''Implosion'' is a
science fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
novel by British writer
D. F. Jones
Dennis Feltham Jones (15 July 1918 – 1 April 1981) was a British science fiction author who published under the name D.F. Jones. He was a Royal Navy commander during World War II and lived in Cornwall.
His first novel, ''Colossus'' (1966), a ...
, published in 1967, set in a
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
just attacked by an unnamed minor
Eastern Bloc
The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed du ...
country. The weapon used, 'Prolix', is a chemical sterilant, that, once ingested, renders most women sterile.
The protagonists are the
Minister for Health, Dr. John Bart, M.D., and his wife Julia; he soon finds his Ministry is the most important government entity in the new, post-attack Britain, while his wife is one of the country's few remaining fertile women. In the end, as the Minister for Health, Dr. Bart finds himself creating a new society where fertile women are herded to
concentration camps, to spend the rest of their lives reproducing.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world are shooting Prolix at each other, gradually reducing their populations to Britain's circumstance. At story's end, mankind learns that the genetic quirk that kept some women fertile allows them to only bear boys, thus dooming humanity to extinction.
External links
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1967 British novels
1967 science fiction novels
Post-apocalyptic novels
Novels by D. F. Jones
Rupert Hart-Davis books
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