Image: Alex Abadjieva
On the East coast of the Mediterranean Sea, c.450-200BCE, an elderly Hebrew sage ponders over the meaning of life. “Utterly meaningless!” he proclaims, “everything is meaningless! … Men go and come, but Earth abides”. These gloomy observations would soon find their way into the Bible, in a book called Ecclesiastes.
On the West coast of the Pacific Ocean, 1949CE, George R. Stewart publishes his latest book, Earth Abides. Inspired by the musings of our jaded Hebrew philosopher, it is hailed as the father of the ‘Post-Apocalyptic’ genre. The apocalypse in question: a mysterious new disease which has reduced humanity to a fraction of its former self.
Isherwood Williams, the protagonist, is one of the few spared from the disaster. Deciding to survey the extent of the collapse, he travels across an emptied America.
The book explores Earth without humans, a scenario riddled with unknowns. What, for example, will happen to our livestock? Will they devour entire portions of the country’s vegetation, reducing swathes of farmland into desert? Or will millennia of human interference have taken away their ability to survive on their own?
Later on, when narrative gives way to intricate world-building, the book loses momentum and slows down into dense, introspective prose. As such, it can become a rather challenging read, lacking suspense or character development to drive the plot forward. However, the level of consideration gone into this vision of a decaying America is remarkable and will prove influential in later works of Post-Apocalyptic fiction. If one is able to settle into the book’s slower rhythm, Earth Abides offers a brooding, meditative experience for its readers.
In way of the story, the book later focuses on a burgeoning survivor community, based in the ruins of San Francisco. It features Ish’s largely unsuccessful attempts to rebuild civilisation through the education of new generations. Yet, trigonometry and Shakespeare are of no use in the now daily struggle for survival. Soon, his community slowly reverts into a primal hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
Skipping into the distant future, we meet an elderly Ish at the end of his life looking out on his prosperous, albeit primitive, community. To his community, he has become a semi-divine figure, The Last American. Ish, much like the Hebrew sage who authored Ecclesiastes, comes to terms with his life, and wonders whether this world is actually that much worse off than the one before. In a final inflection of optimism, he hopes that one day civilization will begin anew and humanity will learn from its past mistakes.
In January, 2020CE, I found this book in a public library and read it in a busy café. Like many around me, I was largely unconcerned about reports about a mysterious disease in China. Yet by April, I had been quarantined in my room for a month amid a global pandemic. Earth Abides seems more relevant than ever before.
The book explores whether a human population as large as ours can ever be truly sustainable. Like any other species that became too abundant and consumptive for its environment, new infectious diseases can be disastrous. Fortunately, unlike Earth Abides, humanity is still here: when it comes time for us to rebuild, albeit on a much smaller scale, let’s hope that we can learn from our past mistakes and strive for a better future. One with us still in it.
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