The planet has been overwhelmed. A new and unknown disease of unparalleled destructive force has sprung up almost simultaneously in every corner of civilization, overrunning all attempts at quarantine, 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, who will ultimately become the last American, will discover will be far more astonishing - than anything he'd either dreaded or hoped for.
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Earth Abides is a classic post-apocalyptic tale about what might be and what might happen after humanity has been visited by a great plague, killing most of the humans. Although written in 1949 George R. Stewart knew how to implement what scientist already knew all those years ago.
He describes how young Isherwood Williams, also called Ish, survived a snake bite which might have conquered the greater disease that had fallen upon him and saved his life.
The young student soon learns that he isn't alone left in what he knew as civilization. He travels through the U. S. now and then finding survivors who were either under shock and crazy or hostile against him. Sometimes it was even him who feared them. He sees how fast nature takes but men took from it a long time ago.
Domestic animals vanish or become hostile. Whole animal species seem to vanish overnight while other thrived from what men left. Insects and rats without boundaries overrushing towns destroying what's eatable and vanishing when the resources are eaten. What's left are cans and bottles and other goods that aren't eatable.
Getting back to his hometowm he meets Emma and in an desperate attempt for love and ending the loneliness they become a couple and later a family. With the months passing more people enter the little community, bearing children who bear children.
The community grows and with it the thoughts about future and what might become of Ish's children and their children. During his whole lifespan Ish tries to teach them how to read without understanding that the new generation isn't interested in reading and knowledge but likes the careless life they life, indulging what is left of a civilization they never knew, slowly learning to adapt to the world they know.
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Sometime in the beginning of this year I saw a documentation on the history channel which was named Life After People that pretty much described with impressing pictures what happens to what's left of the civilization we know today.
Earth Abides is just one example of how things might go on if there are people left capable to go on.
A plot that can't be outdated, at least not yet, but nevertheless gives impressions and lots of thoughts.
Rating:
George R. Stewart.
Mass Market Paperback: 337 pages
Publisher: Fawcett (September 12, 1986)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0449213013
ISBN-13: 978-0449213018
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