‘If a killing type of virus strain should suddenly arise by mutation . .
.
It could, because of the rapid transportation in which we indulge
nowadays, be carried to the far corners of the earth and cause the
deaths of millions of people.’
The quote/prologue at the beginning of the book ‘The Earth Abides’ by George R. Stewart had a definite resonance, when I started reading it a few months ago. The quote belongs to W.M. Stanley an American Biochemist active during the mid 20th century. The extract is cited as being from a magazine called Chemical and Engineering News, published in December 1947.
It was a coincidence, that I started reading this novel amidst the copious coverage of the ‘Ebola outbreak’ that has been spreading like wild fire, both, as a topic gone ‘viral’ and as the literal pandemic that is killing indiscriminately.
The novel, published in 1949, follows the protagonist Isherwood Williams, as he finds himself as one of the few survivors on a planet where civilisation has been wiped out by a mysterious disease. Considering the historical context of the time in which, both the quote and, the novel that uses it, were written this book seemed to me, a premonition of things to come. In 1949 much of the world was in the stage of recovering from WWII, commercial aviation was something that was still in its early stages, not yet a commodity to be enjoyed by your average citizen, yet Stanley clearly realized the potential ramifications of a world in which one pole was no longer more than a 24 hour trip from the other.
Whilst a virus in transit, able to hop between continents, is arguably something that is actually happening in today’s world I want to avoid the topic of Ebola. As a scientist, Stanley was speaking hypothetically. As true then as it is today, given the right circumstances a virus could travel the breadth of the planet infecting the majority of people. However this is not happening. Currently the Ebola virus is only a serious threat to the people of West Africa, and to a lesser extent the people in the bordering countries. The threat of Ebola to the western world is something, which the media have exaggerated and fabricated because scare stories sell. It’s atrocious that an individual dying of Ebola in the U.S gets more coverage than a whole town of people in Guinea or Sierra Leone, but unfortunately that’s the way it works. Although I kind of want to start writing about how it’s possible that large pharmaceutical companies are orchestrating the whole scene so people spend millions on pseudo cures in a year’s time, I doubt the authenticity of this claim myself and I don’t want to sound like some conspiracy nut. So like a good little English graduate I’ll return to the book, which I thought was well good!
Above anything else I think it is an important environmental text. I’d definitely put it on a suggested reading list for. . . Everyone I guess. Because, as Stewart writes ‘Biologically, man has for too long a time been rolling an uninterrupted run of sevens’ (Earth Abides, George R. Stewart, Millennium Publishing, 1999, p.8). We’re getting too big for out boots! At least that’s what I think. We’ve got too used to abundance and instant gratification. Society has evolved to accept that we have an endless supply of everything we need. Around 500 years ago the European settlers headed west and arrived to an island of paradise, America. Multiplying and consuming the abundance of all that was nourishing and magical, the colonies grew and again headed west, until eventually they reached another ocean. However this ideology of opportunity and profusion is something that continued to grow, and now our society is practically built on values surrounding these two things. In The Earth Abides, Stewart uses a case study on rats as a kind of analogy for this fatal flaw of our avarice. Brought to a tropical island as stowaways on a boat, the rats gorged themselves on the fruit and plants of which there was plenty. Breeding all year round and with no need to compete amongst themselves the rat population grew large and the rats themselves were ‘extremely well nourished, and even unduly fat’. Then due to their ‘crowding and also probably because of the softened condition of the individuals, the rats proved universally susceptible’ (p.10) to a new disease and soon became extinct on this particular island.
Reading this it seems obvious that the rats are us. Without having to struggle, or even think about our survival, many of us have become grossly unhealthy, incapable and lazy (I admit I belong to 2 of these categories). Again avoiding the topic of disease, (which is only the introduction to the concepts Stewart is discussing) this book really gets you thinking about us as a species and as a civilisation. Even without ‘Ebola’, which seems to be the hip and trendy threat to our existent at the moment we have lots of other obstacles and potential problems to tackle which aren’t discussed that much in the public sphere; population growth; famine; solar flares, and global warming to name but a few.
Now I’ve not got a solution here, so if you’re expecting to find one you should probably look elsewhere, perhaps find someone who actually knows what they’re on about. If it’s any consolation for myself, which it isn’t, neither has Stewart. Though this book isn’t trying to provide a solution, instead it imagines what life would be like after an event that has left humanity in ruin.
Initially it is a book about survival, suggesting that the survivors of the old world could last on canned goods in supermarkets and enjoy relative comfort for some time, but eventually things must change; without maintenance the dams and electrical turbines stop functioning and Isherwood is plunged into darkness; roads get blocked by falling trees, and with no one to move them certain parts of the world become inaccessible. Nevertheless these are just the preliminary problems that face the protagonist. Eventually he finds a partner and has children, where he is faced with perhaps less obvious predicaments. Does he try to teach them and rebuild society or is this a struggle in vain? Can 1940s America be rebuilt in a few generations?
I don’t want to ruin the book for any potential readers by describing massive chunks but I was amazed about how relevant this text is today. Since the 1940s advancements in technology and home comforts have grown unimaginably, and all the while it seems we could barely conceive a world without them. We have a finite supply of resources on this planet and even without disease or nuclear war it seems we will eventually come to a stage where people cannot survive. Whilst Stewart doesn’t pose any solutions he imagines a convincingly realistic post-civilisation world where man is lost, despite the accomplishments and power achieved over time.
I believe the sign of a good book is based on the lasting impression on the reader. I finished reading The Earth Abides a few weeks back now and I’m still turning it over in my head. Part of me was left thinking that we need to make some radical changes to help sustain society and the world we live in but then part of me thinks maybe we should let Rome burn, maybe it will be better in the long run….
