Earth Abides (1949) by George R. Stewart

Book Review

Earth Abides (1949)

by George R. Stewart

   I recently read an article about American author George R. Stewart (1895-1980), a Berkeley CA based writer who wrote widely across genre, with a good deal of popular success but little lasting critical impact.  Today he is remembered for two books: Storm, which is about, well.. a storm, and is credited with being the inspiration for naming hurricanes after people to tell them apart.  Storm just got a New York Review of Books reprint in August of this year.   His other famous book is this one, Earth Abides, which is widely credited as being the direct or indirect inspiration for a generation of post-World War II post-apocalyptical fiction.

    Earth Abides is at times hilariously out of date, like all books of science fiction it is much a reflection of the actual times of the author than any work of imagination on his or her part.  For example, the main character continues to smoke tobacco cigarettes from "before the fall" for decades after the collapse (caused by an unidentified virus, with minimal societal disruption), while his after the fall community in Berkeley California never mentions marijuana. 

    Stewart's apocalypses is a relentlessly PG affair, with none of the horrors that contemporary readers associate with the genre.  The single act of violence in the book is the murder/execution of a diseased drifter with ill-intentions at the hands of the community.  The infrastructure of pre-collapse, specifically, running water, continues to operate for decades after the fall.  

 Isherwood Williams, the protagonist, is an intermittently interesting guy prone to paroxyms of guilt over his failure to lead his burgeoning community past a semi-parasitic existence of hunting the abundant free roaming cattle and eating out of still-good cans of food.  I mean, you would think these people would be able to get a vegetable garden going.   There are horses available, but they choose to rely on dogs for their limited travel needs.  They are a profoundly unambitious bunch by the standards of the genre and their world is basically a paradise.   It's all very mid 20th century. 

Peach Blossom Paradise (2021) by Ge Fei

Book Reviewg

Peach Blossom Paradise (2020)

by Ge Fei

  Ge Fei is the pen name for Chinese author Liu Yong, well regarded as one of the preeminent writers of "experimental" writers in China for the past several decades.  Fei is little known in English- Peach Blossom Paradise, originally published in 2010, is only the second book from his bibliography to receive an English language translation.   Part of a trilogy,  Peach Blossom Paradise mostly tells the story of Xiumi, the neglected daughter of a wealthy land owner growing up in turn of the 20th century China.

Xiumi is married off, only to be kidnapped by by bandits.  Her family refuses to ransom her, and she ends up the sex slave of a coterie of bandits.  Eventually freed as a side-effect of inter-gang warfare, she makes her way back to her ancestral village and begins a program to revolutionize the people.  Xiumi is not a Communist, rather this refers to the pre-Communist revolutionary activities of a coalition of intellectuals and criminals who acted through secret societies. 

    It's hard to say why this would be considered "experimental" literature in any language, it's more like a straight forward historical novel than anything else. Like many works of Chinese fiction in translation, it can be hard to pick up on the reference points.  For example, this entire book is a reworking of the well known Peach Blossom Paradise myth, but who is going to know that in the English speaking world?  Peach Blossom Paradise is nominated for the National Book Award for Translated literature shortlist, but it would seem like a longshot to win.

The Animals in That Country (2020) by Laura Jean McKay

Book Review

The Animals in That Country (2020) 

by Laura Jean McKay

   The Animals in That Country, by Australian author Laura Jean McKay ticked several boxes that made me want to read it.   First, it's a prize winner from another English speaking country that won an international award (Arthur C. Clarke) as well as a domestic award (Victorian Premier's Literary Award.)  At this point, with a well publicized release in both the UK and the US, it counts as a borderline literary/science fiction cross-over sensation.  And did I mention the original publisher was a small press in Australia?

    It is always a fair bet that if you even hear about a book from another English language country getting a wide release in the United States, it means that book has what it takes to be a hit with both critics and audiences.  Otherwise, a publisher wouldn't even bother.  This is a different phenomenon then when books published in other English language countries get released in the US without a separate campaign- that's just a dumping, or cross-posting situation.

   The idea of The Animals in That Country is that a virus infects the population and allows them to understand what animals, and eventually insects, are saying.  One might naturally suppose that this means that humans can "talk to animals" but that isn't really the case- the reality turns out to be much more horrifying, as humans face the consequences of their casual cruelty to most of god's creatures.  The narrator- is Jean, a washed-up, alcoholic grandma who ekes out a living as a hanger-on at an outback wild life park in Australia, serving at the sufferance of her daughter-in-law (now separated from her son), who runs the park. 

   The plotting is conventionally genre, but the writing is not, and anyone who doubts that McKay is a writer of literary fiction trying to make a name for herself in the kiddie pool might consider that the name of this book comes from a poem by Margaret Atwood, who knows something about the line between genre and literary fiction.   What isn't conventionally genre is the writing, particularly McKay's deft handling of the animal voices.   The Animals in That Country is deeply unsettling and worthy of the international audience it has obtained.