”The trouble you’re expecting never happens; it’s always something that sneaks up the other way. Mankind had been trembling about destruction through war, and had been having bad dreams of cities blown to pieces along with their inhabitants, of animals killed, too, and of the very vegetation blighted off the face of the earth. But actually mankind seemed merely to have been removed rather neatly, with a minimum of disturbance.” Isherwood “Ish” WIlliams is out in the wilderness rock climbing to clear his head from the buzz of civilization when he puts his hand in the wrong crevice. He hears the rattle and feels the strike. He is pretty sure he is going to die. He gets back to the cabin, uses the snake kit to suck as much of the poison out as he can. He becomes too sick and too woozy to drive. He waits for someone to find him. As his time to return comes and passes he becomes angry that no one has come looking for him, not family or friends. He doesn’t die and when he recovers enough to drive into town he finds only dust motes and echoes. A virulent disease has swept through humanity, killing indiscriminately, collapsing society as easily as a biker crushes a beer can. The one thing that we have always been able to count on is our genetic diversity. There always seems to be a fraction of a percent of humanity that is immune to whatever nature has to throw at us. “As for man, there is little reason to think that he can in the long run escape the fate of other creatures, and if there is a biological law of flux and reflux, his situation is now a highly perilous one. During ten thousand years his numbers have been on the upgrade in spite of wars, pestilences, and famines. This increase in population has become more and more rapid. Biologically, man has for too long a time been rolling an uninterrupted run of sevens.”It was just our turn to roll snake eyes. He goes through this period of time swamped with a buffet of feelings. Ish never quite feels lucky to be alive, but certainly reaches varying levels of depression as the extent of the devastation becomes apparent. But for now the electricity still flows through San Francisco. Street lights come on as if the hand of humanity was still guiding the way. For a while he just goes about his life. There is plenty of food. He makes friends with a dog. He reads books, but his curiosity gets the better of him and he explores the city. He finds people, a few stragglers, still alive. He decides that he has to see what has happened to America. The Earth reclaims what man has built, quickly.There is too much of everything now, too many cars, food spoiling, too many clothes, piles of things that no one might need for a thousand years. He drives across country and finds a survivor here or there. Some survivors can’t cope and suicide rates skyrocket among the few fortunate/unfortunate people who find themselves facing a new world bereft of family and friends. He discovers the the virulent entity has been thorough, unrelenting, all-embracing, and taken more far more than it has left. He returns to San Francisco and finds a woman who becomes his wife. She moves in with him because, he...well...had a house full of books and anybody who has moved books before can relate to the fact that it is easier to move to the books than move the books to you. Ish uses the term this is a New Deal to describe this new era which was ironic given that this book was written in 1949. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal policies had just been enacted in the decade before. The book moves languidly along. There is never this feeling of desperation or Mad Max situations or really even scenes of high tension. George R. Stewart was more interested in exploring cultures, how they emerge, how they survive, what motivates them to innovate. Being in the San Francisco area with a temperate climate, they don’t have to fight weather. The city is full of canned foods, weapons, bullets, clothes, and anything else they could possibly need. When the power does finally go out they switch to candles and lanterns. When the water shuts down they find streams and they dig latrines. Life overall is relatively easy almost better than before. Ish is the only intellectual in his tribe of survivors, soon offspring start to become plentiful. Ish finds himself to be the only one concerned about teaching them the ability to read. The only one that sees the importance of sharing a vision of the world through the lens of science. Ish has a dream of restoring the world, to bring back the civilization that took several millennium to create, but to the new generations who never lived in that world they have all they need now. To bring that world back to life will take more labor than they are willing to give. They respect what he knows and even look on him, superstitiously, as a deity of knowledge, but they lack the curiosity or the desire to learn what he knows. Ish reluctantly gives ground on his expectations. He soon realizes that instead of building an ice machine, or aqueducts, or keeping cars in working order that he needs to give them something they will desperately need when the supply of bullets finally run out, something that can be made with a sharp blade and a handful of feathers...the bow and arrow. Original Ace Publishing painting for the 1949 cover.Certainly another very different take on the post-apocalyptic world. Some of the complaints that people may have about this book are the same ones that they had about On the Beach, that there isn’t enough action, not enough tension, not enough claws and teeth, but those situations were not of interest to Stewart. He wanted to explore what we need. Why civilization is necessary? What do we gain from it? Are we happier in a penthouse apartment or would we be happier if we had to forage for food every day? One thing that Stewart and I can agree on is: “Men go and come, but earth abides.” At least I like to believe the earth will ultimately survive us.
