From the Ashes: Society and Economy in Nuclear Literature

Cordle, Daniel

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-51308-3_6

Daniel Cordle²

535 Accesses

Abstract

The 1980s were characterised by deep divisions between supporters and opponents of the neoliberal reforms of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. The social and cultural schisms these disagreements produced run through literature of the period. Discussing works by Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, Don DeLillo and Tim O’Brien, amongst others, the chapter shows how depictions of contemporary society map nuclear concerns into these broader social anxieties. It then turns to several fictions set after nuclear war, including novels by Louise Lawrence, Ursula Le Guin, Paul Cook, Robert Swindells and Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka, which use the trauma of nuclear destruction to project contemporary socio-economic theories into the future and explore how new kinds of society might emerge.

We must not, regardless of our politics, continue to imagine that we can protect or save an economic system by accepting the possibility of nuclear war. In the ashes communism and capitalism…will be indistinguishable. They will also be indistinguishable and irrelevant in the ultra-primitive struggle for existence of those who are so unfortunate as to survive.

J.K. Galbraith, “Economics of the Arms Race” (1981)

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Chapter: USD 29.95; Price excludes VAT (USA)

eBook: USD 54.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Softcover Book: USD 69.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Hardcover Book: USD 109.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

1.
The book is described in its prefatory pages as “a project undertaken with the Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Council for a Livable World Education Fund”. Adams and Cullen, The Final Epidemic, vi (Adams and Cullen Adams and Cullen 1981).
2.
The historian Paul Boyer raises questions about the efficacy of what he sees as Caldicott’s scare tactics, in, “The Battle for Public Opinion in the 1940s and 1980s”, an article first published in 1986 in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and reprinted in his book Fallout, 167–174.
3.
Helen Caldicott, “Introduction”, in Adams and Cullen, The Final Epidemic, 1 (Adams and Cullen 1981).
4.
H.J. Geiger, “Illusion of Survival”, in Adams and Cullen, Final Epidemic, 177 (Adams and Cullen 1981).
5.
Geiger, “Illusion of Survival”, 178 (Adams and Cullen 1981).
6.
Geiger, “Illusion of Survival”, 179 (Adams and Cullen 1981).
7.
Threads, BBC 2, 23 September 1984 (Threads 1984).
8.
Bernard Lown, “The Physician’s Commitment”, in Adams and Cullen, Final Epidemic, 237 (Adams and Cullen 1981).
9.
George B. Kistiakowsky, “Preface”, in Adams and Cullen, Final Epidemic, ix (Adams and Cullen 1981); Victor W. Sidel, “Buying Death with Taxes: Impact of Arms Race on Health Care”, in Adams and Cullen, Final Epidemic, 35, 37, 37–38 (Adams and Cullen 1981); J. Carson Mark, “Nuclear Weapons: Characteristics and Capabilities”, in Adams and Cullen, Final Epidemic, 102 (Adams and Cullen 1981); Anon, “International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War”, in Adams and Cullen, Final Epidemic, 243 (Adams and Cullen 1981).
10.
Anon, “Threat of Nuclear War”, The Lancet, 15 November 1980, 1061 (Anon 1980: 1061).
11.
It is not a consensus in the sense of being universally accepted (quite the contrary, as some of my comments in this book may indicate); it is the consensus in the sense that it became the dominant paradigm. Paradoxically, then, it is an imposed consensus: an assumed “natural” state of affairs through which the “reality” of the free market has subsequently often been taken as a given. For an introduction to some of the problems with this model, see Chang, 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism (Chang 2011) and Klein, The Shock Doctrine (Klein 2008).
12.
Barbara Goodwin, The K/V Papers (London: Pluto, 1983), 26 (Goodwin 1983).
13.
Galbraith, “Economics of the Arms Race”, 53.
14.
Galbraith, “Economics of the Arms Race”, 57.
15.
Galbraith, “Economics of the Arms Race”, 49 (Adams and Cullen 1981).
16.
Also worth reading for its depiction of the 1980s milieu is Jonathan Coe’s excoriating satire on Thatcherism, What a Carve Up! (1994).
17.
Ian McEwan, The Child in Time (London: Vintage, 1992), 72, 133 (McEwan 1992).
18.
