Nostalgia, Nuclear War and Navel-Gazing: An Introduction to NUKE OPERA 2020
Reposted from my blog, Doomsday Writer; originally posted January 8, 2020Nostalgia:
This is the year I turn fifty and like a lot of people do when they find themselves approaching the half-century mark, I’ve found myself turning introspective and more than a bit nostalgic for the years of my childhood.
[1]Of course, being me and having spent the majority of my formative years in the 1980s, one of the things that fuels a lot of my introspection and nostalgia is nuclear war. The other is science fiction. So, guess what we’re going to be talking about over the next however many blog posts?
I was twelve when I first discovered science fiction – for the definition of ‘discovered’ that boils down to ‘became aware of the fact that this thing I liked had a name.’ Prior to that age, I’d been absorbing science fiction for years, mostly through cartoons like
Space Ghost and
Johnny Quest (the 1960s one); TV shows like
Quark and
Buck Rogers (the 1980s one); and, of course, movies like
War of the Worlds (the 1950s one) and
Star Wars (the 1970s one). Really, science fiction was something I grew up surrounded by and didn’t really notice, for much the same reason fish probably don’t notice water.
But it was at twelve that I discovered that science fiction came in book form and never looked back. Exactly when and where I was when this happened, I can’t remember. I believe, though, the first book that sparked my sense of wonder was
The Weapon From Beyond, the first book in Edmond Hamilton’s
Starwolf trilogy. Though it might also have been
Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper. Or maybe the
Northwest Smith stories by C.L. Moore or maybe…well, suffice to say, once I was hooked, I was
hooked.
I was thirteen when I first learned about nuclear war – for the definition of ‘learned about’ that includes ‘became aware of the fact that this thing that could kill me and everyone I knew was a thing.’ Prior to that age, I’d likely heard about the bomb – after all, there’s a scene in
War of the Worlds (1953) where the U.S. Government attempts to nuke the Martians with no real success – but the idea that nuclear war was a thing that could/would happen outside of a movie had escaped me until that day in 8th grade history class.
Over the course of my K-12 school career, I was very lucky to have three teachers who helped spark my interest in history. Mrs. Pamphile in the 5th grade, who turned history into stories; Mr. Herodotus in high school whose approach was more like a college lecture but who still managed to keep me interested in US and World history. (Not that this was exactly difficult, since even back then I enjoyed lectures.)
[2]And then, in 8th grade, there was Mr. Newburgh who was the kind of history teacher every kid should have. During a unit on World War I, Mr. Newburgh came in dressed as a doughboy; for a unit on the Great Depression, he had us play stock market so we could get a better feel for how/why the market crashed. He also talked to us about He combined the best of Mrs. Pamphile and Mr. Herodotus, using stories and facts to help make the past come alive for us.
Nuclear War:
Exactly when he taught us about nuclear war, I can’t recall. I want to say it was in the fall, but it might have been spring – the 8th grade history classroom, at that time, was a windowless concrete box with no windows to the outside so I don’t even have vague memories of the weather to go by.
As part of his lecture, Mr. Newburgh gave us all handouts about fallout patterns and taught us that if, say, Chicago to the west or Grissom Air Force Base to the south were hit, we could expect to receive some of the fallout. Since this was about 36 years ago, I don’t remember much more of what he said though I do remember Mr. Newburgh being sincerely angry that the Carter administration had made some sort of an agreement that had increased our risk of being wiped out by the Soviet Union. I remember being taken aback in part because this was the first I’d heard of this and because I’d rather liked President Carter.
[3]Like I said, I don’t remember much of the lecture, but I do remember that it wasn’t particularly scary or really even anything I thought about very much – at least, not then. Of course, part of the reason I didn’t think much about it was because at thirteen, I wasn’t paying all that much attention to the news at the time.
[4] Since this was the latter half of the Cold War, at a time when tensions between the US and the Soviet Union were ramping up to levels not seen since the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis, my lack of awareness about the state of the world was probably a good thing.
That said, it was still an unescapable bit of conventional wisdom that World War III was pretty much a given; that it was a question of
when, not
if the nukes would fly. Hell, even to this day I’m periodically honestly amazed that it didn’t happen – especially now that I’ve read into some of the actual history of the time and just how close we came to having World War III happen by accident. Hell, in 1983 alone we had two incredibly close calls within the space of about two months.
Speaking of 1983, that was the year I found an old hardback copy of
The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, Third Series on one of the bookshelves at my house. The book was an anthology featuring exactly what it said on the tin: stories from
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction that were considered the best for the year of 1953.
