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George R. Stewart

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Earth Abides Paperback – September 12, 1986

by George R. Stewart (Author)

4.4 4,726 ratings

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A disease of unparalleled destructive force has sprung up almost simultaneously in every corner of the globe, all but destroying the human race. One survivor, strangely immune to the effects of the epidemic, ventures forward to experience a world without man. What he ultimately discovers will prove far more astonishing than anything he'd either dreaded or hoped for.

Print length

352 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Fawcett
Publication date

September 12, 1986
Dimensions

4.25 x 0.75 x 6.75 inches
ISBN-10

0449213013
ISBN-13

978-0449213018
Lexile measure

960L
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What's it about?
A man returns home to find society collapsed due to a pandemic and becomes a leader in the rebuilding of civilization.
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When the opportunity was at your hand, you did not dare to seize it. When the opportunity was lost, it became precious.
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Biologically, man has for too long a time been rolling an uninterrupted run of sevens.
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Perhaps rationalism—like so much else—had only been one of the luxuries which men could afford under civilization.
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Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

A disease of unparalleled destructive force has sprung up almost simultaneously in every corner of the globe, all but destroying the human race. One survivor, strangely immune to the effects of the epidemic, ventures forward to experience a world without man. What he ultimately discovers will prove far more astonishing than anything he'd either dreaded or hoped for.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1.

. . . and the government of the United States of America is herewith suspended, except in the District of Columbia, as of the emergency. Federal officers, including those of the Armed Forces, will put themselves under the orders of the governors of the various states or of any other functioning local authority. By order of the Acting President. God save the people of the United States. . . .

Here is an announcement which has just come in from the Bay Area Emergency Council. The West Oakland Hospitalization Center has been abandoned. Its functions, including burials at sea, are now concentrated at the Berkeley Center. That is all. . . .

Keep tuned to this station, which is the only one now in operation in northern California. We shall inform you of developments, as long as it is possible.

Just as he pulled himself up to the rock ledge, he heard a sudden rattle, and felt a prick of fangs. Automatically he jerked back his right hand; turning his head, he saw the snake, coiled and menacing. It was not a large one, he noted, even at the moment when he raised his hand to his lips and sucked hard at the base of the index finger, where a little drop of blood was oozing out.

“Don’t waste time by killing the snake!” he remembered.

He slid down from the ledge, still sucking. At the bottom he saw the hammer lying where he had left it. For a moment he thought he would go on and leave it there. That seemed like panic; so he stooped and picked it up with his left hand, and went on down the rough trail.

He did not hurry. He knew better than that. Hurry only speeded up a man’s heart, and made the venom circulate faster. Yet his heart was pounding so rapidly from excitement or fear that hurrying or not hurrying, it seemed, should make no difference. After he had come to some trees, he took his handkerchief and bound it around his right wrist. With the aid of a twig he twisted the handkerchief into a crude tourniquet.

Walking on, he felt himself recovering from his panic. His heart was slowing down. As he considered the situation, he was not greatly afraid. He was a young man, vigorous and healthy. Such a bite would hardly be fatal, even though he was by himself and without good means of treatment.

Now he saw the cabin ahead of him. His hand felt stiff. Just before he got to the cabin, he stopped and loosened the tourniquet, as he had read should be done, and let the blood circulate in the hand. Then he tightened it again.

He pushed open the door, dropping the hammer on the floor as he did so. It fell, handle up, on its heavy head, rocked back and forth for a moment, and then stood still, handle in the air.

He looked into the drawer of the table, and found his snake-bite outfit, which he should have been carrying with him on this day of all days. Quickly he followed the directions, slicing with the razor-blade a neat little crisscross over the mark of the fangs, applying the rubber suction-pump. Then he lay on his bunk watching the rubber bulb slowly expand, as it sucked the blood out.

He felt no premonitions of death. Rather, the whole matter still seemed to him just a nuisance. People had kept telling him that he should not go into the mountains by himself—“Without even a dog!” they used to add. He had always laughed at them. A dog was constant trouble, getting mixed up with porcupines or skunks, and he was not fond of dogs anyway. Now all those people would say, “Well, we warned you!”

