What do you think?
Rate this book
Nerves
The magazine version of Lester del Rey's frightening novel of nuclear reactor breakdown appeared in 1942: Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were scarily and accurately predicted. Del Rey was an important science fiction publisher and an SFFWA Grand Master but none of his work had greater impact than this early novel.
192 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published June 1, 1956
7 people are currently reading
268 people want to read
About the author
Lester del Rey
635 books117 followersLester del Rey was an American science fiction author and editor. Del Rey is especially famous for his juvenile novels such as those which are part of the Winston Science Fiction series, and for Del Rey Books, the fantasy and science fiction branch of Ballantine Books edited by Lester del Rey and his fourth wife Judy-Lynn del Rey.
Also published as:
Philip St. John
Eric van Lihn
Erik van Lhin
Kenneth Wright
Edson McCann (with Frederik Pohl)
Also published as:
Philip St. John
Eric van Lihn
Erik van Lhin
Kenneth Wright
Edson McCann (with Frederik Pohl)
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 62 reviews
August 10, 2016
Interesting Golden Age science fiction tale of a meltdown at a nuclear reactor. Much of the science didn't turn out like del Rey envisioned---the reactors are for making "super-heavy isotopes" for medicinal uses, with power as a secondary output, and the main way to remove "radioactives" from injured workers is curare treatment.
But it's interesting to see what he got right---such as a Chernobyl-style cleanup attempt, and several aspects of how the nuclear plant operates---as del Rey first wrote this three years before Hiroshima, and then revised it the year the first civilian nuclear power plant entered operation (1956). He did a lot with the information he had on hand---that is to say, not much---and this book has a fascinating time capsule feel to it, and is prophetic to some degree.
That said, it's not quite the thriller the back cover makes it out to be; the characters are often flat and lifeless, and there's too many named-and-numbered redshirts who show up only once or twice; and the narrative sags at the end under progressive amounts of technobabble and the erosion of focus. It's a passable novel that might interest hardcore science fiction readers and Golden Age junkies, but it has some big flaws. It was okay: a good read that started off great, but did not end as a standout.
Full review found here.
But it's interesting to see what he got right---such as a Chernobyl-style cleanup attempt, and several aspects of how the nuclear plant operates---as del Rey first wrote this three years before Hiroshima, and then revised it the year the first civilian nuclear power plant entered operation (1956). He did a lot with the information he had on hand---that is to say, not much---and this book has a fascinating time capsule feel to it, and is prophetic to some degree.
That said, it's not quite the thriller the back cover makes it out to be; the characters are often flat and lifeless, and there's too many named-and-numbered redshirts who show up only once or twice; and the narrative sags at the end under progressive amounts of technobabble and the erosion of focus. It's a passable novel that might interest hardcore science fiction readers and Golden Age junkies, but it has some big flaws. It was okay: a good read that started off great, but did not end as a standout.
Full review found here.
February 5, 2021
Nerves is arguably del Rey's best novel. It's an expanded and somewhat updated version of a novelette that was first published in John W. Campbell's Astounding SF magazine in 1942, before atomic power or weaponry was a reality. It was a chilling and prescient vision of a meltdown at a nuclear plant (decades before Three Mile Island or Chernobyl), and was recognized as something of an instant classic. It was reprinted frequently, including the seminal McComas & Healy volume, Adventures in Time and Space. The novel version seems to me to lack some of the tension and punch of the original, and curiously seems to have dated less well, but it is a very suspenseful read, and one of the most famous successes of prognostication in the field.
xx-dnf-skim-reference
August 29, 2016Even though I couldn't sleep and I didn't have any other book handy, I got out of bed about 1/3 through this and pored through my shelves looking for something worth my time. This was boring, but not soporific, ime.
June 24, 2021
As someone in the nuclear field this was interesting to see the expectations from 1941 against the current reality.
