Earth Abides
by George R. Stewart
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First published in 1949, award-winning Earth Abides is one of the most influential science-fiction novels of the twentieth century. It remains a fresh, provocative story of apocalyptic pandemic, societal collapse, and rebirth. The cabin had always been a special retreat for Isherwood Williams, a haven from the demands of society. But one day while hiking, Ish was bitten by a rattlesnake, and the solitude he had so desired took on dire new significance. He was sick for days--and often show more delirious--waking up to find two strangers peering in at him from the cabin door. Yet oddly, instead of offering help, the two ran off as if terrified. Not long after, the coughing began. Ish suffered chills and fever, and a measles-like rash on his skin. He was one of the few people in the world to live through that peculiar malady, but he didn't know it then. Ish headed home when he finally felt himself again--and noticed the strangeness almost immediately. No cars passed him on the road; the gas station not far from his cabin looked abandoned; and he was shocked to see the body of a man on the roadside near a small town. Without a radio or phone, Ish had no idea of humanity's abrupt demise. He had escaped death, yet could not escape the catastrophe--and with an eerie detachment he found himself curious as to how long it would be before all traces of civilization faded from Earth. show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Recommendations
sturlington Stephen King has said that Earth Abides was an inspiration for The Stand.
70
timspalding Another (and far better) classic post-apocalyptic story.
40
Bookmarque another post-apocalyptic book that takes a more introspective approach to the role of humans on the earth.
20
jlparent Main character witnesses/narrates the fall of civilization and its rebirth over a long time.
ecureuil Both books share a story based on the world population being wiped out by a deadly disease, and a young survivor left alone trying to survive
Member Reviews
Brian Aldiss coined the term "cozy catastrophe" about John Wyndham's work. It being an end of the world event where the character doesn't suffer enough or there's not always impending doom right at the door. In Earth Abides, the main character, Ish, is bedridden throughout the entire apocalypse. Then we follow him when he is clear-headed. No zombies. No aliens. No evil government stooges.
Ish isn't a scientist or a doctor, or a superhuman soldier; he's just a slightly more intelligent person who understands the present and the importance the future holds. Along the way he picks up a few group of survivors. The dynamic of the group is something that is interesting as we see a small society form. Within this, Ish becomes a defacto leader show more and the idealist - but an idealist who has reality smack into him several times, especially when it concerns other people. While you do get a semblance of others actions and reasons, we are constantly following Ish and his internal dialogue. Society is gone and all that remains are the remains.
But now children come into the mix. Society is still in struggle within their group. Ish wants to build the children to take over and remember the times before and achieve order once again. But what does order and society look like when you only have less than a dozen people who existed in the "before times".
There are some amazing juxopositions in this book as well. Ish takes a wife, Emma, names that have origin towards "Adam" and "Eve". We see the story starts out with Ish (Adam) being bitten by a snake and then he's thrust out into a world of disorder but also the Earth continues. Within this, there is small discussions of religion as in Ish is not religious and views it as a distraction from the unity needed among the group and focus on survival tasks. Then to double back, mythology springs up on things that for Ish are common place but for the children who only know the world after the Great Disaster become totems and exalted titles.
There's no big shootouts in this book. There's no stopping the mad bomber or brigand. It is a calm book but the tension and drama are beautifully done. The dealing with an outside stranger to the group and the impact of actions taken is such a high point. But there are little movements that are big deals and then there are big deals where you think the story will focus on but it settles into a more somber and carefree tone. It's amazing.
I almost come to think of apocalypse stories truly bringing questions of the purpose of life and humanity front and center and this one has done it the most by not focusing on the disaster but on the life and humanity. This would be an amazing book for a group discussion or reading group. I was tempted not to finish it as I saw the end coming and didn't want it to end - a sure sign of a good book. A definite recommendendation. Don't let it sit on your shelf. But if you do, the Earth Abides. Final Grade - A+ show less
Ish isn't a scientist or a doctor, or a superhuman soldier; he's just a slightly more intelligent person who understands the present and the importance the future holds. Along the way he picks up a few group of survivors. The dynamic of the group is something that is interesting as we see a small society form. Within this, Ish becomes a defacto leader show more and the idealist - but an idealist who has reality smack into him several times, especially when it concerns other people. While you do get a semblance of others actions and reasons, we are constantly following Ish and his internal dialogue. Society is gone and all that remains are the remains.
