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james_davis_nicollThe Earth Abides (part 1)
The Earth Abides (Part 2)
In part one, Isherwood Williams survives a rattlesnake bite only to discover that he is also one of very few survivors of a great plague that has killed almost all of humanity virtually over night. After exploring parts of the US, he meets and settles down with a woman named Em, surviving the various hazards of the empty Earth.
In part two Ish, Em and the other survivors do their best to build a new society. Success is mixed; many of them survive long enough to have descendents and so it seems humanity will not die out but almost all of the knowledge of the old world sinks into myth.
It's interesting what they left out to make this more palatable to audiences in 1950s America. The fact that Em is passing for white gets tossed and the section with the sharecroppers is pretty much left out. The nature of the offense that gets someone executed is changed from would-be rape and being a carrier for STDs to manslaughter.
Ish is pretty contemptuous of the couple he finds in New York, content to live for the moment off the riches off the city, but he and Em do pretty much the same thing until forced out of San Francisco by lack of water and disease. The book goes into more detail about how abjectly Ish fails in most of his grand plans.
The Earth Abides (Part 2)
In part one, Isherwood Williams survives a rattlesnake bite only to discover that he is also one of very few survivors of a great plague that has killed almost all of humanity virtually over night. After exploring parts of the US, he meets and settles down with a woman named Em, surviving the various hazards of the empty Earth.
In part two Ish, Em and the other survivors do their best to build a new society. Success is mixed; many of them survive long enough to have descendents and so it seems humanity will not die out but almost all of the knowledge of the old world sinks into myth.
It's interesting what they left out to make this more palatable to audiences in 1950s America. The fact that Em is passing for white gets tossed and the section with the sharecroppers is pretty much left out. The nature of the offense that gets someone executed is changed from would-be rape and being a carrier for STDs to manslaughter.
Ish is pretty contemptuous of the couple he finds in New York, content to live for the moment off the riches off the city, but he and Em do pretty much the same thing until forced out of San Francisco by lack of water and disease. The book goes into more detail about how abjectly Ish fails in most of his grand plans.
