise a 'stra teg y th ro u gh w h ich w ar can be safely p reven ted ' and, failin g that aim, a 'fa ll-b ack strategy w h ich w ill ensure our v ic to ry and su rv iv a l' (Pournelle and P ossony 1970: x x x i). This p o licy then took shape in tw o fu rth er docum ents. The H eritage Foundation (a thin k-tan k) w as d iscussing the fea sib ility o f anti-m issile defences in the early rg8os and tw o o f its k e y m em bers w ere determ ined to brin g th eir fin d in g s to the attention o f Ronald Reagan. Edw ard Teller, w h o se Legacy o f H iroshim a (1962) had argu ed that nuclear w eapon s did not necessarily mean all-out w ar, m et Reagan for a num ber o f b riefin gs ju s t before the latter's Star W ars speech. His colleague General Daniel Graham , form erly o f the D efence In telligen ce A g e n c y , had less success. D enied access to the

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President, he p u b lish ed the H eritage Foundation report as H igh Frontier (1983), rew ritten b y Dean Ing and prefaced w ith in tro­ ductions b y H einlein and Pournelle. This w o rk opens w ith a rousing call to the nation: 'T he U nited States has an historic, but fleeting, o p p o rtu n ity to take its d estin y into its o w n hands' (Graham 1983: 29). Citing the historical precedents o f the V ik in g s and Spanish, Graham proposes space as the n ew 'sea' w h ose frontier can be opened up if the us fo llo w s its d estiny, w h ich The Strategy o f Technology had argued lay in its tech nological expertise. The trope o f the frontier had already been central to P ou rnelle's book on space exploration, A Step F urther Out, w h ere he declares: 'M an kin d needs frontiers. W e need n e w w orld s to conquer, im possible odds to o v e r­ come, a place o f escape from bureaucracy and governm ent' (Pournelle 1980: 103). For 'm an k in d ' read ' u s a ' since there is a specific national u rg en cy in P ou rn elle's w ritin g here. R ed iscovery o f a frontier offers a sym bolic p o ssib ility o f reversin g a national malaise and realising a 'corn u cop ia' o f econom ic benefits from space. True, 'w ith o u t frontiers w ar is m ore than lik e ly ', but then space offers the uniqu e p o ssib ility o f an 'endless fron tier' (Pournelle 1979: 24). A lre a d y w e can see a tension em erging betw een tw o m etaphors: the d efen sive shield (Heinlein com pared H igh Frontiers to a b u llet­ p ro o f vest) and the frontier. The first is static and reactive; the second p roactive and entails expansion and conquest. In the sum m er fo llo w in g R eagan's Star W ars speech the Citizens A d v iso r y Panel on N ational Space P olicy met u nder the chairm anship o f Pournelle (the g ro u p in clu ded am ong its m em bers H einlein, Larry N iven , Greg Bear and G regory Benford) and p u blish ed their report as M u tu a l A ssu re d Su rv iva l (1984) w h ich carried a rin gin g endorse­ ment b y Reagan on its cover. This report repeats the benefits o f a layered defence system (as outlined b y Graham), insists that space has becom e de fa c to m ilitarised, but then asserts a 'syn ergism betw een science and the m ilitary, during frontier exp loration s' (Pournelle and Ing 1984: 118). The analogy betw een space and the A m erican landscape is repeated, takin g it as g iv e n that the m ilitary presence w ill increase; and w ith the opening o f this n ew W est the M oon w ill becom e a 'lunar fort'. N on fiction polem icising w en t in tandem w ith fiction directed to the same end. Starting in 1983 Pournelle w ith John F. Carr edited a series o f volum es under the general title There W ill Be W ar. This series assem bles a com posite narrative o f the rise o f ty ra n n y and the need to confront it, b u ild in g up to a final sh o w d o w n in the eigh th volum e A rm ageddon! The volum es' covers prom ise lurid galactic w ars but their contents v a r y from political essay th ro u gh p o etry

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(Kipling and others) to future wars narratives. Somewhat resem bling H em ingw ay's 1942 anthology Men at W ar , the collections revolve around specific themes: the ty ra n t, the w arrior and so on. A lthough th e historical spread of the series extends as far as Byzantium , the Cold W ar is at the forefront of every volum e.6 W hile w ar em erges as a universal factor in history, the urgency of the series is directed tow ards one overriding threat: Soviet or Soviet-led aggression. Deterrence is rejected as a 'very soft concept' form ulated by 'civilian intellectuals' (Pournelle and Carr 1984: 12); in its place Pournelle and his associates w ould p u t the professionals, m ilitary and o th er­ wise, to im plem ent a more proactive defence policy against percep­ tions of the betrayal of M cN am ara's policy and the malaise of the Carter adm inistration. Instead of passivity, Pournelle like H einlein stresses the m ythical im portance of the w arrior: 'th e w ay is long and hard; for the w arriors m ust ever stand on guard, be ever vigilant: not in w ar, b u t to preserve the peace' (Pournelle and Carr 1986: 13). T he crisis atm osphere o f the fifties is re v iv e d th rou gh such stories as Ben B ova's 'N uclear A u tu m n ' w h ich describes a threat b y the

