Earth Abides

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Summary: Post-apocalyptic Must Read!!
Review: Lost Books -- Review Number 1 Earth Abides by George R. Stewart D. D. Shade 6/11/98

Had Isherwood Williams lived to see our day, with it's social and political decay, he might not have worried so much about "preserving" our culture. As it happens in George R. Stewart's book, the devastating viral plague that cleanses the earth of nearly all human life occurred approximately 50 years ago. Long before the assination of John or Robert Kennedy or Martin Luther King, Jr. Long before the war with Vietnam. Before we put a man on the moon and then cut the space program. Before the pervasion of television and the computer revolution. Before the escalation of the cold war, AIDS, or most of the great serial killers. In other words, Earth Abides takes place in a time that many Americans with gray hair look back upon with nostalgia. The post World War Two years, when those of us between forty and fifty were born. The boomer years. A time of great prosperity. A decade that saw the birth of rock-n-roll, hamburgers, and Oreo cookies. Yet it was a time of great poverty for some. When restrooms, restaurants, and the seats in public transportation were separated by the color of ones skin. When equal pay for equal work was unheard of and a woman's place was in the home. A time when the word 'communist' was the dirtiest and deadliest thing one could call another. An altogether strange time, know as the fifties. It is into this world that Isherwood suddenly finds himself alone. Victim of a freak snakebite while out in the wilderness working on his graduate thesis and survivor of an even more freak accident, the development of a viral plague that wipes out humankind in a matter of weeks. It is altogether fitting that someone named Ish, this is how he signed his name to a hand scrawled will while delirious from the snake bite, should find himself alone in the world. Ish, David Pringle tells us , is a direct reference to the historic Ishi, a California Indian who became famous as the last living representativ! e of his tribe. Ish spends at least a quarter of the book searching for others. He finds a few, lucky people with great immune systems, and in the process stumbles upon the woman with whom he shares the remainder of his years. Together they try to build a community and at the same time rebuild civilization as they had know it. You will have to read the book to learn of Ish's heroic triumphs and failures as he tries to make sure the future has a heritage. Although following the traditional post-apocalyptic formula, that of the earth being cleansed by some means and leaving a few to rebuild civilization, Earth Abides offers some interesting commentary on some central moral questions of our/that time. One of those is racial unrest. Given the nature of European and African American relations in this nation in 1949, Stewart was taking a quite a risk when he developed one particular central character, Em. Ish chooses a strong willed, able, out-spoken, African American woman to be his mate. She was not the first female Ish found, nor was she the best looking, but she had within her the strength to become the mother of a new civilization. Ish recognized this and fell in love with her quickly. And Ish was right-Em alone had the strength and courage to bear the first child in the small community that had grown around them. There was no one who knew how to deliver a baby, and that was frightful enough, but the greatest fear was not knowing if children born into the world would inherit their parents immunity to the plague. Earth Abides is considered a classic by several sources but to my way of thinking, it deserves that exalted position in speculative fiction for having been a forerunner is demonstrating that black and white can live together. Stewart further shows us how important is the relationship between past and future. He does this symbolically through the vehicle of a 4-pound, single-jack hammer. At the beginning of the book, just before the snake bite, Ish is exploring a cave and finds this hammer. It is the! kind miners used in the old days when rock-drills were placed by hand. It is called a single-jack because it can be used with one hand. Ish notes the pleasure he feels when he finds the hammer because of its tie to the past. Even delierous from snake bit, he remembers to take the hammer with him. He keeps it with him throughout the book. As the community grows around Ish and Em, the hammer is used each year to chisel the numbers of the year on a big rock in the hills above where they live. It is always present on the mantel in Ish's living room. And at the end of the book, when Ish has grown old and the younger men, his and other's children, sense that he is ready to pick a new leader for the community, they wait in a circle at his feet for Ish to pick the next leader by giving them the hammer. The importance of tradition to the family and the community is symbolized in the single-jack. John Clute and Peter Nicholls feel that post-apocalyptic or disaster stories are so popular because they appeal to secret desires we all share: a depopulated world, escape from the constraints of a highly organized industrial society, and the opportunity to prove one's ability to survive. I choose the latter of the three. Post-apocalyptic speculative fiction provides a window from which to view the "stuff" of which humankind is made. The writer of a disaster or holocaust story can pit humans against the worst possible odds. The post-holocaust novel gives us the ability to perform an experiment that in reality would be unethical-to put a group of people in hell and record their progress getting out. Earth Abides is a moving, triumpal story of just such a group. No single character in Earth Abides has the stereotypic appeal of Bruce Willis or Nicolas Cage, and yet I came to love them all and worry about their conditions because they were real people. People with many of the same problems and weaknesses I have. People whose actions made me stop and wonder what I would do in the same situation.

