ATOMIC TALE UNLEASHES VIVIDLY IMAGINED HORRORS
Shadows of Nagasaki
Brent Fidler |
Theatre Crossings Film Corporation $25.99 | 334 pp.
On Aug. 9, 1945, the second atom bomb ever dropped fell like hell fire onto the Japanese city of Nagasaki.
The bomb destroyed a third of the city and massacred over 50,000 victims, most of them civilians. The bombing and the nuclear strike against Hiroshima three days earlier (which also involved thousands of civilian deaths) opened a dark new era, one haunted by the nightmarish proof that human ingenuity had created the means to destroy the world.
We have lived under the threat of a nuclear apocalypse ever since. While that danger was most dramatic during the Cold War, a world-blighting nuclear exchange remains possible today. (Over 13,000 nuclear weapons are still poised in various countries awaiting another moment of demented militarism.)
Vancouver actor and writer Brent Fidler’s new book, Shadows of Nagasaki (slated for an August release timed to coincide with the anniversary of the Nagasaki attack) is a horror/ fantasy work based on the dire realities of nuclear war, a kind of atomic age ghost story, if you will. The author calls it “an atomic karma tale.”
In this vividly imagined and painfully rendered tale, shadowy profiles left imprinted on walls by five victims when the Nagasaki blast incinerated them come to life and set out to take revenge, first by killing any living descendants of the scientists and aircrew responsible for the bombing, and then slaughtering the entire population of America.
The murderous shadows are unleashed at Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the final work of creating the Nagasaki bomb was done in 1945.
Many of the bomb makers’ descendants are killed in gore-spattered, ghost driven scenes that cry out for special effects treatment if this book comes full circle and serves as the basis for a movie. (One character muses “I feel like I’m in a Godzilla movie.”)
Using a curious blend of Ainu spells, ninja weaponry and advanced particle physics, a crew of scientists and a shaman defeat the Nagasaki hell-hounds and save America.
This ambitious but flawed book, which could have benefited from a more thorough edit to catch occasional errors of grammar, word choice and internal logic, will, nonetheless, provide a thought-provoking and entertaining beach read for many, and may well inspire a memorable movie to further promote the