It oughta be a movie: Earth Abides, by George Stewart
This book surprised me several times. First, I was startled to realize that, despite the “ecologist wanders out of the woods to discover that global pandemic has destroyed civilization” premise, this wasn’t a new book, nor even written since the late 1980s (when the persistent power of viruses was becoming common knowledge again). No, it is from 1949, when most people were probably assuming new drugs and vaccines were on the path to conquering disease forever! The depiction of the ecological shifts that would result from the fall of modern civilization is unusually good, and I was really enjoying the contemplative nature and subtle humor of the first third of the book, where our protagonist "Ish" is just wandering around with his dog. Then he starts interacting with other humans and some very distasteful ideas about people start to emerge: the more-or-less subtle racism and misogyny you’d expect from a trying-to-be-progressive person of that era, plus some very overt eugenicism. On reflection, though…I actually think this could make a very timely film, despite its flaws. The pandemic aspect would obviously resonate, and we’ve seen from ‘Dune’ that 2020s audiences can be OK with a sci-fi movie that has more landscape shots than action: Just get Denis Villeneuve on the phone! Even the more troublesome “1940s white man thoughts” could actually be explored and demonstrated to be incorrect simply by just adding some other character perspectives. But I’m getting ahead of myself!
The basic plot goes as follows: An ecology1 grad student named Isherwood Williams has been working on his thesis when he gets bit by a rattlesnake. He stumbles back to his remote cabin, and after a few feverish days – which include getting a rash, weirdly – he feels recovered enough to go back to civilization. It seems weirdly quiet, though, and he starts to think about the two guys who found him looking sick, and rudely ran off instead of helping him. In one of the deserted small towns, he finds a newspaper that informs him that, as of that printing date more than a week ago, some fast-spreading virus had wiped out a third of the population of the US! Ish remains outwardly calm – weirdly so, some might say, but I was actually relating pretty hard to how an introverted scientist (used to being alone in the woods for long periods of time) would likely deal with this type of calamity. His first real show of emotion is when he finds his parents’ home empty…and throws up! As someone who has on more than one occasion vomited from anxiety before I actually knew I was anxious, this is again very relatable: He was trying not to think about what probably happened to everyone he ever cared about while there was still no clear sign he needed to worry. He starts looking for survivors, and does find some pretty quickly but most are not in the best mental shape so he figures he should fully explore his options and what the overall state of things is before he starts taking on companions. He sets out on a cross-country journey with Princess, a stray beagle who latches onto him by demonstrating her extreme cuteness. Not finding any major hubs of civilization remaining, he eventually returns to his old California neighborhood, where he fortuitously finds a woman who is both sane and pretty, and who seems to like him. They make a few other friends, who bring a couple more, starting the nucleus of a little “tribe”. The book then follows this group of people and the changes occurring in the environment and remnant human infrastructure around them, over the next six decades or so.
1. At least, that’s definitely what it said his thesis was about! Later in the book, though, Ish describes himself as a geographer, which is confusing.
Compared to ‘Parable of the Sower’, I found I had opposite praise and critiques. In Octavia Butler’s book, the slow-motion apocalypse – climate change – is not super-accurately depicted, even by 1990s standards (eg. If there has been no rain at all for 5 years, how are there still healthy oak trees? Why are these travelers not complaining of the heat?), and the amount of social disorder in response to comparatively mild stressors seemed excessive. Neither is a problem in this book: If anything, people are too set in their “civilized” ways. On the other hand, while both have rather bookish INTJ-like people becoming the leaders, Lauren’s decisions and world-views are way more relatable - at least to me. She sees things are going downhill, and starts making plans for how to deal with the potential loss of her accustomed safety and comforts: keeping a “go bag” packed, learning how to make bread out of acorns, etc. When her community gets burned down, she quickly starts assembling a group – because there is safety in numbers – and trying to find a place out in the country where they can grow food and where they’ll hopefully be out of the way of roving gangs. She also doesn’t give a damn what color anyone is or obsess about if the kids or the more traumatized ones will be too much of a burden. Ish, despite his supposed camping experience, is not NEARLY that practical, and holds some really fucked-up ideas.
