Aquatic Apocalypse Flashcards
What are the two books discussed in Aquatic Apocalypse?
- Kate Sawyer’s “The Stranding”
- Nevil Shute, “On the Beach” (1957)
Chaos, cataclysm and the coast by Alain Corbin
The ocean was the remnant of that undifferentiated primordial substance on which form had to be imposed so that it might become part of the Creation. This realm of the unfinished, a vibrating, vague extension of chaos, symbolized the disorder that preceded civilization.
The line of contact between the world’s constituent elements […] was where the Flood would mark its return and the chain of cataclysms be triggered. It was on this shore, more than anywhere else, that Christians could come and contemplate the traces of the Flood, mediate upon that ancient punishment, and experience the signs of divine wrath.
The nuclear age
- 1896 radioactivity of uranium discovered by Henry Becquerel
- term ‘radioactivity’ coined by Marie Curie, who with her husband Pierre discovers other radioactive elements (polonium, radium)
- 1938 discovery of nuclear fission by German chemists and physicists
- 1 September 1939: Germany invades Poland, beginning of WWI
- 1939 Einstein-Szilard letter to President Roosevelt: warning of potential development of a new type of bomb by Nazi Germany
- 1942-45 Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, New Mexico: under the direction of Robert Oppenheimer, scientists develop different types of nuclear weapons
- 8 May 1945 V-E Day: German surrender
- 16 July 1945: first nuclear test in Alamogordo, NM
- 6 August 1945: uranium-based bomb (‘Little Boy’) detonated above Hiroshima
- 9 August 1945: plutonium-based bomb (‘Fat Man’) detonated above Nagasaki
The cold war
- Nuclear arms race between USA and USSR
- From 1946, Bikini Atoll (Marshall Islands) becomes U.S. testing ground; native population relocated; in total, 67 nuclear tests
- Soviet atomic programme: first nuclear fission bomb tested in 1949
- 1954 thermonuclear bomb tested over Bikini Atoll (Bravo test) led to radiological disaster, contaminating 18,000 km2; 239 Marshall Island natives and 28 Americans were exposed to significant amounts of radiation
- 1946: two-piece bathing suit named after the atomic testing ground in the Pacific
What is Bikini Atoll?
- Island where the Nuclear tests happened in 1946
Why is it called Bikini?
- named after the Bikini Atoll by French designer in 1946
Sex bomb
Women’s bodies, more readily on display than ever before, became dangerous and tempting in magazine advertizements, even weaponized in competitions like the 1957 Miss Atomic Bomb champion.
What is the significance of the conjunction between a provocative bathing costume and nuclear armament, between the hot bikini and the cold war?
What does it suggest about gender roles in the 1950s?
- Distraction from the arms race
- Protecting the freedom
- Liberation –> opposite of communism
Paul Brians “Nuclear War in Science Fiction, 1945-59”
By 1954 nuclear war had become another tired SF cliché. But in the spring of that year fallout from the Bravo test in the Marshall Islands drifted unpredictably over a Japanese fishing vessel soon to become world famous as the “Lucky Dragon.” Worldwide concern over atomic testing built rapidly; and although the US government launched its Atoms for Peace counter-offensive amid great publicity the next year, public fears would continue to mount throughout the rest of the decade.
Some examples of Nuclear disaster fiction of the 1950s
- Cyril M. Kornbluth, Not This August (1955)
- John Windham, The Chrysalids (1955)
- Nevil Shute, On the Beach (1957)
- Charles Eric Maine, The Tide Went Out (1958)
- Walter M. Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959)
- Helen Clarkson, The Last Day (1959)
- Philip K. Dick, “Second Variety” and “The Defenders” (1953), The Penultimate Truth (1964)
Two types of behavior in On the Beach?
‘Carry on’ or reckless hedonism
On the Beach by Nevil Shute
- Naval officers do their duty with a stiff upper lip: Lieutenant- Commander Peter Holmes of the Royal Australian Navy, Commander Dwight Towers of U.S. submarine
- In denial: women, in general, Peter’s wife Mary in particular - “These bloody women, sheltered from realities, living in a sentimental dream world of their own!” (159)
- Courting a quick death: lethal car races (scientist John Osborne)
- Character development from ‘fast’ girl (in a bikini) to steadfast ‘good’ woman: Moira Davidson
Kate Sawyer, The Stranding (2021)
- Humankind is wiped out by an unspecified political catastrophe, probably nuclear war.
- As in On the Beach, life in the northern hemisphere is wiped out first. The lethal rays/conflagration spread fast to the south.
- In New Zealand, the English traveller Ruth and the Māori (?) Nik survive by hiding in the mouth of a stranded whale during the nuclear blast.
What was life like before the apocalypse in The Stranding?
- Post-industrial lifestyle
- Overproduction, waste
- Destruction of nature
- False, shallow life
- Toxic relationship
- Abortion
- Easy life, small luxuries
What was life like after the apocalypse in The Stranding?
- Hunting and foraging
- Careful use and preservation
- Dependence on nature
- Meaningful life
- True love
- Parenthood
- Hard work, deprivation
