The world held its breath for four, terrifying days whilst two nuclear powers, India and Pakistan, snarled at one another from opposite sides of a young and blood-soaked border. For four days we watched, as the squabble escalated into a skirmish, then a brawl; with each side engaging in tit-for-tat drone strikes that would probably seem rather childish and petty, were it not for the civilian corpses that have been left to decorate both sides of the sub-continent. 

Samit Ganguly, a Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, was probably correct when he pointed out that “neither India nor Pakistan wants to be labelled as the first violator of the post-Hiroshima nuclear taboo,” but that remains cold comfort in this age of chest-thumbing militarism. After all, it was only three years ago that India accidentally fired a nuclear capable cruise missile into Pakistani territory. The missile travelled 77 miles before crashing, reportedly “damaging civilian property.” The incident, eventually, was wrapped up by the sacking of three air force officers for the “accidental firing of a missile.” As bad as all this was, the incident could have been much, much worse – the same could be said for the four-day conflict between the two nations in 2025. It’s difficult to sleep easy when two nuclear powers find themselves at loggerheads. From India and Pakistan, to Russia and Ukraine…The more things change, the more they stay the same, and I suspect that we all have quite a few years of sleepless nights ahead of us. We are all still living under the misshapen shadows of ‘Einstein’s Monsters.’

‘Einstein’s Monsters,’ is a delightfully grotesque collection of “bomb-shadowed” short stories penned by the late novelist, essayist and screenwriter, Martin Amis. The book opens with a (depressingly timeless) polemical essay: ‘Thinkability,’ wherein Amis expresses his contempt towards the rapid development of nuclear weapons as a technology, as well as their vestigial twin, the “disgusting and ridiculous doctrine” of Mutually Assured Destruction – a military strategy rooted in the idea that a nuclear attack by one superpower would be met with an immediate retaliatory attack; a course of action that would lead to the complete annihilation of both the attacker and the defender. This outcome – a crucial part of the supposed logic of the doctrine – relies on the self-preserving rationality of two (or more) nuclear superpowers engaged in a (cold or hot) war; a position that Amis rightfully scorns in his essay, pointing out the absurdity of a doctrine that is based on the understanding that “Nuclear weapons deter a nuclear holocaust by threatening a nuclear holocaust, and if things go wrong then that is what you get: a nuclear holocaust.”

In a darkly comic, though characteristically existential passage, Amis concludes his essay by comparing the world’s nuclear stockpile to a circle of monolithic “Keepers,” surrounding and simultaneously imprisoning a gaggle of infantilised political leaders at a “multiracial children’s teaparty,” a gathering that the children themselves are desperate but unable to leave, trapped by their inability to simply “ask the Keepers to leave,” a notion that seems (perversely to Amis) “unthinkable.” Therefore, these “weepy and feverish” children, ensnared by their own apocalyptic creations, must remain at a party that, according to Amis, must endure “until the end of time.” The party must endure…because the alternative is too horrible to contemplate. Amis, never one to shy away from the horrors of the twentieth century, provides his reader with a selection of terrifying glimpses into what might just happen in a world where this “teaparty” grinds to a sudden – though predictable – conclusion. 

Amis follows this essay with the first of his short stories: ‘Bujak and the Strong Force, or God’s Dice.’ A curiously human, grounded story to immediately follow the existential and apocalyptic musings that permeate Amis’s opening essay – though just as unflinching in its depiction of human depravity and violence as the following tales of post-nuclear carnage. Arguably, more so. ‘Bujack and the Strong Force’ is a human story, about humans trapped in a universe that has grown oddly hostile to the existence of the human race – a fallen, post-nuclear reality. Although no bombs are to be seen in the 21 pages of this short story, the background radiation of nuclear holocaust filters through the pages, corrupting the city of London, its inhabitants, and even the language of Samson, the tale’s central protagonist and narrator. The subject of atomic bombs makes its debut early in the narrative, during the narrator’s first encounter with the titular strongman, Bujack. Michi, Samson’s wife, reveals to Bujack that she lost “a cousin of her father’s” in the American devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This revelation – to both the reader and Samson – sets the tone for the rest of the narrative: “It seems that everyone loses someone in the big deaths.” This is a broken world, a depraved world, reduced and tainted by the atrocities of the early twentieth century; a “suicidal” world, ravaged by “recreational crimes of violence, the ever-less-tacit totalitarianism of money…pornographic proliferation. A world that has “seen it all and done it all.” 