I loved the way this book describes the changes occurring in the environment. In the beginning, we get a lot of asides about what is happening with various domesticated species, for example: Any horses and donkeys lucky enough not to be locked in their barns going feral; some scrappy dogs doing OK but many pining away without their masters or unable to survive in the wild; and cats…being cats: “A dead cat, it seemed, lay on the counter, but…he realized that it had merely been lying, after the habits of cats, in such a position that it looked dead. The cat looked at him with a kind of cold effrontery, as the duchess at the chambermaid. Ish…reminded himself that this was the way cats had always behaved.”
The description of the “wild” spreading and the slow crumbling of man-made things is often evoked in biblical language as well as scientific: “In that day…will the fir trees rejoice…Will the deer and the foxes and the quail exult: ‘Art thou also become as weak as we…? Is this the man that made the earth to tremble?’…No – none will say such words, and none will be left to think them…Only, the spike-buck will graze farther from the thicket without knowing why, and the fox-cubs play beside the dry fountain in the square, and the quail hatch her eggs in the tall grass by the sundial.”
There are even population dynamic included, such as a plague of rats caused as they grow fat on our abandoned grocery stores and such, which is eventually quelled by disease, cannibalism, and increases in predator numbers.
There’s an acknowledgement that culture needs to change to suit the circumstances, and also some good commentary on the artificiality of borders, which I really liked:
“At the national boundary, the flags showed different colors, though the same breeze blew them. You stopped for customs and immigration, and were suddenly a stranger, unfamiliar. ‘Look,’ you said, ‘that policeman has a different uniform!’ You got new money and even for picture post-cards the stamps had to have another face on them. ‘Better drive extra carefully,’ you said. ‘Wouldn’t be good to get arrested over here.’ That was a funny business! You stepped across a line you couldn’t see, and then you were one of those queer people – a foreigner! But boundaries fade even faster than fences. Imaginary lines need no rust to efface them…perhaps it will be easier on the mind.”
Ish’s reflections as an old man are good too, the way he becomes willing to let go both some of his old ideas and control over the future. He realizes that everyone who has died would probably be dead by now anyway, and that he would always have grown old: “Now, doubtless, if it had not happened otherwise, he would be Professor Emeritus, puttering around, taking some books out of the Library and intending to do some research, a little of a nuisance to the younger men in their fifties and sixties who now ran the Department – though they might say loyally to the graduate students, ‘That’s Professor Williams – a great scholar, once. We’re very proud of him.’”
However, now let’s talk about the iffier ideas…
The racial stuff is not as bad as it might be. Ish has an encounter with a found-family of black people that is a real mixed bag. On the one hand, he recognizes that in forming a group and growing crops and livestock, they’re moving forward more effectively than he or most of the white people he’s encountered are, and he also acknowledges that they probably have reason to be wary of a strange white man. On the other hand, he just assumes that he could make himself their king, suggesting that he thinks their actions and choices betray a natural servility. Ish’s new wife, Emma, turns out to have some African ancestry2, but he accepts this immediately, which is nice. We don’t actually meet any other people of color, though, which is weird given that this is set in California! However, it is at least implied that some indigenous communities survived in the southwest and re-established pueblos with some of their surviving neighbors of other ethnicities.
2. Though the way this is revealed was super confusing (“Blue in the nail half-moons? What ethnicity is THAT supposed to signify?”) and I was unsure until a later sentence clarified it whether she was supposed to be part-black or part-Jewish (since Ish references both in his “eh, whatever!” response).
The misogyny is largely of the “chivalrous” variety that is a little more subtle than the "all women are stupid whores" variety. But there are quite a few weird moments. For instance, when Ish meets Em, he is relieved to find a woman he can have a conversation with (nice) but then this happens: “As between man and man the breaking of bread was the reality; the shared table, all the symbol needed. But as between man and woman there must be still more, in reality and in symbol, a further sharing.” Gee, Ish, it would be real awkward for you if you found the one surviving lesbian in Berkeley, wouldn’t it? Ish also just assumes that adding either a man or a woman into a group with a couple will inevitably lead to conflict. Then after one new friend, Ezra, is not invited to stay for this reason, he turns up later with two wives, having found one solution to that “three’s a crowd” problem! This is a pretty funny subversion of Ish’s assumption of how jealousy and relationships work, but I have to wonder if he’d have been able to accept this form of a family if one of the trio had been another man. Anyway…Ish respects Em, but primarily for her “mother of nations” qualities – her ability to bear up through hardship, pop out a lot of kids, and play her role as wife and mother. She and the other women never invent anything or contribute any useful ideas, as if caring for kids somehow used up all of their brains. While it would be tiring to have 5 or 6 young kids at once, even full-time homemakers at minimum give a lot of thought to their children’s futures. They would definitely be worrying about things like “What happens when the canned food runs out or goes bad? What if I have trouble in labor and no one knows what to do?” and probably coming up with thoughts of what to do about that. Heck, they all survived 12+ months entirely on their own, so they clearly don’t need to rely on their menfolk all the time! There’s also a very weird incident where Ish and Em’s daughter Mary (14) marries Ralph (~17), but no one seems into it: “They were younger than would have been thought suitable or even decent for marriage in the old days..Ish and Em…were not even sure that Mary was especially fond of Ralph, or Ralph of Mary.” So…WHY? Well, it does say “Mary bore a child before the year was out,” so I’m guessing that’s the author’s oblique 1940s way of explaining!
