The Kraken Wakes (1953) is John Wyndham’s sixth novel and the first to follow his masterpiece, The Day of the Triffids. Like its predecessor, The Kraken Wakes is the story of an apocalyptic event that threatens the survival of humanity. In this case, it isn’t mass blindness and carnivorous, mobile plants, but rather an unseen yet enormously powerful alien presence that makes its home in the deepest sections of our oceans.
Wyndham begins his tale with the two main characters, Mike and Phyllis Watson, watching icebergs in the English Channel slowly drift past them. Wait, what? Icebergs in the English Channel? Yes, and it isn’t until nearly the end of the book that we learn why that’s the case.
The story is told through the eyes of Mike Watson, a scriptwriter and journalist for the EBC (English Broadcasting Corporation). He divides his account into three large sections, Phase One, Phase Two, and Phase Three.
In Phase One, he and Phyllis – another writer for the EBC – are on their honeymoon aboard a cruise ship, and they notice several red “fireballs” falling out of the sky. One lands in the ocean near their ship. They don’t really think anything of them, even after more fireballs are spotted all over the world. They all fall where the seas are deepest.
One scientist, Alastair Bocker, raises the possibility that the fireballs are spacecraft that contain beings from a planet with an extremely dense atmosphere (like Jupiter), hence their landing in spots where the ocean is miles deep. He suggests trying to peacefully establish communication. Bocker is quickly made a pariah by his scientific peers, and an object of mockery by the mass media.
However, the British Navy decides to send down a couple of men in a bathysphere to see if they can get some visual evidence of what’s down there. The Watsons are on board the vessel that is monitoring the bathysphere’s descent when contact is lost. When the communication cable is brought back up, it has been melted.
Meanwhile, ships are sinking under very mysterious circumstances- so suddenly and rapidly that there are no survivors. Wyndham has a lot of fun at this point in the story, describing Soviet Russian statements that blame the “Western capitalists” for all of the ships disappearing while claiming they only want to promote world peace. The investigators conclude that “metal fatigue” is to blame for the sinking ships, and the incidents fade into the background.
However, things get so bad that all shipping is restricted to relatively shallow seas, which plays havoc with the world economy. Some atomic bombs are dropped in areas where the “bathies” are thought to be, but they don’t seem to have any effect. As this goes on, oceanographers notice that there are large amounts of silt in the major currents that shouldn’t be there. Bocker suggests that whatever is down there is mining the seafloor for ore, and the silt is a result. Once again, he is ignored.
In Phase Two, a consortium of scientists come up with a way to counteract the weapon that the unseen aliens are using to sink ships. However, the conflict soon escalates when some villages on small islands are mysteriously completely depopulated. These incidents increase to the point that Bocker is able to tentatively predict where the next attack will occur. He and a team of researchers, including Mike and Phyllis, spend several uneventful weeks on a Caribbean island, when one night it is attacked. They are able to get the first visual evidence that it is an intelligent race behind all these disasters: “sea-tanks” that look like enormous gray half-eggs come up out of the ocean. They are composed of an unknown alloy that is impervious to bullets, and several deploy around the town square. Then, some sort of bubbles appears on their tops which grow into large balloon-like membranes that explode into anemone-like tentacles. If any tentacle comes into contact with a living being, it attaches itself and drags the poor person or animal into itself. One actually reaches through the hotel window where Mike and Phyllis are hiding, grabs Phyllis’ hand, and she is only saved my Mike holding her until the tentacle tears the skin off of her hand. They survive the attack, but many others were not as fortunate. They watch as the anemone things gather groups of humans and roll down to the beach and into the sea.
At this point, even though it is clear humanity is engaged in a fight for its survival, there is very little cooperation between the liberal western democracies and the Communist Russians. And it is here in the story that Wyndham makes some very interesting claims about the role and responsibility of governments. He is not very optimistic about their ability to cope with a huge threat. Instead, the British government is most concerned with keeping the population calm and manageable. As Mike and Phyllis are told what they can and can’t say in their broadcasts, they become more and more cynical and disillusioned.
Even after it becomes clear that the sea-tanks are vulnerable to larger explosives, the people living on the coasts are not given the means to defend themselves. Trust in the authorities quickly breaks down. As Phyllis laments,
‘What’s wrong, Phyl?’
She shrugged. ‘Nothing, except that at times I get sick of putting up with all the shams and the humbug, and pretending that the lies aren’t lies, and the propaganda isn’t propaganda, and the dirt isn’t dirt. I’ll get over it again…. Don’t you sometimes wish that you had been born into the Age of Reason, instead of into the Age of the Ostensible Reason? I think that they are going to let thousands of people be killed by these horrible things rather than risk giving them powerful enough weapons to defend themselves. And they’ll have rows of arguments why it is best so. What do a few thousands, or a few millions of people matter? Women will just go on making the loss good. But Governments are important — one mustn’t risk them.’
John Wyndham. The Kraken Wakes (Kindle Locations 2632-2638). Delphi Classics. Kindle Edition.
In Phase Three, we learn why there are icebergs in the English Channel, but I don’t want to spoil the story. Suffice it to say that, much like in The Day of the Triffids, civilization continues to break down, and Wyndham is none too confident in government’s ability to stop it.
The Kraken Wakes is an excellent and thought-provoking thriller that, once you accept the possibility of an alien invasion, is a credible account of what would happen in the wake of an apocalyptic event. Unlike The Day of the Triffids, it doesn’t happen suddenly and overnight, but gradually over a period of years. Even so, Wyndham has faith in the power of small groups of people to survive. I highly recommend The Kraken Wakes – Wyndham hit his stride with The Day of the Triffids, and The Kraken Wakes is just as good, even if not as well known.
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