Among the stories collected in that volume was Ward Moore’s
Lot, a story that skirted the edge of science fiction since it was clearly set in the then-present day of the early 1950s. The only speculative element was that the United States had been bombed by the Soviets and our protagonist and his family were reacting to those attacks by trying to flee to safety. It’s the first story I can remember reading that dealt with the immediate aftermath of a nuclear attack and it gripped me – though, I didn’t quite grasp the ending at the time. In fact, I don’t think I fully “got” it until I read the sequel,
Lot’s Daughter, in college.
Despite the point of the story going so far over my head that it was likely in Low Earth Orbit,
Lot sparked an interest in fictional depictions of nuclear war and led to me seeking out other examples of the subgenre, which eventually led me to Harlan Ellison’s
A Boy and His Dog (as collected in
The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World). Like with
Lot a lot of the story went over my head, but I was caught up by the world Ellison created. In part, I think, because it reminded me of other post-apocalyptic worlds I was exploring at the time.
Navel-Gazing:
Keep in mind, I was very much at an age where I reading indiscriminately and not everything I got my grubby little hands on was a classic work of science fiction with literary aspirations.
[5] This was a time in history when paperback originals were readily available on racks at newsstands, drug stores and grocery stores. Even in my hometown, which lacked a McDonalds, let alone a bookstore, there were several stores where a kid with some disposable income could find something to read. There was also a resale store in a nearby town that sold stripped paperbacks (yes, I know reselling stripped paperbacks is awful and horrible but as a teenager who wanted cheap books, all I knew was that ten cents a book was a damn good deal).
I don’t remember how old I was when I first discovered that subgenre of cheesy, post-apocalyptic men’s adventure novels that I’ve dubbed
Nuke Operas, but I know that the first series I read was either
Doomsday Warrior by Ryder Stacy or
Endworld by David Robbins. Going by publication dates, which means I discovered these books at some point between 1984-1985, or when I was around 14 or 15. (One of the nice things about being born in 1970, it makes the mathematics of my personal timeline a whole heck of a lot easier).
You would think that reading about the world being destroyed would have ramped up my anxiety but I don’t recall that it did. I think the reasons for that are two-fold. For one thing, I wasn’t reading a lot of these books – I didn’t have the access or the disposable income to be able to buy them when they were new and the resale shop wasn’t getting them consistently.
For another, there was a strange kind of comfort in reading these stories. The idea that survival after a nuclear was possible, even if that survival likely wouldn’t be easy, was strangely soothing. Also, the cheesier books were exactly what they were supposed to be: entertaining adventures that expected you to sit back, relax and enjoy the ride, nothing more, nothing less.
I stopped reading nuke operas shortly before I went off to college in 1988 mainly because of a lack of access and a lack of interest. While I was in college, the Cold War ended and I didn’t think about World War III or those cheesy paperbacks of my childhood until about 2009 when I was walking through a Barnes and Noble and saw a familiar looking series title:
Endworld: The Fox Run by David Robbins. I picked up a copy, thinking it’d be fun to revisit those cheesy days of yore.
And it was. And it wasn’t. The book was definitely still cheesy and kind of fun, but there were things missing from the story. Or, more correctly, there were things that I noticed now that I didn’t – even couldn’t – have noticed back when I first encountered these books. Some things, like slipshod world building, could be forgiven – after all, these books were meant to be the literary equivalent of a Syfy channel original movie, not a textbook on post-nuclear survival. Other things, like the casual racism and sexism, were less easily overlooked.
Being a writer, I decided I was going to write my own version of a cheesy post-apocalyptic men’s adventure novel (I hadn’t coined “nuke opera” back then), but I’d write the sort of story that I wish my younger self would have been able to find. One with worldbuilding that made sense and that featured female characters in roles other than victim/prize for the hero. And that still had mutants and silly, super-scientific things because, c’mon, you have to have fun, right?
[6]Of course, to be able to understand a genre, I’d need to read more than just one book, right? I’d need a decent sample size to get a handle on common tropes and to find things I would want to riff on and play with. So I decided to collect examples of every cheesy post-apocalyptic men’s adventure series from this time period. That this would also mean I could delay actually writing the project was just a side bonus and purely unintentional. Honest.
Checking out used book stores and hunting online, I managed to collect examples from roughly 30 different series, hunting down at least the first book in each series. In some cases, especially when a series was only 3-5 books long, I picked up all of them. In one case, that of Ryder Stacy’s
Doomsday Warrior, I not only have all nineteen books in the series but also have all nineteen audiobook adaptations done by
Graphic Audio (
A Movie In Your Mind
).
