After zero hour

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After the zero hour is a dystopian novel of the American artist Alfred Coppel , the 1960 US English under the title Dark December 1966 in German in the translation by Norbert Wölfl in Publisher Wilhelm Heyne appeared.

action

The US Major Kenneth Gavin has one just ended nuclear war destroyed his nation against the Russians from a bunker under a glacier from enemy with nuclear explosive goals and makes his way to San Francisco, where he his wife Sue and his daughter Pamela has left . His comrades in the military saw the explosions of Russian atomic bombs. Some have seen it myself and therefore feel repulsed by it again and again. Gavin no longer trusts his own people. Relying on J. E. B. Collingwood , another major, on a drive through the woods he learns the suicidal games and the moralistic excesses of his comrade, who drives the artillery officer Bayles to suicide through his torture . Gavin lived through intimate moments with August Feldman , a locally respected figure in Klamath Falls , in which the girl Esther almost made her forget the omnipresent nemesis by playing the violin. Collingwood is imprisoned at Gavin's instigation, but escapes and pursues Gavin as he rides into the contaminated restricted area north of San Francisco. He shoots the horse under his body. Gavin, who could not kill anyone because of his experiences, saves the battered Lorry Fielding , widowed by the war, from rapists. He pulls the boy Kim close to him, and he leads him and Lorry to the two youngsters Tenner and Rock , who have forced him to steal and rob for them. The run-down young people torture a crashed Russian pilot with their friends Nicky and Giorgia in a confusing fracture terrain. When Gavin tries to free him, they ruthlessly attack him and murder their prisoner. In the almost deserted Antioch, Gavin comes across a tape with a few words from his daughter, which has been distributed by a makeshift radio service; Pamela is unharmed herself, but does not hold back with the fact that Sue has met an extraordinarily painful death. Gavin, who is not least affected by radiation sickness , collapses and comes to between Lorry and Kim days later, when Collingwood has meanwhile successfully offered him to help care for the delirious man. Collingwood becomes indispensable for Lorry, Kim and Gavin once again and brings the rocket man to the edge of madness when he trumps on Christmas Day with a bracelet that Gavin gave Esther Feldman as a farewell. Desperate for the meaning and nature of civilization, Gavin decides to flee; He and his followers succeed in doing this when Collingwood has an accident while trying to track his victims over a partially destroyed bridge in the floodplain on the southern tip of San Francisco Bay.

shape

The novel is an example of how Coppel does not start from the heroes, but rather from their deeds or the circumstances and events, and thus illuminates the characters of the actors. According to Don D'Ammassa, the reader is therefore primarily not confronted with what Gavin is going through, but with how he is becoming more and more desperate to discover the fate of his missing relatives because of what he encounters.

expenditure

  • First edition (US): Dark December. Fawcett Gold Medal, 1960.
  • UK edition: Dark December. Herbert Jenkins, 1966.
  • Translation: After the zero hour. Translated by Norbert Wölfl. Heyne Science Fiction & Fantasy # 3078, 1966. Other edition: Goldmann TB # 6686, 1984, ISBN 3-442-06686-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Coppel 1966
  2. ↑ Don D'Ammassa: Coppel, Alfred . In: Jay P. Pederson (Ed.): St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers . 4th edition. St. James Press , New York et al. a. 1996, pp. 208-209; P. 209