Book description
It started with fireballs raining down from the sky and crashing into
the oceansdeeps. Then ships began sinking mysteriously and later sea
tanks emerged from the deeps to claim people . . .
For journalists Mike and Phyllis Watson, what at first appears to be
a curiosity becomes a global calamity. Helpless, they watch as
humanity struggles to survive now that water - one of the compounds
upon which life depends is turned against them. Finally, sea levels
begin their inexorable rise . . .
The Kraken Wakes is a brilliant novel of how humankind
responds to the threat of its own extinction and, ultimately, asks
what we are prepared to do in order to survive.
John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Benyon Harris was born in 1903, the son of
a barrister. He tried a number of careers including farming, law,
commercial art and advertising, and started writing short stories,
intended for sale, in 1925. From 1930 to 1939 he wrote short stories of
various kinds under different names, almost exclusively for American
publications, while also writing detective novels. During the war he was
in the Civil Service and then the Army. In 1946 he went back to writing
stories for publication in the USA and decided to try a modified form of
science fiction, a form he called 'logical fantasy'. As John Wyndham he
wrote
The Day of the Triffids
,
The Kraken Wakes
,
The Chrysalids
,
The Midwich Cuckoos
(filmed as
Village of the Damned
),
The Seeds of Time
,
Trouble with Lichen
,
The Outward Urge
,
Consider Her Ways and Others
,
Web
and
Chocky
. John Wyndham died in March 1969.
