Rating: 
Summary: Life After the Doomwar
Review: The main criteria for judging a recreational novel like THE POSTMAN is whether or not it kept the pages turning. This one did, which is why I finished it, and which is why you are getting to read this fine review. David Brin offers up a vision of life in the near future after the Doomwar and the ensuing anarchy has destroyed civilization as we know it. What remains is a healthy scattering of small communities struggling to survive the chaos.Some of the survivors are would-be tyrants; the rest of them are decent, but cowed folk who try to get along. You can guess who gets the better end of the deal. The novel follows Gordon Krantz, one of the decent, but unusually strong guys as he tries to navigate the bleak landscape. He stumbles upon a Postman's uniform, and accidentally discovers that he can trade dreams of a restored United States back East in exchange for food and lodging. The question of the novel is whether the myth Krantz is offering is enough to get the decent folks to come together and throw off the tyrants. The writing is not terrific, but the action unfolds at a good pace. We are drawn into Brin's world enough to care about how it all turns out. Along the way, Brin invites us through a meditation about the foundations of civil society. His main question is how a "civilized" guy can exercise violence against the tyrants, without becoming one of them. In Brin's vision, the women who live among the despots are treated despotically, and his insight is that genuine civilization depends, in some way, on the strength of women. What he lacks is any good vision of how that necessary feminine strength can be used to civilize the men, and so the end of THE POSTMAN falls flat. My guess is that Brin's failure simply reflects our own society's inability to really understand the nature of feminine strength. Still, give Brin credit for seeing that it is a question. THE POSTMAN is a fine way to while away a few hours at the beach. It might even cause you to pause and muse over a few ideas in the shower, before the whole thing washes away and you move on to your next good read.
Rating: 
Summary: The Postman Rocks
Review: What I find so amazing about this book is how well it relates to current times. one of the main themes in the book is holding together and standing up for our country as well loving our neighbors and sacrificing for things much bigger than any of us. especially after september 11 United States Citizens must pull something from the ashes, must try to right what has been wronged, must hold together for country and the the things we stand for, this is what this book embodies. I strongly encourage everyone and anyone to read this book; it is an experience that will never be forgotten.
Rating:
Summary: Great!
Review: Anyone who saw the movie and thinks they know what happens now so the novel is ruined for them, or who disliked the film for its cheezy and epic required dramatic music etc. (I loved it myself!) shouldn't be put off reading the novel! Although the theme of hope and the symbol of a postman beginning to reunite a nation is the same, (and the occasional character or event) essentially it is completely different... Brin's writing style is enjoyable but not constantly completely engrossing like Michael Marshall Smith (amazing sci-fi writer!)or Anne Rice, for example, but the imagination and scope and detail, the characters and ideals and events that he describes are so real - he really recreates the whole world (well, the US anyway) post-apocalypse and its very believable. Towards the end I was completely enraptured in the events and its a great book! If you've seen the film dont be put off when you're reading by thinking you know what happens next, go into it with an open mind because what happens is almost completely different...
Rating:
Summary: It helps to keep the home fires burning.
Review: This is post nuclear war story writing the way it should be done. If we stuck solely with Mad Max we would realy be in trouble. If you enjoy a really good read this is for you even if you are one of those who generally doesn't read science fiction. This one is one of the best entries you will ever find. And if you haven't seen the movie with Kevin Costner yet do so. In some ways it is even better than the book is if that is ever possible with Hollywood. The script is very well written and the acting is superb.
Rating:
Summary: bring on the mail
Review: this is an ingenius plot....a character to get behind is very much welcome, here it is Gordon Krantz...such an interesting idea, with villains that you actually dislike and you have yourself a good read...ive read this book twice now, and loved it both times...i just love the whole idea of moving the capital of the restored US to St. Paul...and how Krantz plays the role of government worker...this is an excellent book, well written, with a very interesting idea...worth the price at a bookstore? for me it was, others may be better off with a quick pickup at the library, because this is one of those books that you love or you hate
Rating: 
Summary: "Who will take responsibility?"
Review: David Brin's The Postman uses the post-holocaust type of novel to send several relevant messages among them: the importance to take social responsibility, the urgent need of hope and the value of things that we usually take for granted. Brin's novel might not be brilliantly written, and it certainly doesn't have any kind of epic scope. Indeed its scope is quite locally limited and the writing is simple and straight-forward. Nevertheless, the brilliant idea of a made-up Postman bringing new light into a broken country and the weight of the messages that are delivered makes this book a fine read to be recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: good story, BUT...