Soviets

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b y im plication devotes more time to facials than foreign p o licy — and her y o u n g science adviser dismiss the threat as bluff. O n ly the Chairman o f the Joint Chiefs o f Staff, a 'grizzled old in fan try general',

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personification o f realism and professionalism is p roved right. T he Soviets' plan is to launch the num ber o f missiles ju s t b elow the threshold to trigger a N uclear W inter, th ere b y forestalling an y us response. Bova here attacks us m iscalculation o f Soviet intentions ju st as, in the same volum e, 'T o the Storm ing G u lf', b y G rego ry Benford w h o also con tribu ted to M utual Assured Survival, describes the experiences o f a grou p o f holocaust survivors. It is o n ly w ith the help o f an intact com puter that the p h ysical traces in the landscape y ie ld up an approxim ate narrative o f w h at happened. O therw ise the even t w o u ld be irrecoverable ('the h istory books w ill h ave to w rite them selves on this one' [Pournelle and Carr 1989: 67]). Sp ecifically the survivors realise that, although nuclear and biological attack had spread a belt o f death and destruction across the southern USA, the planners go t it w rong: 'nuclear w inter d id n 't mean the end o f a n yth in g ' (Pournelle and Carr 1989: 67). T he concept o f N uclear W in ter w as first p ublicised b y a team o f us scientists centring on Carl Sagan in 1983 w h o argued that e ven a lim ited

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catastrophe. L o w -le ve l to xic clouds, fallout, and damage to the

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ozone protection from u ltraviolet radiation w o u ld bring about far m ore deaths than had been calculated up to now . Sagan's 1990 retro sp ective volum e A Path where No Man Thought, cites exam ples from science fiction to dem onstrate that N uclear W in ter had already been im agined, for instance, in C hristopher A n v il's 1957 story 'T o rch ' w h ere a Russian w arh ead ignites subterranean oil seams, sh ow erin g areas w ith rad ioactive soot, and b y the sheer scale o f the disaster b rin g in g an end to the Cold W ar (Sagan and T u rco 1991: 43-4). A lth o u g h Sagan rejects the ultim ate death o f the species as d escribed in On the Beach and the spectacle o f m assive destruction in Jonathan Schell's The Fate o f the Earth (1982), it is d ifficu lt on such a scale to m ake m eaningful distinctions betw een 'total' and 'w id esp rea d '. Sagan h im self blurs such distinctions b y using em otive epigraphs from Dante, Bunyan and M ilton; and illustrations sh o w in g the g lo b e after nuclear w ar w ith a black cloud g ra d u a lly co verin g its surface, all o f w h ich co v e rtly reinforce the grand narrative o f apocalypse. W hereas Sagan advocated a nuclear p o licy o f M inim um S u fficien cy , P ou rn elle's prom otion o f s d i th ro u gh o u t There W ill Be W ar w as based on a persistent hope that the nuclear stalemate m ight be reso lved b y m ilitary tech n o log y. Iron ically Sagan's iden tification o f a central nuclear paradox, 'nations m ust be read y to fig h t a nuclear w ar in order to p reven t one' (Sagan and T urco 1991: 82), w as en tirely consistent w ith the position o f Pournelle and his contrib utors w h o rep eated ly attacked a p erceived lack o f readiness in the u s a . Eric V in ic o ff and M arcia M artia's 'W in ter Sn ow s' describes an s d i system , but in the hands o f the Soviets w hose Prem ier confronts the us President w ith an ultim atum : surrender or face destruction. The President responds b y revealin g that a d ecorative ball w ith false sn ow flakes in the Soviet Prem ier's office is a secret w eapon w h ich can be detonated at w ill. Super­ ficia lly a trium ph, since the Soviet leader backs dow n, the story dem onstrates the ease w ith w h ich s d i tech n o lo g y could be used o ffe n siv e ly and closes before the reader can be sure w h eth er the A m erican response w as o n ly blu ff. The narrative assumes an ign orance on both sides o f their o ppon en t's latest w e ap o n ry w h ich is both dangerous and necessary: dangerous in that it m ight lead to m iscalculations, and necessary since one goal o f s d i , P ournelle insists, is to 'create u n certain ty in the m inds o f the Soviet planners about the final outcom e o f the w ar w h ich w o u ld result from their attack' (Pournelle and Carr 1987: 404).

