ABSTRACT
This chapter opens by exploring the development of John Wyndham’s style and dominant themes, using new archival research to locate his postwar novels as works of nuclear imagination in the context of international discourse on the Bomb and the broader science fiction (SF) genre. A central claim of this chapter is that science fiction’s effects can be felt in the realm of formal politics. Discussion of the interactions between world politics, international relations theory and SF writing leads into a closer reading of Wyndham’s 1955 novel The Chrysalids premised upon Zymunt Bauman’s (1997) treatment of the ideas of purity and dirt. This novel, written in the immediate aftermath of Joseph McCarthy’s anti-Communist witch-hunt, uses religious themes to discuss morality in the field of politics in a post-nuclear and post-fascist world. Pivoting toward the intersection between ideology and religious belief in the novel, I then look at The Chrysalids in the context of the birth of the Church of Scientology. Wyndham’s work attempts to engage with religious and spiritual themes from a secular perspective, and political issues from a moral stance that characterises him as a liberal in the broad English tradition of David Lloyd George and Herbert Asquith. His outlook can be described as that of a cheerful pessimistic utopian.
