“Dark Dawn”
Henry Kuttner writing as Keith Hammond
Thrilling Wonder Stories, August 1947

Kuttner had three stories in this issue of Thrilling Wonder, one under his own name and two under psuedonyms.  I’ll look at all of them since two of them have been reprinted and the third never appeared in one of Kuttner’s collectons and hasn’t seen print since the 1960s.

In the post War years, Americans were definitely interested in atomic bombs and the possibility of radioactive fallout.  “Dark Dawn” deals with these concerns, as does “Atomic!”, the story in this issue that appears under Kuttner’s byline.

“Dark Dawn” opens with a military ship observing an atomic bomb test in the Pacific taking on a man fouond drifting in a small raft.  The man, Dan Gresham, was in the area and looking straight at the blast.  As a result, he’s now blind.

But soon Gresham begins to see things.  Like the creature that seems to be following the ship.  The crew thinks it’s a dolphin.  It’s not.  The creature is from much greater depths than dolphins swim, and it’s nothing that humans have ever seen.  Gresham begins to refer to them as Swimmers.  And he can see things from their perspective.

Soon Gresham is able to transfer his mind into a shark and viewing things iin the Swimmers’ world.  They inhabit cities on the ocean floor.  Gresham is awed by the beauty of the Swimmers’ cities.

There are other creatures, referred to simplly as Others, who live to eradicate the creatures in the cities.  The atomic test has disrupted things on the sea floor.  Until now the Swimmers were able to successfully defend themselves against the Others.  Now, due to the destruction from the atomic bomb tests, their defenses are weakened.  The Others attack with full force.

The ending isn’t a happy one.

“Dark Dawn” isn’t Kuttner’s best work, but it’s not his worst by any stretch of the imagination.  The motivations of the Others are rather simplistic, certainly by today’s standards.  Of course if someone were to write this story today, it would probably have the Others be some oppressed group that no one understands.  The Swimmers would be Privileged overlords who got what they deserved.  I think I would rather have Kuttner’s simpler entertainment. It’s not necessaarily great literature, but it is fun.