Yet, in some ways, ‘Bujack and the Strong Force,’ is the most optimistic story in the collection…though it is a curious, horrorshow kind of optimism that only an author such as Amis is capable of handling. Bujack is a twisted – though surprisingly likeable – moral pillar for his local community; part-handyman, part-vigilante; an overwhelmingly powerful force of uncompromising morality, of violent virtue, of sledgehammer justice – or, whatever counts for justice in the simmering afterglow of Little Boy and Fat Man. Samson finds himself both drawn to and fearful of Bujack, whose retributive, might makes right form of justice provides a startling allegory for the inherent brutality of nuclear deterrence. Bujcak acts as a “deterrent,” against the petty criminals and thugs of his local community, a figure who is dismissive of Samson’s more pacifistic tendencies – “Bujack was a big fan of revenge. He had a lot of time for revenge.” Bujack, the nuclear “deterrent” made flesh; when a gang of thugs arrive at Bujack’s home to menace the strongman’s daughter, Samson’s description of the violence is appropriately nuclear, detailing how Bujack “carefully poked a neutonium fist into Pat’s upturned face.” Bujack is the nuclear deterrent – as well as all the unflinching, absolutist certainty that shrouds defenders of such devices – made flesh, a being that relies on brute force and the guiding principle of vengeance to maintain order. Even if Bujack uses violence for admittedly respectable causes: defending his daughter from a violent ex, scaring off delinquents, he is clearly something of a fallen guardian angel, a being that has been dragged into the twisted violence of the nuclear-tainted twentieth century; something that the character seems to acknowledge throughout the story. In one moving passage, Samson relates Bujack’s opinion that the modern world has been corrupted by “Einsteinian knowledge,” that the defining paradox of the twentieth century is “that the greatest, the purest, the most magical – genius of our time should have introduced the earth to such squalor, profanity and panic.” Both Amis and Bujack both suggest that the atrocities of the twentieth century are the result of humanity’s “entanglement, its flirtation…its thing with the strong force.” 

Of course, if Bujack is the living embodiment of the nuclear deterrent, the ultimate arbiter of morality and justice, the brutal peacekeeper of London in the aftermath of Hiroshima, then he is a flawed protector and, ultimately, his strength fails to protect the people he loves the most. Whilst Bujack is away from London, Samson reports how Bujack’s family – his Mother, daughter and grandchild – are massacred by a pair of drunken thugs. The depiction of the “naked, contorted, frozen” bodies of Bujack’s family is heartbreaking to read, precisely for its pointlessness; just more evidence of the centuries madness, its arbitrary sadism. As Amis pointed out in his opening essay, the threat of nuclear holocaust only works until it stops working, and even when it works, it doesn’t, not really. Curiously, Bujack chooses not to exact revenge on the murderers of his family, at least, not beyond dragging them to the police station. In a sense, Bujack provides the reader with an allegory not just of nuclear deterrence, but of unilateralism. Bujack relinquishes his strength, and his love of revenge, which he once described as being “as reasonable as anything” – and if the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction is based on anything, it is the human thirst for revenge – with the confession that he couldn’t bring himself to “add to what I saw there.” It is a moment of nobility for Bujack, though this gesture does somewhat undermine the philosophy of Samson’s unilateralism. If Bujack failed to prevent his own personal nuclear holocaust, then his decision to refuse to carry out a second holocaust on the two murderers, whilst admirable, does nothing to undo the deaths of his family. Perhaps Amis is suggesting that it is too late for the human race. Even if we did pursue disarmament, the nuclear genie is out of the bottle; the bodies will pile up, the cities will burn…the best that we can strive for is an unsatisfactory harm reduction. A terrifying prospect…but, as Samson points out “that risk must be smaller than the other risk, which is infinite.”

