Wyndham (John) The Kraken Wakes

London, Michael Joseph, 1953.

First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, price-clipped.

With a title inspired by Tennyson’s poem ‘The Kraken’, this clever invasion tale keeps the antagonists hidden under the waves, with only their abysmal works revealed: fireballs plunging into the deeps, ships lost over the abyssal trenches, sea-tanks crawling ashore, and finally the ice caps deliberately melted and London drowned, all reported by radio journalists Mike & Phyllis Watson with the escalating helplessness of people watching civilisation lose an argument with the weather. Appreciation for this work has risen considerably of late for understandable reasons: a 1953 novel in which humanity responds to slow-motion sea-level catastrophe with denial, sniping and committee meetings no longer reads as fantasy at all…