We Shall Sing a Song into the Deep

There's this famous story of a Japanese soldier who kept fighting for decades after world war 2 ended, believing that the war hadn't ended. It took until the 70s for him to finally accept that the war is over. This story first went viral years ago and has been a fun pop fact for years, but people often like to make fun of the fact that people “forgot” to tell him the war had ended– rest assured, there were many attempts, but he was just so convinced that the war wasn't over that he never believed anyone.

The story was finally made into a movie this year, which premiered at Cannes- Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle. I encourage people to watch it, because it's a fascinating story about utter convinction, cognitive dissonance, the tragedy of foolhardy deference.

Anyway, this novella tells a similar tale, of this weird cult on a submarine where people hold the key to a doomsday weapon, and their only goal is to inevitably set it off... Helped with some great purple prose (purple enough to make for some beautiful writing, but not too purple to lose you) and a well-constructed sense of atmosphere. Like the best of novellas, it packs a lot of stuff in less than 200 pages.

A pleasant surprise.