preece@uicsl.UUCP (12/03/83)
#R:tekig:-166500:uicsl:5400042:000:325 uicsl!preece Dec 2 11:18:00 1983 Another 'old' book about the days after a nuclear war is "On the Beach" by Nevil Shute, which chronicles life in Australia as they wait for the radiation to arrive, some long-ish time after northern hemisphere has died. TDA was hardly breaking new ground, though it is probably a good idea to remind ourselves periodically.
notes@ucbcad.UUCP (12/04/83)
#R:tekig:-166500:ucbesvax:3000006:000:2470 ucbesvax!turner Nov 26 02:52:00 1983 There was a "day after" book by Philip Wylie, the title of which slips my mind. Not the best thing I ever read on the subject, but not so shocking that Reader's Digest wouldn't condense out a few gory parts, and run it to the cold-war-fevered public at the time. Still it was pretty bloody--he vividly describes what happens to people's faces when a huge overpressure hits a window pane that people are standing in front of. Technically, it is better on most counts (especially the immediate effects on targeted cities) than "The Day After". (Although they didn't know about EMP back then.) Wylie was, for a time, a Civil Defense official of the kind who are the heroes of his novel; in retrospect, his view of the short- and long-term dangers of fallout is frighteningly poor. In the end (*spoiler warning*) the U.S. "wins" by exploding something like a 300 megaton device in the Baltic that simply wipes out the USSR. This is a few weeks after the initial exchange, and is recognized as potentially imperilling the rest of the world. But they do it anyway, to rid the world of Communism. In addition to that little lesson, it is also something of a propaganda piece on the value of a good civil defense--the events take place in a mid- west "twin-cities" metropolitan area (maybe Minneapolis-St. Paul?), where one municipality has a "good" CD program, and the other has almost none. The one with the "good" program ends up saving more people, obviously. Apart from the more problematic politics of "The Day After", and the CD-propagandizing of Wylie's novel, they were basically the same story. The presentation was less ideologically charged this time, but neither attempted to cultivate careful thinking in the minds of their audiences. Wylie's novel is (still) worth reading, though. Another relatively good (and less biased) novel in this small genre is Pat Frank's "Alas, Babylon", an account of living in the U.S among the "lucky" few who escape inciner- ation and radiation poisoning. Together, these books form an interesting and reasonably convincing picture of what is, by today's standards, a quite limited exchange of ICBM's. I read these when I was around 12. They made a lasting impression on me. Too many science fiction writers have made World War III into just another exotic backdrop, but Wylie and Frank confronted the subject more directly, and produced what I think are superior stories. --- Michael Turner (ucbvax!ucbesvax.turner)
davidl@tekig.UUCP (David Levadie) (12/10/83)
The best one yet remains, " A Canticle For Leibowitz. " Author forgotten, as usual. I would say, "I wish they'd make a movie out of it", if I didn't think I'd puke when I saw what they did to the book...
colonel@sunybcs.UUCP (George Sicherman) (12/13/83)
_A Canticle for Leibowitz_? Some of us remember when it first appeared-- as a novelette. I still prefer "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream"; I'm trying to make it required reading in C.S. 101. Col. G. L. Sicherman ...seismo!rochester!rocksvax!sunybcs!colonel
eich@uiuccsb.UUCP (12/15/83)
#R:tekig:-166500:uiuccsb:3200026:000:162 uiuccsb!eich Dec 14 13:56:00 1983 "A Canticle for Liebowitz" was written by Walter Miller. It's a good book with which to convince literary types that `Science Fiction' isn't a complete ghetto.
emjej@uokvax.UUCP (12/15/83)
#R:tekig:-166500:uokvax:2700014:000:419 uokvax!emjej Dec 13 13:11:00 1983 The author of *A Canticle for Leibowitz* is Walter Miller, Jr.; try to catch the NPR adaptation of it. All flames about the appropriateness of posting this response here will be cheerfully ignored. As things stand, I have the choice of bothering news readers or bothering notes readers who don't really care about the preceding paragraph; too bad news doesn't provide reasonable followup facilities. James Jones
riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle) (12/16/83)
I don't know if this is the case all over the country, but our local
National Public Radio affiliate is in the process of broadcasting a
serialized version of Miller's "A Canticle for Liebowitz". Most of
you are probably within the reception area of an NPR station. If
you're interested, give them a call and find out when the show is
playing.
----
Prentiss Riddle
{ihnp4,seismo,ctvax}!ut-sally!riddle