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(in ) The other m ost vo cifero u s ad vocate for s d i w as Ben Bova w h o p u b lish ed his o w n co n trib u tio n to the debate, Assured Survival, in * 9^4 (retitled Star Peace in 1986).7 A p h y sicist w h o had w o rk e d on lasers and m issile trajectories, Bova recoun ts the h isto ry o f the form er tech n o lo g y and then sketches out a num ber o f nuclear attack scenarios. In one, unrest in Poland and G erm any triggers a Soviet invasion . Satellites are k n o ck e d out and a nuclear w ar fo llo w s. In another, s d i has resulted in a 'go od strong r o o f o ver A m erica so that the m assive lau n ch o f i c b m s b y the Soviets is blocked . A t this point Bova w a x es lyrical: A s the d aw n rose on a n ew year, a n ew cen tu ry, and a n ew m illennium , w e slo w ly realised that the w o rst th in g a n y o f us had ever exp ected to see had h appened - and w e had all su rv iv e d it. Even the enem y had su rv iv e d it. (Bova 1986b: 297). The result is ju b ila tio n in Soviet cities, presu m ably because their m asters h ave been o u tw itted , and, alth o u gh Bova celebrates the end o f the Cold W ar, the fact that the us has retained all its m issiles w h ile a delegation heads to M osco w to 'd ictate' peace term s suggests trium phalism tem pered b y a suspicion that Soviets m ight have one last trick up their sleeve. Such nationalist sentim ent — the pleasure in realising 'fortress A m erica', for instance — belies B ova's call for m u tu ality in prom oting s d i .8 His re v iv a l o f the cause o f w o rld govern m en t and speculation s around an International P eacekeepin g Force are based u ltim ately on Soviet defeat. The hopefulness o f Star Peace contrasts w ith Bova's 1985 n o vel Privateers w h ich 'fe rv e n tly boosts space-w ar preparedness led b y ru gg ed -in d ivid u alist capitalists' (Franklin 1988: 200). T he novel describes a post-SDi situation w here the Soviet Union has used its m ilitary satellites to force the u s a out o f n a t o . A missile detonated over France has laid W estern Europe w aste and Am erican cities are ru n-dow n , full o f derelicts, and h o verin g on the verge o f collapse. M ean w h ile the Soviet U nion has set up factories in near space and transformed the M oon

into a G ulag

from w h ich

minerals are

shipped back to earth, thus enabling the Kremlin to dictate the prices o f raw materials. This is the situation w h ich must be rectified b y our hero Dan R andolph — astronaut, engineer, entrepreneur and sexual gym nast. A s former lover o f the us President, he steps into the role she has vacated, rejecting her w ait-and-see attitude to the Soviets. R andolph sets up a space station from w h ich he can

T h e St a r W

ars

D ebate

189

intercept Russian ore freighters, figh tin g as a latter-day buccaneer on beh alf o f private enterprise (hence the n o vel's title). In 1982 Bova had w ritten o f a Soviet space offensive, ou tlin ing an im m inent scenario o f the us space shuttle Challenger being dam aged, p ossibly b y Soviet missiles. He quotes an Am erican law yer as stating that Soviet p o licy has been 'either to forbid or to im pede private enter­ prise in space' (Bova 1982: 64). T he novel dramatises the fig h t back against such a p rohibition b y id e n tify in g as one the interests o f the us, T hird W orld and international capital.

Privateers opens w ith a failed hijack w h en a freighter (a 'b ig fat ovum ') opens to disgorge Soviet troops. This first scene establishes a num ber o f associations betw een the Soviets and treachery, brutality and the subhum an. Here Bova recycles the trope o f Com m unists-asparasites used b y H einlein and other writers in the fifties. In fact the episode could come from Starship Troopers , but in reverse since all the W estern astronauts, even the focaliser, are killed. This episode depersonalises the Soviets, preconditioning the reader to accept them as fair game in an y conflict and p avin g the w a y for the n o vel's diagnosis o f us weakness. A m erica's political and m ilitary inertia is shared b y the rest o f the w orld w h o need R andolph to point out that w in n in g the Cold W ar w a sn 't enough for the Kremlin: 'm aybe th e y w ant to rule the w h o le w orld, turn the entire goddam m ed w orld into one big hom ogenised tig h tly controlled Soviet state' (Bova 1986a: 237). T he e vil genius directing this empire is one M alik w ho, like Darth Vader in Star W ars , has a sh ow d o w n w ith R andolph in a space station before spaceships from the free countries arrive to defeat the Soviets in a final battle. N o narrative could demonstrate more co n clu sive ly that sd i was not a cooperative venture since R andolph personifies all the qualities w aitin g to be restored to a fem inised and supine Am erica.

