Living In The Aftermath

Incidentally, the Ubaldo Ragono adaptation of Peter Matheson's classic horror novel, I Am Legend, is the best film version. The film, titled The Last Man On Earth stars non other than Vincent Price. With minimal overacting too. It can be watched in its entirety online, though I'd rather you just read the book.

The time has come. You gauge the length of shadows as you stand at your door watching the last light recede into the west. It is time to take stock of your day. Generator refueled? Check. Ammunition replenished? Check. You've eaten what is every night a potential last meal. In less than thirty minutes you will be under siege yet again. A bandoleer of wooden stakes and a pair of .45s on your hips give you all the confidence you'll be able to muster tonight. The end is nigh. Gird yourself well. It's you or them.

The most consistent feature to the end story is the notion of a survivor of the cataclysm finding a role in the aftermath. Whether resisting alien subjugation, surviving a zombie apocalypse or merely making it day to day amidst a resource depleted Earth's final years, it is the survivor we are most interested in.

Typically this role is reserved for a form of ubermench. Usually it is either a scientist or soldier, or perhaps a hybrid of the two vocations. Hollywood has particularly latched on to this latter formula. The notion is a sexy one. A man of intelligence and physical potency standing as the final testament to mankind's ingenuity and rugged drive to persist no matter the odds.

Today I have three books that somewhat diverge from that theme. There are many great books I could have chosen from. Kurt Vonnegut's Sirens of Titan and Cat's Cradle are two that stand at the top of my list of books not reviewed here. Everyone in the world has read Cormac McCarthy's The Road and so I will not deign to inform people of its well-written but utterly paranoid and messianic vision of the end. If you haven't read it, you may want to. There will plenty of discussion and reading of the book since the film adaptation starring Viggo Mortenson (and apparently a lot more people than I though the plot would bear) is set to release on November 25th.

So that aside, let's get to the yarns I chose instead.


This Is The Way The World Ends by James Morrow. Harcourt Brace & Company. Fiction. Trade Paperback. 319 pp. ISBN: 0156002086. Click on the picture above to purchase the book from Powells Books and support the Devil's Accountant (the book, I believe, is currently out of print and only available via second hand copies).

With a title like that how could I not put this one on the list. This Is The Way The World Ends is a work of fiction that compares instantly to the best writing of Kurt Vonnegut and yet is written with something resembling more sobriety and concision of prose. James Morrow, to risk cliche, is extremely underrated. That being said, he has a very loyal following of serious readers, mostly philosophy or theology majors, and they will tell you that he is their favorite writer.

The plot is convoluted at best but in that wonderful science fiction satirical sort of way. George Paxton is a very ordinary man whose life is seemingly perfect. His wife is attractive and spontaneous and is always wearing a smirk that looks as though "she has just done something midly dangerous or lewd." His beautiful daughter is the light of his life and together the three of them have wonderful family time together. Add to this the fact that George delights in the smallest of things (a favorite movie on TV that evening will carry him through an entire day) and you have a nearly invincible American of the late 20th century. Nothing phases him. Onward and upward for George.

So it is with great excitement but some reservation that he is able to score a high end "SCOPAS" environmental survival suit for his daughter at an incredibly cheap price. The arms race is in full swing and while George Paxton has always believed in humanity's better nature he is yet willing to take advantage of providing this safety suit for his beloved daughter. The cost is low and all he needs to do is sign on the dotted line.

Then the world ends and poor George Paxton and a handful of military elites are the lone survivors.

Morrow is above all a moralist. His tales are nearly always cautionary satires that seek to question conventional theological or secular notions. Mainly test secular concepts and disparage theological ones.

Thus it is without anything like shock that the reader finds George Paxton being put on trial for crimes against mankind's future. Paxton and the military scientists find themselves before a strange race calling themselves "the Unadmitted", which is a hint as to their actual origin. Seemingly alien, the Unadmitted hold Paxton as responsible as those who pressed the buttons because his agreeing to the terms of the purchase of the environmental suit are the same as acceptance of the nuclear holocaust the suit is representative of.

Add in Nostradamus as a character and you have a bizarrely wonderful satire of humanity's greatest failing: complacence.


I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. Orb. Fiction. Trade Paperback. ISBN: 031286504x. 317 pp. Click on the picture above to purchase the book from Powells Books and support the Devil's Accountant.

Not exactly a lost book, but certainly one that may be a little misunderstood. If you have seen any of the movie adaptations of Matheson's brilliant horror story and never read the book then you have no idea what you're missing. The dark sarcasm and dripping cynicism of I Am Legend is improved upon only by the terse clarity of the writer's handiwork.

