Other Worlds

I'd never heard of Leigh Brackett prior to reading her novel The Long Tomorrow, and I only read the novel because it features in American Science Fiction: Four Classic Novels 1953-1956, and having bought this tasty anthology from the Library of America I felt I needed to get my money's worth. And I did. It's a genuine classic, the title of the collection does not lie.

The strength of the work lies in its brilliantly imagined setting. Ms Brackett presents us with an America that has regressed to a  primitive rural economy, populated by a sort of post-Amish brethren as a result of a devastating nuclear war which occurred at some unspecified time in the past (though within two generations of the family of the protagonist.) Written in 1955 the novel eschews the usual post-Apocalyptic clichés, I suppose because they hadn't been invented then. In some ways we are given an optimistic picture of the aftermath of Armageddon. There's been no nuclear winter and the land remains habitable and fertile, if generally empty. In the final part of the novel there are references to the horrors of Hiroshima, but the writer seems to assume that the general catastrophe has remained at that level: the horror has remained localised, centred on the cities, and society is recovering, though for the most part profoundly technophobic. Within these premises wonders are worked in terms of the depth and thoroughness of the imagination involved. As the young protagonist, Len Colter, moves through this world on a quest to find a place that has managed to keep the secrets of the great cities, the America evoked is utterly coherent and entirely believable in terms of its landscapes and population. Indeed, I reckon there's a basis here for a whole series of fictions rather than just the single, deeply-achieved one we have.

I wonder why no one ever thought of making a movie based on the book. Could it be the gender of the writer that somehow stood in the way? Or is it related to the relative lack of fireworks in the plot? There's a kind of quietness about the novel, a lack of demonstrativeness in its very sureness about the world created, that is impressive but perhaps not loud enough for its genre.