On a friend’s recommendation, I recently read the 1953 sci-fi book The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham. It takes place around the time it was written, a few years after WWII, and the main characters are British, though the action is global in scope. The book shows its age rather less than I expected, and in many ways seems startlingly relevant to, and even predictive of, today’s world.

I’m going to attempt to elucidate those relevances without any spoilers.

Human nature, for one, hasn’t changed, though seeing this statement in stark print makes me want to renege on it. I think human reactions, at least, may have changed a lot since sometimes between the unhappily named Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions; fodder for another blog, perhaps. In any case, these characters are on the same side of that line as we are, and like us, most of them must be forced to make necessary changes, like relocating in the face of threats or changing behavior demonstrated to cause harm. After the bombing starts, after the bad diagnosis, that’s when we react.

Politicians in the book, from every country, respond to unfolding events almost exclusively based on their positions on the Cold War, which has nothing to do with what is going on. For the Americans, for instance, the disruptions are clearly Russian mischief-making, while the Russians indignantly reject any solutions of Western origin as capitalist infiltration. That reminds me of another book I’m reading about schismogenesis, possible future blog topic two.

One event in this book is melting of the polar ice packs, though it has nothing to do with climate change, and in fact happens much faster. The author seems to have predicted the effects of this quite accurately, and just as now, people have trouble imagining how it will influence their lives until it does.

Authorities in the government and the military, working with the press, try to curate the information available to the public, for many reasons, including preventing panic and inducing compliance. That’s much more easily done than now, without Wikileaks or Anonymous or social media or even personal computers.

One of the main characters is a scientist who does a very good job of figuring out what is going on, but the news is so bad–and to be fair, so extraordinary–that both the public and press not only don’t believe him, but also vilify him. Dr. Fauci redux.

Some aspects of the book don’t resonate today. Other than the character mentioned in the last paragraph, scientists are completely trusted by almost everyone. General complacency shelves action for years because folks are certain the scientists will take care of the problem. As things worsen, there is some disgruntlement because the government should be doing something. I actually remember when Americans for the most part trusted science and expected the government to solve problems, but this part of the book is clearly a period piece.

Given that this book is mainly set in the UK, there is an interesting sideline about weapons ownership, with people grousing that the government won’t give them access to bazookas as well as sidearms so they can to defend themselves. This sounds quite current for the US–well, we already have access to all that stuff, but people complain we might lose it–but I wonder whether folks in the UK feel that way, then or now.

Mainly I am left with one searing image that is predictive in its own way: The concept of trawling for humans, with the method, the implementation, the terror and disruption, and the tortured deaths of the captured depicted in horrific detail. Humans have deployed trawlers since the 1800s, and now we use cathedral-sized nets, so the results may be even more devastating than the author imagined. These scenes are making me rethink seafood more than Seaspiracy ever did.