FICTION
Tellus 89
Chapter 1, excerpt 1.1. The Norwegian publisher, Det Norske Samlaget’s back cover text:
This is Øivind H. Solheim’s first novel after his debut with “Stupet” in 1978. Here the author presents a very relevant material: arms race, peace movement and nuclear war. The book is a future novel that predicts that the all-consuming world catastrophe will happen at the end of this decade.
”As I looked up to the sky, there came a flicker of white light, and the green trees in the garden turned brown like dead trees. “ Ikuko, five year old girl. Hiroshima.
CHAPTER 1
August 6, 1945 at 08:16 the first atomic bomb dropped by humans on people exploded. Three days later the next one fell. The United States had used the two atomic bombs Little Boy and Fat Man to push Japan against the wall. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were wiped out, nearly two hundred thousand people were dead or dying.
The next day, Japan capitulated, the second great war of the 20th century was over. The war against the Nazi variant of fascism was over, together with the Soviet Union the Western powers had repulsed the totalitarian threat. No one could say for sure how many lives it had cost. Thirty years after the end of the war, historians operated on very vague numbers, between 25 and 50 million died.
The war was over, peace began. The ravaged parts of the world were marked by optimism, hope. As always after a war, the tasks were many, the populations instinctively looked ahead and stood together to build a more secure future. Never again, everyone agreed, never again war.
Tellus 89 is Øivind H. Solheim’s second novel, first published in Norwegian in 1982. This dystopian vision of the future was written at the end of the Cold War. The novel depicts what must never happen, a nuclear war on earth.
Øivind H. Solheim is a novel author and a nature photographer from Norway who loves writing fiction, poetry, essays, and articles helping others understand life, other humans, and themselves. He has published six novels, two non-fiction books, and a poetry book.
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Link to Tellus 89, prologue:
