The Bomb God, 1946

JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

This wonderful, semi-impossible sulphur-laden pamphlet emerged from the bottom of one of the "Naive Surreal" boxes today in the warehouse:

  When God Splits the Atom (1956) offers a not-so-friendly piece of advice:  "its later than you think".  We are told that God delivered the atom and the atomic bomb and the end of the war and the beginning of the United Nations.  None of that will save us from the burning ring of fire, and the U.N. will fail, and so on, down to the firey pit if there is no repentence and acceptance of the higher power.  The cover pretty much tells the entire story. 

 There are a few other God-and-athe-atomic-bomb posts on this blog, like, well, this one:

(Found here.)

And this one (from Miss Atomic Bomb: the A-Bomb in Popular Culture--Comics, Cakes and the Will of God):

And of course on the other end of this:

And that's pretty much that.

The idea and imagery of the atomic bomb was instantly re-purposed and used to identify and sell food and comfort, and was employed for hotel names, cakes, dart games, watches, restaurants, patience games, and so on--God was just one of a series in a long line of a-bomb apps.

Comments

[Ray Girvan]

This rather makes me want to re-read Asimov's The End of Eternity, in which a character who has been accidentally marooned in the 1920s sends a message to the future about his whereabouts and whenabouts by putting an anachronistic ad in a magazine: a stock market tips ad with the heading .A.ll the .T.alk .O.f the .M.arket, and a nuclear-explosion graphic.