The Nukes Of Hazard

(This is one of two blog posts discussing nuclear war depicted in cinema and television. The other one is about fallout shelter stories in the 2020s and was posted simultaneously.)

With the Cold War in full swing, and fears of nuclear catastrophe looming large, there was a moment in popular culture in which mainstream cinema and television grappled with what impacts an atomic war might really have on humankind.

From the perspective of cinema, the 1980s were the golden age of nuclear war. 

There was a time in the 1980s when nuclear war
felt very present on television screens and theatres.
(Image via New Yorker)

There had of course been movies about atomic warfare prior to the 1980s — Dr. Strangelove and Fail Safe to name two — though these had mostly to do with the political decision-makers and military types responsible for launching the weapons. There had been movies set in the decades after such a conflict (A Boy And His Dog or Mad Max as examples), but they mostly didn’t engage with or depict the actual bombs dropping.

Over the course of only a few years, mainstream audiences around the world were inundated with horrifying on-screen attempts to realistically portray a fully nuclear global conflict. Lynne Lyttman directed Testament for PBS in 1983. Within the same month, ABC’s The Day After hit screens. Less than a year later, the BBC offered the bleakest take on the subject with Mick Jackson’s Threads. In 1984, Canada’s CTV made Countdown to Looking Glass, a mock news broadcast showing how a nuclear war would appear to TV viewers. In 1986, Jimmy Murakami offered a small-scale view of nuclear war in his animated film When The Wind Blows. In the Soviet Union in 1986, Konstantin Lopushansky depicted survivors of a nuclear war in the basement of a museum in his film Dead Man’s Letters.

What made this flourishing of nuclear cinema unique was that these are depictions not of how the atomic war might have happened, but about what impact such a catastrophe would have on everyday people — people like those watching the movies.

Prior to the 1980s, the likely and potential consequences of nuclear war had been suppressed by governments. The British Government blocked the distribution of Peter Watkins’ 1966 movie The War Game, in which he tried to accurately depict what atomic warfare would mean for everyday citizens (the movie would not in fact be aired by the BBC until the 1980s). Information, when it was shared at all, focused on the blast and its effects on the immediate vicinity, not on the consequences to the globe and to populations removed from the impact sites. 

With When The Wind Blows, Jimmy Murakami
attempted to show the toll that nuclear war
would have on a pair of senior citizens.
(Image via BBC) 

There were numerous scientific and journalistic reports over the course of the late 1970s and early 1980s that completely reshaped how the public imagined nuclear war. The SCOPE report (Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment), specifically SCOPE 28, detailed the catastrophic and potentially extinction-level ecological and agricultural environmental consequences of nuclear war. Hugo-winning author Carl Sagan in 1983, brought the concept of nuclear winter (in which global climate is fundamentally altered by dust in the atmosphere) to the public's attention. 

By the end of the decade a combination of factors — the cooling of the Cold War, and increased public awareness of the global effects of such a conflict — nuclear war seemed both less likely, and less survivable. (If nobody survives a conflict, there would be no more stories to tell in its wake.)

In a tangible way, these films are amongst the most important science fiction movies ever made. Then-president Ronald Reagan later said he had watched The Day After, and been inspired to reach out to his Soviet counterpart to begin talks about nuclear disarmament. Threads is credited with turbo-charging the British anti-nuclear campaign. Russian State Broadcaster Первая программа broadcast The Day After in 1987, making the unusual concession to the American director that they would not change a word in their translation. In the subsequent decade, the policy results could be seen: the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in 1991 limited the number of nuclear weapons hoarded by the two superpowers. It was followed by additional limitations in 1994, and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty in 1996.

The explosion of nuclear war cinema in 1980s film might seem like and odd obsession for younger audiences, but examining them provides a window into the concerns and preoccupations of that time, as well as a warning about the inability of governments to stick to peaceable agreements.

We would suggest that a related explosion of screen storytelling will help audiences decades from now understand who we are in the 2020s.

Bunker Mentality

(This is the second of two blog posts discussing nuclear war depicted in cinema and television. The other one is about a flourishing of Atomic War fiction in the 1980s and was posted simultaneously.)

From Philip K. Dick’s The Penultimate Truth (1964) to Jeanne DuPrau’s City of Ember (2003), post-apocalyptic narratives set in bunkers often reflect how humans create, respond to, and survive authoritarian control and the destabilization of shared truths.

