Earth Abides

by George R. Stewart

Book Overview

An instant classic upon its original publication in 1949 and winner of the first International Fantasy Award, Earth Abides ranks with On the Beach and Riddley Walker as one of our most provocative and finely wrought post-apocalyptic works of literature. Its impact is still fresh, its lessons timeless.

With an introduction by Connie Willis

When a plague of unprecedented virulence sweeps the globe, the...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345487133
• ISBN13: 9780345487131
• Release Date: March 2006
• Publisher: Del Rey Books
• Length: 345 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.6" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Read This Review!

I can't expound upon this book as some of the reviewers have. Nor can I recall in exact detail everything in the book. But I can add value in this way.... I read this book 30 years ago, and I still think about it. I can remember the plague, the snakebite that saved the main character, the waves of predatory evolution after the event... the tribe, the forced justice, the eventual shut down of the urban areas as the infrastructure started to erode. The shift from scavanging off of grocery shelfs (for years) to providing for themselves. The last breaths of the story teller and the fight for the symbol of power, the hammer which every year the protagonist took up to the cliffs and recorded the time since the plague. 30 Years.... and I still think about it. How many books, movies, songs... etc... do you expect to think about 30 years down the road. You probably wouldn't even remember the title let alone a rough outline. Will I read it again? Certainly! I ran into a young lady reading this on the subway a few years back, and we had a wonderful conversation... it's that kind of a book. Is this considered a "Good" review? Click on the helpful button if so. It would interest me. Thanks Much Love gb

A great and majestic book with marvelous insight

One thing that disturbs people about Earth Abides is its incredible humbling realism about the human condition. People who read it come away profoundly unnerved by the idea that civilization is not something guaranteed to come into existence if we lose it and that it requires an enormous convergence of many different kinds of stimulus to create the energies needed within a race of men to bring it into being. Even the most gifted races of people on the Earth can barely hold it together in the best of times, George Stewart shows us how easily it can all fall apart and remain in a primeval condition for untold generations.The protagonist Isherwood suffers from the same disease that afflicts even the best of men - he lacks direction, loses initiative, becomes too preoccupied with the daily stresses of living and watches his life trickle away in the post apocalyptic environment without ever seeming to summon the right kinds of ambitions to carry out his grand dreams of rebuilding the old world.Stewart was quite prophetic considering when this book was written because many modern anthropologists have since confirmed that many previous civilizations have died out precisely because of this "critical threshold" of the division of labor and sheer numbers of vanished races being too low to sustain a breeding population and achieve the critical mass that leads to a progress oriented civilization. Stewart was very perceptive too be able to articulate this phenomenon and even narrate its exact trajectory following the loss of so many people who were vital components in the world that Isherwood regrets the demise of.The most disturbing aspect for me was that I see much of the exact decay of western civilization going on right now all around us and we have not even have a catastrophic plague yet. The same loss of purpose, of drive, of a sense of our own individual worth as a nation and a desire to maintain our sovereignty is slowly giving way to the degenerative notion of a world socialist government of faceless consumers who lack any culture beyond the food court and cineplex.The terrifying thing about the book "Earth Abides" is that it is the story of our world and the modern era ... even before we suffer the inevitable collapse of our civilization in the physical sense. The reality is that we see it all crumbling around our eyes into the multicultural carnival of formlessness and we often find ourselves as helpless and feckless as Ish himself in doing anything about it.Highest rating, possibly on the top 100 list of best fiction I've ever read. I consider Stewart to be the author of a modern classic in publishing this book. It is so much more than simply speculative fiction, it contains eternal truths.

Men come and go, but earth abides.

First published in 1949, this novel won the 1951 International Fantasy Award in Fiction (the first one awarded) even though this is not a true fantasy novel. The International Fantasy Awards were originated by four British science fiction and fantasy fans (Leslie Flood, John Beynon Harris, G. Ken Chapman, and Frank A. Cooper) for the 1951 British science fiction convention. The awards lasted between 1951 and 1957. George R. Stewart (1895-1980) was a Professor of English at the University of California in Berkeley. This well-read novel is about life after a plague has killed all but a few people on Earth. Isherwood Williams, a graduate student in geography, returns from a trip to the mountains to find everyone dead. He travels throughout the land and finds a female survivor. They settle down in the Bay Area around San Francisco and a small community grows around them. As time goes by, Isherwood tries to teach the children reading and the knowledge of the past. As the decades go by, he discovers that he is the only one who recalls the greatness of the past. Humans have become a band of hunter-gatherers. History has come full circle. "...men go and come, but earth abides." Carl Sandburg considered it one of the best novels of its time. It is regarded by many as a masterpiece and was a precursor for many later disaster novels (note that one of the voters of the International Fantasy Award was J. B. Harris, whose pseudonym was John Wyndham and author of another classic disaster novel, "The Day of the Triffids." One of the earlier reviewers suggested that Wyndham was a better disaster writer. But, "Triffids" came out in 1951, and Wyndham still chose "Earth Abides."). The name "Isherwood" is a direct reference to Ishi, the last surviving member of a California Indian tribe who was brought to the University by Kroeber of the Anthropology Department (many science fiction enthusiasts are very familiar with Kroeber's daughter, Ursula K. Le Guin). Ishi is still quite famous in the study of native American cultures. This book has had such an impact in the development of the science fiction genre that it is now required reading for all serious students of science fiction and speculative literature.

The BEST book I've EVER read, hands down!

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 t