In Albion's Atomic-Weird: Strange Media of the Nuclear Generations, Phil Smith examines the films and TV shows that appeared in the shadow of the atom bomb. Uncontainable energies, mutually assured destruction, and strange forms of desire assemble themselves in the radioactive aftershock and gesture towards a new way of being in an atomised world.

I will explore the nuclear thesis, traveling through a landscape traversed by certain movies and TV programmes of the Cold War generations and by later artefacts that have continued to pursue the same preoccupations, not always explicitly. On this journey, I will suggest that, despite their usually fanciful and often underfinanced strangeness, these artefacts – thanks to the agency of their weird elements – constitute a far better account of our contemporary realities than the current affairs media, online content provision, documented history, influencers, dramatic realism or reality TV that currently dominates public discourse.

—From the introduction

The hidden energies, the horror, the science fiction and the overall folk weirdness are compelling. It feels as if the weird becomes an occult signal of Dada hopefulness within an injured world.... a siren….We blunder onwards into the wherever but, with Phil Smith at the helm, we are never lost for words.

—Andrew Kötting

Albion’s Atomic-Weird emerges from a bold premise – that late-twentieth and early-twenty-first century culture radiated from the splitting (and then fusing) of the atom, and the ensuing physical and social fragmentation – that Phil Smith articulates brilliantly. Combining incredibly impressive cultural and philosophical fluency with incisive analysis, this beautifully written book provides a much-needed guide to the on-screen imagination of (post-)nuclear Britain.

—Brontë Schiltz

Media discussed includes: Rawhead Rex (1986), Threads (1984), Dalek (2005), The Devil Rides Out (1968), Jubilee (1978), Lifeforce (1985), The Day of the Triffids (1963), Penda’s Fen (1974), 28 Years Later (2025), and more.