Fannish Fifty#2: On the Beach
Jan. 18th, 2023 08:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
valoiseAt an estate sale last month I picked up a copy of Nevil Shute’s 1957 book, On the Beach. In the height of the Cold War the fear of nuclear war and annihilation was a driving factor in literature and movies. Apocalyptic scenarios are common fare in 20th & 21st century media with chaos and violence front and center driving the characters to an action filled climax. This book takes a very different tack.
Shute presents a world were the death of all animal life is a given. Nuclear war in the Northern hemisphere began Russia and China and a number of smaller countries, within a month so many cobalt nuclear devices had been deployed that a cloud of radioactive fallout was on its way to covering the globe. In the southernmost coast of Australia everyone is waiting for the cloud to come their way. The book focuses on how people process the inevitable in very human ways. Each person finds a way to face this doom: denial, hedonism, embracing risk, looking at long delayed goals, and finding acceptance. Shute’s writing is a little stiff at times, but his characters come alive in the face of death.
Shute presents a world were the death of all animal life is a given. Nuclear war in the Northern hemisphere began Russia and China and a number of smaller countries, within a month so many cobalt nuclear devices had been deployed that a cloud of radioactive fallout was on its way to covering the globe. In the southernmost coast of Australia everyone is waiting for the cloud to come their way. The book focuses on how people process the inevitable in very human ways. Each person finds a way to face this doom: denial, hedonism, embracing risk, looking at long delayed goals, and finding acceptance. Shute’s writing is a little stiff at times, but his characters come alive in the face of death.
