Nuclear War & Disaster-related Materials
I spent a decade researching the subject of nuclear war fiction, attempting to read every short story, novel, or play about nuclear war or its aftermath written in or translated into English. The total came to over 1400 items. This research resulted in a book published by Kent State University, an op-ed piece in the New York Times, many articles and papers, and many speaking engagements, including my participation in the conference of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War in Moscow during the period when Gorbachev had initiated the new opening to the world called glasnost. This in turn eventually led me to a connection with Lyubov Sirota, who after living through (and being severely injured by) the Chernobyl reactor explosion, wrote about the experience in a series of powerful poems and a novel.
Having read my fill of post-apocalyptic fiction I want to make clear that I am not a fan. I was trying to study how people think about the possibility of nuclear war and possibly do my bit to move the discussion away from the American focus on these weapons.
What is on this site is a sampling of that work. For a more complete list, see my Vita.
- Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction
- Nuclear Texts & Contexts
- Nuke Pop Popular culture images of nuclear war
- Terminator vs. Terminator: Nuclear War as a Video Game
- Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and the Dystopian Tradition
- Vladimir Gakov & Paul Brians: Nuclear-War Themes in Soviet Science Fiction: An Annotated Bibliography
- The Chernobyl Poems of Lyubov Sirota