Nuclear Weapons in Popular Culture - in Literature and Books

In Literature and Books

• The Secret of the Swordfish — by Edgar P. Jacobs, first album of the Belgian comic strip Blake and Mortimer, depicts a 20th century World War in which a fictional Asian Empire ("Yellow Empire") nearly conquer the entire world. It ends with the destruction of the Yellow Empire capital city while the Emperor were planning to launch his nuclear weaponry. The Time Trap and The Strange Encounter, later albums of Blake and Mortimer, deal with time-travels and a potential future where Earth is devastated by a nuclear war.
• Watchmen - by Alan Moore set in an alternative history where the USA and USSR edge dangerously close to nuclear war.
• When the Wind Blows - a graphic novel for adults by children's author Raymond Briggs which follows a retired couple in the days immediately after a thermonuclear war.
• Arc Light - a techno-thriller by Eric L. Harry depicting a limited nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia.
• "Emerald City Blues" - a short story by Steve Boyett published in the Fall 1988 issue of Midnight Graffiti in which the horrors of nuclear war are made vivid by having an atom bomb dropped on Oz with the fallout killing Dorthy Gale.
• Several novels by Dale Brown feature nuclear weapons being employed. Among them are Sky Masters, in which a Chinese naval vessel uses a tactical nuclear weapon near Indonesia; Fatal Terrain, in which China launches a nuclear attack on Taiwan; Chains of Command in which Russia attacks the Ukraine with nuclear weapons, and the Ukraine destroys a Russian bunker with a nuclear bomb and Plan of Attack, in which Russia destroys several US air bases with nuclear weapons.
• The Japanese Manga, Barefoot Gen written by Keiji Nakazawa and adapted into an Anime by the same name. Takes place in 1945 in and around Hiroshima, Japan, where the six-year-old boy Gen lives with his family. After Hiroshima is destroyed by atomic bombing, Gen and other survivors are left to deal with the aftermath. The story is loosely based on Nakazawa's own experiences as a Hiroshima survivor.
• The Valley-Westside War — by Harry Turtledove. After a nuclear war between the USA and the USSR in 1967, L.A.'s San Fernando Valley is reduced to a collection of primitive warring feudal states.
• Halo: Ghosts of Onyx — Kurt detonates two nuclear warheads, on Onyx. Also, a NOVA bomb (a bomb composed of multiple nukes in a special casing) destroys part of the Sangheili fleet.
• Nineteen Eighty-Four, the novel by George Orwell, features Britain run by a dictatorship after a nuclear war that takes place in the 1950s.
• C. S. Lewis's The Magician's Nephew features the "Deplorable Word," apparently a thinly-veiled criticism of nuclear warfare. When said with the "proper ceremonies," it destroys all life forms in the world except the speaker. The only known speaker of the word is the White Witch, Jadis.