This novel was broken into three sections -- 1. World Without End, 2. The Year 22, and 3. The Last American -- that were interspersed with two "Quick Years" segments that pushed the story forward decades at a time. The first section, where protagonist Isherwood Williams survived a plague, was an extremely strong opening, and felt timeless -- right up until about the time Ish started interacting with other people. The more Ish interacted with others, the more cracks started to form in the narrative.It really started breaking down after the first section, where uneven pacing and didactic storytelling started creeping into the story. There was lots of telling -- all the quick years segments, the kids' journey, the death of Charlie, the typhoid epidemic -- and no showing. Opportunities for tension or conflict were glossed over or skipped outright in favor of recapping them in retrospect.Ish was kind of a dick. He was easy to anger, and had a very high opinion of himself and an even lower opinion of other, except his "chosen" son Joey. Then there was Ish's hammer. It is fitting that it was a hammer, as it was used to bludgeon the reader with its metaphorical value as the superstition/taboo/religion/symbol of the Tribe's little society. There was no subtlety to how these allusions were made whatsoever.This book was, I'm sure, in some ways progressive for its time, as Ish married a woman that is at least partly black -- there are subtle allusions to her dark features and "half moon eyes" and she later mentions the treatment of her people by society before the change -- and there was also a polygamous family in the Tribe. However, it was also racist -- early on, Ish considered staying with "negro" folk and being their king, as they were used to serving the white man -- and also incredibly sexist -- the female characters range from stupid, to ignorant, to half-witted, and absolutely no chance to disparage them was missed.The rising action of the second section, The Year 22, where Charlie returns with the boys from their journey and the resulting consequences, was a clinic in bad writing:For starters, the foreshadowing for Charlie being evil was anything but subtle -- he was repeatedly mentioned to be dirty, sweaty, fat, pig-eyed, boar-eyed, etc. -- before he had done anything untoward. And Ish's instant dislike and slander was not solely because Charlie was an outsider, as it was mentioned earlier that the Tribe interacted with others occasionally. When it was made clear that Charlie would try to bed Evie, a beautiful, vacant-eyed blonde that had absolutely no function in the story until that point, and was clearly written solely to be the impetus for this conflict, the reader is supposed to be against their coupling because Ish was, but Ish's reasoning is flimsy at best, and more likely just self-serving, as Ish feels threatened as the alpha male of the community. Why not just let Evie be with Charlie? Why deny her? She was so excited by the prospect they were literally considering imprisoning her to keep her away from him.The climactic resolution was entirely skipped over. How exactly did the community separate Charlie from his derringer and kill him without him fighting back? How is it that Em got to vote about the handling of the situation, but not Ezra or George's wives? How did Ish change the minds of the younger kids so quickly that there was no resentment to him murdering their new friend for an act he hadn't yet committed? This second segment of the book raised many more questions than it gave answers, and few of these points were addressed afterward.But enough about the second section. The segment that followed was another quick years segment, that while it read a bit like an almanac, was brief enough not to cause offense or too much boredom.The third and final section, The Last American, was a strong, if imperfect ending. I liked Ish's contemplation about the state of the world and his ancestors, who now care for him and even revere him, up to a point. The bit about the bows and arrows was a nice touch, as was the destruction of Ish's childhood home and the conclusion on the bridge regarding the inheritance of the hammer.While I had a long list of complaints about this book, in the end I am definitely glad to have read it, even if I wasn't loving the process of reading it. So it goes for most classics. It is also a good exercise to revisit the roots of an interesting genre. Stephen King acknowledged this book as an influence in The Stand, so any fan of that book, as I am, will certainly see the value of reading this, if for no other reason than to see how that was built on the foundation this laid.
Do You like book Earth Abides (2006)?
what i loved about this book was it's reality... what would happen if? a massive epidemic - nearly everyone on earth dead... the practical end of what would happen next. gathering a few survivors, building a new life and lifestyle. the main charactor (your basic mild mannered guy) over time realizing that he needed to teach the next generation what they'd need to survive without common utilities or grocery stores. this book made me think... and one of the best 'visuals' .... 'he sat and watched the lights go out on the Golden Gate Bridge for the last time.. ever.'holy cow. what a thought.