February 12, 2016
While this written as SiFi at the time it now reads as a scary look at our atomic power industry and a worst case scenario. Well written by a master of the SiFi genre, with tons of actual hard science in the story. Recommended
January 27, 2024
Recently recorded a podcast for my Science Fiction Hall of Fame series on the classic story by Lester Del Rey Helen O’Loy. I have to admit before reading that story I have not read any work by the famous Golden Age author. I was familiar sure, when I was a young Science Fiction reader Del Rey's books were a mark of quality to me. I didn’t realize at the time that there were two people behind that name who had built that brand. (that is another column)
(podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... )
When preparing for the podcast I pulled this book off the shelf that I had there for a few years now waiting to be read. Lester Del Rey is an interesting character in Science Fiction who grew up in rural southeastern Minnesota unlike the New York Futurians he was alone and invented some hilarious mythologies about himself, and how he got his famous pen name. Leonard Knapp chose to live as Lester Del Rey and that is that.
In the late 30s like many young writers in that era, he was writing to please and sell to Astounding editor John W. Campbell. Once Del Rey had relocated to New York City and was a part of the community he became one of the authors that Campbell gave seeds of ideas to authors. As Issac Asimov’s Foundation became a loosely adapted AppleTV the world of Harry Seldon and the Galactic empire began with Campbell giving Asimov one of those seeds.
This novel Nerves is often cited as an example of predictive SF appears to have started with Campbell’s fascination with Nuclear power several years before the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. According to Alec Nevala- Lee’s biography of Campbel Astounding “Del Rey’s Masterpiece was ‘Nerves,’ a thriller about a nuclear accident that the editor pitched “not merely as an idea, but as to the viewpoint and the technique that made it possible.” And that was what interested me. To write a novella about a Chernobyl-type meltdown in the early days of WW II is an excellent piece of speculative writing. The nuclear stories were enough to cause government agents to show and question Campbell, who would have told you it was reading scientific journals.
The Novella of Nerves first appeared in the September 1942 issue of Astounding. It is a great issue of the magazine The issue opens with a time travel novella by Anthony Boucher (six years before starting his Berkeley SF classes), Fredric Brown who was known for bringing humor to SF in the golden era, and Lewis Padgett the joint pseudonym of the science fiction authors Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore.
The novel published in 1956 is called an expansion or fix-up but it is different. It is the same idea and characters just written with a narrative structure. While the novelette version was overseen by Campbell as editor, Fredrick Pohl who was serving as Del Rey’s agent in 1956 oversaw the novel, enough that Del Rey dedicated it to him. This story coming from 1956 is a little less impressive but the Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant, in the Soviet Union had been going for two years. Still, the short story was 12 years before that.
The story is centered around Doctor Ferrel the lead medical personnel working in the atomic planet in Missouri. It is not stated in the story what year this is, but it is implied that the country has been using atomic energy for a few decades. We are introduced to the Doctor when he is on-call and breaks back to the plant to deal with an emergency. Del Rey (or Campbell) was smart to use the angle of the medical staff. It puts one of Campbell's beloved competent heroes in the story but the medical doctor doesn’t have to have to knowledge of atomics that an expert would.
The politics of the plant and where it was placed in the world were very curious to me. Del Rey plays with the idea that neighborhoods were built around the plant but over time people didn’t want to keep living close to it. The retro nature of this story is right on the surface once the crisis starts there is a scene when they try to find the scientist from the plant and they are calling restaurants and nightclubs around town. Del Rey didn’t envision a future when a cell phone or even a pager existed. But the paper printout on 1940s spaceships is one of the reasons we read the old stuff right?
Through the eyes of the doctor much of the action and suspense centers around the burns and damage to the workers. Even though the theme is in the title, it is often overlooked the role of fear of what could happen.
“Nerves! Jorgenson had his blocked out, but Ferrel wondered if the rest of them weren’t in as bad a state. Probably somewhere well within their grasp, there was a solution that was being held back because the nerves of everyone in the plant were blocked by fear and pressure that defeated its own purpose.”
The idea that fear and nerves are caused by working so close to powers so great is much of the building of terror and suspense. In some ways, the shorter more compact novelette from 1942 sells this better. The art of terror-filled faces certainly didn’t hurt.
