‘The Kraken Wakes’ is very science-y science fiction, in which long passages are devoted to the biology and physics of this bizarre phenomena from the sky, which come down as red-centered clouds observed by British radio journalists Mike and Phyllis Watson. These reddish-pink blobs splash down into the ocean and quickly take up residence in “the Deeps,” the deepest trenches in the ocean floor, where they reconnoiter and plan their attack on humans. Chief “boffin” or scientist A. Bocker sums up the dilemma: “Two intelligent forms of life are finding one another’s existence intolerable,” he observes. “The same urge drives them as drives us—the necessity to exterminate or be exterminated” (178-79). Wyndham spins out the many permutations of this battle for survival—one thing Wyndham is good at is laying out solutions and then crushing them, as governments fail to take the problem seriously, relying on propaganda to reassure the populace as Big Science tries defenses that are unsuccessful. When she’s not being intrepid, Phyllis is the voice of despair in the book, articulating just how desperate the situation is, as the “Bathies” find ways to melt the polar ice caps when they’re not decimating coastal populations by rolling them into balls of humans held together by tentacle baling wire. In short, this book is sort of a unintentional climate change parable that is sure to give you nightmares.