Earth Abides
by George R. Stewart
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Book Reviews of Earth Abides
Book Review: Flawed logic...
Summary: 3 Stars
I had been really looking forward to this book. Sadly, it really didn't deliver. I found the story telling very linear, the main character Ish, lacking in any real depth and the logic of how he and his small band of people survived, very questionable.
I found the first 1/3 of the book interesting. The main character Ish, travels the US in search of other survivers of the deadly plague that ravenged the world. It read more as a travel logue than an sci-fi book, but never the less, was still interesting. However, one would be better served reasing the book, "A world without us".
Ish, seems nonplused by the vanishing of humanity. The character uses "logic" to deal with the situation, but calls those who are enotional or "crazy" as being in shock. Frankly, it appeared to me that Ish was in shock, due to his lack of emotion over the loss of basically everyone. It was as if he rationalized it this way, "wow, everyones gone, oh well, I'm lonely, but that's the breaks".
Finally, gathering enough other stragglers together to form "the tribe", they seem to live solely on old can goods from local markers for...22 years!!. I don't know about you, but the last thing I would eat was a can of food that was 22 years old.
It appears as if everyone in the "tribe" was hit with the stupid stick. Any normal parent would teach their kids the basics of reading and writing, not these folks, it's as if they all just gave up. Plus there is a point in the story where it's highlighted that none of the children even know numbers! WTF? Any normal parent teaches their kids how to count their freaking fingers and toes!
Also, the book was written in 1947, yet no one in the book knows a thing about gardening! No one had victory gardens during the war? No one lived on ration cards?
It's like all these people dropped out of the sky.
There are some many other things wrong with this book, I could go on for pages.
Why did I give it 3 stars? 1 for it was a post apocolypic story, the second for the first 1/3 was okay, and lastly, the 3rd star because there were some mildly interesting moments.
Beyond that, it's like a group of morons running around in a dark room trying to find the switch.
Book Review: Disappointed
Summary: 3 Stars
I was looking for a good "end of the world" type novel, and after the amazing reviews, chose this one. Disappointed hardly describes it. This is one that as a quick reader (usually finishing a novel in less than two days) it took me over a week of forcing myself to keep picking this back up. This was so anti-climatic it was boring.
The most interesting thing about the story wasn't even told! One day, Ish wakes up to the aftermath of a world stripped of most humanity. Personally, I would have liked to read about the actual acts of the end of days, not the leftover start over.
So Ish decides to drive all over the U.S. just observing, meeting some people along the way. Again, pretty dull. It is described well, and the writer is a good writer, but he doesn't seem to have anything to tell. He could have had more conflict, more interesting character, but it lacked this. In fact, until the end of the book, I didn't even know how old Ish was in the beginning. For a book that focuses on this main character, and pretty much the first quarter of the book is all about Ish, there is very little backstory and knowledge of him. Unacceptable.
Instead the focus is on everything going on, well not going on, around Ish. The lack of people. The mess. The fires and fallen trees. Where has electricity and where doesn't. The looting.
The most interesting thing he actually wrote about was the rise and fall of other species. I would have LOVED to read more about THAT! However, his telling of the ants, which was brilliant, was summed up in a few paragraphs while he took ages to tell the most boring parts.
It also was unbelievable to me. Granted, this was written in the forties. But I hardly think for as long as time passed, even in simpler times, that people would live as they did without making more adjustments until they absolutley had to. I suppose some people might be that way, and I guess we'll never know until it happens.
Honestly, I would have been more interested in reading about the other survivors than Ish, who was a procrastinator and thought very little of those closest to him.
I would not recommend this book. Yes, it does stick with you. But not in a good way.
Book Review: A good read but predictable
Summary: 3 Stars
This post apocalyptic book starts off strong with somewhat of a new twist on the traditional post-collapse civilization, as told by one graduate student and his struggle with a life after modern conveniences are gone. He is an observer kept alive as the second wave of deaths wash over the world by a mere need to observe and discover. I'll never forget reading as if with him while he waited for electric power to finally fail. The lights dim slightly and with this realization he waits up as a long time friend passes into oblivion. Several of the concepts are quite dated (the copy I read was re-released in the 70s but still referred to household items long since out of date and probably belonged in the original publication from '49).
