Alas, Babylon

Halfway There

TALKING POINTS MEMO: I’m just going to say it – so far I have found this book a huge disappointment. The story has done nothing for me, and the writing is downright flat. I've found very little of substance so far.

"So the struggle was not against a human enemy or for victory. The struggle, for those who survived The Day, was to survive the next."

I’M JUST ASKING QUESTIONS: I have no idea how I would react after a nuclear attack - how I would find food and water, fend for my family, protect us from attacks... but I’m pretty certain I would not choose do any of the following: pay a visit to the library or the bank, host a barbecue, scour the city for liquor and coffee, or make cracks about no longer having to worry about paying child support. The characters reactions to the destruction of most of cities of the country is completely blasé. So little of the plot of this book seems at all plausible to me.

“It was strange, she thought, pedaling steadily, that it should require a holocaust to make her own life worth living.”

Interestingly, Frank also authored a 160 page non-fiction booklet a few years after the publication of “Alas, Babylon” titled “How to survive the H-Bomb and Why”.

Wikipedia has a pretty extensive list of post-nuclear fiction here, and I was surprised to discover I’d only read a few.

I also searched a few different lists of Top Ten Nuclear Disaster movies like this one. Some of the noteworthy:

Mad Max
Superman
Terminator
The Road

Though reading this book has also brought to mind the awesome 1983 Matthew Broderick movie “War Games”:

“Nuclear warfare is a strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”