Earth Abides
Posted by andyslack on 28 August 2009
Or, what I read on my hols, part 2…
Earth Abides is a post-apocalyptic novel written in 1949 by George R Stewart, who amongst other things seems to have invented the template for the disaster movie.
We follow the protagonist (a graduate student of geography) from his return from a field trip to discover that humanity has essentially died out, to his meetings with other survivors, to his old age some decades later.
The book has aged surprisingly well, I suppose since once civilisation collapses there is nothing obviously out of date. Althought Stewart glosses over the initial apocalypse (and the protagonist never does find out what happened in any detail, other than a mysterious disease arising and nearly erasing humans from the globe), he does focus on the Secondary Kill – people who survive the disease, but are unable to cope with the new world, and implode under the stress. We then follow the protagonist as he lives alone for a while, eventually links up with a few others, and essentially becomes a tribal elder.
The novel speaks well to what technical and social concepts can survive this, and which can’t. It also discusses what would happen to domestic and wild animals, although I’m not entirely convinced that sheep would die out. I can see romantic love being a lost luxury; in a community of say 20 people, there are not going to be many choices of a partner near the right age and the opposite gender.
It’s a book which is likely to haunt me for some time, especially the hero’s steadily declining expectations of what level of technology his tribe can actually maintain.
Overall, Earth Abides reinforces what I’ve felt for a while on this topic: Once the electricity goes out, we’re back in the Stone Age, and precious few of us know how to live there any more.
