The Long Tomorrow

by Leigh Brackett

On This Page

Description

'No city, no town, no community of more than one thousand people or two hundred buildings to the square mile, shall be built or permitted to exist anywhere in the United States of America.' Thirtieth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States Two generations after the nuclear holocaust, rumours persisted about a secret desert hideaway where scientists worked with dangerous machines and where men plotted to revive the cities. Almost a continent away, Len Coulter heard whisperings that show more fired his imagination. Then one day he found a strange wooden box ... show less

Tags

Recommendations

Member Recommendations

Member Reviews

35 reviews
(...)

The Long Tomorrow reminds me of the excellent The Wild Shore, Kim Stanley Robinson’s debut. Both a coming of age story about a boy, both set in a rural America decades after nuclear annihilation, with knowledge of the past not forgotten but not completely understood either. And like Robinson’s, Brackett’s characters ponder questions about which life is better: tech city life with its destructive dangers, or primitive small town farming? Like Robinson, Brackett doesn’t give answers. Instead she focuses on the desire of some humans for knowledge and change, and the fear of it in others.

The characters ostensibly dualistic archetypes on these matters, Brackett manages to turn things on their heads, and keeps the reader engaged show more with main characters that transcend the binary. There are other themes too: family, educating children, religion as a product and a source of societal change, the brazen arrogance and naivety of youth, and the non-existence of free will.

(...)

Full review on Weighing A Pig
show less
As an SF author, Leigh Brackett is known for her planetary romances, which are indeed very fine. But this novel, perhaps her most lauded book-length work, involves a more serious and credible look at the future of our society. Indeed, the book's scenario for the not-so-distant time to come is not much less believable now than it was when she wrote it about sixty years ago. The only ways it seems dated are that she didn't predict the microprocessor, or describe any anthropogenic climate change. Given the nature of the story, the first of these is not a significant lack.

In some features, this book resembles Logan's Run, which I read recently. Both involve a protagonist rejecting a stultified society and looking for a possibly-mythical show more site of organized resistance which has continuity with the lost values of the past. Where Logan's Run has Sanctuary, The Long Tomorrow has Bartorstown. But while Logan flees an urban technocracy, Brackett's Len Colter is trying to escape an American anti-civilization in the etymological sense: a culture that has overtly rejected the idea of the city, along with all of the industries and technologies of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

With this rural, piously conservative, post-apocalyptic environment as the setting for what is in large measure a coming-of-age story, the novel invites an even more direct comparison with John Wyndham's The Chrysalids. On the whole, I consider Brackett more successful. She better realizes the ways in which even those oppressed by the prevailing morals have internalized them, and she traces a more extensive and nuanced process of maturation in her characters.

The Long Tomorrow reads quickly -- "I finished The Long Tomorrow today," I remarked paradoxically to my Other Reader -- with digestibly short chapters divided into three component "books," which might have been titled "Piper's Run" (the village of Len's childhood), "Refuge" (a community where his exile leads him as a young man), and "Bartorstown." Although it was not issued as YA fiction, it would serve that increasingly sophisticated market well today. And it continues to deserve the attention of adults willing to reflect on social and technological change outside the myth of progress.
show less
Written fewer than ten years after Hiroshima, this classic SF novel depicts a post-apocalyptic society rebuilding itself after a nuclear war. No horrors of war are shown, and people live in mostly rural and agrarian groups. Technology is frowned upon, even banned, and no town is permitted to have more than 200 buildings. The society has a very 19th century feel, and religion is an important part of most people's lives.

Len and Esau are cousins living on adjoining farms. They have heard rumors of a big city where technology has been preserved, and become obsessed with someday finding that city. When they become teenagers, they run away in search of that city.

There are themes of the conflicts between knowledge and progress vs. ignorance show more and the status quo. There is a good depiction of the many different religious sects and how they divide people.