Nerves is a better artifact than a novel, like CM Kornbluth’s Takeoff of a Moonshot written 17 years before humans made it there. It is interesting to explore. I enjoyed reading this novel but if you don’t find the out-of-date stuff charming and interesting it may not work for you. Is this canon for the genre? Who am I to say but I think the way it predicted stuff is important and interesting so in that sense yes. I consider this canon, of course, that is just my opinion but that is what I am here for. Nerves offers much to study and understand. It teaches us what the speculation of a nuclear accident was like. We now have three real-life accidents to compare it to. To many the events in the real world only added to its power.
(podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... )
When preparing for the podcast I pulled this book off the shelf that I had there for a few years now waiting to be read. Lester Del Rey is an interesting character in Science Fiction who grew up in rural southeastern Minnesota unlike the New York Futurians he was alone and invented some hilarious mythologies about himself, and how he got his famous pen name. Leonard Knapp chose to live as Lester Del Rey and that is that.
In the late 30s like many young writers in that era, he was writing to please and sell to Astounding editor John W. Campbell. Once Del Rey had relocated to New York City and was a part of the community he became one of the authors that Campbell gave seeds of ideas to authors. As Issac Asimov’s Foundation became a loosely adapted AppleTV the world of Harry Seldon and the Galactic empire began with Campbell giving Asimov one of those seeds.
This novel Nerves is often cited as an example of predictive SF appears to have started with Campbell’s fascination with Nuclear power several years before the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. According to Alec Nevala- Lee’s biography of Campbel Astounding “Del Rey’s Masterpiece was ‘Nerves,’ a thriller about a nuclear accident that the editor pitched “not merely as an idea, but as to the viewpoint and the technique that made it possible.” And that was what interested me. To write a novella about a Chernobyl-type meltdown in the early days of WW II is an excellent piece of speculative writing. The nuclear stories were enough to cause government agents to show and question Campbell, who would have told you it was reading scientific journals.
The Novella of Nerves first appeared in the September 1942 issue of Astounding. It is a great issue of the magazine The issue opens with a time travel novella by Anthony Boucher (six years before starting his Berkeley SF classes), Fredric Brown who was known for bringing humor to SF in the golden era, and Lewis Padgett the joint pseudonym of the science fiction authors Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore.
The novel published in 1956 is called an expansion or fix-up but it is different. It is the same idea and characters just written with a narrative structure. While the novelette version was overseen by Campbell as editor, Fredrick Pohl who was serving as Del Rey’s agent in 1956 oversaw the novel, enough that Del Rey dedicated it to him. This story coming from 1956 is a little less impressive but the Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant, in the Soviet Union had been going for two years. Still, the short story was 12 years before that.
The story is centered around Doctor Ferrel the lead medical personnel working in the atomic planet in Missouri. It is not stated in the story what year this is, but it is implied that the country has been using atomic energy for a few decades. We are introduced to the Doctor when he is on-call and breaks back to the plant to deal with an emergency. Del Rey (or Campbell) was smart to use the angle of the medical staff. It puts one of Campbell's beloved competent heroes in the story but the medical doctor doesn’t have to have to knowledge of atomics that an expert would.
The politics of the plant and where it was placed in the world were very curious to me. Del Rey plays with the idea that neighborhoods were built around the plant but over time people didn’t want to keep living close to it. The retro nature of this story is right on the surface once the crisis starts there is a scene when they try to find the scientist from the plant and they are calling restaurants and nightclubs around town. Del Rey didn’t envision a future when a cell phone or even a pager existed. But the paper printout on 1940s spaceships is one of the reasons we read the old stuff right?
Through the eyes of the doctor much of the action and suspense centers around the burns and damage to the workers. Even though the theme is in the title, it is often overlooked the role of fear of what could happen.
“Nerves! Jorgenson had his blocked out, but Ferrel wondered if the rest of them weren’t in as bad a state. Probably somewhere well within their grasp, there was a solution that was being held back because the nerves of everyone in the plant were blocked by fear and pressure that defeated its own purpose.”
