Name: The Kraken Wakes
Rating: 3.666666666666667 (6 reviews)
ISBN: 9780140010756

John Wyndham

The Kraken Wakes

It started with fireballs raining down from the sky and crashing into the oceans’ deeps. Then ships began sinking mysteriously and later ‘sea tanks’ emerged from the deeps to claim people . . . For journalists Mike and Phyllis Watson, what at first appears to be a curiosity becomes a global calamity. Helpless, they watch as humanity struggles to survive now that water – one of the compounds upon which life depends – is turned against them. Finally, sea levels begin their inexorable rise . . . The Kraken Wakes is a brilliant novel of how humankind responds to the threat of its own extinction and, ultimately, asks what we are prepared to do in order to survive.

Tim Pendry

'The Kraken Wakes' has stood the test of time even though it is very much of its time - including the satire on the Cold War politics of the early 1950s, on industrial relations, on the media, its pre-Suez belief in the British Empire as a viable superpower and the gender relations. It is also a very fine science fiction horror which has the human race thrown back into pre-industrial civilisation by a threat from the skies which mimics the trajectory of 'War of The Worlds' from beginning to end but has the aliens be new masters of the ocean deeps. This should be a Lovecraftian theme but there is no trace of the American master. It is a very British dystopia with much controlled emotion, naval discipline and wry humour while the gender aspect shows the masculine and feminine as different but equal - with the feminine often far the cleverer. The protagonists, two journalists balancing duty to country and humanity against getting the news out and being very responsible about it too, start off being much like the Myrna Loy and William Powell characters in 'The Thin Man', a general trope of mid-century popular movies. However, this moves on with the story until what we have is not only a satire and a science fiction adventure but a rather good popular novel with believable characters. The core of the novel seems 'real' even if the carapace surrrounding it is fantastic and satirical in turns. There is, of course, the influence of the war and international confrontation but not in any didactic sense. The politicians and special interests do their thing and the communists are absurd but humanity is saved ultimately by boffins and the discipline of the Royal Navy. The faith in boffins is very much of that curious period when boffins (basically the scientific community) were heroes of the hour, given a great deal of credit for beating the Nazis, and were regarded as dogged thinkers who would eventually come up with the solution to any problem. In the end (though it is the very end), they do. This spirit of boffindom is exemplified by the character of Professor Bocker (who perhaps shares genetic code with Challenger and Quatermass) who sticks to his guns as a rational actor amidst the usual hysteria of a media-driven free society. There is some serious excitement in the well constructed story, divided into three parts, like novella, covering the three phases of the invasion - the descent from the skies (well in 1950s tradition), the invasions of the land and the rising of the tides. We never see the aliens but we get a strong impression of their nature. Human contact with them is filmic in its presentation. The 'Escondido raid' could easily be an extended scene from one of the better British war films (also popular in the 1950s). The science is plausible for the time. The atom bomb is just a tool rather than a threat just for existing. The whole story is an extension into fantasy of the existential threat of the Second World War with the same ethos of necessary and accepted ruthlessness on both sides. At one point Professor Bocker gives an account of what is necessary - that ruthless exterminatory enemies require exterminatory methods in return - that might well shock the modern reader but which was the mentality of the final bombing raids on Germany. This was also a steeling of the people emotionally for a response to Soviet expansion if it ever came to that. With the atom bomb uninventable, the British Empire might have to use it and in force and so such bombs are automatically deployed against the threat from the Deeps. The satirical aspects of the tale may make the Soviets absurd in their ideology (good-humouredly so, in the same vein as national socialism had been ridiculed a decade earlier) but they are also directed at the home front. Bosses and workers are treated with equal cynical good humour as are politicians and media barons. Ordinary journalists and the middle classes just doing their job with a sense of duty to the nation are the implicit heroes. The masses are in danger of going brute under pressure. Interestingly, the armed forces are never treated in this way - there is still the respect accorded them (which remains to this day in British culture) for winning not only the last war but the next one and the one after that. Politicians are despised, the armed forces never. The cultural bias could have come straight out of the 1926 General Strike as much as the Second World War. The basis of the nation and of the empire is the educated middle class, science, sound administration and the armed forces. It is what will restore civilisation. How very English! Written after the 'Day of the Triffids' (1951) and before 'The Chrysalids' (1955) and 'The Midwich Cuckoos' (1957), Wyndham produced a line of exemplary English science fiction in the 1950s even if his approach was possibly justifiably critiqued as 'cosy catastrophe' by Brian Alldiss. But it was much more than that. Wyndham captures a peculiarly English sense that a somewhat muddle-through but functioning system was highly vulnerable not to internal but to external inhuman threats, metaphors for post-war and post-imperial anxiety about the 'other'. He was actually a child, in terms of science fiction, of the American pulps where he targeted his short stories so what we see is a marriage of American and British styles reintroducing science fiction as a relatively serious expression of British concerns traced through the decade. Britain at that time was learning that it was not an imperial superpower (exemplified by the fiasco at Suez in 1956) and it was not even a very strong economy. Winning the war proved to have given no benefit and American partners were becoming American overlords. 'The Kraken Wakes' is at the beginning of that trajectory and is worth reading for getting the 'feel' of the time from an accomplished writer who had had wide experience of life. [Incidentally, the cover art for the current series of Penguin Editions of Wyndham's work must be the worst I have ever seen for failing to capture the spirit of the contents. The reasoning process of the publishers here is beyond my comprehension]

