Rating: 
Summary: Bad book, better movie
Review: As a post-apocalyptic novel, The Postman is mediocre at best. As a social/political commentary, it's much worse. There are many other books better than this. Give Costner (and the screenwriter!)credit that the movie made a solid adventure story out of a poor novel. Its too bad, the basic premise of The Postman is very interesting. However, the end result is disappointing.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent tale
Review: I first read this book years ago, probably when it was first printed, and I found it to be a very powerful story of one man's fight against oppression. Granted, we've all heard that before but then what plot hasn't been heard before. There's just something about America that brings us all together when some dictator wannabe comes along to take away our freedom(s) and that's what this book is all about.
Rating:
Summary: Taking Stock of Our Responsibility For Law
Review: At one point in David Brin's "The Postman," the narrator intones: "Gordon's appointed postmasters would continue lying without knowing it, using the tale of a restored nation to bind the land together, until the fable wasn't needed anymore. Or until, by believing it, people made it come true." There is more than a touch of William James here, of making it so by believing in it, of the "Will to Believe." Certainly, Kevin Costner's movie version demanded a heavy dose of the willing suspension of disbelief from us when an army of postmen rode to the rescue under a restored "Old Glory," forming an unwitting parody of "cavalry to the rescue" scene in old westerns, as well as of an earlier Costner epic ... the mounted ride-by presented as holy defiance in both The Postman and Dances With Wolves. Because Brin was crafting a book, and not painting visual symbols, his demands seem more reasonable. Despite some stretches, and unlike other reviewers, I did not see the mano-a-mano at the end as "deus ex machina," but instead a reasonable question -- are we as capable of creating one kind of "superman" as that other, most feared? The fight woven into the endstory is, after all, symbolic of a struggle between Titans (an image and a term Brin consciously employs): competing world views. If we are prepared by science fiction to accept the evil member of the "superman" twins, why not also the good? Is science fiction so jaded, or will it accept the myth of the good in people as quickly as the myth of evil? By using the Postman as the handy symbol for "swell the music, pass around the Kleenex" scenes, Costner buries the underlying irony. The Postman as epic hero.... Brin demands that we attempt, and then understand that it is, faith in such simple images of normalcy, justice and peace that make it so. As his apocolyptic tale has it: "More people died due to the breakdown and lawlessness -- the shatt! ered web of commerce and mutual assistance -- than from all the bombs and germs, or even from the three-year dusk." It is belief that must re-weave the web, not brute power. Brin's demand, the demand he lays equally at the feet of the idealist, the pragmatist and the intellectual, is more fundamental than the "willing suspension of disbelief" with which we watch TV reruns. We do not allow the show to end, but make it real by our belief that it is. This demand is at the core of a basic rift in philosophies of law which both book and movie drive home. To Costner's credit in an otherwise overwrought and manipulative movie, he did not lose sight of that demand. The Holness and survivalists, in both Brin's work and Costner's, are embodiments of a conception of law as a one-sided exertion of power. Brin comes close to quoting the power-oriented political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes' classic "Leviathan" when he describes the life of women in the new order as "poor, painful and short." Against this philosophy is one that grounds law and orderliness in the notion of the reciprocal nature of the relationship between people and law, the governed and the governing. Against the power-oriented visions of law and government, Brin has set a view, well expounded in jurisprudential works by the late Lon Fuller, who saw law as an enterprise with an internal morality demanding commitment from both the government and the governed to do things well and right if it is ever to succeed. Law as more than Fascist "Law and Order," imposed from without, law as good order springing from the better side of people. By the story medium he chose, we should assume that Brin is, after all, making a point in political philosophy. We slip further and further away from our own responsibility for our government and our laws, a responsibility which the Postman shortsightedly fails to recognize as his own when he whines about wanting someone [else] to take responsibilit! y to set things right. The further we slip, the more we silently accept the message of the Nathan Holn and his survivalist gangs. We become mere followers in a world where only a few are willing to take responsibility ... and seeing the free reign they are given, abuse it. Unfortunately, there is in Brin's tale more than a suggestion that "extraordinary individuals" are still required, and that it is acceptable for those individuals to use the "noble lie." In this one particular, Costner surpasses Brin at least once, when the movie's Abbey admits that she knew that the Postman was not really a messenger from the restored government -- a passing moment of recognition by the "little people" that they are participating in the forging of myth into reality. In Brin's book, only the leaders, the cognoscienti, appear to be smart enough and dedicated enough to acknowledge the Big Lie yet adhere to it as a Noble Necessity. The fundamental message, still, is a simple one, and one that America sorely needs to grasp as one of the central demands of a free and open society. We are responsible for our government and our laws. It is only by accepting responsibility that we can keep alive our part in our government and our fate. There is no Sugarloaf Mountain on which we can hide for long, and the other alternative is passive and slave-like acceptance.
