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Title: The Postman by David Brin ISBN: 0-553-27874-6 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 03 November, 1997 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $7.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.19 (113 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A Definitive Post-Nuke Book
Comment: Before SF novelist David Brin became known as one of the "Killer Bs" of 80s and 90s SF, he penned a serial novel called "The Postman," a post-apocalyptic romp through the Williamette Valley in Oregon. Set in an area dominated by militias, survivalists, and the kinds of folks who like to blame Jewish people and blacks for America's troubles, Brin lampooned the typical, gutsy, survival-of-the-fittest attitude in post-apocalyptic (PA) fiction, creating a unique blend of adventure story and important moral lesson. In an interview, Brin said that most PA fiction revels in the downfall of civilization, creating a kind of macho paradise which would be great if you were a gun-toting conservative white male. For everyone else, it would be hell, and that is exactly what "The Postman" tackles.
Fifteen years after the Doomwar, a combination nuclear, biological, and chemical exchange between the US and an unknown enemy, Gordon roams the landscape looking for a cause to follow. The largest organization in this atmosphere are a loosely-organized militia-army, who follow the teachings of the deceased Nathan Holn, a racist whose beliefs about life and freedom were a mix of Ayn Rand, David Duke, and a badly warped Charles Darwin. Gordon, a college-educated thinking man, wants nothing to do with the militias, but is inadvertantly forced into acting when bandits steal his clothes and he is forced to dress as a postman and invent a story about the Restored United States to get some food.
On his way, Gordon meets towns wallowing in drugs and violence, paranoid people so scared by oppression they trust no one, and an organization seemingly controlled by a computer artificial intelligence. When the militias begin attacking the Williamette Valley in far greater fervor, Gordon begins to organize the resistance, aided in part by George Powhatan, an organizer who has begun to rebuild civilization in his own way.
"The Postman" makes clear that the downfall of civilization would not be a good thing, especially if you happened to be a woman, or black, or anything else not conforming to the WASP-militia stereotypes. Aside from a good adventure story, Brin's book bucks convention and treads new groud, providing an obvious stepping stone for later SF novels in the genre like "The New Madrid Run" and "The Rift." The prose can be rocky, but given "Postman" was published serially (and wasn't necessarily aspiring to high literature), this can be overlooked for the far more positive points of its content.
Final Grade: B-
Rating: 4
Summary: An entertaining look at post-apocolyptic America
Comment: This was a pretty entertaining book. A movie based on it came out around Christmas, but I've had this book for years and decided to read it before seeing the movie. It's about a post-apocolyptic America and centers around a protagonist who was in college when World War III broke out. Though things got a bid cheasy toward the end (I won't say how), it was nonetheless a very entertaining read. The story tracks this reluctant hero's treck through Oregon in a bleak landscape of fudile villages and city rubble. His chance finding of a dead postman changes him and is the catalyst behind much of what happens throughout the novel. By the way, the movie, which is now the butt of jokes on Leno almost every night, deserves the jokes - it is a insufferably long, slow movie, terribly acted, with painfully contrived sentimental moments. It's too bad that the book now has this associated with it...
Rating: 2
Summary: So much potential...
Comment: ...wasted. It's hard to say how good a book this could have been based on the concept, but the execution was just, well, terrible. One of the best (worst?) examples I can think of where an incompetent protagonist survives much longer than he/she has any right to, or than a reader can believe. Goofy plot elements abound along with the introduction of incredible (as in not credible, not as in "wow!") characters to create even more dire challenges, when mere bad guys were would have fit the existing storyline better.
What's really frustrating are the glimpses of Brin's obvious skills. These keep you going until the end, but just barely.
Now about the movie...
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Title: Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank ISBN: 0060931396 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 April, 1999 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: Earth Abides by George R. Stewart ISBN: 0449213013 Publisher: Fawcett Books Pub. Date: 12 September, 1986 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: The Rift by Walter J. Williams ISBN: 0061057940 Publisher: Eos Pub. Date: 04 April, 2000 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle ISBN: 0449208133 Publisher: Fawcett Books Pub. Date: 12 May, 1985 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Earth by David Brin ISBN: 055329024X Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 May, 1991 List Price(USD): $7.50 |
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