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 alien invasion; as told - with quite a bit of wry humour, even when describing manifestly non-humorous situations - through the eyes of Mike Watson, who works for the fictional English Broadcasting Company, and his wife and co-worker 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 the public far more than they are capable of absorbing at a given moment.

Mike and Phyllis tend to witness the major events, such as they are, but there are no heroic deeds of a mankind fighting for survival. Unlike in H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds", to which an explicit comparison is made in the first chapter, it takes years before humans realize at all 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 - an exciting moment for everyone on board, but nobody realizes that they have witnessed the beginning of an invasion from space. Eventually the distribution of the objects' landing points - always at ocean deeps, never on land - implies intelligence.

It is suggested in the early parts that conflict may not have been inevitable. The aliens appear to come from a gas giant, and 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 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.

However, humans are nevertheless disturbed and feeling threatened by this new phenomenon on their world - particularly since the newcomers show signs of intensive work to adapt the ocean deeps to their needs, and there are even indications of their digging a tunnel deep underground to connect the Atlantic and the Pacific, in effect their own version of the Panama Canal.

A British bathysphere is sent down to investigate, and is destroyed by the aliens. The British government reacts rashly and rather unwisely - as remarked by protagonists at the time - by exploding a nuclear device on the spot, under the guise of "testing" it (an act not yet forbidden, at the time the book was written, by the Test Ban Treaty).

As it turns out, the aliens have many more means of getting at the humans than the other way around. Moreover, humanity is not united in the face of the mounting threat - the Cold War between West and East is at its height, with the two sides often suspiciously attributing the effects of the alien attacks to their human opponents.

Phase two of the war starts with ships being attacked, causing havoc to world shipping, and the British are humbled to realize "how easily we have been driven off the oceans" (the book was written at the time when, in real life, they had to get used to no longer being an empire). Shortly after, the aliens start 'harvesting' the land by sending up 'sea tanks' which capture humans from seaside settlements, for reasons that are never made clear. The fate of those captured is equally unexplained, but in the Western world, the focus of the narrator, the attacks were eventually met with retaliation so that "...their percentage of losses mounted and their returns diminished".

In the final phase, Phase Three, the aliens begin melting the ice caps, causing sea levels to rise. London and other ports are gradually flooded (the government promptly relocates to Harrogate), causing widespread social and political collapse. The same happens in many other countries - for example, the Dutch flee the Netherlands when it becomes clear that they had "...lost their centuries-old struggle with the sea."

The Watsons cover the ongoing developments of this 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, humanity (specifically Japan) develops an underwater ultrasonic weapon that kills the aliens. However, the world population has been reduced to less than a fifth of its level before these events.

Throughout the book the aliens remain unseen; everything we know about them is inferred from their actions. The most that is learned is that, once they have been killed, "large masses of organic jelly" float to the surface of the sea.

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."^[1] In F&SF, Boucher and McComas selected the novel as one of the best sf books of 1953, describing it as "humanly convincing";^[2] they praised the novel as "a solid and admirable story of small-scale human reactions to vast terror."^[3] P. Schuyler Miller found this novel superior to The Day of the Triffids, citing its "characteristic, deceptive quietness."^[4] 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."^[5] One newspaper reviewer, however, was less impressed, declaring that the novel's pace "is that of a slightly superior snail," making the reader impatient.^[6]

References

1. ^ "Galaxy's 5 Star Shelf", Galaxy Science Fiction, April 1954, p.119
2. ^ "Recommended Reading," F&SF, March 1954, p.93.
3. ^ "Recommended Reading," F&SF, April 1954, p.72.
4. ^ "The Reference Library", Astounding Science Fiction, September 1954, p.152
5. ^ "Spaceman's Realm", The New York Times Book Review, July 10, 1955, p.15
6. ^ "Time and Space", Hartford Courant, February 7, 1954, p.SM19

External links

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

Bibliography

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