Ironically, with northern hemisphere nights at their shortest and the sun blazing down, the best of the current crop of science fiction books sit firmly at the darker end of the genre’s spectrum. And things don’t get much darker than the depths of the north Atlantic, where most of the action in Benedict Anning’s impressive debut effort, Atomic Coffin (Bantam £20/Saga Press $18), takes place.
The year is 1984, and the cold war is in its final throes, although global tensions are still running high. A Soviet nuclear submarine lies submerged off the coast of Iceland, motionless, and a Royal Navy hunter-killer sub is dispatched to investigate. The Russians have unwisely been experimenting with unknown forces, and their vessel has become the host for a malignant presence with the power to take over human minds and compel them to commit brutal acts.
Atomic Coffin could have been just a bit of pulpy fun — and no shame in that — but Anning has chosen to elevate things by concentrating on the unravelling psyche of his main character, British spy Heidi Sperling, with the narrative becoming increasingly fragmented and hallucinatory as her grasp on reality slips. The icy claustrophobia of the deep-sea setting and the sense of a paranoid world on the brink of nuclear Armageddon are strongly conveyed.