The Day the Televisions Stopped

By S.B. Sutton

A myth about the inexplicable loss of television on June 22, 2002, is recalled eighty years later by a spectrum of storytellers whose many voices chime together to relate a foreboding, futuristic... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0151239940
• ISBN13: 9780151239948
• Release Date: January 1969
• Publisher: Harcourt
• Length: 212 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 1.3" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

A very rare story by an unknown writer

I found this book in a thrift store, and the inside jacket flap sounded intriguing. "On June 21, 2002, all the televisions in the world stopped." I glanced at the copyright date: 1992. This ought to be good, I thought. And indeed. More than 'good', it's a fable made up of the story of the television cessation, told from the viewpoints of many people - from a poor Brazilian to an astronaut who glows in the dark (and flies); it's a beautifully written and charming story. That's not to say it is all sweetness and light: the world is awash in blood and violence seems to be darkening every corner of the globe. But....! The story S. B. Sutton tells - like all really good stories - comes with hope. A cautionary tale, perhaps. The book was published in 1992 and takes place 10 years into that future. I am reading it for the first time 18 years after publication. And find it just as pertinent - if not more so - as it (should have been) then. I Googled Ms. Sutton, and to my great disappointment, can find no other fiction by her. She wrote biographies, and dry histories up in the Boston Mass areas. I was even more saddened to read that she is listed this way: "Sylvia Barry Sutton, 1940 - 1997." Apparently, she had died of cancer at the young age of 57, which is my age right now. Truly melancholy now, for I so enjoyed her book that I wished to read more of her fiction. She was a grand story-teller! I wish I knew more about her. Perhaps this review will bring the book out again and more people will be curious about it and her. Back to the book and the story. I don't know how reviewers put things. I know this. If you read this book, you'll love it. You'll love her characters, and their quirks. You'll wish you'd been there when Fat Ozzie was picked up and flown up; you'll wish you had been sitting in Moose's bar when Maria sang; you'll run out and buy lime-green Kool-Aid; you won't look at goats the same way, and you will worry a little more about the destiny of human-kind and its ever-increasing predilection for violence and hatred. But you'll also have a jolt of joy and a flash of hope, for there are still people who care deeply about the world and its direction.