The main character is faced as being the only intellectual left in a small band of survivors he later deems "The Tribe." This is the placement of the majority of the book and faces the questions of what humans would do with so much time on their hands? How they would adapt to a life with everything they need laying about them, but no deadlines to push them to reestablish a civilized world? It also conicals several things other books leave out, such as the adoption of odd superstitions about "Americans" by children who have never known a life with organized government or life outside of their small Tribe. I would give this part of the book a higher score, but the later portion fell short of my expectations and the standards set by the rest of the work.
As the book continued it became quite redundant and predictable, and though I had high hopes the book would somehow redeem itself and return to it's previous glory, I was left disappointed. If you are looking for a book with a strong resolution upon completion, this is not a book for you. While I am glad I finished it (the first half was quite good), and several major problems were resolved, a larger picture of what would happen with the passing of the main character was left unsaid (though a general idea was obvious and alluded to several times). This portion of the book brought down the overall rating I could give.
I would recommend this book as an easy read with an interesting take on the traditional end-of-the-world concept.
Book Review: Dated even more than the Golden Gate Bridge...
Summary: 3 Stars
I was really looking forward to this book, and was left feeling really disappointed. I have now read all of what I consider the "big-4" of 50's PA literature, I found Alas Babylon and "Canticle for Leibowicz" excellent, "on the beach" overly depressing and unrealistic (but I was 16 when I read it so my opinion might have changed by now) but Earth Abides left me un-impressed.
I thought the central character was so devoid of likeability and compassion it made him entirely unrealistic, in fact he came across as some sort of post-apocalyptic Daily Mail reader who spend a significant proportion of the first part of the book traversing America deciding if anyone was "good-enough" to share his planned new civilisation, but found the survivors too emotional, too provincial, too poor, too black, too uneducated etc etc. "Ish" would have benefited from a good punch in the face, and the only character who might have offered to give him one was executed for bragging about his carnal adventures whilst drunk.
His long suffering and dignified wife Em, also had to make the startling confession that she was of mixed race and was beside herself with gratitude that Ish didn't then and there string her up from a nearby tree (like Charlie).
The pace of the story is languid and the descriptions interesting, but for me, the entire book was held back by the attitudes and small mindedness of the central character.
I am generally not a fan of the "marauding biker gangs" type PA style but in this case, if the Toecutter had rocked up at Ishs' house and decapitated him with some sort of boomerang, then the community and post-plague America would have been done a great service.
Sadly, the attitudes of Ish probably just reflected those extant in America in the 50's but that means that the story has dated particularly badly, and although Alas Babylon also suffers from the same malady, the central character in that book is much more human and flawed and this makes that book a more engaging read.
I am currently reading "Summer of the Apocalypse" which borrows some elements from Earth Abides, but is a much better fit for me in terms of what I like in PA books.
Book Review: Almost a great end-of-the-world novel
Summary: 4 Stars
This book is not so much about the end of the world itself; instead, it uses the end of the world - the end of most of mankind, anyway - as a plot device to explore how a new, small, totally contained society would develop out of the leavings of the old one. This task it accomplishes quite well; the growth of the Tribe in San Francisco and their mythological beliefs, traditions, and practices is fascinating, if a little slow-moving in several parts. But because societal development is the primary concern of the novel, the little details are simply glossed over, and there are so many technical errors or things left unexplained that it had a tendency to lift me out of the story and re-engage my disbelief. For instance, most of mankind is wiped out by a mysterious, very viral disease, but it's never explained what the disease is, where it came from, or why some people are immune. In fact, the main character of the book comes down out of the hills after it's all over, having no idea what was going on the "civilized" world, but he shows a total lack of curiosity about what happened to everybody that I found unbelievable. And when several survivors get together, they never discuss where they were or what happened to them when the Great Disaster (as it's called in the book) went down, which I think goes totally against human nature. And the survivors continue to live off the leavings for forty or more years afterward, eating canned food that must have long since gone bad and even smoking cigarettes that had to have been unsmokeable after at least a year. They never bother to start even a rudimentary garden - an idea which I think would have occurred to just about anybody - but somehow manage to live in nearly perfect health until old age without eating any fresh fruits or vegetables. Again, I understand that these details weren't important to the author, but they were important to me, and so these little problems served to disrupt what was otherwise a well-written, intriguing take on the old end-of-the-world plot.