But now children come into the mix. Society is still in struggle within their group. Ish wants to build the children to take over and remember the times before and achieve order once again. But what does order and society look like when you only have less than a dozen people who existed in the "before times".
There are some amazing juxopositions in this book as well. Ish takes a wife, Emma, names that have origin towards "Adam" and "Eve". We see the story starts out with Ish (Adam) being bitten by a snake and then he's thrust out into a world of disorder but also the Earth continues. Within this, there is small discussions of religion as in Ish is not religious and views it as a distraction from the unity needed among the group and focus on survival tasks. Then to double back, mythology springs up on things that for Ish are common place but for the children who only know the world after the Great Disaster become totems and exalted titles.
There's no big shootouts in this book. There's no stopping the mad bomber or brigand. It is a calm book but the tension and drama are beautifully done. The dealing with an outside stranger to the group and the impact of actions taken is such a high point. But there are little movements that are big deals and then there are big deals where you think the story will focus on but it settles into a more somber and carefree tone. It's amazing.
I almost come to think of apocalypse stories truly bringing questions of the purpose of life and humanity front and center and this one has done it the most by not focusing on the disaster but on the life and humanity. This would be an amazing book for a group discussion or reading group. I was tempted not to finish it as I saw the end coming and didn't want it to end - a sure sign of a good book. A definite recommendendation. Don't let it sit on your shelf. But if you do, the Earth Abides. Final Grade - A+ show less
Just finished reading Earth Abides, by George R. Stewart, and have to say I was completely blown away. I have had this book on my “to be read” list for a long time and I am glad I finally picked it up. The book was originally published in 1949 and I must admit I was expecting a dated science fiction story with little connection to my experience or todays realities. I was so wrong. Not only is the book still relevant it almost seemed to speak directly to our times.
In writing this book, the author stripped away the meaningless detail that we all use to define our lives and instead told his story at the basic level at which all people actually live their lives, no matter the time and place. The result was a story that was just as fresh show more as if it had been written last year. If you want to really understand what civilization is all about, and how it relates to humankind and to our world, read this book. You will not regret it. show less
In writing this book, the author stripped away the meaningless detail that we all use to define our lives and instead told his story at the basic level at which all people actually live their lives, no matter the time and place. The result was a story that was just as fresh show more as if it had been written last year. If you want to really understand what civilization is all about, and how it relates to humankind and to our world, read this book. You will not regret it. show less
Rating: 4* of five
The Publisher Says: A disease of unparalleled destructive force has sprung up almost simultaneously in every corner of the globe, all but destroying the human race. One survivor, strangely immune to the effects of the epidemic, ventures forward to experience a world without man. What he ultimately discovers will prove far more astonishing than anything he'd either dreaded or hoped for.
My Review: Call him Isherwood. (Cause that's his name.) On a camping trip in the mountains, Ish gets bitten by a rattlesnake and barely survives. Clearly he can't call for help on his cell because 1) the mountains and 2) 1949. After all his sufferings, Ish drives down the mountain and finds humanity...in Los Angeles...gone. Just not show more there. (Oddly, there are also not heaping mounds of dead bodies everywhere...he's only been gone a week or so, and the Plague killed quick. That nit being picked, I resume.) Ish spends his time alternately looking for survivors and ruminating on the justice and inevitability of the plague:
When he stops being stunned, he sets out to contact and assess his fellow survivors. He spends a lot of the book out a-wanderin', and he picks up here and there some fellow remnants. No one is a medical research genius or a high government official or anything, thank goodness, so no one knows where this plague came from, how many are dead in other places, or any of that other stuff that pockmarks other post-apocalyptic stories I've read. I completely buy that the survivors are shocked and isolated, where I've always been hmmphy about the better-informed-character stories.