The idea that fear and nerves are caused by working so close to powers so great is much of the building of terror and suspense. In some ways, the shorter more compact novelette from 1942 sells this better. The art of terror-filled faces certainly didn’t hurt.
Nerves is a better artifact than a novel, like CM Kornbluth’s Takeoff of a Moonshot written 17 years before humans made it there. It is interesting to explore. I enjoyed reading this novel but if you don’t find the out-of-date stuff charming and interesting it may not work for you. Is this canon for the genre? Who am I to say but I think the way it predicted stuff is important and interesting so in that sense yes. I consider this canon, of course, that is just my opinion but that is what I am here for. Nerves offers much to study and understand. It teaches us what the speculation of a nuclear accident was like. We now have three real-life accidents to compare it to. To many the events in the real world only added to its power.
January 26, 2025
I think I’d have preferred the novelette version of this book, but the story was suspenseful enough to keep me hooked.
June 11, 2016
Old Doc Ferrell can’t even spend a day off with his wife and son. The National Atomics nuclear facility in Kimberly, Missouri is scheduled to undergo a government inspection and the plant manager, Allan Palmer, needs his chief physician present to handle the suits.
Worse, inspections make the men nervous and nervous men make mistakes.
There was already a bill under review in Congress to move the entire facility to a remote location, away from the dense civilian population that is currently enjoying the inexpensive power generated as a by-product of the plant’s operations. Palmer wants nothing more than to prove the safety of nuclear power. As such, he wants his best people present.
Giving up his day off, Ferrell enters the plant to find minor injuries already in progress, adroitly handled by the nursing staff. However, during the inspection, an accident occurs that leaves one man badly burned.
To make matters worse, a routine testing of one of the converter chambers by chief scientist Mal Jorgenson uncovers the presence of highly volatile and deadly “Isotope R”, otherwise known as Mahler’s Isotope. Jorgenson sounds the alarm, but not before becoming trapped inside the converter chamber, his armored Tomlin suit his only protection against the fatal radiation.
Palmer orders a rescue mission to retrieve Jorgenson, the only man in the plant who knows the best method to stop Mahler’s Isotope from destroying not only everything in a fifty-mile radius, but perhaps the entire eastern United States!
After a massive and dangerous effort by several of the plant’s crew (aka “atomjacks”), Jorgenson is pulled from the wreckage of the converter chamber and brought to the Infirmary where a heart massage is the only way to keep him from certain death, but when his heart fails to respond, Doc Ferrell and his team must turn to an unorthodox—and untested—solution.
Stories from the golden and transitional ages of speculative and science fiction have always been my absolute favorites. Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, Ellison, Heinlein, Niven, the list goes on. Over the past two years or more, I’ve made a deliberate effort to expand my knowledge by including such writers as Philip José Farmer, Joe Haldeman, and Lester Del Rey, founder of Del Rey Publishing.
While I enjoyed The Best of Lester Del Rey anthology, I think it’s fair to say that NERVES is not one of his best works. Fortunately, it’s a short novel at only 153 pages. Sentence structure was occasionally awkward, character development non-existent, and I’m not entirely confident that Del Rey had a full grasp of the true nature of radiation exposure and its effects on the human body, although I will give him credit for an engaging description of the rescue and cleanup work after the accidents. I was a bit perplexed that there was only one expert on Mahler's Isotope in the entire facility. I suppose having another would have invalidated the entire plot.
Overall, I’d recommend skipping this one, but I will absolutely read more from Lester Del Rey.
Worse, inspections make the men nervous and nervous men make mistakes.
There was already a bill under review in Congress to move the entire facility to a remote location, away from the dense civilian population that is currently enjoying the inexpensive power generated as a by-product of the plant’s operations. Palmer wants nothing more than to prove the safety of nuclear power. As such, he wants his best people present.
Giving up his day off, Ferrell enters the plant to find minor injuries already in progress, adroitly handled by the nursing staff. However, during the inspection, an accident occurs that leaves one man badly burned.
