In 1939 Nevil Shute wrote a horrifyingly prophetic book, Ordeal, which made the life of the average citizen under bombardment only too real, as time proved…. And now comes Shute again [in On the Beach] with a portrait of the last stand of mankind against an enemy over which there was no control—radiation, gradually encompassing and destroying the world. There has been a brief atomic war, launched by two nations and resulting in mutual destruction within a brief month. But then the real catastrophe comes, as the death dealing effects encompass the living world. In Australia, where only the upper fringes so far lie within the circle, the people of the community of which he writes have exact scientific knowledge of when their doom will descend. To some it brings cessation from all activities; to others, indulgence in excesses of one kind or another; to still others, refusal...