About this title: A young man makes his way through the desolate and dangerous post-apocalyptic landscape of the former United States, gaining access to isolated and mistrusting communities by posing as a postman. He delivers messages from friends and relatives long-presumed dead, and instills hope in a hopeless society.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: softcover
Publisher: Bantam Books, New York
Date Published: November 1986
ISBN-13:9780553278743ISBN:0553278746
Description: Good condition. Used paperback in good condition, pages all tight, spine creased, book store stamp on inside front cover, slight discoloring inside covers. read more
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Spectra Books
Date Published: 1997
ISBN-13:9780553278743ISBN:0553278746
Description: Good. No Jacket. Good. No DJ Issued Good. No dust jacket as issued. Cover has very mild edge wear and a faint spine crease. Pages are a bit age toned, mostly at the edges. No other faults. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 336 p. Bantam Classics. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Spectra, Westminster, Maryland, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1990
ISBN-13:9780553278743ISBN:0553278746
Description: Good. 0553278746 Mass market paperback, previously read used book in good condition, varying degrees of shelf wear, some spine creases, m..._ read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Spectra, Westminster, Maryland, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1990
ISBN-13:9780553278743ISBN:0553278746
Description: Good. 0553278746 Mass market paperback, previously read used book in good condition, varying degrees of shelf wear, some spine creases, m..._ read more
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Spectra Books
Date Published: 1997
ISBN-13:9780553278743ISBN:0553278746
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Clean pages, shows wear on edges & spine, remainder mark on bottom edge. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 336 p. Bantam Classics. Audience: General/trade. read more
Description: New. 0553257048 Perfect spine-no creases, unread tight copy, has very minor edge/shelf wear on cover, Great Book. ** Satisfaction Guaranteed ** Orders ship same or next business day. read more
Binding: Paper back
Publisher: Bantam
Date Published: 1985
Description: Good. Heroism and human survival, when one day fate touched a wanderer who found a long-dead postal worker's jacket, which he wore to protect himself from winter's cold. It had the power to regenerate the symbol of hope and recovery. read more
"Again with my interest in post-apocalyptic stories. I guess I'm always a sucker for man stripped of all his contrivance and forced back to earlier software build. It's kinda like reinstalling the OS for the world, I guess.
The Postman must not be confused in any way with the Kevin Costner adaptation for screen. While that one did a decent job of capturing some of the visuals, the emotion of the story seems bleached out.
In brief, our hero is a survivor in a fractured post nuclear war United States. In order to score some authority and welcome into the small, girded pockets of remaining humanity, he dons the uniform of a dead pre-war postal worker and fabricates his service to the postal service of the "Restored United States." What started out as subterfuge is embraced by the survivors of the Pacific Northwest as hope that life might be returning to some sort of normal. The Postman carries enormous guilt about what he's created, but his act of self-interest accidentally starts off a chain of events that begins to offer real hope for renewal. He's finally forced to own his new persona when all that has been created is threatened by a band of survivalists seeking to crate a fiefdom in the vacuum of federal power.
The offical review/synopsis on Good Reads says this isn't Brin's best work, calling the writing substandard and the plot contrived. I can't quite agree. While it may not be a tour-de-force, a terrific character is realized in the role of the Postman. It's a classic thief-turned-hero story; through his subterfuge, he creates good. That good in turn rebirths him and makes him this flawed society's ideal defender."
"The first three quarters of the book are extremely thought provoking, what if something even close to this could or would happen. The reader is forced to imagine what the hard knock life would be like, could I as the reader do or survive in the environment depicted. The last quarter the book looses a little of it's authenticity, and believability. I would have liked a different ending. All in all it was hard to put down due to the questions that needed resolved. I like books, movies, and shows that are moral thought provokers, and this book was definitely one that required an examination of personal morals."
"This is classic post-apocalyptic science fiction at its best. The story is set in the U.S., the government and all infrastructure appear to have failed, and this is the story of one man who picks up a bag of mail found in the wreckage and sets the task of delivering it all to the recipients identified on the letters and packages. Naturally, people give him additional letters to deliver, so this becomes a full-time gig and means for providing hope to people who are unsure whether distant family members and/or cities survive. (If you saw the movie, please don't let that ruin it for you. This is a great book.)"
"Given what I had heard of David Brin, I had very high expectations when I began The Postman. Consequently, I was sorely disappointed. This does not sound at all like the work of a major SF author. The writing has absolutely nothing exceptional, I cannot remember a single striking sentence, image ir idea. As for the story, the only thing that struck me about it was its lack of subtlety. I really don't know if it can seem meaningful or moving to an American (after all, this is about rebuilding the USA from scratch, with the help of courageous pioneers of the future), but for anyone in the rest of the world, it is a pure waste of time. The events and characters are pompous, more reminiscent of war films like Pearl Harbor than of any kind of subtle narration. I did not really appreciate Brin's portrayal of women either. They were at best caricatures of stupid feminists who think they are better than men and eventually fail miserably because one on of them betrayed their cause out of sheer female stupidity. Everyone else in the story is either a heroic hero or a villainous villain. I was surprised as well to find some very awkward moments in the plot, for instance when a major character, Chief George Powhattan, is suddenly introduced out of the blue near the end, only for the purpose of solving all the problems. This is something an author should think of a little earlier, isn't it? A very disappointing book just a tiny step above the frankly unreadable."
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