Tossing about half-feverishly, he now seemed to himself to be composing a defense. “Perhaps,” he would say, “the very danger in it appealed to me!” (That had a touch of the heroic in it.) More truthfully he might say, “I like to be alone at times, really need to escape from all the problems of dealing with people.” His best defense, however, would merely be that, at least during the last year, he had gone into the mountains alone as a matter of business. As a graduate student, he was working on a thesis: The Ecology of the Black Creek Area. He had to investigate the relationships, past and present, of men and plants and animals in this region. Obviously he could not wait until just the right companion came along. In any case, he could never see that there was any great danger. Although nobody lived within five miles of his cabin, during the summer hardly a day passed without some fisherman coming by, driving his car up the rocky road or merely following the stream.

Yet, come to think of it, when had he last seen a fisherman? Not in the past week certainly. He could not actually remember whether he had seen one in the two weeks that he had been living by himself in the cabin. There was that car he had heard go by after dark one night. He thought it strange that any car would be going up that road in the darkness, and could hardly see the necessity, for ordinarily people camped down below for the night and went up in the morning. But perhaps, he thought, they wanted to get up to their favorite stream, to go out for some early fishing.

No, actually, he had not exchanged a word with anyone in the last two weeks, and he could not even remember that he had seen anyone.

A throb of pain brought him back to what was happening at the moment. The hand was beginning to swell. He loosened the tourniquet to let the blood circulate again.

Yes, as he returned to his thoughts, he realized that he was out of touch with things entirely. He had no radio. Therefore, as far as he was concerned, there might have been a crash of the stock market or another Pearl Harbor; something like that would account for so few fishermen going by. At any rate, there was very little chance apparently that anyone would come to help him. He would have to work his own way out.

Yet even that prospect did not alarm him. At worst, he considered, he would lie up in his cabin, with plenty of food and water for two or three days, until the swelling in his hand subsided and he could drive his car down to Johnson’s, the first ranch.

The afternoon wore on. He did not feel like eating anything when it came toward suppertime, but he made himself a pot of coffee on the gasoline stove, and drank several cups. He was in much pain, but in spite of the pain and in spite of the coffee he became sleepy. . . .

He woke suddenly in half-light, and realized that someone had pushed open the cabin door. He felt a sudden relief to know that he had help. Two men in city clothes were standing there, very decent-looking men, although staring around strangely, as if in fright. “I’m sick!” he said from his bunk, and suddenly he saw the fright on their faces change to sheer panic. They turned suddenly without even shutting the door, and ran. A moment later came the sound of a starting motor. It faded out as the car went up the road.

Appalled now for the first time, he raised himself from the bunk, and looked through the window. The car had already vanished around the curve. He could not understand. Why had they suddenly disappeared in panic, without even offering to help?

He got up. The light was in the east; so he had slept until dawn the next morning. His right hand was swollen and acutely painful. Otherwise he did not feel very ill. He warmed up the pot of coffee, made himself some oatmeal, and lay down in his bunk again, in the hope that after a while he would feel well enough to risk driving down to Johnson’s—that is, of course, if no one came along in the meantime who would stop and help him and not like those others, who must be crazy, run away at the sight of a sick man.

Soon, however, he felt much worse, and realized that he must be suffering some kind of relapse. By the middle of the afternoon he was really frightened. Lying in his bunk, he composed a note, thinking that he should leave a record of what had happened. It would not be very long of course before someone would find him; his parents would certainly telephone Johnson’s in a few days now, if they did not hear anything. Scrawling with his left hand, he managed to get the words onto paper. He signed merely Ish. It was too much work to write out his full name of Isherwood Williams, and everybody knew him by his nickname.

At noon, feeling himself like the shipwrecked mariner who from his raft sees the steamer cross along the horizon, he heard the sound of cars, two of them, coming up the steep road. They approached, and then went on, without stopping. He called to them, but by now he was weak, and his voice, he was sure, did not carry the hundred yards to the turnoff where the cars were passing.

Even so, before dusk he struggled to his feet, and lighted the kerosene lamp. He did not want to be left in the dark.

