Posted on 02/08/2014 8:42:44 PM PST by backwoods-engineer
Ping for possible interest to the FReeper Preppers and Survivalists.
bfl
it was a great book... just loved it. It was funny how the kids just did enough homework to make him leave them alone to have fun.
I read this book in high school after reading something about jimi hendrix liking the book.
This has been my favorite book for along time. I am not a big reader of fiction though.
Great book!
I highly recommend it.
I liked the kids making arrowheads from silver coins.
And the respect the people had for the hammer.
It was like a sceptre.
First read EA in high school, have re-read many times since. Tried to get a movie made when I was in production, but so many imitators have ripped off Stewart’s work it came to naught. I’d still like to see it adapted though - set in its original 1950 period, in wide screen B&W.
bookmark
First read it 40 years ago (required reading in my 10th-grade English class). Re-read it again last year (while on a binge of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic sci-fi: "Alas, Babylon," "A Canticle for Lebowitz," etc.).
What "bothered" me the most on re-reading it was just how "Ish" and the few survivors with whom he banded together to form the nucleus of the "Tribe" weren't able to jump-start civilization. Stewart plainly states that other survivors became unhinged due to the mass death and due to the subsequent vanishing of civilization, but only hints at the fact that "Ish" and his friends are likewise somehow "lessened" by the catastrophe (they were mostly only 100 I.Q. people anyway) - and that "Ish," himself, though of above-average intelligence, is too passive, too much a mere observer, to take charge.
Even though I am not a practicing survivalist, I've read up on the subject, and that background makes it especially wry / ironic to ponder on how many mistakes "Ish" makes in his attempt to re-establish society. (In that regard, "Alas, Babylon" is even more of a laugh - Can you imagine having advance warning of the coming catastrophe, and preparing an "iron reserve" of supplies and bartering items consisting ONLY of, e.g., a lb. of coffee, two bottles of whiskey, a bottle of aspirin?)
Regards,
bump
Going to look for this. Fascinating. Thanks!
Excellent read! I guess I first read it 40 or 50 years ago.
Glad to see that others still appreciate it.
Thanks for posting and for having the full text available.
Your closing comments are the best part of your Post, though!
Years later I read the book. Entertaining.
Fwiw, the Escape radio show is available on the web.
I love the old radio shows...one of my favorites was a modern ‘update’ of War of the Worlds broadcast by WKBW out of Buffalo. The broadcast sounded just like their regular programming...rock music...the disc jockey was someone that most listeners were familiar with. All seemed normal UNTIL the ‘huge metal cylinder’ crashed on Grand Island in the Niagara River. You could hear the despair in the DJ’s voice as the machines he thought were trapped on the island straddled the river and entered Buffalo. IIRC, poison gas got him; then the voice-over about the germs ended the broadcast. It was VERY well done.
I like the part where the grandson brings grandfather a coin and calls it “corns”. At least grandpa taught them how to build bows. A great book that all preppers should read.
One part of the ending of the book caught my eye. The author describes the younger people returning to tribalism, which he suspected would be like Native American tribalism. Yet the way he described it is more like Germanic tribalism, and this is an important difference.
Germanic tribes first evolved the idea of “warrior egalitarianism”, that all warriors were equal in stature. In turn, this lead to trial by a jury of peers (that only other warriors could judge a warrior), innocence before guilt, impartial courts and advocates, because even a good warrior may not be well spoken, and finally, that that which is not expressly forbidden is by default legal.
And these ideas migrated to Britain and became the Common Law. Common Law is biased to development and prosperity, entrepreneurship and civility.
So in the case of Earth Abides, the younger generation had the right idea.
Another apocalyptic story, though not on Earth, is Issac Asimov’s “Nightfall” (1941), that was later enlarged into a novel, and even made into a low budget movie, which was universally panned. The short story and novel were far better.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightfall_%28Asimov_short_story_and_novel%29
It takes place on a planet with several suns, which is in perpetual daylight. And archeologist discovers that mysteriously, about every 2000 of their years, their entire civilization collapses, only to begin again.
Doing some astronomy, he and others figure out that about every 2000 years, an alignment of suns happens, allowing the planet to experience night. This is too much for the people who live there, who all go violently insane because of the dark, and destroy their civilization.
I haven’t read it, but you would think someone would remember how to mix sulfur, charcoal and saltpeter to make gun powder.
Years ago, I read that the Apaches learned to make their own gunpowder from an Apache boy slave who had escaped from the Spaniards.
The Spanish were so upset by this that they began to supply the Apaches gunpowder in hopes they would soon forget how to make it.
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