MarzAat

Raw Feed (2005): Out of the Deeps, John Wyndham, 1953. 

Wyndham is often referred to as the founder of the “cosy catastrophe” sub-genre, a peculiarly British institution.  He is also said to epitomize post-World War II British fears. This is the first of his disaster novels I’ve read unless you wanted to stretch the point and call his The Midwich Cuckoos a disaster of alien invasion/hybridization. You could also see that novel as a metaphor for the unease of the World War II generation for their youngsters.

You can definitely call this a cosy catastrophe novel. Slickly narrated, this novel is presented as history being written by a radio reporter which allows him to present a personal encounter with the kraken and yet briefly summarive the invasion’s effect on the world and engage in lots of foreshadowing. The aliens who invade Earth, colonize the sea, and make incursions onto coastal areas are never referred to as krakens, but the novel’s original British title, The Kraken Wakes, suggests the word)

The cosiness comes in because, though the narrator and his wife narrowly escape being killed by the krakens in the Caribbean, we don’t get any closeup looks at famine victims, people battling for survival supplies, the triage of survivors, and the struggle for survival that makes the disaster and post-apocalypse sub-genres so compelling. (Wyndham — who wrote sf starting in the 1930s under a variety of names and quite successfully retooled his identity when he changed his pseudonym with The Day of the Triffids — paved the way for John Christopher whose disaster novels are far less cozy.)

We get those things, but the narrator and his wife survive in relative comfort compared to Britain’s woes.  It is those woes, Britain the naval power being denied (with virtually every other nation — though it is strongly hinted at novel’s end that the kraken will be defeated) the use of the sea, that could serve as a metaphor for Britain’s post-war dis-ease.  (Another unexpected sign of this is the complaint of the narrator and a citizen that the government — just like in World War II — doesn’t trust its citizens with weapons to defend themselves.)

The afterword says Wyndham was heavily — and obviously — influenced by H. G. Wells and quotes him as saying “our reader is seeking entertainment rather than cramming for an exam in physics” which explains why he postulates an implausibly high level of sea level rise when the kraken melt the polar ice caps (however the cooling of climate is more plausible due to change of ocean currents and increased fog). This is a more glaring error to modern sf readers who have heard many scientific estimates of the degree of sea level change due to global warming than it probably was to contemporary readers.

Still, the aliens were interesting. Of course, Wyndham follows the tradition of trashing his hometown, specifically London. Having actually been to London, I got more out of the book than I would have otherwise.  Of course, the destruction of London is another echo of Well’s The War of the Worlds. [Update: It’s possible Wyndham was inspired by H. G. Well’s “The Sea Raiders“.]