Say what you will about the shadowy builders of
Silo 18, they had a flair for brutalist architecture.
(Image via Apple+)

So what does it say about our present moment that there are three major television series all playing with the same trope?

• On the Apple+ TV series Silo, Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson) slowly begins to realize that citizens of “Silo 18,” the underground bunker in which she lives, are being deceived and that a shadowy cabal is manipulating the populace. 
• Over on Amazon Prime’s Fallout, Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell) sets out on a quest to uncover a conspiracy surrounding “Vault 33,” the underground bunker in which she was raised. 
• On Hulu’s Paradise, Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) investigates the mystery surrounding the construction of a post-apocalyptic bunker in which the last vestiges of the American government are now sheltering.

These fictional nuclear bunkers provide a relatively controlled environment for narratives about authoritarian systems of control being replaced by a more egalitarian system. These are stories in which protagonists live in a home that they did not choose, can not control, and from which they (at least in principle) cannot escape. Systems of coercion and control are baked into the very walls by which the citizens are surrounded, because those walls were designed and built at the behest of an unseen elite. Architectural features such as the levels of Silo 18 can be designed to keep one class of citizen separated from another class. Surveillance — either overt or covert — can both enable authoritarian policing and be used as a panopticon that motivates individuals to police themselves. 

Fallout depicts a society that relies on propaganda
and the manipulation of shared notions of history.
(Image via Amazon)

Fundamentally, these are all narratives about a distrust in institutions and in authority — and the hope that they can be overtaken and replaced with something that provides more integrity and more space for hope. The villain in Fallout isn’t the atomic weapons, it’s the shadowy elites who make decisions without regard to the consequences for the masses. This resonates with audiences living in an era of global declines in trust towards institutions, and each other. They can also be about the idea that mere survival isn’t enough, that we need to do better by one another even in the face of catastrophe.

In the modern context, these stories can serve as allegories for climate change. It’s been long observed that climate change affects those on the lower end of the economic spectrum more than it affects the more privileged classes and countries. Consequently, those making decisions at the top do not have as much skin in the game when it comes to dealing with carbon emissions, for example. Essentially, whether the world burns in nuclear fire or is cooked in a runaway greenhouse effect, those at the top of the economic pyramid will be able to hide away in their bunkers and preserve their privileged position. This is the narrative conclusion of Frederick Jamieson’s famous maxim that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism; the post-apocalyptic bunker story portrays the persistence of capitalism-derived hierarchies when all else is dust.

What makes these stories affecting is not just their dystopian premises, but how plausibly they mirror the realities experienced by today’s viewers. As climate anxiety grows and wealth inequality deepens, the idea that a select few might retreat into secured, climate-controlled sanctuaries while the rest of humanity suffers outside doesn’t feel like science fiction. Rather, it feels like a logical extension of gated communities and private police forces.

In Paradise, the connection between bunker and
gated community is made fairly explicit.
(Image via Hulu. 

You don’t have to look hard to find real-world parallels: from billionaire bunkers in New Zealand to Silicon Valley doomsday preppers investing in underground shelters, the fantasy of survival for the elite is already in motion. The bunker trope is a narrative reflection of this quiet but chilling shift in priorities for the privileged classes. Elon Musk’s pipe dream fantasies of building underground slave colonies on an uninhabitable planet seem strangely benign and kind when compared to the prepper billionaires preparing for the depopulation of our current planet.

Fundamentally however, the current crop of bunker-mentality television shows reflect a world where escape is privatized and survival is monetized. Perhaps audiences turn to these shows for a glimmer of hope, since they all seem to argue that those in power can not perpetually escape the consequences of their decisions.

The Alien Conquest of Brighton (Hugo Cinema 1987)

This blog post is the thirtieth in a series examining past winners of the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo Award. An introductory blog post is here.

It had been an unusually cool August in Brighton, the English seaside town that hosted the 45th World Science Fiction Convention. But on the day of the Hugo Award ceremony the weather had turned pleasant.

The Brighton Metropole Hotel, site of the 1987 
Hugo Awards. (Image via Doubletree.com)

The event was held at the Brighton Metropole Hotel. It was possibly one of the most architecturally significant venues ever to host the Hugos, having been designed by Alfred Waterhouse, who was famous for the Natural History Museum in London and Strangeways in Manchester.