Any road, time passes, life goes on, babies are born and people die and food is grown in tune with nature. We revert, in other words, to the way things were for ~10,000 years before monoculture and factory farming. Ish ages, and the younger people without strong attachments to the pre-apocalyptic world start to think about what the meaning of life is:
If there is an apocalypse while I'm alive, I'm makin' this my post-apocalyptic mission: Disestablishing religion. Ish is my soul-brother in this regard. But as you can imagine, he's fighting a rear-guard action despite being the oldest person anyone knows, and also the last survivor of Before in the Now. Having lived through the AIDS apocalypse, some days I feel the same way.
And as it must, Death comes for Ish at last, putting an end to his moanings about the stupidity of the human race for making the same mistakes that cost us so dearly before, his pessimistic views on the sustainability of his made tribe, and his invaluable store of knowledge...despite the fact that the whippersnappers don't listen:
I suspect all of us over a Certain Age feel this way to a greater or lesser degree. Plague or no plague, Youth isn't inclined to listen to Age, and apocalypse is relative. My apocalypse...the endangerment of tree books...is youth's Bright New Dawn, bulkless environmentally sound infinite stories! Yes, I'm going, I'm going, stop pushing me!
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. show less
The Publisher Says: A disease of unparalleled destructive force has sprung up almost simultaneously in every corner of the globe, all but destroying the human race. One survivor, strangely immune to the effects of the epidemic, ventures forward to experience a world without man. What he ultimately discovers will prove far more astonishing than anything he'd either dreaded or hoped for.
My Review: Call him Isherwood. (Cause that's his name.) On a camping trip in the mountains, Ish gets bitten by a rattlesnake and barely survives. Clearly he can't call for help on his cell because 1) the mountains and 2) 1949. After all his sufferings, Ish drives down the mountain and finds humanity...in Los Angeles...gone. Just not show more there. (Oddly, there are also not heaping mounds of dead bodies everywhere...he's only been gone a week or so, and the Plague killed quick. That nit being picked, I resume.) Ish spends his time alternately looking for survivors and ruminating on the justice and inevitability of the plague:
As for man, there is little reason to think that he can in the long run escape the fate of other creatures, and if there is a biological law of flux and reflux, his situation is now a highly perilous one. During ten thousand years his numbers have been on the upgrade in spite of wars, pestilences, and famines. This increase in population has become more and more rapid. Biologically, man has for too long a time been rolling an uninterrupted run of sevens.
When he stops being stunned, he sets out to contact and assess his fellow survivors. He spends a lot of the book out a-wanderin', and he picks up here and there some fellow remnants. No one is a medical research genius or a high government official or anything, thank goodness, so no one knows where this plague came from, how many are dead in other places, or any of that other stuff that pockmarks other post-apocalyptic stories I've read. I completely buy that the survivors are shocked and isolated, where I've always been hmmphy about the better-informed-character stories.
Any road, time passes, life goes on, babies are born and people die and food is grown in tune with nature. We revert, in other words, to the way things were for ~10,000 years before monoculture and factory farming. Ish ages, and the younger people without strong attachments to the pre-apocalyptic world start to think about what the meaning of life is:
If there is a God who made us and we did wrong before His eyes—as George says—at least we did wrong only because we were as God made us, and I do not think that He should set traps. Oh, you should know better than George! Let us not bring all that back into the world again—the angry God, the mean God—the one who does not tell us the rules of the game, and then strikes us when we break them. Let us not bring Him back.
If there is an apocalypse while I'm alive, I'm makin' this my post-apocalyptic mission: Disestablishing religion. Ish is my soul-brother in this regard. But as you can imagine, he's fighting a rear-guard action despite being the oldest person anyone knows, and also the last survivor of Before in the Now. Having lived through the AIDS apocalypse, some days I feel the same way.
And as it must, Death comes for Ish at last, putting an end to his moanings about the stupidity of the human race for making the same mistakes that cost us so dearly before, his pessimistic views on the sustainability of his made tribe, and his invaluable store of knowledge...despite the fact that the whippersnappers don't listen:
Then, though his sight was now very dim, he looked again at the young men. "They will commit me to the earth," he thought. "Yet I also commit them to the earth. There is nothing else by which men live. Men go and come, but earth abides."
