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The award-winning Earth Abides is one of the most influential science fiction novels of all time, a mix of dystopian horror and a literary exploration of loneliness. It remains a fresh, provocative--and all too relevant--story of apocalyptic pandemic, societal collapse, and rebirth. Includes an introduction by Kim Stanley Robinson!
“This is a book, mind you, that I''d place not only among the greatest science fiction but among our very best novels” – Boston Globe
For Isherwood Williams, his cabin has always been a haven from the demands of society. But one day while hiking, Ish is bitten by a rattlesnake, and the solitude he had so desired takes on dire new significance. Because not long after, the coughing begins. Then the chills and fever and a measles-like rash. He thinks it’s a reaction to the bite. What he doesn’t know that the venom might be the only thing that kept him alive.
For when Ish heads home the world is not as he left it. No cars pass, the gas station not far from his cabin looks abandoned, there’s nothing on the radio, and he is shocked to see the body of a man on the roadside near a small town. He has missed humanity’s abrupt demise, only to find himself at the center of society’s rebirth. This is a chance to start over, and as Ish gathers survivors to him, he discovers just how wondrous and terrible that proposition is.
And when, decades later, he looks back on his legacy, he is only starting to understand the challenge between enlightenment and practicality. He had left one world, rejoined another, and now leaves—hopefully—an even different world behind. Because, reluctantly or no, his words and actions carry weight for the next generation, and Ish’s vision of the future may be one of prophecy…or doom.
Industry Reviews
"Earth Abides was a huge influence on my book [The Stand]. Read it in 7th grade and never forgot it." -- Stephen King
"This novel, George Stewart's masterpiece, is exceptionally ambitious, wide-ranging, graceful, and wise. It's one of the greatest novels in the subgenre of science fiction now called post-apocalyptic, and very worthy of the permanent place in science fiction and in American literature that it has achieved." -- Kim Stanley Robinson, author of The Ministry for the Future
"This is a book, mind you, that I'd place not only among the greatest science fiction but among our very best novels. Each time I read it, I'm profoundly affected, affected in a way only the greatest art--Ulysses, Matisse or Beethoven symphonies, say--affects me. Epic in sweep, centering on the person of Isherwood Williams, Earth Abides proves a kind of antihistory, relating the story of humankind backwards, from ever-more-abstract civilization to stone-age primitivism." -- Boston Globe
"One of those novels so rare in our time, that the reader wishes would never end."
-- New Yorker
"The book has more thought-challenging elements than a shelf full of ordinary novels."
-- Christian Science Monitor
"This is a novel that deserves not only to be read as a masterwork of sf, but also a classic of American literature."
-- SFFWorld.com