(IV) N o sooner had Reagan delivered his 1983 speech than comparisons began to m u ltip ly w ith the 19 77 m ovie Star Wars. T he w ords o f the aging warrior, 'the Force w ill be w ith yo u alw a ys', w ere quoted b y Reagan him self and General James A . Abraham son ('W e're not on the Dark Side ... W e really do h ave the Force w ith us': B offey 1988: 209). One placard in a 1985 dem onstration at Cape K en nedy shrilled

' s t o p d a r t h r e a g a n !' A n d the Star W ars label q u ic k ly became so institutionalised that it was used as the title o f a Soviet m ilitary publication

in

1985

w h ich

w arned

grim ly

that

the

USA was

190

A

m er ica n

Sc ie n c e Fic t i o n

a n d the

C old W

ar

'preparing the stage for a nuclear w a r '.9 The film lent itself to a sim plistic model o f political conflict betw een an evil empire (the Soviet Union) and a rebellious freed om -loving planet-nation. The empire is presided over b y an autocratic ruler w hose cru elty is em bodied in the m asked Darth Vader w h o stalks the Death Star (an ultim ate m ilitary space station) dressed in black. The com bat is polarised

b etw een

Good

and

E vil,

and

con du cted

w ith

laser

w eapons w h ich seemed to be actualised in the tech n o lo gy required for s d i . W illiam J. Broad has show n that a num ber o f the yo u n g p hysicists

w o rk in g

on

sd i

w e a p o n ry

at

T eller's

Liverm ore

Laboratory were in flu en ced b y their reading o f science fiction, one adm itting an influence from Larry N iv e n 's R ingw orld and N ive n and Pournelle's The M o te in G od 's E ye , w h ile another confirm ed the im pact o fH e in le in (Broad 1985b: 11 9 -2 0 , 131).

On the science fiction com m u n ity the im pact o f s d i w as m ore controversial. Those supporters already nam ed tended to h ave a com m on backg ro u n d in m ilitary-related tech n o lo g y. Poul A n d erso n introd u ced the 1988 a n th o lo gy Space W a rs ap p ro v in g G raham 's H igh F rontier and declaring that he 'w o u ld su p p ort a w ar on an y scale necessary if that should p ro v e the o n ly altern ative to letting in the G u lag' (W au gh and G reen berg 1988: x). Isaac A sim o v, h o w ev er, rejected it as a d evice to break the Soviet econom y w h ich w o u ld also break the us econom y ('It's v e ry m uch a John W a y n e standoff') and A rth u r C. Clarke testified to the us Senate that s d i plans w ere 'tech n o lo gical obscen ities' (Broad 1985a: C3) and argued that laser satellites could be d estroyed b y lau n ch in g bu ckets o f nails into orbit. One o f the m ost sustained attacks came from F rederik Pohl w h o had been unim pressed w h en H einlein sent him a co p y o f H igh Frontier. He pron ou n ced s d i a 'fu zzy-h e a d ed n otion ' w h ich w o u ld be co u n terp ro d u ctive: 'the Star W ars scenario is not m erely not a w a y o f keep in g us from nuclear attack and v e ry lik e ly the nuclear w in ter as consequence. Rather, it is the surest w a y I can th in k o f to m ake both these th in gs h a p p e n '.10 Thom as M . Disch su b seq u en tly salvaged a m oral from the w h o le co n tro v ersy in that for him it dem onstrated the im portance o f science fiction as a forum for debatin g the us space program m e (Disch 1986: 652). Reagan's ten d en cy to m ix referen ces to Star W ars w ith A rm a­ ged d o n and the E vil Em pire p ro v o k ed W alter M . M iller to assem ble his 1985 a n th o lo gy Beyond A rm ageddon: Tw enty One Serm ons to the D ea d w h ich w as d esigned to ch allen ge the m ilitary orth o d o xies o f s d i . 11 U nlike its supporters, M iller revises the sides in a n y M egaw ar to be 'm ilitaristic G overn m en t' against the rest o f hu m an ity. His opposition is direct and moral:

T h e St a r W

ars

Debate

Once M egaw ar is launched, nationality ceases to exist. The ultimate atrocity has been comm itted, and e v e ry political and m ilitary man w h o participated is thenceforw ard at war w ith the w hole people o f Earth, and all her various lifeforms. He is a w orld-killer. (M iller and Greenberg 1987: 11).

Like Lew is M um ford and Thomas P yn ch o n (whose 1973 novel

Gravity's Rainbow probes the cultural origins o f the Cold War), M iller grounds his criticism in a spiritual holism w h ich he sees as being dam aged b y a secular scientific Logos or reason w h ich 'cuts apart, divides, separates', partly b y erecting a 'screen o f sym bols' (M iller and Greenberg 1987: 13). For M iller the ideological debates o f the 1980s (Communist vs. Christian) were m erely sym ptom atic o f this Logos and he accord in gly turns to Taoism as a system totally rem oved from W estern culture.

