A little something in the anti-mouseover line first. I read this book back in 1981 (for personal reasons, I can date it to within a month or two), liked it then and like it now. But following discussions with another Doper who has recently read it on my recommendation, it seems as though I have a question about it. Here’s the first spoiler: In the edition I read
Jonah Scott and Valentina Borofsky, plus two planeloads of refugees, reach McMurdo Sound in Antarctica having fled the formerly civilised world that has just become a radioactive slag-heap as a result of a brief but massive nuclear war. But in the final chapter, the Earth’s axis precesses as a result of the many nuclear impacts, causing the South Pole to be no longer located in Antarctica and hence the continent to assume a more northerly latitude. Unfortunately, the reason they fled to Antarctica in the first place was to escape the airborne fallout, kept at bay by the permanent Antarctic high, and once the continent shifts there’s nothing to keep out the radiation any more, and everyone dies.
But the other Doper in question was puzzled by what I referred to in the latter half of that spoiler, as in the edition she read the story ends with Valentina’s landing in the Antarctic and reunion with Jonah, and the presumption that everyone lives, if not happily ever after, then at least as well as they can hope for with less than a thousand people left alive in the world and the better part of a decade to wait until the rest of the planet starts to become vaguely habitable. No continental shift, no unwelcome radiation, nobody else dying, and in short the ending is radically different.
Whereas a comment I found in an article on the Internet, not discussing the book in great detail but addressing the unusual phenomenon referred to in the first spoiler, suggested that the version the author read had Antarctica shifting as before - eventually to become tropical - but (inconsistently) not falling foul of the radiation cloud, whichis different again.
Can anyone shed any light on this? Are there really three different versions of DTASS out there?
Er…I am that Doper! Not sure why you didn’t just ask me to participate! Anyway, yes indeedy…my book ends as Mal says in the second spoiler. When he started bringing up stuff from t he first one I went .
I hate alternate endings and different versions. There was another I nearly got tripped up by recently…what was it?
Oh, damn. I can’t remember. Something that they thought American audiences couldn’t handle, and British audiences got the whole ending. It was even discussed here on the Dope! bangs head on desk
Nonono, upon reading your spoilers in more detail…Mine was definitely the third spoiler.
[Spoiler]The earth was shifting, as in in the process, on its axis. The Antartic was going to end up where the equator was. But there was no epilogue about afterwards. No radiation troubles. No Russkies overestimating their cold abilities.[/spoiler
So me thinks there are only two versions. One has the last chapter cut out.
By the way, do you know how many David Grahams there are? Sheesh!
I read the book a long, long time ago. Probably the very first edition. It definitely ends with everyone realizing they are going to die. At first, they are ecstatic that it’s warming up, as I recall. Then they realize that the fallout is going to hit them and it’s all over.
In fact, I seem to recall that it ended with some kind of Adam-and-Eve thing, with the two main characters walking along in a warm Antarctica.
Maybe someone decided the ending was A) too depressing and B) too hokey, and changed it.
Maybe. The edition I’ve read ends (1981 reprint, not stated to be a revision of the 1979 original) as you’ve stated; in the Epilogue, everyone has died except Jonah and Valentina, and the two of them ride off into the snow, then continue on foot when their Snow Tiger runs out of fuel, and finally Jonah hears a voice telling him that it is time for a beginning; this is Woman and he is Man.
Googling around, I found a reference to the work on a physics site, talking about axis shift and similar unfeasibilities in science fiction, and it was there that I got the idea that there was a version in which Antarctica ended up tropical and nobody died; I thought the choices were “no axis shift, no-one dies” and “axis shift, everyone dies”. The physicist did remark the silliness of having Antarctica ending up equatorial and thus defeating the purpose of going there to flee the radiation. But I thought the no-axis shift would have been a better ending. Leaves the reader free to imagine the future and what kind of improvisation they would need to actually get off Antarctica when the time came…
(Anaamika, you know I’m too much of a gentleman to take a lady’s name in vain without her leave, and it was one of those late-evening moments when I just had to have a stab at getting the question answered. )
If they changed the ending, it was a good decision. I remember liking the book quite a lot until that Adam and Eve ending, then almost throwing it across the room.
I stopped liking it a couple of pages earlier, with the whole axis-shift thing. Bad science, whether it’s a happy ending or the one you and I read. But what the heck, the rest of the book is quite gripping.
Hey, look at that! 15K! I wonder if I get a prize.
Anyway… Yeah, the ending with the axis shift was bad science, but the Adam and Eve thing was bad writing. In fact, for the longest time books on writing science fiction or fantasy had the ‘new Adam and Eve’ plot gimmick as the #1 cliche-to-be-avoided.
Before that, though, it was a good book as I recall. I loved the scenes of them in the air, trying to find a safe place to land.
It was an excellent book. Pulls at the heartstrings a bit, but that’s to be expected. I thank **Mal **for the recommendation, and for the consideration in not mentioning my name! Though that wasn’t necessary.
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