I suspect all of us over a Certain Age feel this way to a greater or lesser degree. Plague or no plague, Youth isn't inclined to listen to Age, and apocalypse is relative. My apocalypse...the endangerment of tree books...is youth's Bright New Dawn, bulkless environmentally sound infinite stories! Yes, I'm going, I'm going, stop pushing me!
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. show less
A worthwhile but ultimately disappointing read, Earth Abides is another of those books where its credibility and reputation comes from its status as one of the first of its genre, rather than of any particular literary merit. This is not to say it is poor: its prose is quite well-written and the themes well-articulated (if flawed). Though it could have done with some more dialogue just to loosen it up a bit, I read through the book as a whole rather quickly and have no complaints on that score.
There were a number of significant drawbacks: the characters were quite inconsequential and served only to advance Stewart's ideas, the prose was quite didactic, it made frequent use of exclamation marks (which always seem to jar with me) and the show more author has a habit of telling us, not showing us, how characters are feeling and how the world is changing. The book starts strongly, and the initial aftermath of the apocalypse with Isherwood, our protagonist, adjusting to his new environment, is compelling. However, after Ish meets up with more and more people and starts a community, the book begins to wobble significantly, even if it manages to avoid breaking up completely.
Earth Abides, after its strong start, is essentially an anthropological treatise in novel form. Ish sees himself as an observer of the new community which has formed (and a reluctant, de facto leader). There are two passages from the book which demonstrate the direction which Ish could have gone as a character – the first would have been compelling and the second underwhelming. The first:
… he thought for a moment of his life, and considered what he had piled up of sins and of virtues. For he realized that a man should make peace with himself, even though all conditions changed, and that a man should face the question of whether in his life he had satisfied the ideas which he had built up within himself as to what he should be…" (pp304-5 – my emphasis in bold)
And the second: "To Ish the whole affair, in spite of a certain horror that he still held of it, came to be a most interesting study in ecology, almost a laboratory problem." (pg. 108)
Unfortunately, Stewart for the most part chooses the second course. We are shown flashes of the first course, which would have made Earth Abides into a sort of post-apocalyptic The Grapes of Wrath (there is even a reference to the 'Okies' on page 122). This could have developed Ish's struggles to form a community, dealing with morality, law and order, love and happiness, and mankind's capacity for adapting to a more challenging environment. A compelling idea, you'll surely agree. As it is, such things as law and punishment, teaching and farming, are covered but only in small scenes; they do not constitute the main force of the novel. And whilst Stewart does avoid most of the clichés of characters and communities in post-apocalyptic fiction (which, at the time the book was written in 1949, wasn't even a thing), he doesn't replace them with anything more believable. Decades after the 'Great Disaster', as it is called, the community is still largely scavenging from the old world (tinned food, metals, piped water, etc.) long after such things could conceivably have been useable. For all the emphasis on community, Ish's group never develops a coherent social structure, nor any teaching for the children, nor even any agriculture. This leads me onto discussion of the second passage.
Ish, and the other characters who survive the disaster, are incredibly apathetic. They have no interest in doing anything more than the bare minimum to get by. Even decades later, there is no long-term planning for the community: as mentioned above, they rely on the old water pipes (which somehow are still working), eat only tinned food (decades-old canned salmon – really? You're going to put that in your mouth?) and don't teach their kids to read, write, or even teach them any basic information about how the world works. If there is no social structure, it is only because no decisions are ever in danger of being made.
Ish is perhaps the worst, and reminded me greatly of the titular character from John Williams' novel Stoner (which, seemingly myself alone, I disliked). Because he's intelligent enough to recognise where things are going wrong. He knows the sort of things that need to be taught. But he makes only half-hearted attempts to shape things in that direction, preferring to observe as if his community was an anthropological case study. Consequently, all of the children grow up illiterate and completely ignorant of any knowledge of the world (they think the sun goes round the earth (pg. 290) and worship a simple hammer as an artefact of divine power (pg. 205)). Ish tries to educate them at first but, considering a lack of support from the other initial survivors and his own disinterest, he soon just says 'School dismissed' and never arranges another class. We are told that in the old life Ish would have been a professor – a professor emeritus, no less – but not with this level of enthusiasm for teaching, he wouldn't.