[7]I also did some digging into critiques or studies of this genre of fiction, but didn’t find much. The closest thing I found to a review of nuke operas was in Paul Brians’
Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction, which is an online edition of the book version, which was published in 1987 and is now out of print. Brians’ bibliography of atomic war in fiction helped me track down series titles and was and is an indispensable resources. As are Brians other atomic war related research, available at
Nuclear War & Disaster-related Materials.
I’ve also found series and reviews of individual titles at review sites dedicated to pulp novels/paperback originals. Some of my favorites include:
Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to find the resource I really want, which is a study/deep dive into Nuke Opera books along the lines of Bill Pronzini’s book-length studies of “alternative classic” (i.e. bad) mystery novels (
Gun in Cheek,
Son of Gun in Cheek) and Westerns (
Six-Gun in Cheek). Not to mention, Grady Hendrix’s look at horror paperbacks in the 1970s-1980s ,
Paperbacks from Hell and his reviews at
Book Reviews of the Damned. Or Gabrielle Moss’s
Paperback Crush. And, last but by no means least, Beyond Heaving Bosoms, Smart Bitches, Trashy Books’ review of the romance novel genre.So, since I can’t find what I want, I’m going to have to make it myself. That’s what this blog series is going to be. Toward that end, here’s an incomplete listing of what I want to do with these blog posts:
- First and Foremost: is to review several books and stories that are linked by a common theme, including some that I feel haven’t gotten the kind of critical attention they really should have.
- Secondly: To talk about the history of nuclear weapons, civil defense and popular culture’s responses to the possibility of World War III.
- Thirdly: to actually accomplish something I’ve been wanting to do for years now: produce a final product. I’ve been working on writing, focusing on fiction and have yet to actually finish anything. This year, I’m going to take a stab at working on a non-fiction project and setting smaller, more accomplishable goals in hopes of achieving something.
Toward that end, I’m planning on attempting at least one post a week. Some posts will be book reviews (and some of those will be multi-part); others will be on aspects of Cold War history. I’ll also be looking at books that aren’t themselves nuke operas, but which I feel are important to the subject.
Footnotes:
- [1]:Please note: my recollections of this time are not exact; unfortunately, I was not one of those kids who kept a diary, so don’t expect documentary-style accuracy when it comes to my personal recollections. When it comes to actual historical things that I can look up, the accuracy is going to be a lot better.
- [2]: I changed the names of my teachers because I’m from a really small town and it just feels kind of squicky to out my teachers, even if I’m talking about them positively. The names I’ve given them are references to famous historians because I’m that kind of nerd. Though, how cool would it have been to have a history teacher named Herodotus?)
- [3]: I’d voted for him in my first-grade class’s mock presidential election back in 1976 because Carter liked peanuts and I liked peanuts. (I was six.)
- [4]: When I was around fifteen or so, I did become a lot more anxious about nuclear war and the possibility of it actually happening. Though, I do think that was more in response to other things going on in my life at that time that were making me anxious. Kind of like, I couldn’t think about those other things, so all the anxiety got directed toward nuclear war because that was something I could deal with more easily.Oddly enough, I can actually remember when those fears went away. It was while I was watching Spies Like Us (1985). The movie was a comedy featuring Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd as bumbling spies who accidentally launch a nuclear weapon but end up saving the day because the plot demanded it. It wasn’t a good movie; it’s most lasting claim to fame might be the fact it was a plot point in an episode of Family Guy back in 2009. But, for some reason, seeing the characters prevent World War III helped ease my fears and I walked out of the theatre feeling as if a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Not bad for a film that only has a 32% on Rotten Tomatoes.
- [5]: For a given definition of “classics” that is meant to draw a distinction between stories/novels that were written for the literary side of the genre market, as opposed to stories/novels like Endworld and Doomsday Warrior that were written to be cheap, fast entertainment.
- [6]: If you’re interested in this still-theoretical book, check out my Defcon tag, wherein you can see a lot of navel gazing on the subject of writing/typing up various drafts; the work is, like most of my fiction, currently a Work In Progress.
- [7]: My
List of Things to Buy When I Win The Lottery, Despite Not Playing the Lottery
includes obtaining the Graphic Audio version of entire run of the long-running Deathlands nuke opera series, which ran to 125 books in print and is being continued by Graphic Audio as audiobook exclusives. Currently, the series is at 136 titles and is available for ‘only’ $3,681.64 in the MP3 CD format. Y’know, if anyone would like to get me a 50th birthday present, just sayin’.
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Originally posted at: Nostalgia, Nuclear War and Navel-Gazing: An Introduction to NUKE OPERA 2020, January 8, 2020
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oldtoadwoman selected were: post-cyberpunk, tom corbett space cadet, walter emerson
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