From a to ta lly d ifferent direction the second volum e o f Kim Stanley R obinson 's O range C ou n ty trilo g y The Gold Coast (1986) confronts w h at some felt w as the h idd en agenda behind s d i: the boosting o f fu n d in g for the California-based defence in d u stry. R obinson w ro te the n o vel out o f a fear that s d i m arked the 'n e x t generation w eapons system in the cold w a r'. 'I w as d isgusted at this potential m ilitarisation o f space', he has stated, 'and the o b vio u s boon d oggle nature o f the project, w h ich w as clearly a p h ysical im p o s sib ility '.12 In the n o vel the Laguna Space Research C om pany ( l s r ) is com peting in the design o f a m ethod for track in g d estroyin g m issiles using lasers and space m irrors. Denis M cPherson, ch ief en gineer for l s r , has been sold on the s d i dream o f a nuclear-free 'com p letely secure d efense'. 'H ave w e reached that point in h isto ry', he w onders, 'w h ere technology fin ally w ill m ake w ar obso­ lete, and nuclear w eapons un n ecessary?' (Robinson 1990: 62). The novel demonstrates that this is a premature question. W hat M cPherson suppresses is an aw areness o f h o w rig g ed the testing and p rocu re­ m ent procedures are. W h en l s r ' s tender is rejected because a u s a f general interferes w ith the process, their response is to lod ge an appeal w h ich fails because the ju d g e decides the status quo should stand 'in the interests o f national se cu rity' (Robinson 1990: 287). Robinson blocks o ff hopes o f an im m inent change to Cold W ar strategy b y red irectin g the reader's attention to the recent h isto ry o f O range C o u n ty w h ere, since the Second W orld W ar, a m ilitaryindustrial in frastructu re has g ro w n up. This com plex d rives national p o licy: 'A n d so the m achine served the Korean W ar, and the Cold W ar, and the Vietnam W ar, and the Cold W ar ... and the Space W ar ... a w ar m achine, ever g ro w in g ' (Robinson 1990: 264).

192

A

m er ica n

Sc ie n c e Fic t io n

a n d the

Cold W

ar

As M cPherson's hopes are dashed his jaundiced sense of the selfperp etu atin g system converges on the n arrato r's identification of the profit m otive fuelling defence policy. M cP herson u n co n scio u sly repeats R eagan's dream o f a fin al release from nuclear fear. A n d this m ust h ave inform ed the fiction o f Ing, Bova, Pournelle and others w h ich exaggerates the e ffe ctiv e ­ ness o f action d ivorced from the constraints o f politics. The rein vigo ratio n o f national pu rpose th ro u gh the im age o f the frontier w as co n fu sin g ly conflated w ith a sp ecific defence prop osal w h ich risked transfer o f the space program m e to the m ilitary (Disch 1986: 656). The in co m p atib ility b etw een the m etaphors o f shield and frontier, the expansion ism w ith in the v e ry notion o f s d i , and the p ro x im ity betw een offen ce and defen ce denied the p o licy clarity. H istorically Star W ars m arked an u n preceden ted period o f sy m b i­ osis betw een science fiction and the us adm inistration w h ich passed w ith the easing o f Cold W ar tensions as the Com m unist regim es o f the Soviet Bloc collapsed. Ben Bova describes a British se cu rity a d v iser's reaction to s d i in w o rd s w h ich could stand as a coda for this w h o le volum e: 'It sounds lik e science fiction to me ... But so m uch o f to d a y's w o rld seems lik e science fiction that I suppose w e m ust consider the idea qu ite ca re fu lly ' (Bova 1986b: 268).

Notes 1. 'President's Speech on M ilitary Spending and a N ew Defense', New York Times (24 M arch 1983) A20. 2. One instance o f contact was the 1985 Futurist II conference held at an Ohio air force base w here m ilitary researchers responded to speculations b y G regory Benford, Joe Haldeman, Larry N iven and Jerry Pournelle, among other writers. 3. The Ransome o f Black Stealth One (1989) describes a Soviet attempt to steal the Am erican spy plane. Ing's other main Cold W ar novels are tw o spy thrillers, Blood o f Eagles (1987) and Spooker (1993). Other survivalist articles w ere collected in The Chernobyl Syndrome (1988). Ing invited Frederik Pohl to w rite a cover line for Pulling Through. 4. Reagan read Hackett in 1983 w ith enthusiasm: see D ugger 1984. 5. Letter from Jerry Pournelle, 10 February 1998. 6. Pournelle describes M arxist opponents in his 1979 Janissaries (see Gray 1994: 324) and during a period o f disillusionm ent w ith the us governm ent projected a near-future 'CoDominium' in his fiction w here the tw o superpow ers collaborate in repressive w orld rule. Footfall (1985) uses the alien contact theme to vindicate the resurgence o f the Am erican space programme ('the cold war began again, w ith all

T he St a r W

ars

Debate

x93

its im plications': Pournelle and N iven 1986: 122). Pournelle him self joined the Communist Party for a short time after his return from the Korean w ar (Platt 1987: 19). 7. Published w ith an endorsement by Reagan's science advisor. 8. Cf. Boyer 1998: 178-9 on the relation between s d i and a national tradition o f self-reliance. 9. 'Star W ars' Delusions and Dangers. M oscow: M ilitary Publishing House, 1985: 31. 10. Pohl 1984: 26. Pournelle responded in Science Fiction Chronicle, 6.Ill (December 1984) w here he rejected Pohl's claims and declared that he was 'talking nonsense' (16). u k e d i t i o n s u b t i t l e d Survivors o f the Megawar. 12. Letter from Kim Stanley Robinson, 6 A p ril 1998. 11.

