The Quiet Earth

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A CHILD cries out in the night for its parent. The parent responds. Perhaps it is thirsty, or had a nightmare, or is tangled in its bedclothes? No, it just needs a reassuring cuddle. It needs to know it isn’t alone.

In Craig Harrison’s The Quiet Earth—first published in 1981 and loosely adapted into a cult sci-fi film four years later—it is not a child who awakens, but an adult, our narrator. John Hobson is not alone in the dark, but rather comes to with a flash of light at 6.12 a.m. in a motel room in Thames, on New Zealand’s North Island. And when he calls out into the world, nobody answers. Every home, every car, every shop and street is deserted. The concept cuts so cleanly to the heart of our most basic fears that the most surprising thing, as you enter this novel, is the realisation that you haven’t read the story before.

Perhaps the reason it is not a narrative staple is that the challenges inherent in telling it are so daunting. At some stage, in a novel like this, the reader must be offered an explanation. Yes, it would be a terrifying, searching experience to wake up as the last person left on Earth, but under what fictional circumstances can that scenario be made credible? In narrative terms, Harrison’s opening gambit is like a crime writer opening with an exotic set of clues to a hideous case. It is a wager: stay with my story and I will bring this home. The reader, by picking up such a tale, enters into a contract—one that creates a special tension. We are at once fascinated and wary, hoping the author can pull it off.

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