Needed: another Adam

Apocalyptic novels involving nuclear disaster are commonplace today, but in 1946 they were a new idea, and one of the pioneers of this new subgenre was Pat Frank, a newspaperman turned novelist. His most significant novel was Alas. Babylon, about the impact of a nuclear war on one Florida town. But in 1946, just a year after Hiroshima and Nagasaki,  Frank wrote Mr. Adam about what happens after an accidental nuclear explosion in Mississippi.

Mr. Adam is actually a comic novel, and not a particularly good one. Yet it sold a lot of copies and caused concern among many of its readers, including Eleanor Roosevelt, who wrote a review.

It seems that after that Mississippi disaster, every man in the world becomes sterile. Every man, that is, except Homer Adam, an aw shucks kind of guy who happens to be at the bottom of a lead mine when the explosion occurs. When his wife has a baby, it becomes international news. Among women,  Homer Adam suddenly becomes the most desirable man in the world. Can an Adam once again populate the world?

This may sound like every man's erotic fantasy, but there is virtually no sex in Mr. Adam. In Frank's hands it becomes a comedy about government bureaucracy. The White House, Congress, the military, various government agencies, even the United Nations -- everyone, it seems, gets involved in how to spread Adam's seed to the women of the world through artificial insemination. But Mr. Adam has other ideas, deciding he's a man, not a government resource. The story is narrated by a newspaper reporter who becomes Adam's friend and whose wife, Marge, wants a baby.

The plot may have comic potential, but it remains largely unrealized. Give Frank credit, however, for realizing the potential of nuclear apocalyptic novels.