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Index

A b ernathy, Robert, 168 Abraham son, General James A., 189 Ackerm an, Forest J., 34 A gee, James, 4-5, 175 Ahern, Jerry, 177, 178, 183 Am en, Carol, 65, 66 Anderson, Senator Clinton P., 63,

64 Anderson, Poul, 2, 40—3, 4 5 -5 1, 54, 119-20, 146, 181, 190 A nisfield, N ancy, 12 A n vil, Christopher, 18, 45, 187 A rd rey, Robert, 102, 103 Asim ov, Isaac, 21, 80, 119, 120, 128, 132, 190 Astaire, Fred, 169 A taturk, Kemal, 105 Axelsson, Arne, 12 Bailey, Charles W ., 148 Balmer, Edwin, 14, 15 Barrett, Neal, 183-4 Barth, John, 127-8 Barthelme, Donald, 124 Bartter, M artha A ., 11, 124, 172 Baruch, Bernard, 1, 18 Bear, Greg, 185 The Beginning o f the End (film), 7 The Beginning or the End (film), 7 Benchley, Nathaniel, 94-5 Benford, G regory, 185, 186 Bermel, A lfred, 149, 150 Berriault, Gina, 145, 146-7 Bischoff, Peter, 129

Blish, James, 3, 8, 7 1 -2 , 82, 146, 150, 163 Boddie W illiam s, N ick, 2, 5 The Bomb (film), 19 Bone, J. F., 120 Boucher, A n thon y, 16 1-2 Bova, Ben, 186, 188-9, I 92 Boyer, Paul, 5, 12, 60, 107, 132 Brackett, Leigh, 17, 157-8, 172 Bradbury, Ray, 17, 60, 74, 78-80, 82, 168 Bradley, David, 57 The Brain Eaters (film), 133 Brennan, John P., 85 Bretnor, Reginald, 15, 112 Brians, Paul, 4, 12, 45, 59, 105, TI5' x45' I ^o, 175, 176 -7 Brin, David, 176-9 Broad, W illiam J., 190 Budrys, A lgis, 8, 10 Bunch, David, 124 Bunyan, John, 187 Burdick, 148 Burnham, James, 69, 70, 94 Butler, Samuel, n o Caidin, M artin, 22 Campbell, John W ., 31 Capek, Karel, 161 Card, Orson Scott, 104 Carr, John F., 185-6 Carroll, Noell, 134 Cartmell, Clive, 9 Charnas, Suzy McKee, 153 Chernus, Ira, 151 2 12

In d e x

2I3

Chinnock, Frank W ., 174 Christie, Julie, 79 Clareson, Thomas, 60, 84, 125 Clark, W . H., 45 Clarke, A rthur C., 190 Clarkson, Helen, 63-5, 169 Cloete, Stuart, 7 Condon, Richard, 71 Conklin, Groff, 7, 19, 71, 1 11, 181 Cook, Fred J., 150-1 Cooper, Ralph S., 181 Coppel, A lfred, 66, 170—2 Crossen, K. F., 77—8, 120, 168

Fitzgibbon, Constantine, 98, 99-

Dante A lighieri, 187 Davis, Chandler, 19, 71, 148 Davis, Elmer, 95-6 The Day After (TV movie), 66 The Day the World Ended (film), 8,

Gaitskell, Hugh, 100 Galison, Peter, n o Galouye, Daniel F., 160 Geduld, Carolyn, 112 George, Peter, 65, 148, 149, 151,

57 De Camp, L. Sprague, 34 Deer, James W ., 3 DeLillo, Don, 124-3 Derrida, Jacques, 4, 5, 6, 7, 51, 169 Destination Moon (film), 33 Dick, Philip K., 17, 40, 68, 125,

134-43 Disch, Thomas M ., 141—2, 190, 192 D owling, David, 9, 11, 51, 62, 162, 166 Dr. Strangelove (film), 147-50, 152,

i 53> 154 Dubois, Theodora, 95 Dulles, John Foster, 16 Eisenhower, D w ight D., 26, 36, 132, 169 Eliot, T. S., 129, 145 Ellison, Harlan, 127, 128 Emshwiller, Carol, 55-6 Engelhardt, Tom, 28, 36 Engh, M. J., 105 Face to Face with Communism (film), 95 Feiffer, Jules, 146 Finney, Jack, 134