It was this direction which the novel took which really baffled me, for the author himself was a professor. Surely he would be championing the value of learning and of civilisation to mankind's wellbeing? But no, Ish speculates that "perhaps the brilliant ones were not suited to survive" (pg. 282), admits he has long begun to have doubts in books "and all they stood for" (pg. 304), and that he no longer considered it a 'disaster' that civilisation had been lost (pg. 302). Stewart portrays a civilisation being wiped clean and replaced with a bunch of illiterate, superstitious primitives ("From the cave we came, and to the cave we return." (pg. 297)), and yet portrays this as a good thing. On page 311, Ish thinks on "all that had gone to build civilization – of slavery and conquest and war and oppression." All those hard-won lessons – developments such as freedom of religion, medical treatment, law and order, rationalism – all gone. All would have to be re-learned in the millennia ahead – a mass of unnecessary bloodshed and strife and toil – rather than just maintaining the traditions of the previous world. All just because the feckless Ish didn't want to sit a bunch of little brats down to learn how to read, or to correct a grown man who believes the sun goes round the earth.
Perhaps Stewart was responding to the aggressive consumerism which was just beginning to pick up steam in the post-war era (on page 49, Ish says he "had not realized how much of the noise in the world was man-caused") but unlike, for example, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 just a few years later, he misses the mark completely. Perhaps it's just a bunch of academic speculations – an experiment on the author's part – but I got the impression on closing the book that, whilst not a proto-hippyish attempt at making man one with nature, Stewart's themes ran dangerously close to Luddism and anti-intellectualism.
So, all told, it was a rather peculiar read. I enjoy 'Last Man on Earth' type books, and Earth Abides, particularly at the beginning, is a strong addition to the post-apocalyptic fiction genre. It evokes the desolation and loneliness of this new world quite well, even if this part of the book is short-lived. But I'm reluctant to condone what I consider to be a rather suspect theme, and readers should be aware that Earth Abides has many flaws and they may, as I did, find it all rather disagreeable." show less
There were a number of significant drawbacks: the characters were quite inconsequential and served only to advance Stewart's ideas, the prose was quite didactic, it made frequent use of exclamation marks (which always seem to jar with me) and the show more author has a habit of telling us, not showing us, how characters are feeling and how the world is changing. The book starts strongly, and the initial aftermath of the apocalypse with Isherwood, our protagonist, adjusting to his new environment, is compelling. However, after Ish meets up with more and more people and starts a community, the book begins to wobble significantly, even if it manages to avoid breaking up completely.
Earth Abides, after its strong start, is essentially an anthropological treatise in novel form. Ish sees himself as an observer of the new community which has formed (and a reluctant, de facto leader). There are two passages from the book which demonstrate the direction which Ish could have gone as a character – the first would have been compelling and the second underwhelming. The first:
… he thought for a moment of his life, and considered what he had piled up of sins and of virtues. For he realized that a man should make peace with himself, even though all conditions changed, and that a man should face the question of whether in his life he had satisfied the ideas which he had built up within himself as to what he should be…" (pp304-5 – my emphasis in bold)
And the second: "To Ish the whole affair, in spite of a certain horror that he still held of it, came to be a most interesting study in ecology, almost a laboratory problem." (pg. 108)
Unfortunately, Stewart for the most part chooses the second course. We are shown flashes of the first course, which would have made Earth Abides into a sort of post-apocalyptic The Grapes of Wrath (there is even a reference to the 'Okies' on page 122). This could have developed Ish's struggles to form a community, dealing with morality, law and order, love and happiness, and mankind's capacity for adapting to a more challenging environment. A compelling idea, you'll surely agree. As it is, such things as law and punishment, teaching and farming, are covered but only in small scenes; they do not constitute the main force of the novel. And whilst Stewart does avoid most of the clichés of characters and communities in post-apocalyptic fiction (which, at the time the book was written in 1949, wasn't even a thing), he doesn't replace them with anything more believable. Decades after the 'Great Disaster', as it is called, the community is still largely scavenging from the old world (tinned food, metals, piped water, etc.) long after such things could conceivably have been useable. For all the emphasis on community, Ish's group never develops a coherent social structure, nor any teaching for the children, nor even any agriculture. This leads me onto discussion of the second passage.
