Disaster stories existed long before science fiction
was a recognized genre; indeed, the biblical
account of Noah’s Flood predates the novel
altogether. Even Leonardo da Vinci felt inspired to
narrate a fictional destruction of the world in
Deluge. Novelists such as H. G. WELLS, M. P. Shiel,
and S. Fowler Wright produced classic tales of the
devastation of large portions of the world and the
near extinction of the human race, and in the
1950s the disaster novel would become almost a
subgenre of its own in England.
Philip WYLIE and Edwin Balmer had both enjoyed moderate success as authors individually
when they teamed up to produce this classic story
of the destruction of Earth. Balmer had written detective fiction and one minor science fiction novel,
and Wylie had authored two previous speculative
novels whose plots were considerably less ambitious. The premise of When Worlds Collide is that
two rogue planets are approaching the solar system. On their first orbit, the planet Bronson—
named after the astronomer who discovered
it—will pass close enough to the Earth to cause
devastating tidal effects, earthquakes, flooding,
storms of unprecedented violence. On their second pass, Earth will be hit directly, destroying our
planet and altering the major intruder’s orbit so
that it will then leave the solar system. The only
possibility for survival is to migrate to the companion world, which will conveniently take up an orbit
very close to that of the now missing Earth and
which, as we later discover, has an atmosphere that
humans can breathe. The coincidences necessary
to provide this hope of salvation are substantial,
but since the focus of the story is elsewhere, we
can forgive that failing.
Most of the novel deals with the difficulties,
both logistical and personal, surrounding the effort
to build a ship that can successfully cross to the
new world. Since only a very small number of people can be saved, there is growing tension about
the makeup of the passenger list, and the steadily
worsening conditions outside the project are not
likely to make things any easier. The ultimate success of the launch comes only after an exciting and
generally satisfying series of adventures and catastrophes. The novel was filmed with surprisingly
good results in 1951. The authors went on to provide a sequel, After Worlds Collide (1934), pitting
the new colonists against rivals from Earth as well
as the hazards of their new world, but it was not
nearly as rewarding a story.