READ IT!!
Then tell me what you think.
It could, because of the rapid transportation in which we indulge
nowadays, be carried to the far corners of the earth and cause the
deaths of millions of people.’
The quote/prologue at the beginning of the book ‘The Earth Abides’ by George R. Stewart had a definite resonance, when I started reading it a few months ago. The quote belongs to W.M. Stanley an American Biochemist active during the mid 20th century. The extract is cited as being from a magazine called Chemical and Engineering News, published in December 1947.
It was a coincidence, that I started reading this novel amidst the copious coverage of the ‘Ebola outbreak’ that has been spreading like wild fire, both, as a topic gone ‘viral’ and as the literal pandemic that is killing indiscriminately.
The novel, published in 1949, follows the protagonist Isherwood Williams, as he finds himself as one of the few survivors on a planet where civilisation has been wiped out by a mysterious disease. Considering the historical context of the time in which, both the quote and, the novel that uses it, were written this book seemed to me, a premonition of things to come. In 1949 much of the world was in the stage of recovering from WWII, commercial aviation was something that was still in its early stages, not yet a commodity to be enjoyed by your average citizen, yet Stanley clearly realized the potential ramifications of a world in which one pole was no longer more than a 24 hour trip from the other.
Whilst a virus in transit, able to hop between continents, is arguably something that is actually happening in today’s world I want to avoid the topic of Ebola. As a scientist, Stanley was speaking hypothetically. As true then as it is today, given the right circumstances a virus could travel the breadth of the planet infecting the majority of people. However this is not happening. Currently the Ebola virus is only a serious threat to the people of West Africa, and to a lesser extent the people in the bordering countries. The threat of Ebola to the western world is something, which the media have exaggerated and fabricated because scare stories sell. It’s atrocious that an individual dying of Ebola in the U.S gets more coverage than a whole town of people in Guinea or Sierra Leone, but unfortunately that’s the way it works. Although I kind of want to start writing about how it’s possible that large pharmaceutical companies are orchestrating the whole scene so people spend millions on pseudo cures in a year’s time, I doubt the authenticity of this claim myself and I don’t want to sound like some conspiracy nut. So like a good little English graduate I’ll return to the book, which I thought was well good!
Above anything else I think it is an important environmental text. I’d definitely put it on a suggested reading list for. . . Everyone I guess. Because, as Stewart writes ‘Biologically, man has for too long a time been rolling an uninterrupted run of sevens’ (Earth Abides, George R. Stewart, Millennium Publishing, 1999, p.8). We’re getting too big for out boots! At least that’s what I think. We’ve got too used to abundance and instant gratification. Society has evolved to accept that we have an endless supply of everything we need. Around 500 years ago the European settlers headed west and arrived to an island of paradise, America. Multiplying and consuming the abundance of all that was nourishing and magical, the colonies grew and again headed west, until eventually they reached another ocean. However this ideology of opportunity and profusion is something that continued to grow, and now our society is practically built on values surrounding these two things. In The Earth Abides, Stewart uses a case study on rats as a kind of analogy for this fatal flaw of our avarice. Brought to a tropical island as stowaways on a boat, the rats gorged themselves on the fruit and plants of which there was plenty. Breeding all year round and with no need to compete amongst themselves the rat population grew large and the rats themselves were ‘extremely well nourished, and even unduly fat’. Then due to their ‘crowding and also probably because of the softened condition of the individuals, the rats proved universally susceptible’ (p.10) to a new disease and soon became extinct on this particular island.
Reading this it seems obvious that the rats are us. Without having to struggle, or even think about our survival, many of us have become grossly unhealthy, incapable and lazy (I admit I belong to 2 of these categories). Again avoiding the topic of disease, (which is only the introduction to the concepts Stewart is discussing) this book really gets you thinking about us as a species and as a civilisation. Even without ‘Ebola’, which seems to be the hip and trendy threat to our existent at the moment we have lots of other obstacles and potential problems to tackle which aren’t discussed that much in the public sphere; population growth; famine; solar flares, and global warming to name but a few.
Now I’ve not got a solution here, so if you’re expecting to find one you should probably look elsewhere, perhaps find someone who actually knows what they’re on about. If it’s any consolation for myself, which it isn’t, neither has Stewart. Though this book isn’t trying to provide a solution, instead it imagines what life would be like after an event that has left humanity in ruin.
Initially it is a book about survival, suggesting that the survivors of the old world could last on canned goods in supermarkets and enjoy relative comfort for some time, but eventually things must change; without maintenance the dams and electrical turbines stop functioning and Isherwood is plunged into darkness; roads get blocked by falling trees, and with no one to move them certain parts of the world become inaccessible. Nevertheless these are just the preliminary problems that face the protagonist. Eventually he finds a partner and has children, where he is faced with perhaps less obvious predicaments. Does he try to teach them and rebuild society or is this a struggle in vain? Can 1940s America be rebuilt in a few generations?
I don’t want to ruin the book for any potential readers by describing massive chunks but I was amazed about how relevant this text is today. Since the 1940s advancements in technology and home comforts have grown unimaginably, and all the while it seems we could barely conceive a world without them. We have a finite supply of resources on this planet and even without disease or nuclear war it seems we will eventually come to a stage where people cannot survive. Whilst Stewart doesn’t pose any solutions he imagines a convincingly realistic post-civilisation world where man is lost, despite the accomplishments and power achieved over time.
I believe the sign of a good book is based on the lasting impression on the reader. I finished reading The Earth Abides a few weeks back now and I’m still turning it over in my head. Part of me was left thinking that we need to make some radical changes to help sustain society and the world we live in but then part of me thinks maybe we should let Rome burn, maybe it will be better in the long run….
READ IT!!
Then tell me what you think.