To make matters worse, a routine testing of one of the converter chambers by chief scientist Mal Jorgenson uncovers the presence of highly volatile and deadly “Isotope R”, otherwise known as Mahler’s Isotope. Jorgenson sounds the alarm, but not before becoming trapped inside the converter chamber, his armored Tomlin suit his only protection against the fatal radiation.
Palmer orders a rescue mission to retrieve Jorgenson, the only man in the plant who knows the best method to stop Mahler’s Isotope from destroying not only everything in a fifty-mile radius, but perhaps the entire eastern United States!
After a massive and dangerous effort by several of the plant’s crew (aka “atomjacks”), Jorgenson is pulled from the wreckage of the converter chamber and brought to the Infirmary where a heart massage is the only way to keep him from certain death, but when his heart fails to respond, Doc Ferrell and his team must turn to an unorthodox—and untested—solution.
Stories from the golden and transitional ages of speculative and science fiction have always been my absolute favorites. Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, Ellison, Heinlein, Niven, the list goes on. Over the past two years or more, I’ve made a deliberate effort to expand my knowledge by including such writers as Philip José Farmer, Joe Haldeman, and Lester Del Rey, founder of Del Rey Publishing.
While I enjoyed The Best of Lester Del Rey anthology, I think it’s fair to say that NERVES is not one of his best works. Fortunately, it’s a short novel at only 153 pages. Sentence structure was occasionally awkward, character development non-existent, and I’m not entirely confident that Del Rey had a full grasp of the true nature of radiation exposure and its effects on the human body, although I will give him credit for an engaging description of the rescue and cleanup work after the accidents. I was a bit perplexed that there was only one expert on Mahler's Isotope in the entire facility. I suppose having another would have invalidated the entire plot.
Overall, I’d recommend skipping this one, but I will absolutely read more from Lester Del Rey.
September 10, 2013
A good emergency thriller from the time of atomic cars and human operator-controlled videophone lines. The book manages to hold your attention quite well, despite the somewhat silly ideas about transuranic elements that are at the core of the story.
It's also great to see that the author did not take the path of evil, and did not shrink the medicine in the novel to magic lazorrs and glue guns. Treatments look mostly believable and well thought out.
The only serious annoyance is the whole 'Jenkins turning out to be a big huge genius all of a sudden' business. It feels a bit forced, and a lot like wishful thinking, which is too much for an otherwise down-to-earth story like this.
It's also great to see that the author did not take the path of evil, and did not shrink the medicine in the novel to magic lazorrs and glue guns. Treatments look mostly believable and well thought out.
The only serious annoyance is the whole 'Jenkins turning out to be a big huge genius all of a sudden' business. It feels a bit forced, and a lot like wishful thinking, which is too much for an otherwise down-to-earth story like this.
May 19, 2014
Meh, more like Lesser del Rey ...
October 21, 2019
Suspense and relatability are the heart and mind of a book, without them the book is nothing. The book Nerves, by Lester Del Ray has some suspense but the dialect is from the mid 1900’s and not relatable. Science fiction books should be filled with unworldly things that are hard to imagine really happening. This book had extreme events that took place but the dialect was very old fashioned and not fun to read. Nerves was a difficult read because it was written a long time ago with dialect that is hard to understand and not relatable.
The characters in the book use expressions that are awkward and do not relate to current day. Today, people do not speak with the same type of dialogue so it is hard to understand the points that each of the characters are trying to make. In addition, the suspense was ruined many times throughout the book because the characters dialogue was confusing. When this happened it just became frustrating, confusing, and hard to continue reading. On the other hand, when the dialogue was not as clumsy, the events in the book were easier to relate to and imagine. For example, the reader can relate to a routine test at a nuclear power plant going bad and the events that follow add suspense that makes the reader want to keep reading to see what happens next. Reading Nerves is a chore because of the awkward dialogue but the reader can get through the book because a nuclear explosion is relatable today.
The dialect in the book is old fashioned and out of touch with present day which makes it hard for the reader to follow along with the book. Although the older dialogue is tough the book still has many events that are relatable to modern day. Nerves has some good suspense that hooks the reader, but the awkward dialogue in the book makes the reader confused which takes away from the suspense and makes the book boring. The book deserves a 5 out of 10 because it was not easy to read the older dialogue and writing style. The only thing that made me want to keep reading was the suspense and how the events relate to the twenty-first century.
