The Kraken Wakes

''The Kraken Wakes'' is an apocalyptic science fiction novel by John Wyndham, originally published by Michael Joseph in the United Kingdom in 1953, and first published in the United States in the same year by Ballantine Books under the title ''Out of the Deeps'' as a mass market paperback. The title is a reference to Alfred Tennyson's sonnet '' The Kraken''.

Plot

The novel describes escalating phases of an invasion of Earth by aliens, as told through the eyes of Mike Watson, who works for the English Broadcasting Company (EBC) with his wife and co-reporter Phyllis. A major role is also played by Professor Alastair Bocker – more clear-minded and far-sighted about the developing crisis than everybody else but often alienating people by telling brutally unvarnished and unwanted truths. Mike and Phyllis are witness to several events of the invasion, which proceeds in drawn-out phases; it takes years before the bulk of humanity even realises that the world has been invaded. In the first phase, objects from outer space land in the oceans. Mike and Phyllis happen to see five of the "fireballs" falling into the sea, from the ship where they are sailing on their honeymoon. Eventually the distribution of the objects' landing points – always at ocean depths, never on land – implies intelligence.

The aliens are speculated to come from a gas giant and thus can only survive under conditions of extreme pressures in which humans would be instantly crushed. The deepest parts of the oceans are the only parts of Earth in any way useful to them and they presumably have no need or use for the dry land or even the shallower parts of the seas. Bocker puts forward the theory that the two species could co-exist, hardly noticing each other's presence. Humanity nevertheless feels threatened by this new phenomenon – particularly since the newcomers show signs of intensive work to adapt the ocean deeps to their needs. A British bathysphere is sent down to investigate and is destroyed by the aliens with the loss of two lives. The British government responds by exploding a nuclear device in the same location. The aliens' technology proves formidable and an American attack ends in disaster. Humanity is not united in the face of the mounting threat because of the Cold War, with the two sides often attributing the effects of the alien attacks to their human opponents or refusing to co-operate because of their different political ideals.

Phase two of the war starts when ships all over the world begin to be attacked by unknown weapons and are rapidly sunk, causing havoc to the world economy. Shortly after, the aliens also start "harvesting" the land by sending up biological "sea tanks", which capture humans from coastal settlements, for reasons that are never made clear; the Watsons witness one of these assaults on a Caribbean island. These attacks are eventually met with sufficiently strong retaliation from humanity that they become far less frequent.

In the final phase, the aliens begin melting the polar ice caps, causing the sea level to rise. London and other ports are flooded, causing widespread social and political collapse. The government moves to Harrogate. The Watsons cover the story for the EBC until the radio (and organised social and political life in general) ceases to exist, whereupon they can only try to survive and escape a flooded London, using an acquired motor boat to a Cornish holiday cottage which, due to the floods, now exists on an island. Other coastal countries are also disastrously affected – there is a reference to masses of Dutch refugees fleeing into Germany, having "lost their centuries-long war with the sea". Ultimately, scientists in Japan develop an underwater ultrasonic weapon that kills the aliens. The population has been reduced to between a fifth and an eighth of its pre-invasion level and the world's climate has been significantly changed, with water levels 120 feet higher than before.

Plot narrative

Even at the end, humans have no clear idea what their opponents looked like. The most they have is some protoplasm which floated to the surface of the sea after the ultrasound weapon was used. As stated in the book by the protagonist, the book aims to demonstrate that an alien invasion of Earth could take a very different form from that in ''The War of the Worlds''; publication of the book coincided with the release of 1953 film ''The War of the Worlds'', an adaptation of H. G. Wells

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