Ish, and the other characters who survive the disaster, are incredibly apathetic. They have no interest in doing anything more than the bare minimum to get by. Even decades later, there is no long-term planning for the community: as mentioned above, they rely on the old water pipes (which somehow are still working), eat only tinned food (decades-old canned salmon – really? You're going to put that in your mouth?) and don't teach their kids to read, write, or even teach them any basic information about how the world works. If there is no social structure, it is only because no decisions are ever in danger of being made.
Ish is perhaps the worst, and reminded me greatly of the titular character from John Williams' novel Stoner (which, seemingly myself alone, I disliked). Because he's intelligent enough to recognise where things are going wrong. He knows the sort of things that need to be taught. But he makes only half-hearted attempts to shape things in that direction, preferring to observe as if his community was an anthropological case study. Consequently, all of the children grow up illiterate and completely ignorant of any knowledge of the world (they think the sun goes round the earth (pg. 290) and worship a simple hammer as an artefact of divine power (pg. 205)). Ish tries to educate them at first but, considering a lack of support from the other initial survivors and his own disinterest, he soon just says 'School dismissed' and never arranges another class. We are told that in the old life Ish would have been a professor – a professor emeritus, no less – but not with this level of enthusiasm for teaching, he wouldn't.
It was this direction which the novel took which really baffled me, for the author himself was a professor. Surely he would be championing the value of learning and of civilisation to mankind's wellbeing? But no, Ish speculates that "perhaps the brilliant ones were not suited to survive" (pg. 282), admits he has long begun to have doubts in books "and all they stood for" (pg. 304), and that he no longer considered it a 'disaster' that civilisation had been lost (pg. 302). Stewart portrays a civilisation being wiped clean and replaced with a bunch of illiterate, superstitious primitives ("From the cave we came, and to the cave we return." (pg. 297)), and yet portrays this as a good thing. On page 311, Ish thinks on "all that had gone to build civilization – of slavery and conquest and war and oppression." All those hard-won lessons – developments such as freedom of religion, medical treatment, law and order, rationalism – all gone. All would have to be re-learned in the millennia ahead – a mass of unnecessary bloodshed and strife and toil – rather than just maintaining the traditions of the previous world. All just because the feckless Ish didn't want to sit a bunch of little brats down to learn how to read, or to correct a grown man who believes the sun goes round the earth.
Perhaps Stewart was responding to the aggressive consumerism which was just beginning to pick up steam in the post-war era (on page 49, Ish says he "had not realized how much of the noise in the world was man-caused") but unlike, for example, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 just a few years later, he misses the mark completely. Perhaps it's just a bunch of academic speculations – an experiment on the author's part – but I got the impression on closing the book that, whilst not a proto-hippyish attempt at making man one with nature, Stewart's themes ran dangerously close to Luddism and anti-intellectualism.
So, all told, it was a rather peculiar read. I enjoy 'Last Man on Earth' type books, and Earth Abides, particularly at the beginning, is a strong addition to the post-apocalyptic fiction genre. It evokes the desolation and loneliness of this new world quite well, even if this part of the book is short-lived. But I'm reluctant to condone what I consider to be a rather suspect theme, and readers should be aware that Earth Abides has many flaws and they may, as I did, find it all rather disagreeable." show less
After I finished Earth Abides, I found out that it was the inspiration for Stephen King’s The Stand. No surprise there because it reminded me of King’s book as I read it. The premise is the same in both – a rogue virus has wiped out civilization as we know it and new societies take shape in the scattered pockets of humanity that survive. Beyond that, the two books are very different. This one isn't post-apocalyptic horror novel like King’s; it’s a thoughtful novel of speculation about how one small group might adapt to an ungoverned world that has been stripped of modern (1940’s era) conveniences such as power and running water. Considering it was first published in 1949, it wasn’t as dated as I expected and parts of it show more seemed almost contemporary due to the way it described how ecosystems would change without humans around to influence them. show less
George R. Stewart Earth Abides *****
Wow. Among the many achievements of Earth Abides is the near perfect choice of protagonist. Isherwood Williams is a young anthropologist whose habit of observing, questioning, pausing to consider, and not assuming that he has the last word about anything forms the basis for the novel’s thoughtful and unsensational atmosphere throughout. (Possibly the most dated aspect and a welcome one!) Ish is convincingly in a position to ‘observe’ the disintegration of ‘civilization’ after the Great Disaster -- an epidemic that wipes out all but a tiny number of humans. Moreover Ish is a fully rounded character, by nature a shy, self-aware and slightly dry person, a reader can care enormously about even show more while he is carefully narrating events -- often with just the telling detail, of a person’s name on the registration of an abandoned car that he can’t forget, or raccoon tracks by a fountain in the middle of a formerly crowded Berkeley park.