Apprehensively, he bent his lanky body down to peer into the little mirror, set too low for him because of the sloping roof of the cabin. His long face was thin always, and scarcely seemed thinner now, but a reddish flush showed through the suntan of his cheeks. His big blue eyes were bloodshot, and stared back at him wildly with the glare of fever. His light brown hair, unruly always, now stuck out in all directions, completing the mirror-portrait of a very sick young man.

He got back into his bunk, feeling no great sense of fear, although now he more than half expected that he was dying. Soon a violent chill struck him; from that he passed into a fever. The lamp burned steadily on the table, and he could see around the cabin. The hammer which he had dropped on the floor still stood there, handle pointed stiffly upwards, precariously balanced. Being right before his eyes, the hammer occupied an unduly l...

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Fawcett (September 12, 1986)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0449213013
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0449213018
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 960L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.25 x 0.75 x 6.75 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,919,884 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #21,569 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction
- #89,678 in American Literature (Books)
- #98,016 in Science Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.4 4,726 ratings

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Customer reviews

4,726 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the storyline interesting and realistic, with a thoughtful analysis of people's responses to a devastating plague. They also praise the writing quality as very well written and the author as knowledgeable. Readers describe the ending as one of the best end of the world stories ever. However, some find the emotional tone boring and without apparent emotion. Opinions are mixed on the characters, with some finding them believable and relatable, while others say they lack relatable elements. Reader opinions are mixed also on the plot, with others finding it believable, realistic, and haunting, while other say it detours through ugly assumptions that date it severely.

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Storyline Research quality Writing quality Ending Plot Age Characters Emotional tone

363 customers mention "Storyline"335 positive28 negative

Customers find the storyline captivating, solid, and sucks the reader in from the start. They also say it's well written and keeps their attention.

"...It is thought-provoking, sad and tragic in places, and thoroughly engaging. It is well worth the read...." Read more

"...the essential point that these reviewers made--that this is a book that pulls you in, that surrounds you with a "world entire," that creates a place..." Read more

"...Not only a great read, but a great warning that we have not learned enough." Read more

"...In any event, the story was thought provoking. As I just read MGM has taken on a project of making this story into a film or series later this year...." Read more

160 customers mention "Research quality"150 positive10 negative

Customers find the book thought-provoking, enlivening, and atmospheric. They say the themes are relevant to how we live and the end brings hope for mankind. Readers also say the book is remarkably prophetic, heart touching, and replete with an overview of the history of mankind. They describe it as the greatest post apocalyptic novel ever written.

"...Instead, Stewart's book is a contemplative and reflective narrative that describes how this small 'tribe' of people survive and develop over the..." Read more

"...The book's descriptions of the abandoned world are awesome, enlivening and atmospheric, and for some of us no doubt a secret dream come true...." Read more

"A very unique look at the apocalypse. Great introspect this one makes you seriously think about the mental aspect of surviving with the natural..." Read more

"...Abides by George R. Stewart is one of the most important, one of the more comforting, and one of the more hopeful books I have ever read...." Read more

116 customers mention "Writing quality"83 positive33 negative

Customers find the writing quality of the book very well written, and praise the author as knowledgeable. They also say the characters are well-developed and easy to like, and the setting is familiar.

"...Set your disbelief aside though, and read this. It's well-written, nicely paced, and enjoyable, and the depictions of the man when he's really old..." Read more

"...accident (who survived) and local geography. This book was well-written by a man who had a long lifetime of observation and thoughtful..." Read more

"...As the main character he was difficult for me to like and warm up to...." Read more

"...The book was an awkward read with many well-written passages and a lovely final acceptance of a new world and the hero's place in it...." Read more

27 customers mention "Ending"23 positive4 negative

Customers find the ending of the book powerful, and say it imbues the story with melancholy. They also describe it as a post-apocalyptic story with an unwilling hero.

