Product Description

Ships are sinking for no apparent reason, carrying hundreds to a dark underwater grave. Strange fireballs race through the sky above the deepest trenches of the oceans. Something is about to show itself, something terrible and alien, a force capable of causing global catastrophe.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #154065 in Books
• Published on: 1973-06-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Customer Reviews

A cracking slice of deep-sea unease.
Although "The Kraken Wakes" never got the same acclaim as Wyndham's (justly) famous "The Day of the Triffids", it isn't just a pale `Triffids' rip-off either. Yes, the book's ending is a bit of a damp squib and, yes, the narrator's wife Phyllis might strike modern readers as a patronising stereotype, but then again ... "The Kraken Wakes" may be just about the best alien invasion story since H. G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds". Wyndham is one of the few British S.F. writers who could match Wells for invention and logical construction. He doesn't go in for histrionics - the introduction of the sub-aquatic aliens is very low-key and the screw oftension tightens slowly but inexorably as the book progresses. "The Kraken Wakes" cleverly combines a Wellsian war between very different species with a Ballard-style environmental disaster. Gradually, control of the high seas passes to the invaders. Strange objects rise out of the waves and kidnap human samples. Finally, the polar ice melts, the oceans rise and the world suffers catastrophic floods. We never get to see Wyndham's "Xenobath" aliens up-close - they remain tantalisingly ill-defined and all the more alarming as they gradually encroach on the deep seas and luckless ships. In amongst the sometimes lame characterisation, there are passages of real nail-biting tension and some very funny swipes at Cold War rivalries. Okay, so maybe the "Triffids" it ain't, but "The Kraken Wakes" is still one of Wyndham's best stories and a very rewarding book in its own right.

Don't worry. It isn't going to be alright...
Wyndham's books have, for me, two contradictory, but oddly, not conflicting aspects. First, there is the disorientation which I tend to attribute to the post-Imperial, post-Austerity Britain of the 1950s. The role and the rule had pretty much gone - though there would have been enough in the news and on the radio about firefights and terrorist atrocities in various places whiuch were the remnants of the Empire. Second, however, there is the 'not fully informed' feel that must have gone with an age where technology was everywhere, but not working at full speed.

Whereas nowadays, we have film of natural disasters half way round the world within a couple of hours, in the 50s the output of a telegraph machine would be as much as we would get from remote spots for some days or weeks. It wasn't like the early 1800s where news took months, and it's not like now when it's colse to instantaneous. It was something in between, snippets and bits of garbled stuff.

That's why I find this the best of Wyndham's books. Information is mostly spotty, and uncertain. It's quite likely nothing is happening, just a few maritime losses here and there. Then there's a bit more information and we are introduced into a kind of semi-informed world, then we are at the end, and there is still no information. The book brilliantly combines the feeling of impotence of a world over which control has been lost (the post-Imperial weariness) and the lack of coherence to the threat, about which we never really learn very much, except that it is threatening, and it is malevolent.

In some ways, it might have made the ultimate Hitchcock film. Instead of a climax where everything works out, we just have a dissipation of tension without any loss of incipient disaster.

We end the book quietly knowing that everything is not going to work out fine.

You heard it here first !
Ever wondered what global warming will be like ? Or more importantly, what your neighbours might be like when global warming comes ? This is the extra terrestial side of Wyndham, keen to remind us of our own frailties, and of the idea that we might only be masters of all we survey by default. In some authors hands, this could oh so easily turn into a didactic horrorstory fit only to use as a nightcap. Instead, Wyndham's lightness of touch and satirical turn of mind turn this into almost a jape in places. Knowing when to switch off the lightness and bring us back to the harsh realities is another of Wyndham's real skills. Patient well written, well plotted and well researched, this is another of the books that deserves far greater recognition, and a seat alongside Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov as one of the great writers of future fiction.