Talk:Down to a Sunless Sea (Graham novel)

Untitled

this book is one of my all time favourites.

Ehm... Beirut??

Edited this part: "The city has essentially descended into the status of a bombed-out London or Berlin during World War II, Saigon after South Vietnam fell, or current-day Beirut, as warring gangs fight for turf in a city without energy or fuel."

I didn't know Wikipedia dates back to the eighties ;) Beirut is actually a very nice place and has been for years (despite an assassination or two, but that's par for the region). It's about as dangerous as the actual real life New York city today, imho.

---

I was referring to current-day Beirut as it existed then, although I was unaware that Beirut was anything but a warring city currently. I have changed the reference to read "Beirut during its 1980s civil war" or something like that. Paul Robinson (Rfc1394) 00:30, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

The End

So what happens at the end?

I didn't particularly want to spoil the ending for those that might want to actually read the book, but here goes. They are able to find an island that is a U.S. military base, that was still usable because it was struck by the Russians with a very short half-life Neutron Bomb rather than a standard radioactive bomb. After they arrive a soviet plane arrives, mostly with women and children. The scientists who were on Jonah's plane determine that the fallout is arriving from the north and they will have to head for the South Pole. With help from someone on the Telex network, they determine there is enough food for all of the people on both planes to go. A serious mistake requires some of the people on the Russian plane to have to sacrifice themselves by jumping out to allow the rest of them to reach the South Pole. After they arrive it is determined the impact of all the nuclear weapons has caused the planet's poles to shift, and where they are will become a much more pleasant climate.

Note that the bit above is referring to the updated ending of the book. In the original ending, which I found in the library edition I just read (I believe it is first edition), pretty much exactly the above happens. Except, shortly after one scientist tells them of the shifting poles that will cause their new colony to be in a subtropical area, another walks in to announce that the changing winds cause by earth's shifting axis have brought the radioactive fallout to Antarctica, and they are all doomed to a fairly quick death: "Yes, the warm air is coming. Coming from the north. It is here...here now. And it has brought death with it. The air you breathe now is twice the fatal level...and rising fast." The book then ends with a sort of philosophical piece labelled:

   E
   P
   I
PROLOUGE
   O
   U
   G
   E

I'm not sure why the later printings removed this shock ending, but there are definitely two versions of the story. Christopher Parham (talk) 08:10, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm thinking that it's a pretty dreary story as-is. Ending a story as depressing as it was without some "redeeming" quality probably caused people not to buy the book as most people don't like a story that goes from bad to worse to disaster and then gets even worse from there. I know I wouldn't have liked the story. Also, it eliminates any possibility of writing a sequel to the first book. Paul Robinson 18:56, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Any chance you could give a few more details on the ending? My edition, a book club one, has an Epilogue/Prologue followed by the "happy ending" of Chapter 23. I've been trying to find details on the "depressing" version only to glean something here. Does the book end with that cross symbol or is there more text after that? Does the "cross" come after the scientist announces they are all going to die? Abacab 20:20, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Everyone begins to die from radiation, and commits painless suicide with medical help. Last of all, Jonah and his new Russian wife go out on the melting ice in a Sno-Cat until it runs out of fuel. They dismount and stand holding hands in the blinding Antarctic sunlight, out of which a voice full of infinite sadness says "Come. It is time for a beginning. This is Woman. And thou art Man."Captain Pedant (talk) 10:32, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Sacrifices

There are many sacrifices among characters in the storyChris-marsh-usa (talk) 06:08, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

• Joe Markovich, the National Guard commander, lets Jonah take Capel and Nicki illegally out of NYC
• Eddie and SAS personnel Hamish Bond and LeMaister who choose to stay behind at Lajes, believing that they are giving priority to children or essential personnel going to McMurdo, before it is clear that food and a nuclear reactor mean that all but fifty end up going.
• The naval officer in the Falklands is in a sealed room suffocating. He knows to exit the room and use the shortwave radio to contact McMurdo will likely be fatal, however. He does, in fact, die, but dies knowing how many Russians and Americans he has saved.
• The fifty Russians, mostly elderly, who volunteer to lighten the weight carried by the Antonov so that the others may make McMurdo.

What's up with that?

The author gets a number of things wrong in the penultimate chapter when he is talking about the impact on the Earth's axis:

• The axial tilt of the planet is given as 19.5 degrees - the actual figure is closer to 22.5
• He talks about atomic bombs in the "over 50 kilotons" range... hydrogen bombs are much bigger. However, he also claims them as bigger than Krakatoa, which was probably about 200 megatons
• He has the planet revolving in the wrong direction! He has impacts first on the longitude of Chicago, then later on that of London, then later still of Moscow, as being in the same location relative to Earth's position in space. Also he has a 90-degree differential between the first pair as being six hours apart (reasonable) and then the 45-degree interval between the second pair as nine **more** hours later.
• Those six-hour and nine-hour time intervals don't align with the earlier accounts of the nuclear exchange -- when London was hit there were no prior reports of attacks on the United States, and the "war" was over by the time Delta Tango landed (which was much less than fifteen hours after it started: Jonah talks to ATC Gander minutes after the attack on London and the American retaliatory strikes are already in the air, and the crew discuss Delta Tango's maximum flight endurance and give a figure of eight and a half hours).

2A00:23C7:AB4:2F01:DB2:68AA:5694:4A28 (talk) 18:57, 26 June 2023 (UTC) Captain Pedant (forgotten my password)