Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction

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Re: Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction
Date:
March 23, 2007 8:53:38 AM PDT
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            Monte Davis:
            I remember vividly a day during the Cuban missile
            crisis of October 1962....

            Dave Monroe:
            Not quite old enough even to have NOT remembered those
            thirteen days, I can only imagine the wreck I'd've
            been had I been.  To my mind, that was the single most
            important moment in human history since we crossed
            over into sentience--we DIDN'T end life as we know it ...

It's a fadeograph on the yestern scene for me, but there were those 
stacked boxes of supplies against one wall of our schoolroom, 
canned food, bottled water and such. Nervous times, to say the least.

            Monte Davis:
            As a 1950s child and 1960s teenager, rocketry and
            SF fan, I swam in the cultural currents Brians
            traces: "duck and cover" exercises in primary
            school, "On the Beach" and "Alas, Babylon" and
            all that.

            Dave Monroe:
            I'm of the Planet of the Apes/Damnation Alley/The Day
            After/Testament (the single most devastating film I've
            ever seen, everybody involved in the arms race oughtta
            sit down an watch THAT) generation.  Meanwhile, in
            Marvel Comics, radiation was GOOD for you, sort of, so

Started John Hershey's "Hiroshima" when I was seven or eight, (yep, 
the Cuban missile crisis, yep, I was scared) got as far as the page
with the image of a clock whose hands have melted onto its face,
permanantly set for the time of the blast. We had those "kiss your ass 
goodbye" excersises at elementary school. Never really developed a
taste for atomic fictions, though spectulative fiction involving endtimes 
(or the threat of endtimes), such as Ursala K. LeGuin's "Lathe of Heaven"
and the movie "A.I." attracted my attention.