The novel is in three basic sections: the longest section is the first: the time between the first days of the epidemic while Ish, in shock, travels across the entire US from San Francisco to New York and back again, observing the changes that come in only a few short weeks and months. Between the deaths from the epidemic he observes a second wave of deaths - of the people too damaged or rigid to adapt, of animals too domesticated to go feral and watches the swift way nature reasserts itself, in desert or in the well-watered East. Finally, electricity which lasts, in San Franciso for an amazingly long time fails. The 2nd section describes the beginnings of the Tribe and Ish’s struggles inward and outward about how to best guide his ‘people’ although he always a reluctant leader. In this section also, he describes the plagues, of ants, of cattle, of rats and various animals who multiply furiously and then die back, after a couple of years the 22 years the water fails. In the last section Ish grows old, and the tribe comes into maturity.
While the novel is sixty years old and there are incongruities and moments when the contemporary reader flinches, overall, it is remarkable what a powerful book it remains. People smoke cigarettes, spray DDT with happy abandon, and I was not convinced that all those bodies would be so conveniently off-stage, but these are quibbles! The combined personalities and skills and intelligence of Ish’s little Tribe of survivors (all of them either very down-to-earth or like himself removed, observant) are what tilt the development of the Tribe’s own ‘ways’ and character, as they slip slowly and inexorably into organizing themselves as a functioning pre-industrial, and pre-literate society, a real tribe. As first electricity, then running water, cars, then reading and writing (with the death of his one son who was intellectually inclined) and finally the great stores in the cities are burned up or deteriorated, Ish has to let go of his hope that he can guide his tribe towards rekindling ‘civilization.‘ The great ‘question‘ Ish confronts is: What makes society change? Does the push come from within? Or do societies mostly react to outward necessities? I find his ‘conclusions‘ (such as they are) convincing, although others might not. Stewart gracefully but firmly steers Ish towards a new understanding of what constitutes happiness and what ways suit mankind best, and even on his deathbed, he is still watching and wondering, and that is where the strength and beauty of the story lies.
I picked up Earth Abides as a result of the Wallace Stegner group read. show less
Wow. Among the many achievements of Earth Abides is the near perfect choice of protagonist. Isherwood Williams is a young anthropologist whose habit of observing, questioning, pausing to consider, and not assuming that he has the last word about anything forms the basis for the novel’s thoughtful and unsensational atmosphere throughout. (Possibly the most dated aspect and a welcome one!) Ish is convincingly in a position to ‘observe’ the disintegration of ‘civilization’ after the Great Disaster -- an epidemic that wipes out all but a tiny number of humans. Moreover Ish is a fully rounded character, by nature a shy, self-aware and slightly dry person, a reader can care enormously about even show more while he is carefully narrating events -- often with just the telling detail, of a person’s name on the registration of an abandoned car that he can’t forget, or raccoon tracks by a fountain in the middle of a formerly crowded Berkeley park.
The novel is in three basic sections: the longest section is the first: the time between the first days of the epidemic while Ish, in shock, travels across the entire US from San Francisco to New York and back again, observing the changes that come in only a few short weeks and months. Between the deaths from the epidemic he observes a second wave of deaths - of the people too damaged or rigid to adapt, of animals too domesticated to go feral and watches the swift way nature reasserts itself, in desert or in the well-watered East. Finally, electricity which lasts, in San Franciso for an amazingly long time fails. The 2nd section describes the beginnings of the Tribe and Ish’s struggles inward and outward about how to best guide his ‘people’ although he always a reluctant leader. In this section also, he describes the plagues, of ants, of cattle, of rats and various animals who multiply furiously and then die back, after a couple of years the 22 years the water fails. In the last section Ish grows old, and the tribe comes into maturity.