Amis continues his theme of post-nuclear corruption with ‘Insight at Flame Lake.’ The story follows two central protagonists, who reveal their thoughts to the reader through excerpts taken from their separate diaries. Dan has recently lost his father to suicide, and goes to stay with his Uncle Ned; Ned’s wife, Francesca; and their infant daughter, Hattie. As Dan resides with the family at their house by Flame Lake, we begin to slowly discover more about the circumstances that have driven him into the care of his uncle. Dan is schizophrenic, a condition he has inherited from his father. As the narrative unfolds, Dan finds himself increasingly obsessed by the “insight” he believes he can gain, from a state of self-awareness regarding his condition. This results in a complete psychotic breakdown from Dan, who finds himself increasingly haunted by the belief that Francesca is attempting to seduce him, and that Hattie has also inherited his father’s madness. The child of Ned and Franesca begin to stalk Dan at night, swelling to nightmarishly impossible proportions, urging Dan to go with her to the “sleeping warhead of Flame Lake” in order to complete their “trial by fire.” A passage with disturbing implications for the fate of little Hattie. Fortunately, Amis spares the infant. Unfortunately, his mercy is not extended to the child, for Dan, driven into a psychotic breakdown from his hallucinations, drowns himself in the “black and boiling” water of Flame Lake. Dan, we learn in the concluding pages of Uncle Ned’s diary, was only twelve years old. 

Just like ‘Bujack and the Strong Force,’ the tragedy of ‘Insight at Flame Lake’ takes place in a nuclear-tainted world, a corrupted world – however, whereas the previous story focuses on the decline of morality in a post-nuclear society, ‘Insight at Flame Lake’ is preoccupied with the distortions of the mind. Amis seems to be positing a link between the collapse of Dan’s sanity, and the creation of nuclear weapons. Dan’s father – who Dan also described as “one of the fathers of the nuclear age” – worked in delivery systems on the development of Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicles; a type of exoatmospheric ballistic missile. Dan confesses to the reader that “my urine contains bufotenine” and that when he is hallucinating “there is more bufotenine, more mauve, in my urine than when I’m not.” We know that Dan’s father took his own life during a psychotic break; a tragedy that is repeated in his son’s dreadful fate – perhaps Marx was wrong when he said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce? ‘Insight at Flame Lake’ offers very little in the way of farce, merely a series of interconnected micro-tragedies, linked by an inherited mental illness. From the father, to Dan – not to mention Dan’s fear that little Hattie shares the same illness – the culpability of humans in the creation of a weapon as devastating as Nuclear Warheads haunts the characters of ‘Insight at Flame Lake’ like an original sin; manifesting in acts of self-destructive madness. 

Amis follows ‘Insight at Flame Lake,’ with the first truly dystopian story in the collection: ‘The Time Disease.’ The narrative transpires in some unspecified future society, in the aftermath of a nuclear conflict, or disaster. In this story, Amis presents the reader with an absurd, topsy-turvy world wherein sickness and age are seen as signs of good health; and the entire population is overwhelmed by a terrible fear of catching a disease called time, a condition that results in the “shiny telltale succulence of youth,” sufferers of which are condemned to death. Indeed, the protagonist, Lou, is little more than a corpse inhabiting a dead world beneath a “ruined sky” – a sky of “cloaked ghosts” and “crimson demons” – that he would rather lull himself into a state living death, sapping away the disease of youth, of time, numbing himself with hours of mindless television provided by The Therapy Channel whilst huddled beneath a blanket. A post-nuclear world, Amis seems to suggest, is an irredeemable, unloveable world, in which time, the prospect of being burdened with time, is to be shunned.