Martin Amis, London Fields (London: Vintage, 2003), 30, 43, 116, 173 (Amis 2003b).
19.
Amis, London Fields, 64 (Amis 2003b).
20.
Amis, London Fields, 24 (Amis 2003b).
21.
Amis, London Fields, 35 (Amis 2003b).
22.
Amis, London Fields, 251 (Amis 2003b).
23.
Amis, London Fields, 255 (Amis 2003b).
24.
Amis, London Fields, 113 (Amis 2003b).
25.
Amis, London Fields, 442 (Amis 2003b).
26.
McEwan, Child in Time, 25 (McEwan 1992).
27.
Margaret Thatcher, Speech to Conservative Party Conference Speech (9 October 1987), <http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106941> [accessed30 July 2015].
28.
McEwan, Child in Time, 1 (McEwan 1992).
29.
McEwan, Child in Time, 2 (McEwan 1992).
30.
McEwan, Child in Time, 181 (McEwan 1992).
31.
McEwan, Child in Time, 25 (McEwan 1992).
32.
McEwan, Child in Time, 25 (McEwan 1992).
33.
McEwan, Child in Time, 36 (McEwan 1992).
34.
Daniel Cordle, States of Suspense: The Nuclear Age, Postmodernism and United States Fiction and Prose (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), 103–106 (Cordle 2008).
35.
Don DeLillo, White Noise (London: Picador, 1986), 84 (DeLillo 1986).
36.
DeLillo, White Noise, 84 (DeLillo 1986).
37.
Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka, Warday and the Journey Onward (London: Coronet, 1985), 17–18 (Strieber and Kunetka 1985).
38.
Strieber and Kunetka, Warday, 215 (Strieber and Kunetka 1985).
39.
Strieber and Kunetka, Warday, 109 (Strieber and Kunetka 1985).
40.
Strieber and Kunetka, Warday, 91 (Strieber and Kunetka 1985).
41.
Strieber and Kunetka, Warday, 151 (Strieber and Kunetka 1985).
42.
Strieber and Kunetka, Warday, 50–51 (Strieber and Kunetka 1985).
43.
Strieber and Kunetka, Warday, 152 (Strieber and Kunetka 1985).
44.
Striber and Kunetka, Warday, 126 (Strieber and Kunetka 1985).
45.
Strieber and Kunetka, Warday, 127 (Strieber and Kunetka 1985).
46.
Robert Swindells, Brother in the Land (London: Puffin, 2000), 8.
47.
Swindells, Brother in the Land, 20 (Swindells 2000).
48.
Swindells, Brother in the Land, 26 (Swindells 2000).
49.
Swindells, Brother in the Land, 121 (Swindells 2000).
50.
“Panorama: If the Bomb Drops”, YouTube <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=milbW4RDIco> [accessed 22 June 2016].
51.
Duncan Campbell, War Plan UK (London: Burnett, 1982), 15 (Campbell 1982).
52.
Swindells, Brother in the Land, 74–75 (Swindells 2000). The name resonates with Martin Amis’s 1987 description of nuclear weapons as “Masada weapons”—in other words as mass suicide weapons, echoing the legend of the Siege of Masada, in which defenders of the Massada fortress kill themselves rather than accept defeat by the Roman army. Martin Amis, “Introduction: Thinkability”, in Einstein’s Monsters, 26.
53.
Swindells, Brother in the Land, 122 (Swindells 2000).
54.
Swindells, Brother in the Land, 138 (Swindells 2000).
55.
Louise Lawrence, Children of the Dust (London: Lions Tracks, 1986), 76 (Lawrence 1986).
56.
Lawrence, Children of the Dust, 84, 76 (Lawrence 1986).
57.
Lawrence, Children of the Dust, 86 (Lawrence 1986).
58.
Lawrence, Children of the Dust, 96 (Lawrence 1986).
59.
Lawrence, Children of the Dust, 126 (Lawrence 1986).
60.
Lawrence, Children of the Dust, 127 (Lawrence 1986).
61.
Lawrence, Children of the Dust, 128 (Lawrence 1986).
62.
Lawrence, Children of the Dust, 127 (Lawrence 1986).
63.
Lawrence, Children of the Dust, 144 (Lawrence 1986).
64.
Lawrence, Children of the Dust, 141 (Lawrence 1986).
65.
Paul Cook, Duende Meadow (Toronto: Bantam, 1985), 94 (Cook 1985).
66.
Cook, Duende Meadow, 204 (Cook 1985). This contrasts with the “martial law” imposed by the Hive when emergency threatens. Cook, Duende Meadow, 207 (Cook 1985).
67.
Cook, Duende Meadow, 206 (Cook 1985).
68.
McIntyre, Dreamsnake, 113 (McIntyre 1979). That the man is “beautiful” rather than “handsome” itself signals a realignment of gendered expectations.
69.
McIntyre, Dreamsnake, 157 (McIntyre 1979).
70.
McIntyre, Dreamsnake, 156 (McIntyre 1979).
71.
McIntyre, Dreamsnake, 25 (McIntyre 1979).
72.
McIntyre, Dreamsnake, 276 (McIntyre 1979).
73.
McIntyre, Dreamsnake, 50 (McIntyre 1979).
74.
Ursula Le Guin, Always Coming Home (London: Grafton, 1988), 195, 30 (Le Guin 1988).
75.
Le Guin, Always Coming Home, 31 (Le Guin 1988).
76.
Le Guin, Always Coming Home, 112 (Le Guin 1988).
77.
Le Guin, Always Coming Home, 349 (Le Guin 1988).
78.
Le Guin, Always Coming Home, 351–352 (Le Guin 1988).
79.
See discussion of Le Guin in Chapter 4 for other dimensions of this scene.
80.
Le Guin, Always Coming Home, 20, 351 (Le Guin 1988).

