Earth Abides by George R. Stewart
312 pages
Published 1949
Read from September 22 to September 25
Rating: ★★★ out of 5
I got to thinking about a pair of contradictory attitudes I hold. On one hand I consciously abhor the sort of self-satisfied sociopathy young males in our culture (and Republican voters of every age and gender) cherish, the Randian delusion that I am an enlightened, important being in the midst of sheep. On the other, I have to admit to being something of a self-satisfied elitist myself: Look at all these ignorant beings around me who never notice the sky or the trees or the rocks underfoot, and have no concept of time and space and the scale of existence. The former aspect of my outlook found Earth Abides' thematic and narrative through-line that not all human beings can think or lead or create rather troublesome. The latter part of me remembered that most people are pretty dull, at least to all outside appearances, and reluctantly agreed that a random pool of survivors from a globally lethal pandemic wouldn't behave all that differently, in all probability, from Stewart's depiction. Perhaps I can resolve my internal conflict, at least in terms of this book, by rejecting all notions of inborn ability rooted on gender and racial constructs and class, and citing sociological and psychological data on how it's the way you were raised that largely determines your abilities and outlook, rather than some icky Randian chosen-one narrative.
The first third or so of this book, which begins with a variant on the proverbial "waking up in an abandoned hospital" device (and possibly invented it for this type of global depopulation narrative, for all I know) and follows our hero Ish through the first days and weeks of discovering the aftermath of the contagion, is good stuff. The wires hanging up the scenery are a bit obvious -- you can tell Stewart really, really wanted to show off his ideas of how each region of the country would appear after 99.999% of humanity got wiped out -- but it worked for me. The ending, a brief coda which sees our now superannuated survivor, "the Last American," observing what his little Tribe has become in the succeeding three generations, is also quite evocative, making me long for a sequel of some sort to explore this future society in greater depth. The stretch in between, however, gets dull and repetitive at times, as our hero spends much of his time in his own head, worrying at problems he thinks no one else around him is intellectually inclined to discuss with him (or capable of grasping, for that matter). The philosophical meat here, whether "man" pushes back more at his surroundings or his surroundings push more against him, is a basic rhetorical question in sociology, and I never felt that Stewart gave his own answer sufficiently well, given how many times it gets chewed in Ish's ruminations.
So, here we have about half of a quite good book, bookending a rather dry and directionless middle. Earth Abides is interesting as one of the earliest examples of the post-apocalyptic narrative -- I only know of After London and Mary Shelley's even older The Last Man coming before this one, though I really should have googled for others before publishing this review. Oh well. I'll google it later and give myself some more things to add to my to-read list.
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