Description
Description
The cabin had always been a special retreat for Isherwood Williams, a haven from the demands of society. But one day while hiking, Ish was bitten by a rattlesnake, and the solitude he had so desired took on dire new significance.
He was sick for days--and often delirious--waking up to find two strangers peering in at him from the cabin door. Yet oddly, instead of offering help, the two ran off as if terrified. Not long after, the coughing began. Ish suffered chills and fever, and a measles-like rash on his skin. He was one of the few people in the world to live through that peculiar malady, but he didn't know it then.
Ish headed home when he finally felt himself again--and noticed the strangeness almost immediately. No cars passed him on the road; the gas station not far from his cabin looked abandoned; and he was shocked to see the body of a man on the roadside near a small town.
Without a radio or phone, Ish had no idea of humanity's abrupt demise. He had escaped death, yet could not escape the catastrophe--and with an eerie detachment he found himself curious as to how long it would be before all traces of civilization faded from Earth.
About the Author
About the Author
Critical Reviews
Critical Reviews
"Earth Abides was a huge influence on my book [The Stand]. Read it in 7th grade and never forgot it." -- Stephen King
"This novel, George Stewart's masterpiece, is exceptionally ambitious, wide-ranging, graceful, and wise. It's one of the greatest novels in the subgenre of science fiction now called post-apocalyptic, and very worthy of the permanent place in science fiction and in American literature that it has achieved." -- Kim Stanley Robinson, author of The Ministry for the Future
"This is a book, mind you, that I'd place not only among the greatest science fiction but among our very best novels. Each time I read it, I'm profoundly affected, affected in a way only the greatest art--Ulysses, Matisse or Beethoven symphonies, say--affects me. Epic in sweep, centering on the person of Isherwood Williams, Earth Abides proves a kind of antihistory, relating the story of humankind backwards, from ever-more-abstract civilization to stone-age primitivism." -- Boston Globe
"One of those novels so rare in our time, that the reader wishes would never end."
-- New Yorker
"The book has more thought-challenging elements than a shelf full of ordinary novels."
-- Christian Science Monitor
"This is a novel that deserves not only to be read as a masterwork of sf, but also a classic of American literature."
-- SFFWorld.com
Publishing Information
Publishing Information
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