The Kraken Wakes (1953)

The Kraken Wakes is an apocalyptic science fiction novel by British writer John Wyndham, originally published by Michael Joseph in the United Kingdom in 1953, and first published in the United States in the same year by Ballantine Books under the title Out of the Deeps as a mass market paperback. The novel is also known as The Things from the Deep.

The novel is structured as a book within a book. After a short scene-setting introduction, the novel is the book written by the protagonist, radio reporter Mike Watson, chronicling the events that took place when creatures from the depths of the ocean attacked humanity. Mike and his wife Phyllis work for the (fictional) English Broadcasting Company (EBC) so are privy to decisions by government and scientific authorities, who alternatively try to counter the aliens' moves or stifle news to prevent panic. The aliens are never seen, and their origin and level of intelligence, if any, are never discerned. They are only known by their acts of violence against humanity, and their weapons of choice are not of the sort envisioned by humanity.

The title is a reference to Alfred Tennyson's sonnet The Kraken.

Plot

The novel describes the course of an attack on humanity by creatures from the ocean depths, as told through the eyes of three characters: Mike Watson, a journalist for the English Broadcasting Company (EBC), his independently-minded wife and colleague Phyllis, and Professor Alastair Bocker, who is more clear-minded and far-sighted about the developing crisis than everybody else but who often alienates people by telling brutally unvarnished and unwanted truths.

Mike and Phyllis are witness to several events of the invasion, which proceeds in drawn-out phases; it takes years before the bulk of humanity even realises that the world has been invaded. In the first phase, fiery objects from outer space are seen landing in the oceans. Mike and Phyllis happen to see five of the "fireballs" falling into the sea, from the ship where they are sailing on their honeymoon. Eventually the distribution of the objects' landing points – always at ocean depths, never on land – implies intelligence.

The aliens are speculated by Bocker to come from a gas giant and thus can only survive under conditions of extreme pressure in which humans would be instantly crushed. The deepest parts of the oceans are the only parts of Earth in any way useful to them and they presumably have no need or use for dry land or even the shallower parts of the sea. Bocker puts forward the theory that the two species could co-exist, hardly noticing each other's presence. Humanity nevertheless feels threatened by this new phenomenon, particularly since the aliens show signs of intensive work to adapt the ocean deeps to their needs.

A British bathysphere is sent down to investigate and is destroyed by the aliens with the loss of two lives. The British government responds by exploding a nuclear device in the same location. The aliens' technology proves formidable, and an American attempt to use a nuclear bomb ends in disaster. Ships all over the world begin to be attacked by unknown weapons and in each case are rapidly sunk, causing havoc to the world economy. Humanity is not united in the face of the threat because of the ongoing Cold War, with the two sides often attributing the effects of the alien attacks to their human opponents or refusing to co-operate because of differing political ideals and mutual distrust.

Phase two of the war starts when humans living in isolated island communities across the world start disappearing without explanation. It eventually emerges that the aliens are "harvesting" the land by sending up "sea tanks", using mutated and genetically altered sea creatures, which capture humans from coastal settlements. Like much of what the aliens do, the reasons for these attacks are inscrutable. Working with Bocker, the Watsons witness one of these assaults on the Caribbean island of "Escondida" and their eyewitness reports convince a global public that the threat is real. Eventually coastal settlements establish such defences against these "sea tank" raids that they become far less frequent, but this only happens after raids are experienced on every continent.

In the final phase, the aliens begin melting the polar ice caps, causing the sea level to rise. London and other ports and cities are flooded, causing widespread societal collapse. The Watsons cover the story for the EBC until the radio (and human civilisation in general) ceases to exist, whereupon they can only escape to their Cornish holiday cottage which, due to the floods, now exists on an island. Ultimately, scientists in Japan develop an underwater ultrasonic weapon that destroys the aliens. The human population has been reduced to between a fifth and an eighth of its pre-invasion level and the world's climate has been significantly changed, with water levels 120 feet higher than before.

Plot narrative

Even at the end, humans have no clear idea what the aliens looked like. The most they have is some protoplasm that floated to the surface of the sea after the ultrasound weapon was used.

As the protagonist states in the book, the book aims to demonstrate that an alien invasion of Earth could take a very different form from that in The War of the Worlds; publication of the book coincided with the release of the 1953 film The War of the Worlds, an adaptation of H. G. Wells' classic work, which was both a critical and box office success.

Plot differences

Depending on the book's printed origin there are several changes to the plot:

The US edition, entitled Out of the Deeps, cuts almost an entire chapter found in the UK edition on how the Watsons gained possession of The Midge yacht, and their aborted attempt to use a dinghy to get to Cornwall. It simply states that Freddie Whittier "found it" one day.