(First published 1959. Edition here: HarperCollins/Perennial Classics, 1999, 323pp, including author biography and publication history by Hal Hager)
Next up in the group of apocalyptic novels I read in June, following Butler’s PARABLE OF THE SOWER, is this. It isn’t as famous as two other near-contemporaneous novels, ON THE BEACH from 1957 and FAIL-SAFE from 1962, since popular movies were made from both of them. (I think there was a TV version of this one.) The author was a journalist whose work took him into contact with military people who strategized various nuclear war scenarios. He was asked what would happen if nuclear war broke out. He said, “Oh, I think they’d kill fifty or sixty million Americans–but I think we’d win the war.” This was in the 1950s. Frank was similar to George R. Stewart, author of EARTH ABIDES (my review here), in that while both wrote other books and were moderately well-known in their day, they are remembered decades later only for one book each.
The previous time I read this it reminded me of a Stephen King novel. Continue reading
