Under the Shadow

In Pat Franks 1959 novel Alas, Babylon, the character Helen says of her children: All their lives, ever since theyve known anything, theyve lived under the shadow of waratomic war. For them the abnormal has become normal. The threat of nuclear annihilation was a constant source of dread during the Cold War, and in Under the Shadow, author David Seed examines how authors and filmmakers made repeated efforts in their work to imagine the unimaginable. Seed discusses classics of the period like Nevil Shutes On the Beach, but he also argues for recognition of less-known works such as Walter M. Millers depiction of historical cycles in A Canticle for Leibowitz, Bernard Wolfes black comedy of aggression in Limbo, or Mordecai Roshwalds satirical depiction of technology running out of human control in Level 7. Seed relates these literary works to their historical contexts and to their adaptations in film. Two prime examples of this interaction between media are the motion pictures Fail-Safeand Dr. Strangelove, which dramatise the threat posed by the arms race to rationality and ultimate human survival. Seed addresses the attempts made by characters to remap America as a central part of their efforts to understand the horrors of the war. A particular subset of future histories is also examined: accounts of a Third World War, which draw on the conventions of military history and reportage to depict probable war scenarios. Under the Shadow concludes with a discussion of the recent fiction of nuclear terrorism.