‘THE KRAKEN WAKES (1953) is narrated, in whatever is the prose equivalent of received pronunciation, by radio journalist Mike Watson. He is one of the first to report on the mysterious fireballs spotted falling into the world’s oceans, and as he follows the story, along the way picking up unfamiliar new words from scientists such as “tsunami” and “ecology”, he finds himself in increasing agreement with the minority who imagine a link between the fireballs and a range of phenomena from the sinking of ships and strange weather patterns to the melting of the ice caps and an apparently inexorable rising of sea levels’. Lawrence Phelan
THE KRAKEN WAKES was adapted for radio by Val McDermid into a groundbreaking dramatisation with specially composed music, recorded for the BBC with a live orchestra, and starring Tamsin Greig
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07bzhr4
‘More than a mere alien invasion thriller – though it’s a gripping one of those – this is a potent parable in which humanity notices too late a threat to its survival, and is all too plausibly ineffectual in its response’. Lawrence Phelan, Independent
