About this title: 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.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Fawcett Books
Date Published: 1986
ISBN-13:9780449213018ISBN:0449213013
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. 2304-Some cover wear. Used but sturdy. Good reading copy. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 337 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Edition: Reprint
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Ace Star, New York
Date Published: 1949
Description: Fair. No Jacket. This book has some shelf wear as well as marks and tanning on the cover and pages. There is creasing on the spine and the cover. This book is 318 pages. read more
Description: Very Good. 0449213013 Mass Market Paperback, Condition: Very Good; this book is in very good condition with light curve to the spine / light reading creases to the covers. read more
Description: Very Good. Del Rey, TPB, 2006 reprint trade paperback. Clean, reasonably tight, light wear, no markings. Check my store for more than 1500 other sci-fi and fantasy titles. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Fawcett Crest
Date Published: 1971
ISBN-13:9780449015513ISBN:0449015513
Description: Good. This is a nice undated M1551 paperback copy. No names, no stickers. Binding is tight and square. Text is clean and bright. Light edge and corner wear. Small dot on bottom edge. We recommend PRIORITY MAIL for even faster delivery! read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Fawcett Crest, New York, NY, USA
Date Published: 1989
ISBN-13:9780449213018ISBN:0449213013
Description: ACCEPTABLE. Reading copy ONLY! Old and showing it's age--cover has lots of creases, wear and a 1/2" surface-paper tear on the top spine edge. Multiple spine creases; all pages intact. No writing or highlighting but ownership stamp on closed outside page edges. 011308 (kcam7) read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Fawcett Crest
Date Published: 1971
Description: Very Good. EARTH ABIDES by George R. Stewart. Fawcett Crest, 1971. Binding: Mass Market Paperback Dust Jacket: No jacket. NOTES: Fawcett Crest # M1551. Showing light exterior wear/creasing, contents are overall clean and tight with no owner markings. read more
Edition: First Thus
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Ace Books, New York
Date Published: 1962
Description: Good. 12mo-over 6¾"-7¾" tall. Minor edge and corner wear, lightly scuffed and scratched, spine is lightly creased, pages are toning, book is slightly warped, some shelf wear, overall a nice clean used first Ace Books paperback edition! Color illustrated wrapper with green and red lettering. 318 very clean unmarked and uncreased adventure-filled and action-packed pages! "America----the world----had been destroyed by a catastrophe so total and horrible that few humans survived. Young Isherwood ... read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: ORION PUBLISHING CO Country = UNITED KINGDOM
Date Published: 1999
ISBN-13:9781857988215ISBN:1857988213
Description: BRAND NEW PAPERBACK. 320 pages. (320 pages) returning from a field trip, isherwood williams discovers that a mysterious plague has destroyed civilization during his absence. eventually returning to san francisco, he finds a female survivor and together they and their children build a small community, living like their pioneer ancestors. (Paperback) read more
"If I were to teach an upper-level college writing class, I'd use this book as the foundation for my semester. Just as secret service agents need real, expertly crafted, counterfeit bills removed from circulation and brought into their classroom to learn how to identify bad paper, every writer needs a counterfeit novel that made it into circulation and received praise. Through deconstruction of this book, I could teach almost everything writers shouldn't do.
Hundreds of places the author could have 'shown us', with suspense, but instead 'tells us', with none (As an example, this is all we are told about our main character being attacked by a mountain lion): ...In the end there was bad luck, because Ish missed his shot and instead of killing a lion merely raked it across the shoulders, and it charged and mauled him before Ezra could get another shot home. After that he walked with a little limp,...
And this, I believe, is the author's failed attempt at suspense, which actually results in confusion (I've omitted nothing): ...one question, he knew, that they had not yet faced, and now she brought it forward.
"That would be fine!" she said.
"I don't know."
"Yes, it would."
"I don't like it."
"You mean you don't like it for me?"
"Yes. It's dangerous. There'd be no one else but me, and I wouldn't be any use."
"But you can read-all the books."
"Books!" he laughed a little as he spoke. "The Practical Midwife?"...