101 Five (subtitled A Story about the Day after Tomorrow) (film), 172 Ford, Daniel, 120 Foster, W illiam Z., 86 Foucault, M ichel, 68 Frank, Pat, 33, 6 1-2 , 63, 66, 68,

145 Franklin, H. Bruce, 11, 30, 33, 181 Freud, Sigm und, n o , 114, 117, 152 Friborg, A. C., 125-6 Fromm, Erich, 122

I 52' 153 Gillespie, Bruce, 139 Gold, H. L., 8-9 Goldwater, Barry, 35 Graham, General Daniel, 184-5, 190 Grant, M axw ell, 42 Griffin, Russell, 159—60 Guha, Anton-Andreas, 168 Gunn, James, 8 Hackett, Sir John, 183 Haldeman, Joe, 38 Harrison, Harry, 37-8, 142-3 Heinlein, Robert, 16, 23, 28—38, 40, 46, 50, 53, 88, 101, 112, 120, 148, 183, 185, 186, 190 Heller, David, 45 Heller, Jeane, 45 Heller, Joseph, 148 H em ingw ay, Ernest, 97, 186 Hersey, John, 6, 57 Hitler, A dolf, 139 Hoban, Russell, 49, 54, 163-6, 168 Hoffman, Nicholas von, 65-6 Hofstadter, Richard, 132 Holt, Terrence, 55 Hoover, J. Edgar, 134

214

In d e x

Hord, John K., 40 H uxley, Aldous, 15, 16 -17 , 49, 56, 76, 146 I Married a Monster from Outer Space (film), 133, 134 Ing, Dean, 62, 182-4, 185, 192 Invaders from Mars (film), 133, 134 Invasion o f the Body Snatchers, 133, x34 Invasion u s a (film), 95 It Conquered the Earth, 133, 134 James, W illiam , 116 Jameson, Fredric, 10 Johnson, Denis, 174-5 Johnson, Lyndon B., 141 Johnstone, W illiam W ., 177 Jones, D. F., 119, 126-7, 128 Jones, Ewart C., 100 Jones, Raymond F., m Kagan, Norman, 152 Kahn, Herman, 6 -7, 44-5, 46, 47, 48 , 150 , 1 5 1 , 1 5 3 Kane, Francis X., 125, 184 Karp, David, 72-4 Kennedy, John F., 87, 137, 148, 150 Kersh, Gerald, 164, 166 Kipling, Rudyard, 186 Klein, Richard, 8, 168 K luckhohn, Frank L., 45 Knebel, Fletcher, 148 Knight, Damon, 74, 145 Koestler, A rthur, 73, 114 Kornbluth, C. M ., 9-10, 50, 82-5, 87- 9, 92- 3, 97- 9, 104,105 K orzybski, A lfred, 113 Kramer, Stanley, 169 K ubrick, Stanley, 148, 152 Kunetka, James, 168, 175 -6 Kuttner, H enry, 56 Lange, Oliver, 46, 95, 10 1-3, 105 Langyear, Barry B., 92 Lanouette, W illiam , 5, 26, 107

Laurence, W illiam L., 15, 53, 151 LeGuin, Ursula, 92, 104 Leiber, Fritz, 44, 59 Leinster, M urray, 9 Lem, Stanislaw, 139 Lew in, Leonard C., 150-1 Lippm ann, W alter, 1 Ljoka, Dan, 23, 169-70 Longyear, Barry B., 50 M acA rthur, General Douglas, 48 M cCarthy, Joseph, 71, 78, 80, 119 MacDermott, K. A ., 29 M cDonald, John, 129 M cGrath, Thomas, 74-5, 78 M acklin, F. A n thon y, 152 McNamara, Robert, 23, 141, 186 Malamud, Bernard, 7-8 M annix, Patrick, 12 M arcuse, Herbert, 123-4 Martia, Marcia, 187 Masters, Dexter, 19, 25, 58 Matheson, Richard, 55, 86 M ay, Elaine T yler, 53 M erril, Judith, 25, 54-5, 57-9, 60, 63, 68 M iller, W alter M., 40, 116, 120, 157, 158 -61, 162-3, 165, 168, 190-1 M ills, C. W right, 145-6 M ilton, John, 107, 187 M oore, C. L., 78 Moore, W ard, 61, 65, 120 M orrow , James, 154-5 The Mouse That Roared (film), 147 M um ford, Lewis, 69, 109, 117, 145-6, 153, 191 Nadel, Alan, 12, 20 N eville, Kris, 9 N iven, Larry, 185, 190 N ixon, Richard, 139 Norton, Andre, 56 O'Brien, Tim, 66 O 'Donnell, Patrick, 132, 134-5 On the Beach (film), 169