Robert Neville is the last man on earth and, as the tag line goes, he is not alone. The concept is a study in how implication creates tension. The finest example of this sort of situation via implication dates back to 1870 when Thomas Bailey Aldrich wrote possibly the shortest horror story ever.

"A woman is sitting alone in a house. She knows she is alone in the whole world; every other living thing is dead. The doorbell rings."

Matheson, unlike the scriptwriters who adapted his book, was careful to maintain tension in non action oriented ways. The book is a clever stew of humor, tension and social criticism. It has it's share of things desirable to Hollywood, namely violence and sexual content, but they are delivered with a patience and nuance that Hollywood has never been able to attain.

There are several differences between the novel and the movies worth noting. The creatures are not zombies as portrayed in the Will Smith version. They are vampires or at least creatures that resemble vampires and suffer from the weaknesses that typically plague the bloodsucking race. They are also not as anonymous as the white-faced creatures of the Charlton Heston move, "The Omega Man" or again, as the ravenous zombies in the Smith movie. Instead Matheson carefully bestows upon them enough humanity to add complexity to the plot.

Neville is the last man on Earth, and as the last man he is starved of companionship. Thus a shapely vampire vixen dancing half-clothed on his lawn at night is always a temptation he is finds hard to resist. Darker still are the moments when he hunts the vampires and comes upon an attractive female sleeping in the catatonic manner they do during the day. Neville is a clever but brutish sort of man and his lust often grows too strong for his mind to dismiss. He wrestles with questions of rape. Is it rape? Is it wrong? Are they human? It is unnerving to read these portions to say the least.

Then there is the humorous device of Ben Cortman, Neville's neighbor and former coworker. Cortman leads the charge to his doorstep every night, for it is there at his fortress like house that the horde of vampires gather every evening, and monotonously calls to Robert, "Come out, Neville!" It drives Neville to fits of laughter and insanity, sometimes at the same time.


(cover art to the Doubleday bookclub edition.)

The cleverness of this book lies in the fact that Robert Neville is an ordinary man. His being so allows the author to make his most dramatic point, which is thoroughly lost in the supermen Hollywood has paraded in the role. The essential point of Matheson's book is not that Neville is great or good but instead fearfully potent. Mankind has transformed into something new and Neville is the remainder of some other time. He violently hunts them by day, teeming with barely contained lust and unbridled hatred. In a world populated by inhuman creatures it is Robert Neville that has become the monster.

The edition published by Orb contains a selection of other tales by Matheson and all are worth reading. I Am Legend itself is only 150 pages or so and is a quick and essential read. There are few books that will make you feel as uncomfortably mirthful as this cruel tale of man's last stand.


After London by Richard Jefferies. Out-Of-Print (a few reprint publishers are maintaining this book in print - see above). Published originally in 1885 by Casell & Company Ltd., London. Click on the picture above to purchase the book from Powells Books and support the Devil's Accountant.

Far ahead of its time this slender novel contains many observations that might seem amazingly prescient to the modern reader. Jefferies was a naturalist and near-Luddite activist for English rural life. In After London he depicts a somewhat conflicted view of an England living in the aftermath of technological calamity.

I say conflicted because the fall of industrial society sets up a return to feudal society and a low-tech, roughly Middle Ages type economy and technological outlook. Swords and spears have replaced rifles and cannons. This would have been much to Jefferies delight, or so I suppose from the zeal in which he writes of a rural barony in the low tech future.

On the inverse there is the way in which this situation is arrived at. While no one knows for sure, the lore all hints at some sort of technologically based, possibly oil related disaster that some have equated with a sort of nascent peak theory. While I won't grant Jefferies that kind of foresight, I will praise his inventive story.

The middle of England has been replaced by a giant lake. The old metropolises like London are now dangerous havens of gypsies and toxic remainders of the old times. Jefferies takes careful and classically British care codifying the species of flora and fauna that exist in this new world, particularly the types of wild dogs that inhabit the wilderness.

In classic storybook fashion the novel itself concerns young Sir Felix Aquilas. Felix is a bookish knight who is better with the bow and arrow than with the sword and better still with the tomb of forgotten lore. His family is impoverished nobility and in a dangerous state of decline.

There is of course a love interest, who deeply cares for Felix despite the young bookish knight's lack of self-confidence and belief that he is not worthy of her love. Naturally they have been friends and casual kissing partners since childhood and naturally he resolves to become worthy of her love via adventure.

A quick and naive read, After London is a pleasant story fit for young adults. The writing is not incredible and the plot is often seemingly schizophrenic, but the place of this curious little book in the literary tradition of apocalyptic tales is worth noting.

Thus we have.