This book analyses the 1980s as a nuclear decade focusing on British and United States
fiction. Ranging across genres including literary fiction science fiction post-apocalyptic
fiction graphic novels children¿s and young adult literature thrillers and horror it shows
how pressing nuclear issues were particularly the possibility of nuclear war and how deeply
they penetrated the culture. It is innovative for its discussion of a ¿nuclear transatlantic ¿
placing British and American texts in dialogue with one another for its identification of a
vibrant young adult fiction that resonates with more conventionally studied literatures of the
period and for its analysis of a ¿politics of vulnerability¿ animating nuclear debates. Placing
nuclear literature in social and historical contexts it shows how novels and short stories
responded not only to nuclear fears but also crystallised contemporary debates about issues of
gender the environment society and the economy.