The characters in the book use expressions that are awkward and do not relate to current day. Today, people do not speak with the same type of dialogue so it is hard to understand the points that each of the characters are trying to make. In addition, the suspense was ruined many times throughout the book because the characters dialogue was confusing. When this happened it just became frustrating, confusing, and hard to continue reading. On the other hand, when the dialogue was not as clumsy, the events in the book were easier to relate to and imagine. For example, the reader can relate to a routine test at a nuclear power plant going bad and the events that follow add suspense that makes the reader want to keep reading to see what happens next. Reading Nerves is a chore because of the awkward dialogue but the reader can get through the book because a nuclear explosion is relatable today.
The dialect in the book is old fashioned and out of touch with present day which makes it hard for the reader to follow along with the book. Although the older dialogue is tough the book still has many events that are relatable to modern day. Nerves has some good suspense that hooks the reader, but the awkward dialogue in the book makes the reader confused which takes away from the suspense and makes the book boring. The book deserves a 5 out of 10 because it was not easy to read the older dialogue and writing style. The only thing that made me want to keep reading was the suspense and how the events relate to the twenty-first century.
August 3, 2023
This book is what I consider Lester Del Rey’s best story. While he engages in a great deal of poetic license regarding the basics of nuclear physics, the fundamental story is very real. The premise is that a major accident takes place at a nuclear reactor. The reactor is used to produce energy as well as nuclear material used commercially. It is a massive facility and there is a growing anti-nuclear movement in the country. While it is not anti-nuclear, the goal of the movement is to have nuclear plants located in extremely remote areas so that any catastrophic accident will at most lead to deaths at the plant itself.
The manager of the plant receives a request to produce a nuclear material that can be used as a pesticide, so he delegates a portion of the plant to produce it. He believes that if they can be shown to be saving major crops, people will believe in nuclear power. The process goes wildly wrong and there is a potentially catastrophic explosion if it isn’t dampened.
What makes this story so compelling is that it is told from the perspective of the plant physician, the man that has to treat the injured and irradiated. In a nod to the future, one of the other physicians is female and she is extremely calm and competent when things are falling apart. Given the major nuclear disaster that took place at Chernobyl in 1986, Del Rey proved to be prescient. He also predicted the anti-nuclear movement that existed before Chernobyl.
The manager of the plant receives a request to produce a nuclear material that can be used as a pesticide, so he delegates a portion of the plant to produce it. He believes that if they can be shown to be saving major crops, people will believe in nuclear power. The process goes wildly wrong and there is a potentially catastrophic explosion if it isn’t dampened.
What makes this story so compelling is that it is told from the perspective of the plant physician, the man that has to treat the injured and irradiated. In a nod to the future, one of the other physicians is female and she is extremely calm and competent when things are falling apart. Given the major nuclear disaster that took place at Chernobyl in 1986, Del Rey proved to be prescient. He also predicted the anti-nuclear movement that existed before Chernobyl.
September 28, 2023
Lester del Rey
”Nerves"
The original 1942-version
Read in Sept 2023 in
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two
Written in 1942. That is really impressive. The discovery of nuclear fission occurred in 1938. The first man-made nuclear reactor achieved criticality on 2. December 1942. After del Rey had written the story. That is how early is was.
Apparently the 1942-version has the plan producing atoms and the heat is an unused by-product.
The most interesting part of the story is the time capsule: CPR by massaging the hear directly, the defibrillation and lung machine as a heavy experimental device. And the radioactive waste is washed out into the swamp.
Some of it is hilariously stupid: The problematic radioactive material is inert. And the breakdown products, are they poisonous? No worry the amount is very small. If X radioactive matter breaks down to Y and Z. The mass of Y+Z will be only a tiny bit smaller than X. Stuff doesn’t just disappear. And like a reward. Just like that. Not to mention his working on his dad atomic plant as a twelve year old.