There is not a lot of action in the book, and while it is a quick and easy ready, I found it a bit slow-moving. It also has a rather YA feel, not my favorite genre. So while I'm not sorry I read it, it is not one I would whole-heartedly recommend.
show less
½
Oof. There were some bits in this book that got a little bogged down in religion, but by the end I thought I knew what was going to happen and it kept surprising me. I literally slapped my hand to my forehead at one point. Warning, some ideas of gender that are a bit rough (but almost vaguely progressive for the time) even if written by the woman who wrote Rio Bravo.
When Fear Rules, Reason Dies

Many consider Leigh Brackett’s The Long Tomorrow a science fiction classic because it is among the first mediations on the aftermath of nuclear holocaust and probably because she was one of the few successful female sci-fi writers of the era. Modern readers may find it slow by today’s standards and the science antiquated, particularly the giant computer brain on the order of an overgrown UNIVAC (itself notable at the time for predicting the outcome of the 1952 U.S. Presidential Election). But others will recognize the theme of fear and ignorance vs. human curiosity and scientific advancement as pertinent today as it was in the 1950s (recall the Red Scare-mongering and national Cold War paranoia). show more Scientific inquiry and its findings, after all, can be tough for many to abide, especially when it debunks cherished beliefs.

And such is the case in The Long Tomorrow. Not many years after the end of a worldwide nuclear war, around eighty years, the United States eschews science, reverts to religious dominance and its strict rules of faith and conformity, and restricts settlements to maximum populations of one thousand and no more than two hundred buildings per square mile. Thus, no more big cities, no more electricity and the conveniences and communications it supports, no more autos, trucks, trains, and planes. Steam power produced by crude engines becomes the technology of the day, livestock provides transportation and power, and roaming traders supply the goods that rural communities can’t manufacture for themselves. Instead of respecting and encouraging scientific exploration and knowledge, society represses both for fear of another conflagration.

Two teen boys, cousins, Len and Esau Colter, chaff at the insularity of their Mennonite community. They’ve heard stories of the past, of the big cities, of the wonders of modern life fostered by the remembrances of their old grandmother, and most particularly of a mystical big city called Bartorstown. They yearn to find it. After a devastating trading day, when a mob of ultra religious zealots kill a trader, Esau finds a radio in the wagon of another, Ed Hostetter. Later, they try unsuccessfully puzzling how to operate it. Nonetheless, it spurs them on to escape their stringent community and set out to find Bardorstown. Along the way, they arrive in a town called Refuge, where they work for an expansion minded businessman, Mike Dulinsky and Esau meets a girl, Amity. When Dulinsky repudiates the wishes of Refuge religious elders and the ambitions of a rival town by building an additional warehouse, retribution and mob action follow. Dulinsky dies at the hands of a local elder, while Hostetter appears to save Len and Esau.

The three, plus Amity, then make the journey to a town in the Rocky Mountains called Falls Creek and there find the Bartorstown they have dreamed about. Except that it bears no resemblance to what they imagined. Instead, it is a small community of scientists technicians who maintain a giant computer called Clementine and a nuclear reactor. They people work tirelessly and to their great frustration to discover a shield to protect humankind from the kind of destruction suffered at the hands of misused nuclear power. The endeavor seems hopeless and the achievement, if it can be had, appears long off in the distant, long tomorrow. Len and his new Bartorstown wife Joan, who long has been disillusioned and seeking escape, devise and execute a plan to flee Bartorstown, though the penalty for such action is death. After attempting to reach his hometown a thousand miles away, being buffeted by hardship, and engulfed again by the religious fatalism he fled, Hostetter finds them and arranges for them to be accepted back into Bartorstown. Len, for his part, accepts that change will come eventually, though he may not live to see it.

Though nearly sixty-five years old, the underlying theme of the novel will still resonate with certain readers.
show less
When Fear Rules, Reason Dies

Many consider Leigh Brackett’s The Long Tomorrow a science fiction classic because it is among the first mediations on the aftermath of nuclear holocaust and probably because she was one of the few successful female sci-fi writers of the era. Modern readers may find it slow by today’s standards and the science antiquated, particularly the giant computer brain on the order of an overgrown UNIVAC (itself notable at the time for predicting the outcome of the 1952 U.S. Presidential Election). But others will recognize the theme of fear and ignorance vs. human curiosity and scientific advancement as pertinent today as it was in the 1950s (recall the Red Scare-mongering and national Cold War paranoia). show more Scientific inquiry and its findings, after all, can be tough for many to abide, especially when it debunks cherished beliefs.

