On the Beach was the first book of Nevil Shute's I ever read and I confess that it influenced my outlook on the problem of nuclear war and human survival. Until then I secretly believed that such a world catastrophe could never happen. Mankind was too rational to destroy itself. Like many others, this did not prevent me from being active against war, but always with a certain emotional reservation, founded mainly on historical and political optimism. Nevil Shute's book, while not demolishing the optimism, qualified it greatly and made me begin to see that Bertrand Russell might be right and that the chances of human survival were not quite so good. Undoubtedly, On the Beach had a similar effect on other readers. It may have caused some to grow disheartened, but some would have drawn from it a new sense of urgency and of the terrible reality...