My previous post was about Philip Wylie’s 1954 novel, Tomorrow!, about a nuclear attack on the United States, which ends with massive retaliation wiping out two-thirds of the population of the Soviet Union. It reminded me of a 1947 short story, Thunder and Roses, by Theodore Sturgeon, a less renowned, but more gifted and original, writer, also about the United States in the aftermath of a nuclear attack.
In Sturgeon’s story, the United States was wiped out in a first strike, and the remnants of the population are doomed to die by radiation poisoning. The means of retaliation still exist, however, if someone can find them. The result, however, would be to raise the total level of background radiation to such a level as to destroy all life on other. A beautiful and beloved singer and movie star is traveling across what’s left of the USA to try to persuade the survivors to not retaliate.
She begins her performance with her signature song, which is a reminder of all the reasons that life is worth living.
When you gave me your heart, you gave me the world
You gave me the night and the day
And thunder, and roses, and sweet green grass
The sea, and soft white clay
I drank the dawn from a golden cup
From a silver one, the dark
The steed I rode was the wild west wind
My song was the brook and the lark
With thunder, I smote the evil of earth
With roses, I won the right
With the sea, I washed and with clay I built
And the world was a place of light
She then makes her plea against taking justified revenge.
The spark of humanity can still live and grow on this planet. It will be blown and drenched and shaken and all but extinguished, but it will live if that song is a true one. It will live if we are human enough to discount the fact that the spark is in the custody of our temporary enemy. Some—a few—of his children will live to merge with the new humanity that will gradually emerge from the jungle and the wilderness.
The protagonist then discovers the secret missile installation from which massive retaliation can be launched. His best friend tries to fire the missiles. The protagonist (apparently) kills him to stop him, destroys the installation so that the missiles can never be launched and then sits down to die.
“You’ll have your chance,” he said into the far future. “And, by Heaven, you’d better make good.”
A decade later the anti-war Russell-Einstein manifesto called upon the peoples of the world to “remember your humanity and forget the rest.” Philip Wylie’s novel Tomorrow!, which describes a U.S. victory through nuclear genocide, is a reminder that the best of us can forget our humanity. Theodore Sturgeon’s novel reminds us that it is always possible to remember your humanity.
