Level 7

by Mordecai Roshwald, David Seed

Overview

Level 7 is the diary of Officer X-127, who is assigned to stand guard at the "Push Buttons," a machine devised to activate the atomic destruction of the enemy, in the country's deepest bomb shelter. Four thousand feet underground, Level 7 has been built to withstand the most devastating attack and to be self-sufficient for five hundred years. Selected according to a psychological profile that assures their willingness to destroy all life on Earth, those who are sent down may never return.
Originally published in 1959, and with over 400,000 copies sold, this powerful dystopian novel remains a horrific vision of where the nuclear arms race may lead, and is an affirmation of human life and love. Level 7 merits comparison to Huxley's A Brave New World and Orwell's 1984 and should be considered a must-read by all science fiction fans.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780299200640
Publisher:	University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date:	06/24/2004
Series:	Library of American Fiction
Edition description:	1
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	8.80(w) x 6.00(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Mordecai Roshwald is Professor Emeritus of humanities at the University of Minnesota, where he taught for twenty-five years, and a visiting professor at leading Israeli, U.S., and European universities.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	ix
	Looking Back in Wonder: The Author's Reminiscences and Reflections	xxix
	Preface	xlv
	Level 7	1
Appendix A	Training the Nuclear Warrior: A Manual for Level 7	185
Appendix B	The Politics of Ratology (a fantasy)	191
	Further Reading	203

Editorial Reviews

"It is easily the most powerful attack on the whole nuclear madness that any creative writer has made thus far."—J.B. Priestley

"Eventually, I believe, Roshwald’s remorseless apocalypse will be recognized as one of the masterpieces of anti-utopian literature."—H. Bruce Franklin

"In some ways this story gives the most realistic picture of nuclear war that I have read in any work of fiction."—Linus Pauling

From the Publisher