The ceremony had to conclude by 10 p.m. sharp, owing to timed fireworks that would conclude the Worldcon. This meant short shrift for categories without acceptors in attendance. Per usual, there was nobody present to accept the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, but the win for Aliens was greeted by the audience with a robust cheer. It had won by a considerable margin.

Some weeks after the ceremony, Hugo Administrator Paul Kincaid stopped by the offices of 20th Century Fox and left the Hugo trophy with the receptionist.

It was an eclectic and interesting year for science fiction and fantasy film, with numerous and impressive titles failing to make the shortlist. The Park Plaza Mall was terrorized by security robots in Jim Wynorski’s send-up of Regan-era capitalism Chopping Mall. Autobots and Decepticons battled it out in the first — and best — big-screen outing for the Transformers. A rural British couple faced the aftermath of a nuclear war in Jimmy Murakami’s animated movie When The Wind Blows. And in the Russian movie Dead Man’s Letters, a scientist huddled in the basement of a decimated museum trying to imagine what he’d say to his son.

Clancy Brown is a memorably
great villain in Highlander.
(Image via IMDB)

A surprising omission from the shortlist is Russell Mulcahy’s Highlander, a stylishly directed epic about immortals destined to fight each other to the death. Although it was not particularly successful in the cinemas, the movie had decent buzz within fandom, and has held up better than most movies of the era. Mulcahy, who had a background as a music video auteur, took a rock-and-roll sensibility to the direction and livened up the editing with thoughtful transition wipes. It is impressive how clear and easy the movie is to follow given that the narrative is told in two parallel tracks, following the protagonist Connor McLeod (Christopher Lambert) in the present day in one and in the 1700s in the other. Notably, the soundtrack was by Queen, and featured several top-charting hits. Highlander is one of the most technically accomplished SFF films of the year, despite a leaden and hammy performance by Christopher Lambert.

But to be fair, there’s only really one movie on the 1987 shortlist for Dramatic Presentation that probably doesn’t belong there: Labyrinth, Jim Henson and Brian Froud’s follow-up to The Dark Crystal. Like many other Henson productions, the movie has some charm and is visually appealing, but the story meanders and blunders from event to event with little direction. Featuring David Bowie as the Goblin King, the movie is oddly paced with what little plot there is interrupted by largely irrelevant musical numbers. It does get some points for being the only non-remake, non-sequel movie on the shortlist in 1987.

Labyrinth was one of two musicals on the shortlist, which was the only time multiple musicals were shortlisted for the Hugo in the same year. Little Shop of Horrors (adapted from a Broadway play based on the 1960 Roger Corman movie of the same name) could be considered the first Kaiju movie ever shortlisted for a Hugo Award. It’s filled with top-tier talent (such as Rick Moranis, Steve Martin, John Candy, and Jim Belushi) and has an incredible amount of energy in the first half, leaving the second act in, well, second place. There was a fair amount of disagreement in our viewing club, with some of the viewers complaining that the music was “very Boomer,” and that the lead actress Ellen Greene was cloying in her theatrics.

Evil alien plant Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors
was voiced by Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops.
(Image via Letterboxd)

David Cronenberg’s The Fly is one of the few cinematic remakes that is generally considered to have outshone the original. Set almost entirely in the apartment and laboratory of scientist Seth Brundle (a young Jeff Goldblum), it centres on his relationship with journalist Veronica Quaife (an even younger Geena Davis) as an experiment causes him to slowly transform into a human-fly hybrid. The movie is carried by two truly terrific lead performances, and viscerally disturbing body horror. In another year, it might have competed for the trophy, but 1987 was a very strong year.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home came in second in the final vote, and it’s easy to understand why. With the crew time travelling back to 1980s Earth to save humpback whales and humanity, it’s probably the most unserious of all Star Trek movies. It was, however, also one of the most engaging to watch, especially for those in our cinema club who are not hard-core Trekkies. This would have been at, or near the top of most of our ballots despite some dated gender dynamics in the (somewhat forced) romance between captain James T. Kirk and marine biologist Dr. Gillian Taylor (Catherine Hicks).

