Shogghoth

Spoilers ahead

Reading Earth Abides was a fascinating book as at its time it was one of the first novels to discuss as a scientific test what if the world had undergone an horrific pandemic which wiped out all of humanity? Science Fiction at the time it was written but post Covid it definitely follows science fictions ability to first imagine the future and in strange cases manifest it. It makes the act of reading the story less like taking in a piece of fiction which you can disregard and more like an anthropologists catalog of what the world will be like with man gone. Where will all the farm animals go? Where will all the pets? What creatures will be brought back from extinction and what will be brought back to it because man is no longer there to take care of them?

Earth Abides is really three different stories in one as it starts with World Without End then goes into The Year 22 and finally concludes with The Last American.

First is the World Without End which focuses on introducing both the main character of the book Isherwood Williams who a recluse and a naturalist is bitten by a snake and misses the downfall of civilization. The united states is disbanded and its people disappear into history. A fasting moving fast acting human focused disease has taken man down a peg. The author explains the hypothesis of why this happens by using a repeated pattern seen in history of nature balancing itself out by the use of pandemic. It’s seen in the locusts who after a massive population boom which rendered many other species under danger they soon underwent a mysterious disappearance and returned to reasonable numbers.

This being the thought experiment which ended the world. George Stewart uses this as a method to take you on a scientific journey of the country as Isherwood who a sees nothing better to do then become a recorder to the downfall of man sets off on a nationwide journey growing from California to New York and back seeing each region its animals and its remaining people and cataloguing how they survive or if they are fit for long term survival.

This is where the book gets interesting as Ish could have just been a vehicle for Stewart to talk about his predictions but he also brings a bit of Ish’s intellectual bigotry and makes it known that it’s only just a prediction not an exact science. Some creature like the sheep may continue to survive despite the farmer being there to protect them from wolves. Nothing is determined and that is seen when Ish discusses the rare people he meets on his journey. He meets some rural people in Georgia which are deemed to survive since life has not changed much but then contrasts that with Long Islanders who can survive for a bit in the greatest city of the world with all the food and amenities they can have but will probably be stuck as a relic to the times which people live in agrarian societies.

This leads to Year 22 as this is when Ish meets Emma and begins to start his family and his attempt to rebuild society. Because of a lack of dates they carve time in a rock and have 22 years go by as the community around his old parents house begins to grow in size due to Ish and Emma’s children and other survivors joining along. Year 22 picks up as the year Ish wants to rebuild the United States in no short terms. He sees the pattern of people still living of the old society using the running water system and canned foods as an example and deems this to be a dead end for humanity which is surely approaching. The means to recreate these commodities are arcane knowledge by this time after the apocalypse and without proper intellectual care they will fade into history.

Ish tries to find someone else like him in the group and lands on his joint son Joey being the one deemed to continue the teaching of reading writing and all those humanities which lifted nations before. It’s only when tragedy strikes and Joey cannot continue the line does he fall into despair.

Ish is a flawed person and I think that was a great choice for the story as we see him become the last American being old and frail and seeing the group become more and more foreign to him as the people in his life die and forget the past and what America used to be and all this does it make him retreat inward. He is still overwhelmed by the task to continue the world which made trains and cars but still can’t help but only reminisce rather than take active steps to make it happen himself.

It’s seen as a good observation that most people will just continue their lives to survive the day to day but it takes someone who. Is compulsive an a worrier to be someone who plans for the future. Historically humanity have not been good long term planners and it usually takes people a tragedy or loss of life for them to make a preventive change.

This is what I found when reading Earth Abides. The thinking about the world and how we have shaped it away from natures grasp but never out of its reach. I found that it’s hard to be someone who plans ahead but through the thoughts and frustrations of Isherwood Williams you wanna become that person who eases suffering and shepherds nations. Being a host to the Library of Alexandria is hard when you have to rush into the burning building but either way if society collapses people will get along fine without it but probably there will be less of them.