Product Description

In this profound ecological fable, a mysterious plague has destroyed the vast majority of the human race. Isherwood Williams, one of the few survivors, returns from a wilderness field trip to discover that civilization has vanished during his absence. Eventually he returns to San Francisco and encounters a female survivor who becomes his wife. Around them and their children a small community develops, living like their pioneer ancestors, but rebuilding civilization is beyond their resources, and gradually they return to a simpler way of life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #70407 in Books
• Published on: 1999-06-10
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Generally regarded as the classic tale of life struggling on after a global disaster, Earth Abides (1949) was George R. Stewart's only venture into SF. Before the first page the human race has been almost completely wiped out by plague. Our hero Isherwood "Ish" Williams discovers a female survivor and fumblingly tries to bring up a new civilization in the ruins of California. It's an elegiac story of loss as humanity makes it through the crisis, at the cost of our race's painfully gathered knowledge--which seems irrelevant to the new generations as they develop a hunter-gatherer society reminiscent of the old Amerindian tribes, and see no practicality in the fabulous tales of the old days told them by Ish. His nickname is deliberately reminiscent of Ishi, the once famous Californian Indian who was also the last of his tribe and became a misfit in a new world, in his case early 20th-century America. Annoyingly for fans of survivalist SF who reckon civilization can be rebuilt in about a month with a Swiss army knife, Earth Abides proposes that the cycle of regrowth will take significant time ... but there is always time. Stewart's title and epigraph echo the Book of Ecclesiastes: "Men go and come, but Earth abides." One of the sadder, gentler Millennium SF Masterworks reissues. --David Langford

Synopsis
In this profound ecological fable, a mysterious plague has destroyed the vast majority of the human race. Isherwood Williams, one of the few survivors, returns from a wilderness field trip to discover that civilization has vanished during his absence. Eventually he returns to San Francisco and encounters a female survivor who becomes his wife. Around them and their children a small community develops, living like their pioneer ancestors, but rebuilding civilization is beyond their resources, and gradually they return to a simpler way of life.

About the Author
SALES POINTS * #12 in the Millennium SF Masterworks series, a library of the finest science fiction ever written * The first winner of the International Fantasy Award * 'A profound, poetic, post-holocaust novel of immense stature: so special I wanted mine to be the only copy' -- Garry Kilworth

Customer Reviews

A genuine classic, very thought-provoking
This is a very thought-provoking book as it portrays in very vivid detail what would happen if only a few survivors from a plague had to start all over again. It tackles issues that you wouldn't necessarily think of straight away, such as what happens as things gradually stop working as there's no one left to fix them. Street lights start failing as power stations fall into disrepair, gas and eletricity stop, roads and pathways become invaded by plants and trees as there's no one to keep nature in check anymore. It very accurately paints a picture of a world slowly returning back to a more primitive time as modern conveniences are no longer available, and describes all the endeavours, and ordeals, the remaining protaganists have to go through to both survive and to try and build a new world, a very clever book.

Brilliant Book
I first read this over 30 years ago and over the years I've read it and re-read it and its never lost its impact or failed to move me.
I find I frequently use the phrase "as you yourself indeed well know".... probably too often:-))

Oh dear, so tedious and just not believable...
I feel I almost have to apologise because I'm so at variance with the majority of the reviewers here.
Maybe it's because I was spoiled as a teenager with the vivid visions of Asimov, Heinlein, Philip K Dick, etc.
Maybe it's because, nearly 40 years later, I'm a grumpy old man and haven't picked up any sci-fi for decades.
I don't know.
But after the first few pages - which I thought showed promise, it was, well, a bit of a struggle to actually keep going.
I found the author - sorry main character, Ish, to be lacking in imagination, lacking in soul and simply not believable.

And how can Homo Sapiens be expunged from the planet without the faintest whiff, sniff or hint of corruption? Everybody dies and their corpses seem to vanish (obligingly) into thin air - how refreshingly convenient for Ish!
And was no-one else expecting the Pied Piper of Hamlin to saunter into view after the march of the rodents at one point?
Was it just me that found all this completely unbelievable?

It was almost as if the author decided that having released something as mundane as a killer virus (that by the way wiped out 99.99% of the human race) it was now time for you, dear reader, to dutifully follow the completely un-fascinating main character through decades of his blinkered, disinterested existence!

I wasn't expecting a rollicking Triffidian sizzler, but I was certainly expecting more to be made of one of the juiciest sc-fi concepts going!
Instead, we got 'ho-hum, planet all dead, 'scuse me while I grow old then, throw another log on the fire' type of stuff.
This author bores the pants off me and has not the teeniest interest in giving the subject or his readership the respect they deserve.
Read 'The Death of Grass' to find out how to treat this subject properly and what happens when humanity goes down big-time.

Pity the author didn't bury Ish early on along with his imaginary virus-stricken planetary populace.

Oh well, At least, I can do the proper thing now and stick this turgid book where it will do some good for the planet - in a composter.