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Summary: Wonderfully written
Review: This book reaches across time and avoids the technology trap. It hits home in many circumstances and is an excellent read. I liked its energy and symbolism. It avoids being grim and actually gives you hope for a disastrous future.

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Summary: Sorry, I just didn't get it.
Review: I see many people loved this book, but having just finished it, I just don't get the appeal it has for so many people. I found it incredibly boring and tedious. I do not exaggerate when I say I spent an afternoon struggling with it, nodding off to sleep every two or three paragraphs. To his credit, Stewart raises a number of issues about science and human nature, but it is done in the context of an uneventful story. The first book in years that almost made me abandon it halfway through, but I fought it out to the end. I remained disappointed.

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Summary: An Evaluation of Earth Abides
Review: This novel, Earth Abides, written by George Stewart takes place in San Francisco during present times. A worldwide virus overtakes and wipes out the entire human race, leaving only a select few alive. Of these few is a man named Isherwood who goes in search of other survivors to band with. He meets a woman named Emma and a few other people who start a new civilization. It is not easy, however, and they are constantly hitting head-to-head with nature, fighting for survival. As in any other society, there are some people who challenge the law that was laid down in the beginning. As a result, certain members of the tribe are divided. Unity is essential for survival...will they make it? Only time will tell.
The author of this book was probably raised in a Christian environment because there are many Biblical references in this book. For example, one of the characters in this novel is named Ezra, as is an Old Testament prophet. Stewart's Christian roots are evident in the way he unravels his novel and the double meanings behind some of his story. For example, a child named Joey is born to Ish and Em that is far more intelligent than any other of the many children. Ish finds hope in this young boy because he knows that Joey's outstanding brightness will one day be of great use to future peoples, just as God had much pride in His son Jesus.
This novel is a wake up call to the reader in that it brings attention to how weak and vulnerable humans really are. What if mankind were to die today? Would people have their affairs set in order?
This novel is a fictional story but has real-life applications. For example, there are real people facing real starvation and shelter needs. Stewart portrays very well the thoughts and feelings of each of the characters, which enhances the story line.
Earth Abides is an excellent novel. It is extremely well written and it flows nicely. Anybody thirteen years of age and older should definitely read this book because it captures the reader's attention and has the ability to transport the reader to a world no longer inhabited by humans. Younger children may not be able to understand some of the vocabulary in this book and may be easily confused due to the complex plot line. However, I give this book a two thumbs up.

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Summary: The BEST book I've EVER read, hands down!
Review: George R. Stewart weaves at once a beautiful and hauntingly believable tale with this novel, one that I've never been able to forget...or wanted to. Once considered dated, with the lessening of global nuclear tensions, the scenario Mr. Stewart envisions for a possible worldwide catastrophe, one brought about not by bombs but disease, has once again come to the forefront and become the most plausible ingredient in mankind's demise. More even than the fact that this is a truly enjoyable read is the deeper message Earth Abides shares with the reader as it reaches down and touches our very hearts, defining what it means to be human in an inhuman environment. The symbolism involved in Isherwood Williams' desire to keep a hammer with him for the future as a tie to the past is obviously an unconscious comment on his personal hope of rebuilding a fallen civilization. A hope that goes unfulfilled in his life time and maybe many lifetimes to follow. The insight into the human psyche that Mr. Stewart demonstates as he carries Isherwood from his youth at the beginning of the book to old age and finally death at the end and Isherwood's subtle change of attitude during that process, rings exceedingly true and speaks volumes about Mr. Stewart's keen and perhaps unique ability to put into words what it really means, or at least should mean, to be human. I've rarely read a book more than once because I just don't have the time, but I've read Earth Abides several times since I was a teen and I know I'll read it several more times before I too reach that stage in my life that Isherwood assures us won't be the calamity our youth oriented culture would have us to believe.