While the novel is sixty years old and there are incongruities and moments when the contemporary reader flinches, overall, it is remarkable what a powerful book it remains. People smoke cigarettes, spray DDT with happy abandon, and I was not convinced that all those bodies would be so conveniently off-stage, but these are quibbles! The combined personalities and skills and intelligence of Ish’s little Tribe of survivors (all of them either very down-to-earth or like himself removed, observant) are what tilt the development of the Tribe’s own ‘ways’ and character, as they slip slowly and inexorably into organizing themselves as a functioning pre-industrial, and pre-literate society, a real tribe. As first electricity, then running water, cars, then reading and writing (with the death of his one son who was intellectually inclined) and finally the great stores in the cities are burned up or deteriorated, Ish has to let go of his hope that he can guide his tribe towards rekindling ‘civilization.‘ The great ‘question‘ Ish confronts is: What makes society change? Does the push come from within? Or do societies mostly react to outward necessities? I find his ‘conclusions‘ (such as they are) convincing, although others might not. Stewart gracefully but firmly steers Ish towards a new understanding of what constitutes happiness and what ways suit mankind best, and even on his deathbed, he is still watching and wondering, and that is where the strength and beauty of the story lies.
I picked up Earth Abides as a result of the Wallace Stegner group read. show less
It was moving to read this novel after experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic. Our protagonist, Ish, experiences 'the Great Loneliness' as the vast majority of humanity has perished in an unknown illness. Eventually, he finds a wife and starts a very small Tribe in the ruins of post-civilization California.
Efforts at rebuilding civilization are made but with very limited
The novel is filled with many excellent passages. I found myself turning down corners of the page to mark interesting passages often. There are also moving passages about the value of libraries (I love libraries!), reading and education. The sad, gradual decay of civilization is very well told.
I'll end this review with the conclusion from David Pringle's "Science Fiction the 100 Best Novels" which says this about "Earth Abides":
"In this beautiful meditation on ecology, old age and the implacability of change, George R. Stewart wrought, albeit unknowingly, one of the masterworks of science fiction."
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George R Stewart's Earth Abides in Post-apocalyptic Literature (July 2010)
Author Information
George R. Stewart (1895-1980) was a professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Earth Abides
- Original title
- Earth Abides
- Alternate titles*
- Le pont sur l'abîme
- Original publication date
- 1949
- People/Characters
- Isherwood Williams; Emma; Jack; Robert Williams; Richard; Charlie (show all 15); Evie; Princess (dog); Ezra; Molly; Jean; George; Maurine; Joey; Mr. Barlow
- Important places
- California, USA; New York, New York, USA; San Francisco, California, USA; San Francisco East Bay, California, USA; Doe Memorial Library, Berkeley, California USA; Mojave, California, USA (show all 21); Mojave Desert, California, USA; Arizona, USA; Oatman, Arizona, USA; Kingman, Arizona, USA; Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA; Texas Panhandle, USA; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA; U.S. 56, USA; Route 66, USA; Arkansas, USA; North Little Rock, Arkansas, USA; Memphis, Tennessee, USA; Kentucky, USA; Pennsylvania, USA; New Jersey, USA
- Important events
- Pandemic; Post-apocalypse
- Epigraph
- Men go and come, but earth abides.
- Ecclesiastes 1:4 - Dedication
- To Jill
- First words
- . . . and the Government of the United States of America is herewith suspended, except in the District of Columbia, as of the emergency.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Men go and come, but earth abides
- Publisher's editor*
- Klein, Gérard
- Original language
- English
- Canonical DDC/MDS
- 813.0876221
- Canonical LCC
- PS3537.T485
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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- Science Fiction, Fiction and Literature
- DDC/MDS
- 813.0876221 — Literature & rhetoric American literature in English American fiction in English By type Genre fiction Adventure fiction Speculative fiction Science fiction Post-apocalypse Pandemic
- LCC
- PS3537 .T485 — Language and Literature American literature American literature Individual authors 1900-1960
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- 47