(First published 1962. Edition show here: HarperCollins/Ecco, trade paperback, 1999, 286pp.)
Here’s another book that begs categorization; is it really science fiction? I’ve grouped this book with two previously discussed, Pat Frank’s ALAS, BABYLON and Nevil Shute’s ON THE BEACH, because each involves nuclear war in some fashion. And since nuclear war is about the most drastic kind of change that the human race might ever experience, it fits into our broad take of science fiction being about the effects of change on the human race.
In Frank’s novel, the war happens on stage, so to speak, during the course of the story. In Shute’s, it’s happened a year or so before the story begins. In this book — well I should avoid the big spoiler, which applies to the very end.
There’s more technology in this book than in the other two, though it’s contemporary technology of the time, and was unfamiliar to anyone outside military circles.
Summary
During a routine scramble of air force fleets that are constantly poised to strike at the Soviet Union if necessary, a “return” signal to one fleet is lost. The fleet flies on, to Moscow. All attempts to recall the fleet, or even shoot it down, fail. Military protocols designed to prevent the Soviets from mimicking such signals, even mimicking the voices of the President or one of the pilot’s wives, require that the fleet fly on.
The action follows the military in the US, including the President, to do everything they can think of to recall the fleet and prevent it from bombing Moscow. That could trigger a nuclear holocaust. Spoiler: they do not succeed, but that’s not the biggest spoiler.
Notes
In the 1964 movie version, the president of the US is very effectively played by Henry Fonda, cool and measured and determined. He should have been nominated, at least, for an Oscar. He shared many scenes with pre-I Dream of Jeannie Larry Hagman, playing a Russian translator the president needs once he gets on the phone with the Soviet premiere. The other most prominent actor is Walter Matthau, playing a cynical academic theoretician who speculates what the Soviet response might be to any particular outcome.
The early chapters of the book are curious because they commit what critics tell writers not to do, especially science fiction writers: info-dump. In this book the info-dumps are pages and pages at a time of background on particular characters. The translator about his casual genius speaking Russian and how he ended up at the White House; the academic about his differences with other experts of nuclear policy. These sections serve the book well, because once the tension starts mounting, you understanding why, given these backgrounds, the different characters react the way they do.
Particular scenes
The movie follows the book closely. With a couple exceptions. There’s a scene in the movie in which the wife of one of the pilots is put on the phone to plead that he return; it’s not in the book. And for years I’ve had a false memory about what triggers the malfunction that prevented the fleet from returning. In the book, it’s a burned fuse in an electronics console at just the moment someone has lit a cigarette, so no one smells the fuse. In the movie, it’s a large module replace dropped into a console that somehow doesn’t connect. What I thought I’d remembered, before watching the movie a second time some years ago, was that a paper computer tape, spooling underneath a console, got tangled up on itself and didn’t feed where it should have gone. Was that memory from something else?
The end (the real spoiler)
As we come to understand in the early scenes, military and academic men had debated nuclear war strategy for decades. The US developed a No First Use policy; it would launch only if the Soviets struck first. Mutually assured destruction: once begun, it would be hard to stop a worldwide nuclear conflict, so trying to unilaterally destroy the Soviet Union would simply trigger automated missiles to destroy the United States. But what about accidents, as in this story? We hear some of these debates in book and movie, especially involving the Matthau character. In the war room one of the generals goes berserk, in a sense, figuring that if they can’t stop the one bomb, they might as well launch all the bombs and wipe out the Soviets anyway, whatever the risk. The decision ultimately lies with the President, who finds another solution, drawing on a Biblical parable. (I’m still not going the spell that out.)
Would that solution work? I doubt it would. But it makes for a startling, dramatic finish to both the book, and the film.
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Once again, for all that MAGA folks are nostalgic for the 1950s, in a significant way that era was a time of constant apprehension, knowing that at any moment nuclear could break out, and that the world might not survive it. There were other novels than the three I’ve covered; there were episode of The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone; there were those TV movies in the 1970s, like “The Day After,” that some piece I linked to recently discussed.
And it’s still there. Nuclear missiles are still in their silos, and surely the technology for monitoring the other side, and strategies for how to handle any situation, are as discussed and debated as they were in the 1950s and ’60s
