Pirates Of The Nuclear Front

A Small Armageddon
by Mordecai Roshwald
p. 1962

Cold War-era satire, A Small Armageddon, was the second of only two fictional novels ever written by Mordecai Roshwald, whose first novel, Level 7, got me into the post-apocalyptic genre to begin with. A Small Armageddon explores similar themes of mutually assured destruction and the threat of the arms race, but unlike the former, it follows a much more irreverent path to get its point across.

A Small Armageddon does not follow heroes; its primary characters are actually the villains: rogue nuclear submarine captain Gerald Brown and religious fanatic, Peter Schumacher. Brown dominates the majority of the novel as we follow his descent into modern day piracy. Brown—an ambitious but deeply resentful man in command of the nuclear-armed submarine Polar Lion—is interesting because he is a character who may never have become the person he did were it not for various influences. If he didn’t carry with him the baggage of his adolescence, always second best to the ‘popular kids’ he resents, he may never have snapped and murdered his commanding officer. If he weren’t so determined to be liked, he may not have gotten the support he needed to support his mutiny. If he hadn’t listened to one dumb kid’s dreamy notions of adventuring, he may never have gotten the idea to resort to piracy. And most importantly, if he hadn’t felt one-upped by Schumacher, the whole affair might have turned out very differently.

Schumacher is also incited to act based on his personal impulses, his being religious in nature. Schumacher, an extremist and fundamentalist, sees Brown’s crusade and is inspired to start one of his own—but instead of requesting strippers and gold, he demands strict enforcement of his moral code, which ends up being more difficult to provide than the strippers and the gold. Both men are in considerable positions of power and no one suspects they are capable of extreme action until they are literally pointing a missile at the world. It’s not enough that Brown and Schumacher are inspired by personal impulses; they are then further inspired to target each other out of revenge. This whole bit of satire just goes to show how dangerous it is to put the nuclear threat in the hands of men. We are quick to incite to anger and far too easily guided by emotion or personal gain. To allow corruptible men access to such savage power as nuclear weaponry can, according to Roshwald, very likely lead to our own downfall.

I did not find A Small Armageddon to live up to its predecessor. Level 7 is the more impressive of the two, as its vague tones and dire conclusion give it a gut punch feel unrivaled here, where the only ones who suffer are the villains (and a couple unfortunate people caught in the crossfire). Still, A Small Armageddon is not without its merits and it still manages to get its point across: it does not matter if you have the best intentions or the worst intentions if the end result is the same.

Yo-Ho-Ho and a Bottle of Rum

Treasure Island
by Robert Louis Stevenson
p. 1883

It feels strange to admit that I’ve never actually read Treasure Island when the story is itself such a mainstay in pop culture. For sure, it is a tenacious tale that has been reinterpreted over and over again every couple of years for almost a century and a half, and no doubt it will continue to endure the ages because it is such a classic adventure tale with vibrant characters.

It’s always the infamous rogue pirate Long John Silver who gets the most press when people think of Treasure Island, and that’s not a bad impulse, per se, but though Silver is a dynamic and complex character, finally reading him as he’s written made me realize he’s actually rather pathetic. Silver may have been able to round up a herd of mutineers to steal the treasure, but his grasp on their loyalty is tenuous at the best of times and in the end, he is defeated by a smaller party of men, half of whom weren’t even accustomed to sea life, and one of whom is a 14-year-old boy. The film portrayals have gotten one thing right though: Long John Silver is a man of ever-shifting motives and he goes through the whole range of them, but he does have a special fondness for Jim Hawkins and I felt it strongly throughout the book, though I wish we would have had more context as to why.

As for Jim Hawkins, I was a little disappointed that he was so... competent. You have to keep reminding yourself that your narrator is a teenage boy (even upon the retelling of the story, some years later), because he doesn’t present as one. He makes a lot of mistakes, but he’s astoundingly efficient for a boy who has never set foot on a boat before. Hawkins is the catalyst for the treasure hunt, he discovers the mutiny plot, he single-handedly regains control of the ship, endures a bit of suffering and isolation and eventually kills a man who attempts to attack him, and none of this seems to have a lasting effect on his psyche. I would imagine in real life, a boy would show a little more reticence in Jim’s place but young Hawkins is quite bold when confronting the pirates, and he never really sees any consequences for his rash behavior. Everything pretty much works out for the kid. Still, Treasure Island was intended as a boys' adventure novel; that Jim shows incredible mettle and comes out on top is not all that surprising considering the genre.

I’m actually surprised that Smollett, the captain of the Hispaniola, which takes the party to and from their voyage, isn’t a more renown pop culture icon because he was totally awesome. The captain had some of the best lines in the book and it was during the parts where he exerted his leadership that I most felt myself attuned to the action. I wish Robert Louis Stevenson had written a book entirely about Captain Smollett and his prior adventures because I would totally read that.

I am a kid who grew up on "Muppet Treasure Island" and Disney's futuristic reinvention, "Treasure Planet," and I like both of those adaptations, even if they soft-pedal things a bit. Last year I caught a new mini-series adaptation with a pretty great cast, including Eddie Izzard as Long John Silver and Elijah Wood (of all people) as Ben Gunn. For whatever reason, it was on SyFy, so I watched it expecting some fantastical twist on the tale but it ended up having no science fiction elements and I'm still perplexed as to how SyFy ended up with it. That version was a fairly faithful update but what I'm really interested in is the new Starz series starting next month, "Black Sails," which is a prequel to Treasure Island featuring a young John Silver. In an age where the antihero is king, it should be quite compelling to see a story entirely from the pirates' point of view.