The story is around 2½ star. Mostly interesting from a historical perspective. I am rounding up to 3 stars for the strong female character who actually think a real though.
”Nerves"
The original 1942-version
Read in Sept 2023 in
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two
Written in 1942. That is really impressive. The discovery of nuclear fission occurred in 1938. The first man-made nuclear reactor achieved criticality on 2. December 1942. After del Rey had written the story. That is how early is was.
Apparently the 1942-version has the plan producing atoms and the heat is an unused by-product.
The most interesting part of the story is the time capsule: CPR by massaging the hear directly, the defibrillation and lung machine as a heavy experimental device. And the radioactive waste is washed out into the swamp.
Some of it is hilariously stupid: The problematic radioactive material is inert. And the breakdown products, are they poisonous? No worry the amount is very small. If X radioactive matter breaks down to Y and Z. The mass of Y+Z will be only a tiny bit smaller than X. Stuff doesn’t just disappear. And like a reward. Just like that. Not to mention his working on his dad atomic plant as a twelve year old.
The story is around 2½ star. Mostly interesting from a historical perspective. I am rounding up to 3 stars for the strong female character who actually think a real though.
October 11, 2020
This certainly isn't a bad book. It is, however, very dated. The style, the characters, the science all aged pretty poorly. That can often be charming, but this suffers from that. Namely, the way the radiation and the threats associated with it are described. Or should I say, not described? We're told everything is possible through the miracle of atomics, but the rules aren't fully explained. We really aren't shown how any of this stuff works. This leads to plenty of confusion. Confusion is also present concerning the whole disaster in the story. Simultaneously they are telling us how incredibly dangerous this situation is, but through the character's actions, the reader isn't really feeling the dread of the literal ticking timebomb. It ultimately results in this not being a very satisfying read in the end.
June 15, 2023
Disappointed to leave a lower review on this one. I did pick it up, after all, for its influence on one of my favorites of Larry Niven's Work. However, I found the science dense and difficult to follow (especially since it's no longer accurate), and the tension to be lacking. I had hoped for a tense, edge-of-the-seat kind of novel, but I found it instead to drag through the middle. Also, the resolution felt anticlimactic after the seeming hopelessness of the situation. The solution of "dump the radioactive waste in the swamp" was very unusual and, as a 21st century reader, rather alarming to me, instead of being a satisfying and clever ending. The vibes were good, but overall, I found it lacking.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 8, 2024
The best and worst of the Golden Era in one package. The best being a strong sense of pace and a nominally interesting (if boringly engineering-focussed) idea. The worst being:
- Ludicrous characters
- A Masters in Engineering required to understand plot
- Massively outdated attitudes (the protagonist is cool because he still smokes; a whole new category of job is invented between nurses and doctors so that women can occupy it - they could never be doctors themselves, y'see!)
- It's like 90% dialogue and everyone talks in the same voice
- There are 2-3 Mary Sues here and they all brood on tiny mistakes like babies
So overall I'd say my venture into reading more, shorter works is going... okay...
- Ludicrous characters
- A Masters in Engineering required to understand plot
- Massively outdated attitudes (the protagonist is cool because he still smokes; a whole new category of job is invented between nurses and doctors so that women can occupy it - they could never be doctors themselves, y'see!)
- It's like 90% dialogue and everyone talks in the same voice
- There are 2-3 Mary Sues here and they all brood on tiny mistakes like babies
So overall I'd say my venture into reading more, shorter works is going... okay...
February 16, 2021
So, this is a selection found in one of Ben Bova's Science Fiction Hall of Fame books - Vol IIA - the novella. It was quite long for a novella. The story, published in 1942, is about an incident at a nuclear plant. The term is a quaint "Atomics" in this book. There is a large amount of imaginary science here to wade through. Overall, it is a product of its time and mildly interesting. I am sure that 80 years ago it would have been a very intense story line. I vacillated between 3 or 4 stars, but the characters were likable, so 4.
Read
July 30, 2021Read the original novella in the excellent The Science Fiction Hall of Fame: Volume II A. That constitutes quite enough engineering for me at one sitting, or even two. (I won't use it to rate this, which I won't read.) Does have the interesting idea of a "nursing doctor", which a couple of decades later the real world instituted as the nurse practitioner.
October 14, 2022
Shocked that this is considered for SF hall of fame. The only redeeming quality for this story was a roughly prescient prediction of how messy a nuclear meltdown would be (before Chernobyl). Everything else about this was god awful: stilted prose, bad pacing, irrelevant details, unrealistic dialogue, etc.
1.5 / 5 stars (rounded up to 2)
Note - this was read as part of Science Fiction Hall of Fame 2A
1.5 / 5 stars (rounded up to 2)
Note - this was read as part of Science Fiction Hall of Fame 2A
September 2, 2025
There is something about old school science fiction and the way it manages to be hopeful about technology even in the midst of telling a cautionary tale. Hopeful and nuanced about what technology can lead to when we mix it with human emotions and behaviours, both good and bad. It's kind of refreshing from a contemporary point of view where all we seem to use technology for is new versions of plastic and the stupidification of the working and middle classes.
March 18, 2019
I read this via audible.com. Well performed reading of a novella about an accident and it’s aftermath at an “atomic” plant. Much of the story hasn’t aged well, but was at least entertaining, except when two characters start playing chess and Del Rey illustrates a lack of understanding of MY favorite game. 🙂
January 4, 2021
I am always blown away by how Del Rey can deliver such expansive and interesting characters and stories with such a short book. In 150 pages he can give you what some writers can’t in 500, and this book is no different. Although it differs from my regular sci-if choices, it still took me along on a journey with many ups and downs. Great read!
July 16, 2025
So many details correctly covered, so prescient, of the actual unfolding of a nuclear accident—though Hersey’s Hiroshima was published in 1946 (much to the consternation of the US military which occupied Japan then and had imposed a media blackout on the events and aftermath occurring in Hiroshima and Nagasaki)
And after seeing the TV miniseries “Chernobyl” radiation sickness is a horrible way to die.
“Brown drew back her hands, and stared down uncomprehendingly.
‘It’s beating….by itself, it’s beating.’…
His technique was still not faulty and he had performed the operation correctly, after seeing it once on a dog…”
Ha! I would like to think that this is an oblique reference (and homage) to Bulgakov’s Heart of the Dog but I don’t think that was published in English until the late 1960s
And after seeing the TV miniseries “Chernobyl” radiation sickness is a horrible way to die.
“Brown drew back her hands, and stared down uncomprehendingly.
‘It’s beating….by itself, it’s beating.’…
His technique was still not faulty and he had performed the operation correctly, after seeing it once on a dog…”
Ha! I would like to think that this is an oblique reference (and homage) to Bulgakov’s Heart of the Dog but I don’t think that was published in English until the late 1960s
July 2, 2018
In many ways the world-building is an incoherent, hand-wavy mess. But the tension and the theme still work: I don't know if this is the first description of an accident at a nuclear power plant, but knowing how these things have happened in real life doesn't detract from the tension.
February 20, 2025
I don’t know what it was about this book but it just wasn’t very interesting. It took a long time to get anywhere while trying to build tension and failing.
It split its attention between creating dilemmas and dumping exposition on the reader.
I reached the end without feeling like I read a book
It split its attention between creating dilemmas and dumping exposition on the reader.
I reached the end without feeling like I read a book
October 17, 2017
The science and some of the characters are rather dated, but I love the action in this one. I read it every few years.
January 15, 2018
A story of a nuclear plant near meltdown. First written in 1942 for magazine publication, so it was prophetic to some extent. Expanded for book publication in 1956, and revised again in 1976.
April 28, 2018
Hard to finish, too dated, with contrived anxiety and that classic "U.S. Army" dialogue and response to every situation from this time period.
Read
April 19, 2018Nerves had good characterization, but the medical and atomic sciences didn't stand the test of time well. Liked it (3.5 stars).
October 8, 2018
A good, fast-paced read.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 62 reviews