—Deborah
I tried, but this book is too old fashioned for me. It reminds me of something Richard Matheson would write. The main character, Ish, drives me nuts. The women are all idiots according to him - but courageous, since they have the children, so that's okay! Apparently, after a plague wipes out nearly all of humanity, the difference between men & women can be summed up as: "She felt only in terms of the immediate, and was more interested in being able to spot her child's birthday than in all the future of civilization," because Em doesn't care what month it is. Ish decides he "feels superior to her." It's not just Em, though, Ish thinks he's better than everyone! George is "a first-class carpenter" but "essentially stupid", dummy Maurine is always engaged in her "beloved tasks of housewifery", really, the list just goes on & on. Everyone is an idiot, so he decides his son should lead the way because he can read. I believe his reasoning is that this child can always go to the library & read about how to say, be a first-class carpenter. Now I of all people will agree that you can learn about a lot of things at the library, but maybe you shouldn't go around pissing on folks who can't read but who can still build houses. Self-help manuals don't work for everyone. There is one utterly perplexing scene early on. Em tells Ish she's pregnant and starts to cry, tells him, "I lied. Not what I said, what I didn't say . . . you're a nice boy. You looked at my hands & said they were nice. You never even noticed that blue in the half-moons." Suddenly Ish sees her with a shocking new clarity & notices her:-brunette complexion-dark liquid eyes-full lips-white teeth-rich voice-accepting tempermentand everything comes together in his mind. I am surely missing some crucial detail here. Is she an Irish setter? What the heck does this mean? I'm at a loss.
—Melissa
Most of the time when Stephen King cites a book as an influence or recommends it, I'll give it a whirl. Over the years, I'd say I've enjoyed at least 90% of what King recommends -- either on the pages of Entertainment Weekly or in the forwards or afterwards of his various novels.One of those recommended reads is Earth Abides which King cites as an influence for one of my favorite works by him, The Stand. And so it was that I scoured a couple of used book stores to find a copy of George R. Stewart's influential, post-apocalyptic novel. And then, it sat on the to be read pile for a while, collecting dust. For a while I just wasn't in the mood for the end of the world as we know it and rebuilding humanity again. But finally, I got into a place where I wanted to read about the world ending and so I finally got around to reading the story of Isherwood Williams (Ish), who survives a mutated strain of the measles thanks to a rattlesnake bite. Isolated in a cabin in the woods (but not the one used in the Joss Whedon movie, mind you), Ish rides out the poison and the disease to find he's one of the last surviving human beings on the planet. He also finds a hammer, which will become pretty important in the days to come -- not only to break into various establishments to gain supplies, but also as a symbol to the community that Ish helps establish.At first, Ish takes the news that he's one of the last men on Earth fairly well. In fact, I'd have to say that Ish takes it in stride. He takes a cross country tour of America to see the full impact of the disease and if anyone has survived, before returning to the Bay Area. Here he meets a woman named Em, they settle down, get married and start building a new community. Thanks to much of the technology of the time being powered by water falls, things like electricity and running water are around for a lot longer than you'd expect.The story is told over the course of several years, with long sections focusing on the current situation and then short chapters that fill in what happened in between. It helps keep the novel moving and doesn't dwell too much on the ins and outs of daily life in the post-disease world. And that may be a good thing, though at times the sections that detail the between years end up feeling more like a genealogy than anything else. As the years go along, Ish realizes that his little group has to being to establish things like farming if humanity is going to survive. Ish is also driven to make sure humanity's knowledge and culture aren't forgotten, setting up a school for the younger generation and attempting to preserve the library so the great works of literature and much of humanity's history and knowledge won't be forgotten. I suppose if I'd read this when it were first published or before I'd read a lot of other end of the world, doomsday novels, it might have had a greater impact on me. As it stands, Earth Abides is a good novel, but it didn't really stand out from the rest of the pack. Stewart creates some vivid, interesting and memorable moments over the course of the novel, but isolated moments don't make up for a lack of overall drive to the plot or any significantly interest characters beyond the central character of Ish. For surviving the end of the world, the characters here have it fairly easy for much of the novel since running water is still around and there is very little, if any, external threat from predators -- either human or animal. And while Earth Abides was never adapted as a feature film, it was adapted for radio. Escape adapted the novel over two episodes in the 1950's and it's certainly worth a listen. The first part is fairly faithful to the source material, but part two diverges quite a bit. It's still worth a listen, though. You can find both halves of the adaptation HERE.. And if you're worried that by downloading it, the FBI might show up at your door, don't. A majority of OTR shows are public domain these days, so you're free to download, listen and share with family and friends.
—Michael