And such is the case in The Long Tomorrow. Not many years after the end of a worldwide nuclear war, around eighty years, the United States eschews science, reverts to religious dominance and its strict rules of faith and conformity, and restricts settlements to maximum populations of one thousand and no more than two hundred buildings per square mile. Thus, no more big cities, no more electricity and the conveniences and communications it supports, no more autos, trucks, trains, and planes. Steam power produced by crude engines becomes the technology of the day, livestock provides transportation and power, and roaming traders supply the goods that rural communities can’t manufacture for themselves. Instead of respecting and encouraging scientific exploration and knowledge, society represses both for fear of another conflagration.

Two teen boys, cousins, Len and Esau Colter, chaff at the insularity of their Mennonite community. They’ve heard stories of the past, of the big cities, of the wonders of modern life fostered by the remembrances of their old grandmother, and most particularly of a mystical big city called Bartorstown. They yearn to find it. After a devastating trading day, when a mob of ultra religious zealots kill a trader, Esau finds a radio in the wagon of another, Ed Hostetter. Later, they try unsuccessfully puzzling how to operate it. Nonetheless, it spurs them on to escape their stringent community and set out to find Bardorstown. Along the way, they arrive in a town called Refuge, where they work for an expansion minded businessman, Mike Dulinsky and Esau meets a girl, Amity. When Dulinsky repudiates the wishes of Refuge religious elders and the ambitions of a rival town by building an additional warehouse, retribution and mob action follow. Dulinsky dies at the hands of a local elder, while Hostetter appears to save Len and Esau.

The three, plus Amity, then make the journey to a town in the Rocky Mountains called Falls Creek and there find the Bartorstown they have dreamed about. Except that it bears no resemblance to what they imagined. Instead, it is a small community of scientists technicians who maintain a giant computer called Clementine and a nuclear reactor. They people work tirelessly and to their great frustration to discover a shield to protect humankind from the kind of destruction suffered at the hands of misused nuclear power. The endeavor seems hopeless and the achievement, if it can be had, appears long off in the distant, long tomorrow. Len and his new Bartorstown wife Joan, who long has been disillusioned and seeking escape, devise and execute a plan to flee Bartorstown, though the penalty for such action is death. After attempting to reach his hometown a thousand miles away, being buffeted by hardship, and engulfed again by the religious fatalism he fled, Hostetter finds them and arranges for them to be accepted back into Bartorstown. Len, for his part, accepts that change will come eventually, though he may not live to see it.

Though nearly sixty-five years old, the underlying theme of the novel will still resonate with certain readers.
show less
What a great book! It's hard to believe that someone who wrote something as awfully Fanthorpian as "Mel Gray stared with slitted blue eyes down the valley. The huge sun of Mercury seared his naked body." in 1941, or as fun but pulpy as "the Martian had fought beside him through a long guerilla campaign among the harried tribes of the nearer moon. He was a good man of his hands, and in the end had taken the bullet that was meant for Stark, knowing quite well what he was doing. They were friends." in 1951, could write "Len Colter sat in the shade under the wall of the horse barn, eating pone and sweet butter and contemplating a sin." just 2 years later.

It's easy to see why this long overlooked novel has been chosen for the Library of show more America treatment. The writing is rich and evocative, the characters are complex and mixed, and the story only falters in its pace a bit near the end, and not fatally so. The sense of place is overwhelming at times. Brackett doesn't do this by overwriting, but by keenly described detail, including, when it matters most, how things sound and smell, not just look. Just when the post-atomic war new Mennonite world is too bucolic, the darkness of the fear that binds everyone in place is made clear, not by histrionics but by small observation.