In d e x

Oppenheimer, J. Robert, 71 Orwell, George, 1, 68, 69-70, 73,

75- 78, 79' 97 Ostow, Mortimer, 132 Packard, Vance, 69 Pal, George, 33 Pangborn, Edgar, 17, 163, 172-3 Panshin, A lexei, 36 Pauling, Linus, 46, 121 Peale, Norman Vincent, 147 Percy, W alker, 159 Poe, Edgar Allan, 30 Pohl, Frederik, 50, 82-93, 94, 97, 149, 190 Porter, Jeffrey, 164 Porush, David, 127 Possony, Stefan J., 184 Pournelle, Jerry, 34, 181, 182, 184, 185-6, 190, 192 Priestley, J. B., 121 Punter, David, 72 Pynchon, Thomas, 132, 135-6, 191 Rahv, Philip, 72 Ransome, A rthur, 183 Reagan, Ronald, 34, 181, 184, 185, 189, 190, 192 Red Dawn (film), 101, 183 Red Nightmare (film), 95, 98, 101 Reed, John, 104 Reynolds, M ack, 80, 124 Rhodes, Carolyn, 125 Richards, G uy, 99 Ridenour, Louis D., 121 Riesman, David, 69, 88 Robinson, Kim Stanley, 173-4, 191-2 Rohmer, Sax, 42 Roshwald, Mordecai, 65, 12 1-3 ,

125' 147 Rothbard, M urray N., 69 Russell, Bertrand, 121 Ruthven, Ken, 4, 11 Sacco, Nicola, 141 Sagan, Carl, 186-7

2I5

Sambrot, W illiam , 10, 120 Samuelson, David N., 90-1, 115 Schaara, M ichael, 119 Schaub, Thomas Hill, 11 Scheick, W illiam J., 1 1 -1 2 , 168 Schell, Jonathan, 6, 7, 21, 155, 187 Schw artz, Delmore, 71 Schw enger, Peter, 5, 8, 166, 176,

178 See, Carolyn, 168, 179 Seed, David, 59, 71, 79 Sellers, Peter, 147 Shafer, Robert, 96, 103, 105 Sheckley, Robert, 149 Shippey, Tom, 10, 103, 104 Shiras, W ilm ar H., 56-7 Shute, N eville, 6 -7, 24, 63-4, 169, 170 Siebers, Tobin, 11 Siodmak, Curt, 10 Smith, George H., 45 Smith, George O., 148 Smith, Philip E., 30 Sohl, Jerry, 96, 100 Solomon, J. Fisher, 4 Sontag, Susan, 133 Southern, Terry, 148-9 Spencer, Susan, 157 Spengler, Oswald, 40 Spinrad, Norman, 2, 154, 155 Stacy, Ryder, 177 Stalin, Joseph, 94, 95, 98, 104 Stapledon, Olaf, 15 Star Wars (film), 189, 190 Steinbeck, John, 98 Stevenson, Adlai, 153 Stone, Albert E., 12 Strategic A ir Command (film), 36-7, 80, 152 Strieber, W h itley, 168, 175-6 Sturgeon, Theodore, 56, 68, 169,

178 Sullivan, Richard E., 40 Swirski, Peter, 142 Szilard, Leo, 25-7, 28, 43-4, 65,

i 07> 155

2l6

In d e x

Teller, Edward, 137, 169, 184, 190 Tenn, W illiam , 9, 44, 60 Terkel, Studs, 175 Tevis, W alter, 175-6 Them! (film), 1—2 Threads (film), 165 Toynbee, Arnold, 40 Truffaut, Francois, 79, 85 Truman, Harry S., 48 Tucker, W ilson, 10, 170 Turco, Richard, 187 Van Vogt, A. E., 94 Vandenberg, General, 19-20, 30 Vanzetti, Bartolomeo, 141 V inicoff, Eric, 187 Vonnegut, Kurt, 76 -7, 109, 119, 128, 147 W agar, W . W arren, 7 W aldrop, F. N., 54 W allace, Henry, 107, 139 W alsh, Chad, 112 War Games (film), 128-30

W arner, Jack, 98 W att, Donald, 79 W eart, Spencer R., 12, 133-4, 169, 172 W elch, Robert, 132 W ells, H. G., 5, 15, 25, 112, 164 W heeler, H arvey, 125 W hite, Hayden, 2-3, 12, 40 W hitm an, W alt, 175 W hyte, W illiam H., 68, 69 W iener, Norbert, 1 1 0 -11 W ilson, Robert Anton, 139 W olfe, Bernard, 2, 10 7-17, 153 W olfe, Gene, 137 W ouk, Herman, 146 W ylie, Philip, 14-25, 28, 33, 53, 61, 69, 80, 115 W yndham , John, 56 Yeats, W illiam Butler, 50 Zamyatin, 121 Zelazny, Roger, 5-6, 177