false 38169 0060741872 9780060741877 2636 444 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1169064009m/38169.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38169.Alas_Babylon 21475 Pat Frank 2901 504 4 0 false Sat Jul 04 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 22 07:41:12 -0700 2009 Fri Jul 24 10:35:18 -0700 2009
The book follows Randy Bragg, a man adrift in life and lounging around in the small community of Fort Repose, Florida with nothing much better to to. That all changes when nuclear war breaks out between the U.S. and Russia (the book is set in the early 1960s) and everything goes to pot. Fort Repose luckily avoids the overlapping circles of nuclear doom that hit most of Florida's cities, but it becomes cut off from the rest of whatever passes for civilization. Randy has to abruptly change gears and finds himself as a leader leader among his town's survivors in general and his own household in specific. The book tells about how Fort Repose acts as a stand in for civilization in general as it unravels, adapts, and is reborn.

I really liked this book. The extra twist for modern readers like you and me is that Alas Babylon is set about 50 years in the past. In a way this is weird, because there's a lot of ink spent on out dated details, like milk deliveries, telegrams, radio, and the like, where an updated version of the story would no doubt deal with cel phone networks, the Internet, and satellite television. But at the same time, this temporal setting gives the book its own flavor that grows on you and intrigues you by setting forth a slightly different set of rules. Then again, things like gasoline supply chains and the abstract nature of the world financial system remain as relevant now as they were then. Either way, it gets you thinking.

The other thing to like about Alas, Babylon is that there's a lot more literary machinery going on under the adventure story surface. The book comments extensively on race relations between Whites and Blacks (which were no doubt different in 1959 than they are in 2009) and how it takes a nuclear war to level the playing field. And there's plenty of commentary about how different people deal with the upturning of their world. Randy Bragg make plans to dig an artesian well to procure fresh water while the rich banker's wife blithely decides to saunter down to the super market and hopes that it's "not too crowded."

So I'd definitely recommend Alas, Babylon despite its original publication date, or perhaps even partially because of it. It combines end of the world adventure with social commentary and psychological character development. What's not to like?]]>