The first sentence was probably supposed to read: ...and now he brought it forward.... But even without the typo, this is not only horrible dialogue, (one of several in a book desperately short on dialogue) as well as a glance at massive misuse of exclamation points, (three times on every page, minimum) but a good example of the authors incessant self-censorship and avoidance of certain words and descriptions. He not only avoids reference to human intercourse, but birth, death, pain, anger, hatred, bigotry and bloodshed. In a story detailing a handful of human survivors, in 1949 California, after a planet-wide plague-avoiding those topics (or glossing over them) becomes a herd of white dinosaurs in the bathroom.
There are thousands of poorly constructed sentences (like this one, which contains a large word-proximity hiccup): ...He began to temporize, just as he used to do when he said that he had a great deal of work to do and so buried himself in a book instead of going to a dance. ...
Factual errors, which could have been avoided with a small amount of research, are prevalent (here are two):
...batteries with the acid not yet in them...they made the experiment of pouring the acid into a battery...put it into the station-wagon. It worked perfectly... (I guess in 1949, putting battery acid in the battery charged it too!)
...The clock was run, he knew, by electrical impulses which were ordinarily timed at sixty to the minute. Now they must be coming less often... (AC power is 60 pulses per second).
This book contains one main character and dozens of secondary characters we never grow to care about. On almost every page a situation unfolds that could be easily re-written to involve the reader in the action, infuse the character(s) with depth and emotions, or add suspense to the plot. Instead, the story centers around an emotionally dead man who preaches to a bland cast of less-than-ordinary, paper-cut-out idiots about their failure to reach for a fraction of their potential, while he wallows in an uncomfortable rut and never lifts a finger to attain any of his own potential.
Aspiring writers and educators should use this counterfeit paper, available for less than the price of a cup of coffee at used bookstores, as a valuable learning/teaching tool. Where books filled with examples of great writing abound-it's nice to have something chock-full of such a concentrated and vast range of terrible writing to weight down the other end of the scale."
At first, Stewart's anthropological examination of post-apocalyptic America is fairly intriguing; he takes a 'World Without Us' approach to how the Earth would respond to humanity's absence, and it's interesting enough (even though it's hard to tell how accurate his depiction is).
Problems arise when Stewart's contemptuous narrator, Ish, joins a community of other humans. Though written in the late '40s, Stewart's ideas regarding what construes civilization are a bit too simplistic. Ish seems to believe that the tradition of being 'civilized' resides in learning to read; never does he really question the order of society, the hierarchy, the assigning of talents, law, etc... His view is imperialistic, that he must merely 'tame the brutes', though without questioning why. Since nothing really happens in the book--there's no real drama, no suspense--the narration hinges on its ideas, and that is where it falters.
Earth Abides is regarded as groundbreaking, the first of its kind, and part of me admired it on that basis alone. But the ideas presented are too narrow and dated--even for its time."
"In George Stewart's Earth Abides, we follow the protagonist, Ish, as he struggles with first his own survival, then a budding society, his own ideals of rebuilding civilization, and finally, reluctant godhood. It is interesting to follow Stewart's vision of how civilization-specifically, U.S. civilization-would rebuild in the midst of our manmade constructs, recorded history/knowledge, and culture. Just as the roads and bridges decay, so does the memory of acquired knowledge and practices of cultural traditions.
Stewart's writing style flows well, not wordy as a review on Amazon said. Ish is contemplative at times, but every word is important to the character and story.
I understand the draw of this book and why it has endured so long. We, like Ish, are the observer to things that can and cannot be changed. There is a lesson to this, especially in Ish's final days, that we can apply to our lives now."
"I started this book without a clear picture of when or where it was written, just knew it was "a classic." It started out with the stereotypical "lone survivor surveys the empty cities" scenes and moved on to a cross country jaunt to see what humanity survived. However, there was a scene where he came across a couple, a "negro" couple, whereupon he began to wonder if he should just stay there, become their master and have them provide for him. My first thought was "WFT?" My second was "When was this written anyway?" and my third was, "Yeah, good luck with THAT."
So that's when I realized this was written in the 40s. Paradigm shift for sure, I gained quite an appreciation for the novel. And it was really eye-opening how little the human animal changes, regardless of the technological advances around. The universal themes of solitude v lonliness, need for community and so on were indistinguishable from something that would take place today. Except for small "tells" here and there, I never would have guessed that it was 60 years old."
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