Review: David Brin's concept is truly remarkable, and his plotting is superb. This is a wonderful story. But in the end, the verdict on this book is the same as the verdict on the Kevin Costner film that takes its name: With such a good story, there's no excuse for "The Postman" to be as bad as it is. Brin's technique, his craft, betrays his own vision. At best the prose is serviceable; more often, it is an excruciating thing to read. The "Damn you"s that constantly bounce around in Gordon's brain are straight out of the worst community theater's Shakespeare festival. Would you like to know why so few people will rightly call science fiction legitimate literature? This is why: most science fiction writers, like Brin, just can't write--and some of the worst, including Brin, are given the most glorious "literary" prizes. Any serious critic would laugh out loud at this book's Nebula Award; the award doesn't compliment this book so much as this book incriminates the award. It is true that many science fiction writers have brains as active as any writer of "serious" fiction. But only a few in the history of literature could be trusted to transfer those ideas well to paper. Read Ted Sturgeon and Kurt Vonnegut for real reading, and then read this and other Nebula Award-winners if you want reading that is imaginitive but atrociously written.
Rating:
Summary: Believe it or not, I actually loved the movie...
Review: In my experience, if something exists as both a book and a movie, whichever I encounter first is the one that I like best and "The Postman" is no exception. I do feel that the Costner film would have benefitted GREATLY from the detailed explanation of the circumstances which led to society's collapse and the rise of the Holnists which Brin provides in his novel. However, by trimming the fat from the novel (a priesthood of timid computer nerds, a brooding hippie-cyborg)Costner actually created a more believeable story.
It has been stated several times that the novel's greatest weakness is that Brin tries to cram too many themes into too small a space. The novel goes from being an engrossing study into societal decay and the power of myth to inspire hope to a treatise on male/female social dynamics in the space of a few pages without us understanding why. Likewise, Brin transfers the source of horror surrounding the evil Holnists from their ghoulish and all-too-plausible socio-political beliefs to an a contrived, overused device of man fusing with machine to create the ultimate evil. Like many others, I also found the ending to be rushed and unsatisfying.
However, I overall I really did like this story very much. Try not to view it and the movie as the same story, but two entirely seperate imaginings of how the same story *might* have happened. A very worhtwhile read for any fan of speculative or apocalyptic ficiton.
Rating:
Summary: Thankfully not the movie
Review: Actually I can't attest to having seen said movie, but a cursory reading of the plot of the movie shows that they seemed to have played a bit fast and loose with this book, which considering the reviews it got, probably wasn't a good thing. Oh well. To each his own, you're never going to get an exact translation. At least they're restored the brilliant reissue cover, much as one can admire Kevin Costner as an actor, I would have preferred not to have his bedraggled face staring at me every time I go to pick the book up. That all stated, this is a highly entertaining and fairly straightforward book, probably not as deep as Brin would like it to be, but a good try nonetheless. We have a future US destroyed by war, with scattered towns basically living their own separate existences, while an army run by survivalists inspired by a Hitleresque fanatic are trying to take over everything in sight. Our hero enters this mess while trying to escape some roving raiders and finds a postal uniform and some mail . . . from there he concocts a lie to help him get food and stuff but winds up inspiring everyone and restoring hope to a faded nation, regaining his own lost ideals in the process. Needless to say there's plenty to like in this book, Brin's envisioning of a future US with everyone living in the shadow of the past war is great, the story moves at a quick pace, so even when it's not that engrossing you're still reading, and the situations are varied, with a fairly uplifting message that manages to come across as sincere. However, most of the stuff you can see coming from miles away so don't expect "shocks on every page", with the exception of maybe the main character and some others, most of the people populating the book are a tad one dimensional, sure there's lot of them but very few of them feel "real". Brin appears to be shooting for the same status that Earth Abides (a really great novel, by the way), Alas, Babylon and maybe even On the Beach have garnered over the years but he defeats himself by making it too science fictional, what worked in those books was a palpable sense of reality, that this stuff could happen tomorrow, Brin's got too many talking computers, augmented humans and fancy future stuff to give the reader a true connection with his future. So in the end what you wind up with may not be an enduring classic beloved by millions but merely an extremely entertaining and diverting SF novel. Which, all told, may be enough.
Rating:
Summary: One of Brin's Best
Review: I read The Postman long before that horrible movie came out. Women who have not read the book will be pleased to know that there is more than one female character in the book. The choice of Costner, et. al. to make one character that is an amalgamation of the three central female characters is deplorable, at best. After watching the movie, I had to reread the book, just to make sure I wasn't hallucinating A LOT of actions in the book that never made it to the screen. Don't let the "film" sour you on reading this fantastic work.
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