On the Beach by Nevil Shute.
Title: On the Beach.
Author: Nevil Shute (Nevil Shute Norway).
Genre: Literature, fiction, science fiction, post-apocalyptic.
Country: Astralia.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 1957.
Summary: The last generation - innocent victims of an accidental war, living out the last days, making plans that will never be carried out, making do with what they have - however temporary it might be - hoping for the miracle that will not come. As the deadly rain moves ever closer, and the world as we know it winds toward an inevitable end.
My rating: 8/10
My Review:
♥ "Even if we don't discover anything that's good, it's still discovering things. I don't think we shall discover anything that's good, or very hopeful. But even so, it's fun just finding out. "
"You call finding out the bad things fun?"
"Yes, I do," he said firmly. "Some games are fun even if you lose. Even when you know you're going to lose before you start. It's fun just playing them."
♥ "I suppose I haven't got any imagination," said Peter thoughtfully. "It's--it's the end of the world. I've never had to imagine anything like that before."
John Osborne laughed. "It's not the end of the world at all," he said. "It's only the end of us. The world will go on just the same, only we shan't be in it. I dare say it will get along all right without us."
♥ She had known for some time that his wife and family were very real to him, more real by far than the half-life in a far corner of the world that had been forced upon him since the war. The devastation of the Northern Hemisphere was not real to him, as it was not real to her. He had seen nothing of the destruction of the war, as she had not; in thinking of his wife and of his home it was impossible for him to visualize them in any other circumstances than those in which he had left them. He had little imagination, and that formed a solid core for his contentment in Australia.
♥ "Couldn't anyone have stopped it?"
"I don't know... Some kinds of silliness you just can't stop," he said. "I mean, if a couple of hundred million people all decide that their national honour requires them to drop cobalt bombs upon their neighbour, well, there's not much that you or I can do about it. The only possible hope would have been to educate them out of their silliness."
"But how could you have done that, Peter? I mean, they'd all left school."
"Newspapers," he said. "You could have done something with newspapers. We didn't do it. No nation did, because we were all too silly. We liked our newspapers with pictures of beach girls and headlines about cases of indecent assault, and no government was wise enough to stop us having them that way. But something might have been done with newspapers, if we'd been wise enough."
She did not fully comprehend his reasoning. "I'm glad we haven't got newspapers now," she said. "It's been much nicer without them."