Earth Abides by George R. Stewart is an early and celebrated exemplar of the post-apocalypse novel, a now well-established subgenre of sf. First published in 1949 by Random House in the United States, the novel was the inaugural winner of the International Fantasy Award, a British award for excellence within the sf and fantasy field and a precursor of the Hugo Award. The book, to me, reads like the grandfather of its subgenre: grand and stately, slow moving and deliberate; something of a chore to spend time with, despite its venerable wisdom; ultimately, an understated book about the evanescence of human life, rewarding the patient.
Though I assume it was original for its time, the premise of the book will sound well-worn to a contemporary reader. However, the context for the premise of the novel is less important than the premise itself, with Stewart eager to set the protagonist up as one of the few survivors in an eerily abandoned United States as expeditiously as possible. Isherwood Williams, known as Ish, is a graduate student at Berkeley, studying the geography of an area in the mountains, somewhere in California. Whilst on a forage one morning a rattlesnake bites him, and after applying first aid, Ish returns to his cabin to convalesce in bed for several days. When Ish awakens he discovers that the rest of the human population has been almost completely wiped out by a mysterious plague. The first part of the book, ‘World Without End’, has Ish driving from the West Coast to the East Coast of America and back again, searching for survivors and observing the world following what he calls The Great Disaster.
Throughout the description of Ish’s journey, and indeed the rest of novel, Stewart splices in vignettes, describing how the world suddenly all but devoid of humanity would weather the test of time. Stewart details the ecological evolution of various animal species and plant life, the decay of human infrastructure, and the changes in the geography and environment. I say almost all but devoid of human life, because Ish does experience some strange encounters with a few other survivors, most of whom he suspiciously avoids or flees. However, he does find himself drawn to a woman named Emma, known as Em. By the end of the first part of book Ish and Em have agreed to consider themselves married, not only due to genuine affection but also because pf the practical need to contribute to the propagation the decimated human race. They establish a very small community of like like-minded survivors living on San Lupo Drive in the San Francisco Bay Area. A short interlude quickly describes the passing of the first 21 years of the life in The Tribe, as Ish and Em’s group of survivors becomes known.
The second part of the book, ‘Year 22’, recounts in episodic fashion Ish’s tribulations during that single year. Ish is becoming increasingly concerned about the degradation of human civilisation as represented in The Tribe’s unambitious willingness to scratch out a day-to-day survival, with no long-term goals in mind, such as cultural preservation, technological development or exploration of the wider world. Ish takes particular interest in one of his youngest sons, Joey, the only one of his progeny to show any interest in reading and planning for the future. After a threat to The Tribe’s water supply, Ish sends two of his oldest sons out into the wider landscape in a repaired automobile to seek out other groups of survivors and report back. This ultimately results in calamity for The Tribe and challenges Ish’s longer-term aspirations for the preservation of civilisation. The final part of the novel, ‘The Last American’, recounts Ish’s last days as an old man, pondering the ultimate fate of humankind.
Putting aside its specifically American themes and setting, Earth Abides strikes me as a novel that has more akin with the post-war British sf tradition, rather than American sf of that period. The book could be viewed as a genetic precursor to John Wyndham or J.G Ballard as opposed to part of the lineage of Richard Matheson or Stephen King. It eschews the pulp influences of the early novels of American sf, and is a much more literary affair. Earth Abides is an elegiac and subtle post-apocalyptic novel, with few melodramatic peaks or genre clichés. Once I moved from the unlikely premise, the various elements of the novel worked well for me. Stewart has thought out the ecological consequences of the collapse of human society in intricate and fascinating detail. His telling of an antihistory of the human race, in which he relates the decay of civilisation back into a stone-age primitivism, is convincing and thought provoking. The dour subject matter is well balanced by the hopeful passages that detail the flourishing animal and plant life after the fall of humanity, imbuing the book with a sense of rebirth. Earth Abides thoughtfully examines a variety of complex thematic subjects, such as family and community structures, education, the meaning and purpose of civilization, and the nature of humankind. Furthermore, back in 1949, when the book was written, it strikes me that Earth Abides would have stood out as extremely progressive in its approach to these issues. For example, in the era of segregation, the union between Em, a black woman, and Ish, a white man, would have challenged many readers. For a book of its vintage, Stewart is to be commended for his brave depiction of a world stripped bare of social mores and explores issues such as bigamy, capital punishment, religion and custom.
I’ve intimated throughout this review that the set up for the novel is less than convincing. This is not a damning criticism, but I suspect more than few contemporary readers might stumble over this initial hurdle. Ish is spared from death due to some inexplicable immunity, perhaps related to the rattlesnake venom from his bite but never confirmed, and Stewart glosses over the disease itself and Ish’s survival with much hand waving. This contrasts awkwardly with the ecological detail painstakingly described in the rest of the novel. The speed and tidiness of the end of human civilisation in the novel defies credulity, and Stewart’s elegant prose won’t be enough to pull all contemporary readers through this. Apart from the very rare and occasional corpse, the post-apocalyptic world described by Stewart is strangely devoid of bodies, though admittedly this is explained by the fact Ish avoids any place where the dead might congregate, such as hospitals. Nevertheless, it’s a strangely sanitised version of the apocalypse. The slow pace of the novel also tested my patience at times, and putting aside the ecological vignettes, the much of narration describes Ish’s internal world, relating his thoughts and emotions. This quite often feels repetitive, as Stewart has Ish mulling over the same wicked problems or thorny issues again and again for a lot the latter half of the novel. However, I recognise that, for a novel about the slow decay of human civilisation after a decimating event, there is some irony in criticising the author for too effectively evoking the slow grind of a character’s lifetime.
The story’s dénouement is undeniably powerful and haunting, and the fact that the novel tested my patience at times probably reflects more on me as a reader, rather than the quality of Earth Abides itself. This is a novel that deserves not only to be read as a masterwork of sf, but also a classic of American of literature. I would recommend the book to any reader interested in the genetic heritage of the modern post-apocalypse novel, and any other reader, inside or outside of genre, interested in an elegiac literary meditation on the place of humankind against the persistent character of the natural world.
Review by Luke Brown
Earth Abides by George R. Stewart
Paperback, 312 pages
Published June 10th 1999 by Orion Publishing Group (first published 1949)
ISBN 1857988213
I first read it just as I was entering my teens in 1961 or 1962, another hand-me-down from my sf-reading eldest brother. Bearing in mind that in those days we all expected to face a nuclear holocaust in which “the living would envy the dead,” Earth Abides struck a hell of a chord. I’ve read it since, as an adult, and still think well of it. But I can see that it also fits well into the mainstream of the American post-war novel, in that it concerns itself greatly with the psychological make-up of the characters.
But what modern readers will miss is that the entire concept of ecology — and this is definitely a novel of ecology — was an unexplored continent back then. Probably 99 per cent of Americans could not have defined the word when Earth Abides was published in 1947. In that regard, it was not only the progenitor of the post-apocalyptic sf subgenre; it probably introduced the concept of ecology to an audience beyond the readers of academic journals — remember, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring did not appear until fifteen years later.
Well worth reading.