It was the eugenics I found hardest to stomach. The poly trio adopted a little girl they named Evie who seems to have some kind of mental impairment. Ish repeatedly reflects on how Evie probably gets no happiness out of life and can’t bring any to others, and maybe they should have just poisoned her! But given that, when described, she’s usually either angelically serene or laughing, the first part of that obviously isn’t true! She’s also pretty and well-groomed, so either she has enough capacity to dress herself and brush her hair, or her adoptive parents take care of that for her without a second thought – and so would probably disagree with the second and third parts of Ish’s assessment! One person does point out that his insistence that she never have kids might be excessive, since it is entirely possible that her condition is due to the trauma of the pandemic rather than genetics. In fact, the way she fed herself from cans after being orphaned at around 5 years old suggests quite a good ability to fend for herself, despite her lack of words! However, I suppose consent wasn’t part of the discourse at the time, since no one ever brings up that someone with the “mind of a child” probably doesn’t understand sex and pregnancy – and, good lord, would the latter be terrifying to experience if you didn’t understand what was happening to you!
Actually, this leads to a whole other questionable storyline. Two of Ish’s sons go out exploring to see if there are any other “tribes” out there, and they bring back a man named Charlie. Charlie immediately starts trying to seduce Evie (who seems into the attention - though, again, she probably doesn’t get the full implications!) and won’t listen to the demands by Ish that he back off. Several people comment that Charlie feels “off” or dangerous in some way. Ezra points out that Charlie won’t take off his vest because he’s carrying a concealed pistol, and then that Charlie (for some reason) revealed while drunk that he’s got multiple STDs. This is apparently enough for Ish, Em, Ezra, and George to vote to murder him. Well, they say “execute”, but since there was no trial or general vote…yeah, this is lynching a guy on the basis of “hearsay syphilis”, even though they have access to sulfa drugs that should cure the infection AND a car they could use to dump him well outside easy walking distance to their “village”. If he came back and behaved threateningly after that, then sure – I’d probably agree with their decision. As it is…oof.
The conclusion, though, comes back to being something I can more or less get behind. After an excessive twenty-two years of Ish complaining that they are all just living like scavengers instead of building anything, he finally gets off his ass and makes something new: a bow and arrow. The young people are immediately intrigued, playing around with the design and making improvements – showing that they’d probably have responded better to his “schoolhouse” if he’d actually picked subjects that were relevant, rather than trying to teach them geometry and the geography of places they’ll never go! Old-man Ish makes his peace with the changes that human society will need to make to survive in this new world, and even thinks that he’s not sure if he really wants civilization to rise again, given all the war and slavery and whatnot that that entailed the first time around. He notices (through the fog of dementia) that his great-grandsons seem strong and healthy and, moreover, lack the anxious demeanor that the young men of his day had. They’ll be OK.
Adaptation Issues:
As mentioned above, the thing that made this book hardest to get through were some of Ish’s thoughts. The medium of film, however, makes it possible to skip some of those thoughts entirely OR to explore and dissect them by having the characters actually talk about them or to let the visuals contradict them. Therefore, the main change I would make is to include some other character perspectives and give the Ish more actual dialogue with those characters.