"...It is thought-provoking, sad and tragic in places, and thoroughly engaging. It is well worth the read...." Read more

"...In this, its ending was gentle and generous in a way most of the book was not. I'm not sorry I picked it up, but I was glad to finish it...." Read more

"...'s scientific "modern" leanings, very powerful and imbued the story with a powerful melancholy. However, the book is not necessarily all depressing...." Read more

"...It stayed with me, has a haunting ending, and I could not shake it...." Read more

99 customers mention "Plot"67 positive32 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the plot. Some find the world believable, realistic, and astounding. They also describe the book as a sci-fi classic that presents much credible information. However, other customers find the book detours through ugly assumptions that date it severely. They say the narrative flow is broken, the book contains repetitive speculation, and it's predictable.

"...His world is believable and realistic given the events that have occurred...." Read more

"...The book's descriptions of the abandoned world are awesome, enlivening and atmospheric, and for some of us no doubt a secret dream come true...." Read more

"...The book takes a long time to get there. It detours through some ugly assumptions that date it severely...." Read more

"...It really sucked me in. It gives the reader great perspectives on the essence of society." Read more

64 customers mention "Age"41 positive23 negative

Customers are mixed about the age of the book. Some mention the ideas presented in this book are timeless, great, and relevant today. However, others say it's a bit dated.

"...] - a very highly regarded history of the final attack at Gettysburg..." Read more

"...I had never heard of it. Published in 1949, it is surprisingly modern...." Read more

"...A bit dated in presentation (some of the characters perspectives seem built from life during the Second Great War; abhorring hoarders, for example),..." Read more

"...Although written in 1949, it is still very relevant today, in light of what is happening around the world as a result of COVID 19...." Read more

63 customers mention "Characters"29 positive34 negative

Customers are mixed about the characters. Some find them compelling and believable, while others say they lack relatable elements and are robotic.

"...The book's characters lack not just dignity but dimension...." Read more

"...than one could ever cover in one session, and the people are an interesting mix of personalities Two things about it stand out for me: the..." Read more

"...know where to start. To begin with, even the main character is very shallowly drawn and it goes downhill from there...." Read more

"...But overall, I couldn't put it down and was greatly moved by the characters and the plot. There is so much heart and soul in EARTH ABIDES...." Read more

63 customers mention "Emotional tone"13 positive50 negative

Customers find the emotional tone of the book boring, repetitive, and without apparent emotion. They also mention that the line is interesting but the telling of it is boring.

"...It spends far too much time in one man's head and expresses far too much of its world-building as if it were little more than confirmation of that..." Read more

"...readers, but this is poorly accomplished because it is simply uninteresting to read...." Read more

"...This book doesn't suck you in but actually loses you in contradictions, flimsy pretexts, and poor research with an ending that tails off in a..." Read more

"...favorite part of the book, but the book remains interesting and engaging throughout...." Read more

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Phil in Magnolia

Contemplative post-apocalypse story

Reviewed in the United States on December 22, 2013

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Earth Abides was written by George R. Stewart in 1949. I have only just discovered it very recently, having missed it in my youth when my reading time was largely spent with Sci-Fi authors such as Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, Tolkien, and so many others. It came to my attention through the recommendation of friends here on Amazon, and I'm glad that I learned about it and was able to read it.

The title of the book is taken from Ecclesiastes, 1:4 "Men go and come, but earth abides".

The story begins after a virus wipes out most of mankind. It chronicles the lives of a small 'tribe' of survivors, told through the eyes of one man, who becomes the de-facto leader of the group and reflects on mankind and our civilization as he tells the story of the progress of that small group over the course of several decades.

This is a book that tells a post-apocalyptic story in a very different way. It suggests the question - would survivors from a disaster that devastated most of humanity chose to rebuild society as it was before, or would they go in a different direction? The world of Earth Abides did not suffer the destruction of a global war, the landscape is not contaminated with radioactive fallout, and so all of mankind's structures and products still exist until they begin to deteriorate and decay away over time. Would the survivors in such a world simply make use of the leftovers from the predecessor society and allow the training and skills that stood behind the development of those resources to decay? Would they use those products without thinking of what will be done once they have run out and cannot be replenished, forcing them to find new ways to build and survive? At what point would they be forced to learn to survive on their own wits? There is only a small amount of angst or conflict between different surviving groups (some, but very little), and no mention whatsoever of zombies or other such constructs that would likely be part of any similar novel written today. Instead, Stewart's book is a contemplative and reflective narrative that describes how this small 'tribe' of people survive and develop over the first few decades following the apocalypse. His world is believable and realistic given the events that have occurred. It is thought-provoking, sad and tragic in places, and thoroughly engaging. It is well worth the read.

