{"id":1207,"date":"2016-01-11T08:14:08","date_gmt":"2016-01-11T14:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/?p=1207"},"modified":"2016-01-10T22:39:09","modified_gmt":"2016-01-11T04:39:09","slug":"kuttner-unkollected-dark-dawn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/kuttner-unkollected-dark-dawn\/","title":{"rendered":"Kuttner Unkollected: “Dark Dawn”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Thilling<\/a>“Dark Dawn”
\nHenry Kuttner writing as Keith Hammond
\nThrilling Wonder Stories<\/em>, August 1947<\/p>\n

Kuttner had three stories in this issue of Thrilling Wonder, one under his own name and two under psuedonyms. \u00a0I’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.<\/p>\n

In the post War years, Americans were definitely interested in atomic bombs and the possibility of radioactive fallout. \u00a0“Dark Dawn” deals with these concerns, as does “Atomic!”, the story in this issue that appears under Kuttner’s byline.<\/p>\n

“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. \u00a0The man, Dan Gresham, was in the area and looking straight at the blast. \u00a0As a result, he’s now blind.<\/p>\n

But soon Gresham begins to see things. \u00a0Like the creature that seems to be following the ship. \u00a0The crew thinks it’s a dolphin. \u00a0It’s not. \u00a0The creature is from much greater depths than dolphins swim, and it’s nothing that humans have ever seen. \u00a0Gresham begins to refer to them as Swimmers. \u00a0And he can see things from their perspective.<\/p>\n

\"20160110_220029\"<\/a>Soon Gresham is able to transfer his mind into a shark and viewing things iin the Swimmers’ world. \u00a0They inhabit cities on the ocean floor. \u00a0Gresham is awed by the beauty of the Swimmers’ cities.<\/p>\n

There are other creatures, referred to simplly as Others, who live to eradicate the creatures in the cities. \u00a0The atomic test has disrupted things on the sea floor. \u00a0Until now the Swimmers were able to successfully defend themselves against the Others. \u00a0Now, due to the destruction from the atomic bomb tests, their defenses are weakened. \u00a0The Others attack with full force.<\/p>\n

The ending isn’t a happy one.<\/p>\n

“Dark Dawn” isn’t Kuttner’s best work, but it’s not his worst by any stretch of the imagination. \u00a0The motivations of the Others are rather simplistic, certainly by today’s standards. \u00a0Of course if someone were to write this story today, it would probably have the Others be some oppressed group that no one understands. \u00a0The Swimmers would be Privileged overlords who got what they deserved. \u00a0I think I would rather have Kuttner’s simpler entertainment. It’s not necessaarily great literature, but it is fun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“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. \u00a0I’ll look at all of them since two of them have been reprinted and the third never appeared in one of Kuttner’s collectons […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[230,216],"tags":[771,810,689],"class_list":["post-1207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-henry-kuttner","category-pulp","tag-henry-kuttner","tag-pulp","tag-thrilling-wonder-stories"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3P5pJ-jt","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1207"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1212,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207\/revisions\/1212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}