“The end times may really be night”. Science Fiction and Nuclear Dystopia between the 1950s and 1960s

Basing on primary sources and on an extensive bibliography, the article deals with the interaction which took place during the Cold War between the political public discourse and the dystopic fiction about the prospective of a future nuclear war. Since the event itself was regarded as unprecedented and unthinkable (as the atomic bombs dropped over Japan in 1945 were “toys” if compared to the postwar arsenals), the nuclear conflict was primarily a war of words for decades, leaving room for any kind of speculation aimed at warning or at reassuring the population. In this respect, while dystopic novels aimed often at achieving political goals (like mobilizing the population for disarmament), in many cases the political discourse borrowed tropes and figures from fiction, such as Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars”. Although the article will show examples of dialogue and cooperation between the two spheres, more often the interaction took shape of a competition for the “heart and mind” of the general public in portraying the causes and the course of such war, the consequences of a “nuclear Apocalypse” for civilization and for mankind itself, and the ways to prevent it from happening. The article will focus mainly on the anglosphere, due both to its political centrality and to its literary relevance during the decades taken into consideration.