Fiction Reviews
Atomic Coffin
(2026) Benedict Anning, Bantam, £20, hrdbk, 308pp, ISBN 978-0-857-50888-1
Sometimes I am reminded that a book IS pretty much what is shown on the cover. As if the title alone didn’t tell you, Atomic Coffin is a science-fantasy horror billed by the publisher as a cross between The Hunt for Red October and Event Horizon. The cover shows a radar screen image with the top quarter replaced by the image of a red skull.
It’s a horror story set in the confined space of an atomic submarine in December 1984. (So: no mobile phones, videos, etc.)
For those not around at the time, in 1984 the Cold War between Russia and the USA and Europe was still pretty strong, but covert. The bookshelves were filled with horror paperbacks (see Grady Hendrix’s excellent Stoker Award-winning Paperbacks from Hell for examples), Frederick Forsyth and John le Carre novels.
Atomic Coffin fits right into this era. No mobile phones, but we have a Walkman and cassette tapes. To this, SIS field asset Heidi Sperling [codename Thistle] exfiltrates from East Berlin with the only copy of a critical intelligence coup – a naval log containing a solitary message received from a previously unidentified Soviet Typhoon ballistic missile nuclear submarine.
On the Royal Navy’s hunter-killer submarine HMS Viking, Heidi is thrown into a mission to find and investigate the TK-15, and must confront her own fear of the ocean’s crushing black depths and submarine’s seemingly hostile crew. When her only apparent ally, Executive Officer Daniel Vickers, disappears as they investigate the TK-15, she realises this modified submarine is far more than a Soviet experiment to gain a strategic upper hand in the nuclear arms race.
The author does well to emphasise the claustrophobic nature of the submarine environment, as well as the regimented organisation that the Royal Navy live by – all the more important as the situation quickly becomes chaotic.
Of course, it shouldn’t really be a surprise that the Soviets have created or tapped into something rather unpleasant. The consequences of this on Heidi and the crew are horrific, although the author does not always give gruesome details. The unknown thing affects Heidi and the crew, and as the Russian submarine – or the thing on board it - increases its effect, things go all a bit New Wave SF – blurry hallucinations and fractured memories that make Heidi and the reader question what is real and what is ‘something else’. Details about Heidi’s past come to light that suggest she may not have been the best choice for this mission, although she was seemingly the only choice.
In short, Atomic Coffin is an effective horror novel that anyone with a fear of deep water and enclosed spaces will find unnerving. It’s not radically new, not particularly deep (unlike the submarines – ha!), but like all those horror books of the 1980’s, does the job very well. A solid read.
Mark Yon
See also Steven's review of Atomic Coffin.
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