‘The Little Puppy That Could,’ and ‘The Immortals,’ are the concluding stories to the collection. ‘The Little Puppy That Could,’ is, in my view, the weak link in an otherwise magnificent chain. Amis seems to be trying to combine a fairy-tale about a lost puppy with a nightmarish dystopian future wherein the human race is reduced to a miniscule tribe, preyed upon by a some sort of mutated devil-dog. It’s beautifully written, as one comes to expect of any work by Martin Amis, but at times the satirist seems to lose himself in his own absurdity. Very little seems to connect this story with the rest of the collection, beyond a description of a mysterious crater at the heart of this post-apocalyptic society; a fire that burns “with no fuel – but with fission, perhaps, perhaps fission’s daughters lay trapped beneath the crust.” The story concludes with the titular little puppy sacrificing himself whilst battling with the hideous mutant dog to save his beloved owner, Andromeda, before magically (I suppose?) reincarnating as a “strong and warlike” boy called John. Perhaps if more time was dedicated to the surreal, matriarchal village dominated by women called Keithette and Clivone, where more time was provided to explore this future of subordinate husbands, mutated Queers and man-eating beasts, there would be more to appreciate but, in my estimation, ‘The Little Puppy That Could,’ falls short of the rest of the collection. 

Fortunately, ‘The Immortals,’ provides us with a satisfying – though tragic – ending to the collection. In this story, Amis introduces us to one of his characteristically unreliable narrators, an enigmatic being who claims to be hundreds of millions of years old. This entity lives with a rag-tag group of humans, struggling to survive in the aftermath of a nuclear war. This self-proclaimed “dud god” glibly recounts the emergence of life on Earth, the extinction of the dinosaurs, the Ice Ages and, finally, the evolution of man: “All that evolution – and for this?” The Immortal narrator can’t help but bring himself to love humanity, falling in and love countless times, even as he bemoans the species’ self-destructive tendencies. This story reveals its brilliance in the final pages, during which Amis offers us a darkly comic twist ending. The Immortal narrator reveals that the dying remnants of humanity are all gripped by a collective self-delusion, that they are all immortal beings, doomed to endure on a barren Earth once the final vestiges of the human race fade into extinction. The narrator scoffs at this mass-madness, before confessing that he too harbours secret delusion of being little more than a “seond-rate New Zealand school master who never did anything or went anywhere and is now painfully dying of solar radiation with everybody else.” The revelation that our pseudo-celestial narrator is merely just one member of a dying pack of crazed, post-nuclear humans, “crackling” and “fizzing” under a “furious and birdless sky,” reiterates the overarching theme of ‘Einstein’s Monsters.’ The madness of Nuclear Weapons, and the bathetic end that will fall to the savage animals stupid enough to father them. 

It is curious, upon first inspection, how little attention is paid in these stories to the actual moment of nuclear annihilation. The stories instead prioritise the corrupting impact of the mere existence of nuclear weapons on our culture and psychology; or provide us with brief glimpses into the ravaged, absurd dystopias that trail in the wake of nuclear war. Aside from a minor mention of “the first nuclear conflicts,” and a humorous description of standing in the middle of a nuclear blast by the self-proclaimed immortal, almost no time is paid to that moment when our world – perhaps inevitably – is “illuminated by the nuclear flash,” as Douglas Coupland eloquently puts it in his book, ‘Life After God.’ I suspect that the real horror in ‘Einstein’s Monsters,’ are not the bombs, or, to be more precise, not merely the bombs, but the twisted fools that brought them into existence. Amis himself makes it clear in his Author’s Note that “‘Einstein’s Monsters…refers to nuclear weapons, but also to ourselves. We are Einstein’s Monsters, not fully human, not for now.” We are a fallen, corrupted species, corrupted by devices of our own making and Amis, beautifully, captures the results of this corruption throughout his collection. If the wages of sin is death, perhaps the wages of creating death – on a global scale – is madness…followed by more death.