The Kraken Wakes

The Kraken Wakes
Cover of first edition (hardcover)
Author(s)	John Wyndham
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre(s)	Science fiction
Publisher	Michael Joseph
Publication date	July 1953
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	288 pp
ISBN	N/A
Preceded by	'The Day of the Triffids'
Followed by	'The Chrysalids'

The Kraken Wakes is an apocalyptic science fiction novel by John Wyndham, originally published by Michael Joseph in the UK in 1953 and first published in the US in the same year by Ballantine Books under the title Out of the Deeps as a mass market paperback. The title is a reference to Alfred Tennyson's sonnet The Kraken, which describes the Scandinavian sea monster.

Plot

The novel describes escalating phases of what appears to be an invasion of Earth by never-seen aliens, as told through the eyes of Mike Watson, who works for the English Broadcasting Company with his wife and co-reporter Phyllis. A major role is also played by Professor Alastair Bocker – more clear-minded and far-sighted about the developing crisis than everybody else, but with the habit of telling brutally unvarnished and unwanted truths.

Mike and Phyllis are witness to several major events of the invasion, which proceeds in a series of drawn-out phases; it in fact takes years before the bulk of humanity even realize that their world has been invaded.

In the first phase, objects from outer space land in the oceans. Mike and Phyllis happen to see five of the "meteors" falling into the sea, from the ship where they are sailing on their honeymoon. Eventually the distribution of the objects' landing points – always at ocean deeps, never on land – implies intelligence.

The aliens are speculated to come from a gas giant, and thus can only survive under conditions of extreme pressures in which humans would be instantly crushed. The deepest parts of the oceans are the only parts of Earth in any way useful to them, and they presumably have no need or use for the dry land or even the shallower parts of the seas. In theory, the two species could have co-existed indefinitely, hardly noticing each other's presence.

Humanity nevertheless feels threatened by this new phenomenon – particularly since the newcomers show signs of intensive work to adapt the ocean deeps to their needs. A British bathysphere is sent down to investigate, and is destroyed by the aliens. The British government responds by exploding a nuclear device on the spot.

As it turns out, the aliens have more means of getting at the humans than the other way around; a similar American attempt ends in disaster. Moreover, humanity is not united in the face of the mounting threat – the Cold War between West and East is well under way, with the two sides often suspiciously attributing the effects of the alien attacks to their human opponents, to the point the invasion threatens to trigger a nuclear exchange.

Phase two of the war starts when ships all over the globe begin to be attacked by unknown weapons and are rapidly sunk, causing havoc to the world economy. Shortly after, the aliens also start 'harvesting' the land by sending up biological 'sea tanks' which capture humans from seaside settlements, for reasons that are never made clear; the Watsons witness one of these assaults on a Caribbean island. These attacks are eventually met with enough retaliation from the various human militaries that "...their percentage of losses mounted and their returns diminished".

And so, in the final phase, the aliens begin melting the polar ice caps, causing sea levels to rise. London and other ports are inexorably flooded (the government relocates to Harrogate), causing widespread social and political collapse. The Watsons cover the ongoing story for the EBC until the radio (and organized social and political life in general) cease to exist whereupon they can only try to survive and escape a now-flooded London.

At the end, scientists in Japan develop an underwater ultrasonic weapon that kills the aliens. However, the global population has been reduced to between a fifth and an eighth of its pre-invasion level, and the world's climate has been unalterably changed.

As stated by the protagonist in the book itself, the book aims to demonstrate that an alien invasion of Earth could take a very different form from that in "The War of The Worlds"; publication of the book coincided with the release of 1953 film "The War of the Worlds", an adaptation of H.G. Wells' classic work which at the time got considerable attention in the general public and among science fiction fans in particular.

Reception

Groff Conklin, reviewing the American edition, characterized the novel as "sheer melodrama, sure, but melodrama spiced with wit [and] with pungent commentary on human foibles... A truly satisfying shocker." In F&SF, Boucher and McComas selected the novel as one of the best science fiction books of 1953, describing it as "humanly convincing"; they praised the novel as "a solid and admirable story of small-scale human reactions to vast terror." P. Schuyler Miller found this novel superior to The Day of the Triffids, citing its "characteristic, deceptive quietness." New York Times reviewer J. Francis McComas similarly noted that while the novel was "somewhat quieter in tone" than Triffids, it would "nevertheless exert an even more lasting effect on the imagination." One newspaper reviewer, however, was less impressed, declaring that "[The novel's pace] is that of a slightly superior snail," indicating that this novel may make the reader impatient.

External links

• Review by Jo Walton, including comments on other cozy catastrophes.

Bibliography

• Wyndham, John (1953), The Kraken Wakes (1st ed.), London: Michael Joseph .
• ——— (1953), Out of the Deeps (1st US ed.), New York: Ballantine .
• ——— (1955), The Kraken Wakes (1st Penguin ed.), London: Penguin .
• ——— (1970), The Kraken Wakes, London: Penguin, ISBN 0-14-001075-0 .