The Gone-Away World does not take place in the aftermath of a nuclear war.

Or a nuclear accident.

Or any kind of nuclear.

There are no nukes in the story.

Well, there is brief mention of growing up under the raw red eye of the Cold War and the Soviet Arsenal Of Ultimate Plasma Fire And Death Which They Will Launch At Any Moment.

But that’s it.

That’s because I find nuke stories dated. Nukes feel wrong to me for the kind of thing I want to write about. There may come a time when nukes are scary and cool and new again, but right now, for me, they’re just these old expensive pieces of hardware we sort of wish we didn’t have except that if North Korea’s gonna have ‘em and Russia’s gonna have ‘em and China and Israel (deniably) and Iran (not yet) and… actually, there was a song about this, called “Who’s Next?” by the magnificent Tom Lehrer. We’ll try to stay serene and calm when Alabama gets the bomb!

What does a nuke look like, anyhow? Does it look like one of those big clunky rockets we see in movies and on the news? That stuff all looks so damn eighties to me. Or it could be a suitcase nuke. They’re scary. Bit Jack Bauer maybe, but scary. Just how scary probably depends on your luggage. I mean, I know it makes no difference, but I would be less scared by a suitcase with pink frills and a picture of a pony. That would be part of the diabolical masterplan, of course, and I understand that pinkness will not save me from consuming fire. However.

Nukes are not for me. In story terms, they carry with them a lead weight of nuclear winter, subsistence farming, skin rashes and famine, mutants, possibly zombies, and people talking about breeding programmes and ‘mating with’ as many women as possible. The whole thing is specific, and it is specifically not what I wanted.

Well, okay, not entirely specific. I mean, there’s a number of ways you could go with that stuff, and some of them are kinda cheesey/soft pornish, and some of them are dead serious and depressing. You could probably squeeze a comedy out of it without too much trouble.

But by and large I have no desire to play in those green and radioactive pastures.

Which is why The Gone-Away World is not a nuclear story.

Not a nuclear story.

Not.

A nuclear.

Story.

At all.

If I’m saying this with emphasis (and if you’re not getting that I’m saying this with emphasis I need better punctuation and font-stylage here) it’s because I don’t want you to be turned off the book before you start. That can screw up a perfectly good reading experience even if you get past the initial hump. And yet this idea keeps coming back, however many times I stamp on it, and every time I see that written somewhere, I think of you. (Yes, you.) I imagine you in a bookshop, looking at the gorgeous work the cover designers at Heinemann and Knopf and elsewhere have done, and thinking “Oh, what is that gorgeous object on the shelf, with the intriguing name…? Oh, it is strangely attractive to me!” And just as you are about to pick it up, a voice in your head says: WARNING: Nuclear Apocalypse Story! Zombies, mutants, skin rashes! AVOID! AVOID! AVOID!

Maybe your internal book critic is a bit less melodramatic.

(Incidentally, that outfit you’re wearing? It rocks. Great shoes.)

But the point is that in my imagination you put the book down and you never, ever find out that The Gone-Away World is not a nuclear story.

Which it is not.

At all.

And that would be very sad.