But the winner for Best Dramatic Presentation in 1987 was never in doubt. It’s easy to see why Aliens — the sequel to 1979’s Hugo-winner Alien — earned more than twice as many votes as its nearest competitor on the shortlist. The sequel sees Ripley return to the alien-infested planet, this time with marines and massive firepower. Much like the Hugo ceremony in 1987, it ends with fireworks. Aliens is a truly exceptional action movie that counterpoints the isolating horror of the original.

YASSSS QUEEN! Hashtag #Slay!
(Image via IMDB)

What is really stunning to see with the benefit of hindsight is just how efficiently written Aliens is, and the technical skill evident in the craftsmanship. Characters are introduced in as few lines of dialogue as possible, and yet seem fleshed out and real; as an example a female marine named Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein) has fewer than a dozen lines in the movie, but connects with the audience. It’s also worth noting that the pace of editing in Aliens is beyond anything contemporaneous audiences were used to, using almost twice as many cuts per minute than anything else on the Hugo shortlist that year. The overall effect is a percussive, and deeply engaging action movie that puts science fiction at the forefront.

The Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation was just finishing its third decade in existence, and was now clearly one of the most popular categories with voters. More votes were cast with Aliens as a top choice than had been cast in the entire Fan Artist category that year, for example. The award had come into its own, and did it in style by recognizing a movie that is inarguably the best of the year.

The Ones Who Walk Away From Hogwarts

Warning: Semi-Spoilers Contained Within

There is a trope in genre literature set in a wizarding academy that long predates Harry Potter. However, most books published over the past two decades that lean on this setup seem to be responding in some way to Hogwarts and to J.K. Rowling.

The Incandescent by Emily Tesh
(Image via Goodreads)

Lev Grossman’s excellent The Magicians trilogy used the premise of Brakebills Academy for Magicians to play with the lack of character development in the Harry Potter novels, suggesting that magic — like wealth and power — allows young men to remain emotionally undeveloped and callow.

In Magic For Liars, Sarah Gailey introduces Osthorne Academy of Young Mages, which provides an exploration of the classism, gender essentialism, and racial undertones of the British elite private school system on which Hogwarts is modelled.

There have been magical academy stories set in Stryxhaven Academy in Magic: The Gathering, and depictions of magical departments in Scholomance, Oxford, Cambridge, and Yale. There are literally dozens of similar stories published in the past few years, most of which seem like reflections and responses to the Harry Potter cultural juggernaut.

And so we come to Chetwood School, the setting for Emily Tesh’s recent novel The Incandescent. A novel which is likely to be on our Hugo nominating ballots. 

Like many wizarding schools, it’s located in England, is steeped in the British class system, and is modelled on boarding schools such as Eton and Wycombe Abbey. But rather than introduce the reader to the school through the eyes of yet another gifted kid, magical prodigy, or child of prophecy, Tesh offers readers the perspective of one of the teachers, Dr. Saffy Walden.

Walden — a former student at the school — heads up Chetwood’s department of magical pedagogy. Now in her late 30s, she leads a comfortable, if stunted, life. Her work is her passion, and her activities rarely stray from the confines of the school.

The early chapters provide terrific and well-thought-out details about how the protagonist navigates the magical academy. Walden worries about pedagogy, and how to keep the interest of easily distractible students. Magic is more like the humanities than an applied science, it turns out, with few students pursuing it at the post-secondary level. Walden’s believer syndrome encourages her most gifted student to continue studying magic because a good degree will open doors, whatever major one selects. The mundanity of these details, and the effortless way they are conveyed to the reader helps make the setting more believable.

There are long portions of the book that seem to meander, and it’s difficult to figure out if the narrative will add up to much more than a day-to-day slice of life at this elite institution. Even once the main villain is revealed, there’s a lack of immediacy about the conflict. Despite the lack of tension and obvious plotting, the general well-roundedness of the main characters kept us engaged.

One satisfying element of the novel — one that’s often missing from other magical academies — is that the primary antagonist has a compelling and believable motivation. Although we would wager that few readers have met someone resembling Voldemort, the villain of The Incandescent is someone we have all met in our day-to-day lives.

Dr. Saffi Walden — much like many 30-somethings in the real world — has spent decades obsessed with a magical academy for young wizards. But over the course of the novel, she realizes that obsession has stifled her personal growth, and that the academy has a darkness that should be avoided.

There are those who stay obsessed with Hogwarts … and there are those who simply walk away. The Incandescent is a perfect novel for the latter.