Earth Abides was originally published as a mainstream novel and was soon embraced by the science fiction community. It was the very first winner of the International Fantasy Award, and has appeared on many 'best of' lists over the years. It has continuously remained in print since it was first published in 1949. (And while there is an extensive article on the book in wikipedia, I would point out that if you have not read the book yet, the wiki article contains a complete synopsis of the book and includes many spoilers).

I have this book in both paperback and Kindle format: Earth Abides (Kindle) , and Earth Abides (paperback) . The two are equivalent except for the very interesting introductory essay included with the paperback version, which was written by Connie Willis (eleven-time Hugo-award winner and seven-time Nebula award winner, see for example Fire Watch ).

Stewart has also written a number of other highly-regarded books. I have not read any of these others myself (yet), but I'll list some of his most well-known books here for those who may have enjoyed Earth Abides and want to explore his writing further:

- Names on the Land: A Historical Account of Place-Naming in the United States (New York Review Books Classics) . I have purchased this book for myself but have not yet read it.
- Ordeal by Hunger: The Story of the Donner Party
- Storm (California Legacy)
- Fire
- Pickett's Charge - a very highly regarded history of the final attack at Gettysburg

In her introduction to the paperback version of Earth Abides, Connie Willis mentions that "in writing Storm and Fire, he was inventing a new genre: the disaster novel... Hollywood has used not only his story structure of a step-by-step account of a disaster as seen through the eyes of a group of characters caught in it, but his most brilliant innovation: the making of the catastrophe itself into a character... The true heroes, and his novels' most riveting, original characters, were the natural forces".

Stewart was a professor at the University of California, Berkeley for over 50 years. He was friend and contemporary to Wallace Stegner, another Bay-Area based writer of some note (his novel Angle of Repose won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972). Stegner greatly admired Stewarts writing, and included 'Names on the Land' on his 'must-read' list for American Non-Fiction, and 'Earth Abides' on his 'must-read' list for American Fiction (recommending that it be read alongside William M. Miller Jr.'s classic " A Canticle for Leibowitz ").

30 people found this helpful

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Mike Smith

Immerses the reader in a unique world

Reviewed in the United States on October 15, 2007

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I swear it seems that all the reviewers of this book seem desperate to convince people that they've been able to read for a really long time.
"I first read this book back in Vietnam..."
"I first read this book about thirty years ago..."
"When I first read this book, I was only twelve years old, and..."
Great, we get it, you're old, and you can read.
Ahhh... Anyway, despite my grumbling, I do agree with the essential point that these reviewers made--that this is a book that pulls you in, that surrounds you with a "world entire," that creates a place that you inhabit completely from page 1 to page 317 (in the edition I have, anyway), that creates a world that you'll find hard to forget.
The book, "Earth Abides," tells the story of a man who emerges from a long period of solitude to discover that more than 99% of the planet's humans have been killed by a powerful virus, the man himself having likely survived only because of having been bitten by a snake around the same time.
The book's descriptions of the abandoned world are awesome, enlivening and atmospheric, and for some of us no doubt a secret dream come true. It gets even cooler whent the man decides to take a road trip across the newly desolate America--from California to New York City. That's the book's first section, and was probably my favorite part of the book, but the book remains interesting and engaging throughout. The man meets a woman, they have children, they meet others, they form a community, and then--this seemed a bit hard for me to swallow--they basically let all of civilization go, and three generations later they're basically a tribe of primitives who are happy and functional, but who can't read, can't use any of the technologies created by mankind, and believe the sun revolves around the Earth. Yeah, that happened kind of quick....
Set your disbelief aside though, and read this. It's well-written, nicely paced, and enjoyable, and the depictions of the man when he's really old seem totally accurate in their depiction of the sort of fuzzy and uncertain warmth of old age, though I'd need to have this book's other reviewers confirm that to be absolutely sure.
One of my only complaints about the book would be the 1940s mentality that saturates the main character's logic: at one point he says in a sort of wistful tone that maybe one day they might be able to care about such things as race again, he contemplates making himself king of two frightened black people that he meets, and he laments that the his community's lack of law has made it impossible for them to require that an insane girl be "put out of her misery." At first these comments were kind of amusing in a kitschy way, but then they really started piling up, and didn't make his character more endearing to me.
Overall though, this was a great book, and like almost everyone else who's read it, I'm sure I'll be thinking about it for years.