In service of that, and to add a bit more drama, I’d also add some flashbacks to certain key characters dealing with the pandemic itself in between Ish setting out on his journey with Princess and him actually meeting those characters. Most crucially, I really wanted more backstory on Em. Who was her husband, and were they actually happy? – as Ish assumes based apparently only on how perfect a wife he thinks Em is (as if no one could possible fail to see that, which is flattering but unrealistic!) How did she react to the death of her two kids? I’m guessing not nearly as calmly as she deals with deaths later on, since in the “modern civilized world” having your kids die before you do is considered a hugely unexpected tragedy, rather than something that hurts immensely but which pretty much every family has to deal with, as was the case basically up until the invention of vaccines and sulfa drugs. I kind of want to see her almost break, and then use that immense courage that we’re repeatedly told is her most important character trait to pick herself up and survive. I’d also like to see what happened to Evie, and how she got adopted by Ezra and his wives. Speaking of which, a bit about Jean, and how she went from Evangelical to vehement atheist, and what she was doing when Ezra found her, would be a good flashback and “flash-side” (to someone other than Ish, but on the same timeline). Another flashback/flash-side could be to the black found-family Ish encounters on his journey. He speculates about why they didn’t move into a bigger house or how they are responding to him, but it would be more powerful to see it from their perspective3.
3. I’m not any better qualified to write this authentically than Stewart, but as a starting suggestion:
Hot-headed young person: “Why are we still living in this shack, when there’s all these nice houses standing empty?” Cautious elder: “Are you an idiot? We don’t know how many white men might still be alive! Stealings the pigs was a big enough risk for now. With that, we can always say ‘Ah, but the porkers would have just starved if we didn’t’” HHYP (angrily): “How are you still scared of those dead crackers?!” CE: “If you’d seen what I’ve seen, you would be too!” Voice of reason^: “All right, all right. How about this: If none of them turn up in a year, then we move up the hill. Meanwhile, we can still take water from the tap when we need it.” [Ish shows up] CE (panicking): “See?!? I told you!” VOR: “Now, now, let’s all just stay calm and polite, and hope he goes away.”
^ - Probably the pregnant lady, maybe while working out how to spin cotton…because no, Ish, I don’t believe they’d keep bothering to grow it just out of habit!
Then, once Ish starts getting his “tribe” together, I’d like to see more characters taking initiative to find creative solutions to their problems. For instance, Ish initially promises Em to look up info on obstetrics from the university library when she gets pregnant…and then seems to get distracted and drops it entirely when she delivers just fine. I cannot imagine anyone as practical as Em just letting that go, so what if she insisted on being taken up to the library as soon as she knew she was pregnant, hauling back a bunch of relevant texts, and making notes for what Ish should do if anything goes wrong for her. Once she has the first kid successfully, her “mother of nations” role could be expanded by basically learning to be a midwife and helping out the other ladies. Someone – Ish or literally anyone else – should get interested in learning about edible wild foods or how to make fire without matches WAY before the point that happens in the book.
That could also lead into some kind of discussion that challenges Ish’s eugenicist views. If he ever actually SAID them to Evie's adoptive parents, he probably would have been shot down immediately! They might point out that she does contribute to the group – eg. by picking berries or grinding acorns once instructed, or by helping to keep the little kids occupied and entertained – and that someday Ish is going to be a useless old man, but he probably hopes his descendants will look after him (foreshadowing!). Maybe, in the midst of her play, Evie discovers something interesting or useful…because actual children do that with some regularity (eg. stumbling on cave art or dinosaur bones or inventing a toy that could be turned into a tool).
The conflict with Charlie could also be tweaked a bit as well as played up for further drama. Firstly, it would be good if someone – maybe one of Evie’s adoptive moms – pointed out the real concerns with Charlie’s interest in her. Also, I’m not keen on the reasoning behind killing Charlie, so this could either be played up as morally questionable to a greater degree (eg. having the “execution” cause more conflict with the young men who befriended him) OR having them try a non-lethal solution first, and THEN have to kill Charlie after he comes back and starts acting like more of a threat. Similarly, the weirdly early first marriage of the second generation could be a place for a discussion. There could be arguments from social stability, with maybe some people pointing out that you’d get just as much stability if the woman’s birth family were her expected support system (which in turn would trend toward a matrilineal organization). The fact that Ezra’s polygamy was so readily accepted suggest that these people aren’t as inflexible as Ish assumes regarding social norms!
Overall recommendation: A good read for those who
like sci-fi that focuses more on characters or ideas than action, if you can
roll with it as a product of its time. An adaptation could definitely smooth the rough edges.
