Product Description

Australia is one of the last places where life still exists after nuclear war starts in the Northern Hemisphere. A year on, an invisible cloak of radiation has spread almost completely around the world. Darwin is a ghost town, and radiation levels at Ayres Rock are increasing. An American nuclear-powered submarine has found its way to Australia where its captain has placed the boat under the command of the Australian Navy. Commander Dwight Towers and his Australian liaison officer are sent to the coast of North America to discover whether a stray radio signal originating from near Seattle is a sign of life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11110 in Books
• Published on: 2000-09-18
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 296 pages

About the Author
Nevil Shute Norway worked as an aeronautical engineer at Vickers before setting up his own airship company. He served in both world wars and was a commander in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve in World War II, working on secret projects. He flew his own aircraft to Australia to research On the Beach, before settling there permanently. His books are based on his own wartime and aircraft industry experiences.

Customer Reviews

Rearranging Deckchairs on the Titanic.
Shutes books contain a readable style, but 50 years after most were written, they don't stand up to those who could fuse technical details with plausible relationships. This book, perhaps his best known on a account of the subject and film, seems quite thin be todays standards.
Like Day of the Triffids and other apocalyptic stories from that time, Shute's On the Beach concerns those who survived the (in this case) nuclear catastrophy and are waiting out deaths approach as the last remnant of humankind. The story's setting in Australia is crucial, as it seems the southern Hemisphere escaped the nuclear conflict completely. From then on the implausible nature of the situation takes a front seat, I'm afraid, with discussion of the previous conflict appearing over and over, but without much intelligent comment. At the very end it i sput forward that responsible newspapers could have saved humanity! Actually I have come to understand that this story is a parallel of the atheism that has overtaken the western world in the last 100 years.
The whole basis of the book is the line from a peom by T.S.Eliot which declares that the end of the world comes not witha bang, but a whimper. He ist he story of that whimper, and it seems it is acted out approriately enough by a load of whimps! Perhaps we know better no inout age of mass refugee movemnets, but to infer that everyone lays down to die, continuing there lives of quiet desparation up until that happens seems a large misjudgment of human nature. Surely people would be moving away from the airbourne gloom as it gathered towards them. Surely Eliot meant something else.
Here such themes as euthanasia and materialism abound, yet with a bittersweet conclusion. These days people would expect a nuclear conflict to result in terrible consequesences, but here life carries on much as normal, until the last day it seems, thenm a garden furniture shop is looted! So everyone carries on join quiet desparation almost as if nothing had happened. Everyting still functions as before! Yep, the Radio (we nearly all of us now know that nuclear explosions throw out massive electromagnetic fields and radiation to prevent radio communications functioning) still works fine, even recieving from the northern Hemisphere! Food, water and all other services are unaffected, it seems. Oh, sorry, to be quite correct the milk reserves are down in the last week, before the radiation cloud moves south to Melbourne and the central characters have to decide their style of death. Most of them are better preserved in alcohol, as their seem stob e plenty left and the scientist declares that drinking wards off the radiation effects somewhat!
The eminent scientist loves racing in his car, and not only wins the Australian (or is that the known worlds?) Grand Prix, but takes his cyanide tablet later in the drivers seat complete with Helmet and googles in place.
All the other characters likewise drop off this worlds plane in a domestic stupur, lacking any desire for survival. It is much like our generation in that sense, with people scorning any belief in a better world to come and living without any desire to seek such a world. At least you would expect them to use their resources to build shelters? No., they just let death creep up and take them, believing (even the ones who confusingly attend church- surely the Christian message is a contradiction to such circumstances?) death is the end.

Eerie, haunting, fabulous
Compared to a Town Like Alice, OTB feels like a completely different author.

I wouldn't describe myself as a science-fiction fan, but I'm not sure that I'd describe this as a science-fiction book, it perhaps was more so when it was first published.

It is such a chilling story, but captivatingly so... I stayed up until 3am (on a school night!) to finish it, and was so moved at the end that I really felt that I needed to speak to someone real, to break the silence and stillness that you get at that time of the morning particularly when you've just finished such a powerful book. I suddenly realised that the only person I could ring (who wouldn't slam the phone down on me for calling at a ridiculous hour) to hear a real live voice was my boyfriend who at the time was in... Australia.... (spooky!) [Without giving anything away, that will make more sense once you get to the end!].

For those who prefer a more modern take on a similar theme - try Oryx & Crake by Margaret Attwood - same same but different!

Overall recommendation - buy!

A must-read book!
This is quite simply one of the best books I have read in the last 10 years. Considering it was written 50 years ago, it is still relevant today. Yes, some of the science is dubious, but it is a work of fiction after all and the story is incredibly compelling. I finished reading this book a week ago and I'm still thinking about it now. I can't wait to read more by this wonderful author.