Rating:
Summary: The most mundane and accessible Brin
Review: Not as fantastic or far removed from the familiar as Brin's other books, the Postman tells a hopeful tale of post-apocalyptic America. True to form, the Postman leaves the reader with more questions than answers.
Rating:
Summary: an amazingly moving novel
Review: This is simply one of the best novels I have read in a long time. It's various themes and morals can be felt, not just seen, as one reads this moving novel. It is a must read for anyone who still believes in love of country and one's duty to his fellow men.
Rating: 
Summary: A wonderful story about the important of communication
Review: I haven't seen the movie, but from what I have heard, it did not pay justice to the book. (Yes, few films do.) In The Postman, Brin writes about life on earth which is a different location then in most of his books. And the communication he writes about is not the touchy-feely kind, but the "Hey I am alive what about you?" kind. The Postman made me wonder again about how really important it is to know what is happening beyond our own communities. If you like science-fiction, but are tried of the usual humoid aliens, try Brin's The Uplift War.
Rating:
Summary: Do Not Bother
Review: This is one of the worst books that I ever MADE myself read. That's right, I actually forced myself to complete this poorly written book. I kept waiting for the author to redeem himself, but alas I remained dissapointed. The really sad part is that the theme could be quite interesting. Unfortunately, the author creates a probable view of society after a holocast and does nothing with it. What was the deal with the mutunt soldiers? That was realistic (sarcasm). And of course the author couldn't give women too much credit by allowing them to be victorious in battle. Oh yes, the computer, stupid stupid stupid. If the scietists were able to get computers going again, do you really think that they would only repair hand-held children's games? This is a horrible book and a great waste of time. Unfortunately, Amazon has not given me the option of giving less than a one star review. The author owes my life a more than a few hours.
Rating: 
Summary: Something of a disappointment
Review: Mr Brin wastes no time in posing the hard questions: What really constitutes civilization? How much of it is illusion? How might that quintessentially american virtue -- rugged individualism -- turn out to be America's undoing? And in asking these questions he lays the groundwork for a philosophical and cautionary tale that might've compared favorably to A Canticle For Leibowitz -- if only he'd been able to carry through with it. Instead, inexplicibly, The Postman changes genres in mid-stream and transmogrifies from philosophical musings to cartoonish action in the space of just a few pages. The big questions posed at the beginning are never really answered. The bad guys, who might otherwise have caused an NRA type to stop and give his philosophy a serious second thought, are all two-dimensional sub-human supermen with no believable motivation for thier bizzare actions. And to top it all off, at the end we're treated with a deus ex machina that would've choked Sophocles. A disappointing ending to what had otherwise promised to be an excellent book.
Rating:
Summary: Far better than the film
Review: Forget the ego-centric mess that Kevin Costner made of the film. This is an excellent book showing the effect of hope and self-belief on ordinary people.
Rating:
Summary: The real theme is: how to build a country with an ideal
Review: I won't review the plot and I won't say how bad the movie was (although its dreariness was predictable); it's been said before. David Brin, by his own account, writes straightforward stories for his books, and tends to be more mythic in his short stories. The Postman is the exception. It began as a short story which Brin later expanded into a novel, expanding the mythic element as well. I enjoyed the book as a story but what really drew me to it was the political philosophy. What makes one country different from another? What makes a story suitable as the basis of a national character? How did the US acquire its essential nature? How do we teach our children -- and our military -- the difference between service-out-of-duty and service-for-power? By having his hero unintentionally recreate a nation, Brin brings these questions to the fore. We get to look at them, and think about how they apply to our nation's founding. The hero talks about Ben Franklin (good buy) vs. Aaron Burr (bad guy); the Roman legend of Cincinnatus and why he refused the crown; that with freedom comes duty. These are things worth thinking about. Or you can read the book as a simple SF novel. That, I think, would be missing what makes the book truly special, and why many of the reviewers were disappointed.
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