Sarah Sammis

Giant squids have been inspiring horror stories for as long as man has taken to the seas. Since the development of science fiction, the kraken has moved from threat of the deep to threat from the skies. The Kraken Wakes begins a visitation from space but sinks to the deepest oceans where a threat lingers misunderstood and ready claim the seas and the shoreline from mankind.

It sounds like a great premise but the story is rather too ponderous. It takes forever for things to get moving. The main characters, reporters from a rival to the BBC don't know enough about what's happening to be credible or interesting first hand witnesses to this invasion. The best and most horrific part of the book is the cover art which reminds me of how Eric Carle would illustrate Call of Cthulhu.

Here is my BookCrossing Review
Apparently the world ends with people living on tiny islands surrounded by hostile creatures; it's the same ending that Wyndham used in Day of the Triffids. The Kraken Wakes has a very similar narrative, that of a man recording the events that lead up to him living on an island surrounded by hostile creatures, in a book report fashion. There is very little in terms of character development or drama. The Watsons are so dispassionate through the entire book that I frankly didn't care what happened to him.

There are a few good scenes, like the initial landing of the fire balls (presumably pods from space), the attacks on the islands and the flooding of London. Unfortunately these scenes were hidden among long and boring laundry lists of mundane events.

This reads like a news report 80% of the time that reading it is such a chore /sigh. Yang menarik, our main married journalist couple's so so cute, ada pirate chase di Indo, dan penasaran nunggu krakennya keluar. I feel like Wyndham's trying hard to build up the suspense, but it just couldn't work this time, not in this concept, style and tone. It's kind of boring honestly.

'Ingenious, horrifying' - Guardian It started with fireballs raining down from the sky and crashing into the oceans' deeps. Then ships began sinking mysteriously and later 'sea tanks' emerged from the deeps to claim people . . . For journalists Mike and Phyllis Watson, what at first appears to be a curiosity becomes a global calamity. Helpless, they watch as humanity struggles to survive now that water - one of the compounds upon which life depends - is turned against them. Finally, sea levels begin their inexorable rise . . . The Kraken Wakes is a brilliant novel of how humankind responds to the threat of its own extinction and, ultimately, asks what we are prepared to do in order to survive.

Classic Science Fiction

Sofia Blomqvist Rytters

Dani

I was about to write a simple review but it would be full of repeated statements by other users, I found a review by User ‘Apatt’ which I agree with 100%
So that’s it, another nice old timey sci-fi story.

The Kraken Wakes

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