8 people found this helpful

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Christopher Haught

Great Read!

Reviewed in the United States on July 17, 2024

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A very unique look at the apocalypse. Great introspect this one makes you seriously think about the mental aspect of surviving with the natural order of things.

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Duke H. Durfee

Prescient Masterpiece of Science Fiction

Reviewed in the United States on June 13, 2024

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Rereading after many years I am struck by how the author anticipated the effects of a devastating pandemic on humanity and the resulting calamities. Not only a great read, but a great warning that we have not learned enough.

2 people found this helpful

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Ewwwa

Fesselnde Erzählung!

Reviewed in Germany on January 18, 2018

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Earth Abides ist eines der besten Sci Fi Bücher die ich bisher gelesen habe. Es wird die Lebensgeschichte eines Mannes erzählt, der den Untergang unserer Zivilisation übersteht und versucht sich mit einigen andere Überlebenden eine neue Existenz und Zukunft aufzubauen. Besonders spannend finde ich, dass der Roman sich über eine so lange Zeitspanne erstreckt und detailliert beschreibt, wie sich gewisse Überbleibsel der Zivilisation über die Jahrzehnte entwickeln, wenn die Menschheit so gut wie verschwunden ist. Meiner Meinung nach sehr realistisch erzählt.

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Kindle Customer

Ive always loved this book

Reviewed in Australia on November 29, 2018

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Its been about 35 years since I first read this book. I remembered it over the years and totally enjoyed the reread. I think my own maturity has allowed me to appreciate the book and its message of endurance better than when I was younger and had not lived life in all its ups and downs. I highly recommend this book.

One person found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Still timely

Reviewed in Canada on June 10, 2016

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I read this 50 years ago when I was 13, and it's still a timely, thoughtful, relevant, well-written book -- yet also reflects the period and the science of its time (1949). Elegaic passages are truly beautiful

Bruno.b

A BOOK YOU WILL REMEMBER

Reviewed in France on June 26, 2016

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One of the best science fiction books I have read . A classic. Written in 1949, it's not the least outdated.

One person found this helpful

Amazon Customer

quietly profound

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 16, 2009

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This is a beautifully written, quietly profound book that affected me deeply as I read it and has stuck in my mind ever since. The starting point of the book is a catastrophe that all but wipes out humanity, but the real interest lies in the author's exploration of what happens to nature and to the few humans left behind in a world after human society has disappeared.

Ecological changes as the abandoned cities crumble are beautifully imagined (I was reminded of the recently published (sort-of)non-fiction The World without Us ), and would on their own be reason enough to read this book. But it's the exploration of the survivors' slow descent into a more primitive way of life that makes this book so powerful. Ish, the main protagonist, is an academic who believes passionately that the accumulated knowledge of human civilisation must be preserved, and he tries to instil his passion for learning in each new generation of the tribe's children. Of course, each new generation is less interested than the last in the teachings of the 'old world', a world which they have never experienced and are unable to imagine. With no reason for anyone to learn anything that doesn't concern day-to-day survival, literacy and numeracy soon die out. This isn't quite a grim descent into primitivism - new skills and customs, more suited to the changed world, take the place of old ones, and Ish eventually comes to a resigned acceptance that when he dies the old civilisation will die with him.

There is a huge amount here besides - religion, superstition, relationships, politics, language - all are dealt with realistically and in service to the plot. Characters are so well described that you come to believe in the small proto-society of survivors, and feel every loss as they struggle to adjust to inevitable crises and setbacks. The book isn't perfect - much has been made in other reviews here of the convenient lack of corpses and empty roads in the immediate aftermath of the plague - but these are minor points. This is a beautiful elegy to human civilisation and a true literary classic.

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