Earth Abides Author: George R. Stewart | Language: English | ISBN:
B0042JSMQ4 | Format: EPUB
Earth Abides Description
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 — although, somehow, he never doubted that he'd live through the ordeal. Often delirious, he did awake at one point 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 that, the coughing began. Ish suffered chills followed by fever, and a measles-like rash that had nothing to do with snake bite broke out 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 had an air of abandonment; and he was shocked to see the body of a man lying by 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 awesomeness of the catastrophe—and, with an eerie detachment, he found himself curious as to how long it would be before all traces of man's civilization faded from the Earth.
At the same time, he couldn't help wondering whether others had survived, and whether even a handful of human beings would
- File Size: 594 KB
- Print Length: 370 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0345487133
- Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (January 1, 1976)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B0042JSMQ4
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,499 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #22
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Classics
- #22
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Classics
One thing that disturbs people about Earth Abides is its incredible humbling realism about the human condition. People who read it come away profoundly unnerved by the idea that civilization is not something guaranteed to come into existence if we lose it and that it requires an enormous convergence of many different kinds of stimulus to create the energies needed within a race of men to bring it into being. Even the most gifted races of people on the Earth can barely hold it together in the best of times, George Stewart shows us how easily it can all fall apart and remain in a primeval condition for untold generations.
The protagonist Isherwood suffers from the same disease that afflicts even the best of men - he lacks direction, loses initiative, becomes too preoccupied with the daily stresses of living and watches his life trickle away in the post apocalyptic environment without ever seeming to summon the right kinds of ambitions to carry out his grand dreams of rebuilding the old world.
Stewart was quite prophetic considering when this book was written because many modern anthropologists have since confirmed that many previous civilizations have died out precisely because of this "critical threshold" of the division of labor and sheer numbers of vanished races being too low to sustain a breeding population and achieve the critical mass that leads to a progress oriented civilization. Stewart was very perceptive too be able to articulate this phenomenon and even narrate its exact trajectory following the loss of so many people who were vital components in the world that Isherwood regrets the demise of.
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