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Summary: After the pestilence Humankind abides.
Review: I had read this book several times in the past and before reviewing it I read it again.
His author was more than fifty years old when he wrote it. This maturity is perceptible all along this work. The story is situated in a world devastated by a sudden pestilence that annihilates most of the humankind. Taking into account the last SARS epidemic, that jumped abruptly from China to Canada, it doesn't look an impossible scenario.
Isherwood Willams comes down from an isolate spot in the mountains to discover an empty world. He starts a search all across USA, from California to New York and back again. He only find isolate human cells, couples or trios, overwhelmed by catastrophe and in a near catatonic state. Returns to his native town and contemplate with a certain scientific detachment the fading world around him.
Mr. Stewart intercalate brief vignettes describing what happens to dogs, cats, cattle, plants, roads, dams, bridges. Contrasting them with Ish's daily experiences. Little by little the story grip reader's attention and even if action is somehow slow, the book can't be putted down.
Human cells began to approach each other an a rather feeble structure starts to grow up.
This is the story.
The author approaches universal questions about survival and extinction; civilization and savagery; social structure and anomie. He also examines religious values, ethics and the ultimate sense of life itself.
This book gives the reader a lot of stuff to think about. A very enticing read!

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Summary: Earth Abides by George R. Stewart
Review: I first read this book back in 1967. At that time I was a kid and the whole story seemed to be nothing but "science fiction." I read about the way Ish went through his life, with a disbelief that it could ever happen here and now.

However, today I look at the possibility that civilization could be shattered by the loss of what we have come to consider the essential necessities of life - electricity, water, gas, gasoline, telephone, computers, drug stores and grocery stores. Now when I read Earth Abides, I realize that this story could actually happen to us. The problems that Ish had to deal with are now possible. As I read this story, I found myself wondering how I would handle dwindling supplies, the threats of animals and disease, the decreasing availability of items that spoil or evaporate, the social interaction with people, both good and bad. I wondered how I would deal with the lack of food, water, and medicine? Would I be able to survive in a deserted city with no electricity? With terrorists threatening to destroy our way of life, this book could be a survival guide for the modern man.

I especially found the greatest distress in this book was the way knowledge was lost. First Ish wanted to read and then it became less important and then the books fell apart. Ish became an antique with knowledge of things that meant nothing to the younger generation that was growing up around him. This book should be used to teach us all a lesson - that we must keep the flame of knowledge burning all the time or we could lose it so very fast.

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Summary: Totally believable sci-fi
Review: It blows my mind to imagine a book like this having been written over 50 years ago as it deals with the end (and reformation) of civilization in a way that is believable and lacking artificial plot devices to keep things moving and interesting.

Amazing that a book of this era could present the death of the American way of life as a positive ending (and still get published).

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Summary: Ages well...
Review: A worldwide virus has killed off nearly all the world's population. Ish starts exploring a world with no rules and few people. He finds some other people and they form "The Tribe" to restart their civilasation. Interesting book, and it actually survives pretty well considering how long ago it was written. There are very few passages in the book that date it significantly.

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Summary: Thank you, George R. Stewart
Review: George R. Stewart's "Earth Abides" was written in 1949, so of course there are some anachronisms that occasionally jolt the reader. The Giants play at the Polo Grounds and the Dodgers at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. There are no interstate highways and radios all have vacuum tubes.

These minor historical curiosities aside, what truly amazes is the timeless of Stewart's story. How many science fiction novels from 1949 still rate the glowing reviews of "Earth Abides" you will find here? By comparison so many modern sci-fi stories are formulaic, written with short, choppy sentences, shallow characters, and action sequences ready made for transfer to the screen.

Stewart's vision of the future, where education and especially reading, slowly fad away after an apocalypse applies more to today's world than that of his own. His characters have little ability to bring back the technological remnants of the dead world, and truly, if 99% of the people on the planet were to disappear how many of us have the skills to keep the power going, the water flowing, and automobiles running decades after the disaster? His characters adapt to their environment in the most natural way.

In the nearly four decades I have been reading books this is one of a handful that has made a memorable impression and which I consistently continue to recommend.