320 pages
English language
Published Sept. 3, 1993 by Harpercollins.
A story of a group of people who rely on their own courage and ingenuity to survive in a town which escaped nuclear bombing.
I read this for the first time while I was in high school during the Cold War. I lived in a town that had a SAC base that also hosted nuclear ordinance. I've read it a few more times as an adult, too. While the story seems dated today, it's not hard to understand the struggles of surviving in a post-nuclear war world.
This is an unbelievably excellent apocalyptic 'tale'. I read a lot of dystopian novels and this, among the first of the genre, is among the VERY best. The plot line, the characters, and their humanity are astonishingly well depicted. If you have no read it, you should.
It was interesting to read this book just after completing "The City, Not Long After" and just before the threats against South Korea and the US coming from Pyongyang picked up in frequency. Published in '59, "Alas, Babylon" is, to be sure, a product of its era in many ways. The gender and racial politics observed by the third-person narrator (of alternating limited-omniscience) are interesting, in that they are challenged by the post-WWIII environment in some ways, and reinforced in other ways ("color lines" break down, to an extent, while gender roles are seen as necessary to maintaining the structure of civilization and the preservation of females themselves). In this sense, I preferred Murphy's post-apocalyptic San Francisco in "The City, Not Long After," but of course, her book was released in '88.
The thing that surprised me the most as I began reading "Alas, Babylon" was how detailed the explanation …
It was interesting to read this book just after completing "The City, Not Long After" and just before the threats against South Korea and the US coming from Pyongyang picked up in frequency. Published in '59, "Alas, Babylon" is, to be sure, a product of its era in many ways. The gender and racial politics observed by the third-person narrator (of alternating limited-omniscience) are interesting, in that they are challenged by the post-WWIII environment in some ways, and reinforced in other ways ("color lines" break down, to an extent, while gender roles are seen as necessary to maintaining the structure of civilization and the preservation of females themselves). In this sense, I preferred Murphy's post-apocalyptic San Francisco in "The City, Not Long After," but of course, her book was released in '88.
The thing that surprised me the most as I began reading "Alas, Babylon" was how detailed the explanation of the pre- and post-apocalyptic societies were, despite this novel's home on the Young Adult shelves. The events leading up to WWIII are illustrated with startling clarity, and by focusing specifically on one small county, rather than involving other cities to the extent that Murphy does in her book, Pat Frank was able to elucidate his hypothesis regarding the chronology of a civilization's dismantling and its denizens' responses to a degree that has been unparalleled in other post-apocalyptic works I've read or seen. I think I liked this novel for the same reason that I liked watching Swiss Family Robinson or reading Hatchet as a kid: it's a sort of challenge to the viewer or reader. How would I handle disaster, provided I survived? What practical skills do I have?
In 1959, Pat Frank didn't seem to feel we'd be very well-prepared for the results of nuclear war, and in comparing the recently-outmoded technology his characters were able to salvage or revisit after the bombs dropped to our current internet- and smart-phone-dependent society, my guess is he'd lose his shit if he could see us now.
Alas, Babylon is a very good story with characters that are easily relate-able and sympathetic. Written in 1959, it's a horrifying account of the effects of nuclear war upon a small Florida town. Though fiction, Pat Frank was attempting to present an accurate, instructional portrayal of the aftermath of the likely scale of war we might have faced at that time.
Where it falls a bit short of that goal is Frank's decision to present what is ultimately a best-case scenario. The setting is a rural area far from strategic targets, possessed of decent people, strong, moral leaders with a modicum of forewarning, and a natural environment capable of providing most necessities.
It doesn't have the emotional heft of The Road, but is also not lurid or melodramatic. I'm guessing he'd have written this a bit differently after the up-tick in nuclear capabilities by, say, 1989.
Alas Babylon by Pat Frank (1982)
