By the Waters of Babylon (Creative Short Stories) [Library Binding]

Stephen Vincent Benet (Author)

Book Description

Series: Creative Short Stories

After the Great Burning, when fire fell out of the sky, a young priest explores the forbidden Place of the Gods and discovers what kind of beings lived there before their cities were destroyed.

Product Details

• Library Binding: 32 pages
• Publisher: Creative Co (Sd) (September 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0886822947
• ISBN-13: 978-0886822941
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,295,273 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An early science fiction tale that is one of the best, February 28, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Buffalo, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: By the Waters of Babylon (Creative Short Stories) (Library Binding)

This is a tale, the first tale, of post-Armageddon America, rural pioneer America, somewhere near the join of the Ohio and the Missisippi, in the mountains, of long to come; there is no definition of The Great Fire, referred to as having happened centuries ago, but it sure sounds like nuclear war to me, and it was written before such devastation had any possibility.

The scenes encountered by the young boy as he travels are also consistent with nuclear fallout; he sees that people were arrested at their dinner, the food on the table. Hiroshima hadn't happened yet, but Benet foresaw that.

And it's a rattling good tale, a coming of age tale, superbly well written, by a true American master of country idiom, who ridiculously, regrettably, and unfathomably has been almost forgotten. Benet wrote a little like Ray Bardbury to those who know the latter and not the first.

Benet, and his wife (Rosemary Benet) and brother (William Rose Benet) and brother's wife (Elinor Wylie) were nearly all we had of a true literati in the late thirties. Catch anything any of them wrote. It's supremo.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Deceptively complex, February 6, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: By the Waters of Babylon (Creative Short Stories) (Library Binding)

Judging from the two young students' experience with this story, I'd say their teachers did little to help them understand the real-life implications of Benet's work. As a sophomore English teacher I found that there was just not enough time to fully explore all the related aspects of Benet's cautionary tale. The dissatisfied readers would benefit from reading related books (1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, Gulliver's Travels, Candide, etc.)and learning about the history of the time (Great Depression, Nazi uprising) in order to put the themes of the story in context, starting first with the history of Babylon.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very interesting for its era., September 19, 2002

By 

"basara549" (Corbin, KY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: By the Waters of Babylon (Creative Short Stories) (Library Binding)

... The number of things the author had right - especially since he died two years before the first Atomic bomb - is almost frightening.
This type of fiction appears to be out-of-genre for the author, best known for historical writings, but one can see in it the basis of his motivations, pre-Pearl-Harbor, concerning United States entry into World War II.
Taken in context with its era, it is a very important work - ...