Highly highly recommended.
show less

Members

Recently Added By

Published Reviews

ThingScore 75
This is the theme of the Bildungsroman: loss of innocence, change, and the journey from safety into the unknown in pursuit of knowledge. But because Brackett's ambition was huge, she chose for her setting a post-nuclear Ruined Earth. She aimed for no less than the first serious science fiction novel of character.
added by markon

Lists

Best Science Fiction Novels
816 works; 430 members
S.F. Masterworks (Complete)
229 works; 15 members
SF Masterworks
193 works; 8 members
Apocalypse Must-Reads
10 works; 1 member
Books Read in 2015
3,299 works; 126 members
Books Read in 2017
4,249 works; 130 members
Books Read in 2018
4,360 works; 110 members
Top Five Books of 2023
767 works; 317 members
Top Five Books of 2024
795 works; 264 members
Best Post-Apocalyptic Stories
143 works; 88 members

Author Information

Picture of author.
172+ Works 7,096 Members

Some Editions

Cadigan, Pat (Introduction)
Cook, Paul (Afterword)
Docktor, Irv (Cover artist)
Emshwiller, Ed (Cover artist)
Gibbs, Christopher (Cover artist)
Hoffmann, Horst (Translator)
Jones, Howard Andrew (Introduction)
Lutohin, Nikolai (Cover artist)
Rameka, Ben (Narrator)
Riffel, Hannes (Translator)
s.BENeš (Cover artist)
Sweet, Darrell K. (Cover artist)

Awards and Honors

Series

Belongs to Publisher Series

Work Relationships

Common Knowledge

Canonical title*
Am Morgen einer anderen Zeit
Original title
The Long Tomorrow
Alternate titles*
Das lange Morgen
Original publication date
1955
People/Characters
Len Colter; Esau Colter; Mr. Ed Hofstetter (a trader); William Soames (a trader); Judge Taylor (of Refuge); Amity Taylor (the judge's daughter) (show all 13); Mike Dulinsky (Refuge man who wants a 5th warehouse); Wepplo; Joan; Sherman; Gutierrez; Erdmann; Gran Coulter (remembers pre-war days)
Important places
Bartorstown (town); Refuge (town on the north bank of the Ohio River); Piper's Run (small town); Shadwell (new town on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River, opposite Refuge); Fall Creek, Fall Creek Canyon (mining town)
Important events
Nuclear War; Post-apocalypse
Epigraph
No city, no town, no community of more than one thousand people or two hundred buildings to the square mile shall be permitted to exist anywhere in the United States of America
Constitution of the United States, Thirtieth ... (show all)Amendment
First words
Len Colter sat in the shade under the wall of the horse barn, eating pone and sweet butter and contemplating a sin.
Quotations
He knew that when he had groveled in Esau's tracks in the dust and forsworn himself, he had lied. He was not going to give up Bartorstown. He could not give it up without giving up the most important part of himself. He did... (show all) not know quite what that most important part was, but he knew it was there, and he knew that nobody, not even Pa, had the right to lay hands on it. Good or bad, righteous or sinful, it lay beyond whim or attitude or passing play. It was himself, Len Coulter, the individual, unique. He could not forswear it and live. (chapter 7)
[Esau and Len talking about Bartorstown's big project]

'Important,' said Len. 'Yes, it is.' That's true. There isn't any question about that. Oh God, you make the ones like Brother James who never question, and yo... (show all)u make the ones like Esau who never believe, and why do you have to make the in-between ones like me? (chapter 23)
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)"I'll radio Sherman and tell him we've started back."
Publisher's editor*
Schelwokat, Günter M.
Original language*
Englisch
Canonical DDC/MDS
813.54
Canonical LCC
PS3503.R154
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.

Classifications

Genres
Science Fiction, Fiction and Literature
DDC/MDS
813.54Literature & rhetoricAmerican literature in EnglishAmerican fiction in English1900-19991945-1999
LCC
PS3503 .R154Language and LiteratureAmerican literatureAmerican literatureIndividual authors1900-1960
BISAC

Statistics

Members
934
Popularity
28,425
Reviews
34
Rating
½ (3.54)
Languages
Danish, English, German, Italian
Media
Paper, Ebook
ISBNs
14
ASINs
19