The Atomic Bomb And Science Fiction
The Influence Of Hiroshima On A Generation Of Authors
Mar 24, 2009
Suddenly the question of what the future might hold, the question of "what if", gained a horrible new importance. Now, instead of looking a thousand years ahead, humanity was looking at the hands of a Doomsday Clock that were edging closer to midnight.
“Atomic”: From Fictional Gimmick to Real Threat
Until then, the word "atomic" had been nothing more than a convenient gimmick in science fiction, a buzzword that provided power for everything from pistols to robots to spaceships. Although writer Cleve Cartmill had used a chain reaction atomic bomb in his 1944 science fiction story "Deadline", which led to the FBI investigating him due to concern over a possible breach of security on the Manhattan Project, he and co-researcher John W. Campbell were in no way aware of how closely they had duplicated the work of the scientists involved.
Once the atomic bomb had been used, Campbell's response as editor of Astounding, the premier science fiction magazine of the time, was one of validation at this scientific leap forward, a leap which proved that science fiction authors “were not such wild-eyed dreamers as had been thought”. However, in the years that followed, the greater number of science fiction authors treated the situation more in terms of its horrifying potential than its technological advantages.
The “What If” Reaction to the Atomic Bomb
Science fiction authors are almost unanimous in denying any role in predicting the future - the science fiction author begins with "What if..." rather than "When...". In the post-Hiroshima age, the spectres of atomic "What if" in science fiction are innumerable, and rarely positive. Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers features power-suited infantry blithely launching "pee-wee" atomic rockets as tactical weapons, but novels such as Nevil Shute's bleak masterpiece On the Beach with its inevitable creeping death by fallout is far more typical of the response to the atomic bomb and the tensions of the Cold War. Science fiction writers had gained an awful new authority as prophets of the end of the world.
Hand in hand with the immediate perils of thermonuclear Death, science fiction introduced the public to the other horsemen of the new Apocalypse: Fallout, Nuclear Winter, and Mutation. The latter provided heady fare for the filmmakers of the 1950's, with screens filled with shambling monstrosities of every shape, size and species.
Literary SF concentrated for the most part on the horrifying effects of radiation on human beings and the twisted parodies of humanity that might result, although not all writers painted with such a large brush. As an example, Ray Bradbury's story "There Will Come Soft Rains" quietly describes the exquisitely detailed silhouettes of a family etched into the side of their home by the flare of a nuclear explosion.
Different Times, Different Fears
Over sixty years after the Enola Gay opened its bomb bay doors over Hiroshima, the thought of impending nuclear apocalypse no longer weighs as heavily. This is a time of more subtle fears: terrorism, global warming, and AIDS. It would be ridiculous to claim that science fiction played any sort of real role in reducing the threat of death by "The Bomb", but the reality of that threat gave science fiction relevance as a genre that it might never have achieved otherwise.
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