Fails To Deliver...
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Ridiculous and unconvincing tale of a post-apocalyptic everyman's personal mission for survival. By wearing the clothes of a long dead postie our itinerant minstrel and story teller ( exactly?) finds himself welcomed into various town and villages as symbol of hope for the return of a bygone age- "the Restored United States". As he travels the land carrying letters and expanding the postal service he struggles with the myth of his own creating ie. there is no restored US and there is no preserved civilisation coming to save them. If life wasnt't tough enough he has to deal with the "survivalists" who are camouflage wearing gun nuts trying to establish a feudal society through extreme violence and brutality. Our hero goes to enlist the help of an ageing, hippified general? But wait - the nutters are actually "augments", a breed of superhuman soldiers with immense physical powers (I know...) But wait again - the general is one too but he is newer one and therefore harder than they are. They fight it out and the good guys win.
Some of the themes are good - does the end justify the means? does it matter if a beneficial reality is based on a myth? What price hope? I wanted to explore this, particularly with respect to our own pre-apocalyptic society. Why doesn't Brin tackle the origin and purpose of religion? At the end though,what we get is a few good ideas struggling in a sea of tedious sci-fi tosh.
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3.5 wasn't available
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I think this is a good book, not top scoring as some would rank it, but if you like the whole apocolypse theme then this is a pretty good spin on it.
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Well Thought Post Apocalypse
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I saw the Kevin Costner film before reading the book, and unlike seemingly everyone else I enjoyed the movie. However I didn't know what to expect from the book, and so I was quite pleasantly surprised. I am of the school that enjoys movies, but knows that the books are almost always (if not always) better than the movies. The only problem I had is that I kept expecting things to happen as they had in the book, but specific details were different enough that it wasn't really ruined for me. There was thankfully no complete answer at the start that fully explained the condition of the world. This can have a place, but its absense strengthened this book. Instead the mystery is gradually unveiled until we find out that there were many wars and attacks that damaged the world. World War III errupted after an upswing out of the 80s depression. Thankfully explanations weren't simplistic and were quite credible in light of human character. Gordan Krantz was a fun character to journey with along the course of the book. Yes he is somewhat of an educated rogue that starts a huge scam to keep himself alive, but as you go along you begin to feel yourself caught up in what others feel when they hear of the "Restored United States" and the Postal Service. You cannot help but feel hope for these people, so long beaten down by the brutal Holnist survivalists and harsh post-apocalyptic conditions. If you enjoy science-fiction this book is peppered with enough of it to hold your interest, yet it isn't based of technical specs or diagrams. It is easily intelligble to the non science or sci-fi buff, yet at the same time it doesn't talk down to them either. I found it a very enjoyable story with empathetic characters and concepts that tie the whole together into something greater than the sum of its parts
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Pedestrian post apocalpyse fable
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Ok , so its better than the film, but still a derivative and largely unengaging work. Set a few years into the future, our hero sets himself up as a postman travelling between isolated communities in a world dominatd by gun toting survivalists. Needless to say this type of ground has been tread many times before in far better works (A Canticle for Leibowitz or even 'The Stand') as well as countless exploitation novels. David Brin is a far more talented author than this work suggests. His excellent short fiction (see River of Time) is highly imaginitive, his Uplift saga novels are fascinating Space Operas and even other 'lesser' works like The Practice Effect demonstrate his skill. Like many Science Fiction authors he is often better at dealing with situations and events rather than emotions and character developments and the works (like this one) where the latter take centre stage are the ones where he is least successful. Perhaps I'm being unkind, but there a lot of books in the world that are worth reading, that one might never find the time for. Don't waste such a precious source on such paltrey fare.
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Pedestrian post apocalpyse fable
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Ok , so its better than the film, but still a derivative and largely unengaging work. Set a few years into the future, our hero sets himself up as a postman travelling between isolated communities in a world dominatd by gun toting survivalists. Needless to say this type of ground has been tread many times before in far better works (A Canticle for Leibowitz or even 'The Stand') as well as countless exploitation novels. David Brin is a far more talented author than this work suggests. His excellent short fiction (see River of Time) is highly imaginitive, his Uplift saga novels are fascinating Space Operas and even other 'lesser' works like The Practice Effect demonstrate his skill. Like many Science Fiction authors he is often better at dealing with situations and events rather than emotions and character developments and the works (like this one) where the latter take centre stage are the ones where he is least successful. Perhaps I'm being unkind, but there a lot of books in the world that are worth reading, that one might never find the time for. Don't waste such a precious source on such paltrey fare.
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