Bibliography

Adams, Ruth, and Susan Cullen, eds. 1981. The Final Epidemic: Physicians and Scientists on Nuclear War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Google Scholar
Amis, Martin. 2003b. London Fields. London: Vintage.
Google Scholar
Anon. 1980. Threat of Nuclear War. The Lancet, November 15: 1061.
Google Scholar
Campbell, Duncan. 1982. War Plan UK. London: Burnett.
Google Scholar
Chang, Ha-Joon. 2011. 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism. London: Penguin.
Google Scholar
Cook, Paul. 1985. Duende Meadow. Toronto: Bantam.
Google Scholar
Cordle, Daniel. 2008. States of Suspense: The Nuclear Age, Postmodernism, and United States Fiction and Prose. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Google Scholar
DeLillo, Don. 1986. White Noise. London: Picador.
Google Scholar
Forman, James D. 1984. Doomsday Plus Twelve. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Google Scholar
Goodwin, Barbara. 1983. The K/V Papers. London: Pluto.
Google Scholar
Klein, Naomi. 2008. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. London: Penguin.
Google Scholar
Lawrence, Louise. 1986. Children of Dust. London: Lions Tracks.
Google Scholar
Le Guin, Ursula. 1988. Always Coming Home. London: Grafton.
Google Scholar
McEwan, Ian. 1992. The Child in Time. London: Vintage.
Google Scholar
McIntyre, Vonda N. 1979. Dreamsnake. London: Pan.
Google Scholar
Strieber, Whitley, and James Kunetka. 1985. Warday and the Journey Onward. London: Coronet.
Google Scholar
Swindells, Robert. 2000. Brother in the Land, New edn. London: Puffin.
Google Scholar
Threads. UK: BBC, 1984.
Google Scholar

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, United Kingdom
Daniel Cordle

Authors

Daniel Cordle
View author publications
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Copyright information

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Cordle, D. (2017). From the Ashes: Society and Economy in Nuclear Literature. In: Late Cold War Literature and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51308-3_6

Download citation

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51308-3_6
Published: 29 October 2016
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-51307-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-51308-3
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics