Attack From Atlantis [Paperback]

Lester Del Rey (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Tempo Books; First Thus edition (1953)
• ASIN: B0013SP04Y
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

Customer Reviews

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Before We Were So Wise, February 17, 2008

By 

Paul Camp (Chattanooga, TN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: ATTACK FROM ATLANTIS (Hardcover)

Oh, yessiree Bob. We are all casual and blase about atomic powered submarines _today_. We have all read our Tom Clancy novels and seen all the James Bond movies. We know what they are like. But there was a time... There was a time...

_Attack from Atlantis_ (1953) by Lester del Rey is set partly on the atomic powered submarine _Triton_. In a foreward to the novel, del Rey refers to the first real-life atomic sub: "The _Nautilus_ is already being built. And just as this is being written, word has come that the first tests of an atomic power plant for the ship have been successful" (ix). In the novel, del Rey spends a bit of time explaining the difference between the nuclear engine of the _Nautilus_ and that of his fictional _U.S.S. Triton_.

Del Rey was not a professional scientist. But he had a better than average layman's knowledge of nuclear physics, and he wrote several popular books and articles on the subject. I suspect that there were a great many political and military leaders who knew less about nuclear energy than del Rey. There were even scientists of the day who believed that a little fallout was good for you. Del Rey knew better. So if the novel is in some respects a routine adventure, del Rey deserves a few points for knowing about atomic power before we were as wise and sophisticated as we are today.

Perhaps a few words might be said about the cover artist to the original Winston hardback, Kenneth Fagg (1901-1980). He had a strong background in architecture and geography and created the world's largest geophysical globe. He did covers for some of the big commercial magazines of the day-- _Holiday_, _Life_, and the _Saturday Evening Post_. But there were also those spectacular covers for _If_ in the early 1950s, some of them wraparounds. He did the cover illustrations for Arthur C. Clarke's "Jupiter Five" and James Blish's "A Case of Conscience." Many were astronomicals-- "Landing on Deimus," "A Volcanic Eruption on Titan," "Surveying a Dying Sun," and "Explorers on a Planet of Lava and Lightning." One was a portrait of an undersea city with transparent domes and exotic phosphorescent fishes swimming around it. The cover to _Attack from Atlantis_ is in that tradition. It depicts the _U.S.S. Triton_ being pulled downward by a team of glowing Ickthyosaurs in harness. The Ickthyosaurs are being ridden by some green skinned Atlantean men. The cover is almost worth the price of the book.