In the following review LaFaille contrasts the book to Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon.

Nevil Shute's On the Beach, although certainly intended for a mainstream audience when it was first published in 1957, immediately attracted the attention of the science fiction community because of its brilliant and horrifying depiction of the end of human life after an atomic war. On the Beach begins in Melbourne, Australia, in 1963, one year after a limited exchange of atomic weapons between China and Russia resulted in a wider conflict between the superpowers, as well as a series of regional conflicts with further atomic warfare. The result of this cataclysm is that there are no outward signs of human life after an atomic war. On the Beach begins in Melbourne, Australia in 1963, one year after a limited exchange of atomic weapons between China and Russia resulted in a wider conflict between the superpowers, as...