APOCALYPSE THEN.......WE DUCK 'N COVER AS THE MUSHROOMS SPROUT IN "ALAS, BABYLON".........

Alas Babylon by Pat Frank (1959)    Had a fascinating time, coming back to this one.......the first novel by an American author that depicted a catastrophic nuclear attack on the United States........

           2 years earlier, British-Australian author Nevil Shute published "On The Beach"........depicting Australia as the last remaining outpost of civilization in a nuked world,the population waiting to inevitably die from radiation sweeping the globe.

            Welcome to the fun-filled 50's, folks........

            Despite all the requisite horrors depicted, Pat Frank held a fundamentally optimistic view of humanity in the face of unimaginable disaster and destruction.....

             Though he afflicts his sturdy band of survivors with typhoid, murderous looters and some radioactive jewelry, they manage to prevail in their isolated little southern Florida coastal town........benefiting from their proximity to an artesian well and the fish in their patch of still uncontaminated ocean.

            (We'll not get into any scientific debate on how this bunch manages to stay clear of the fallout generated by all the nuked-to-hell-and-gone Florida cities that surround them.....)

           Pat Frank's big 'thumbs up' for humanity's perseverance must have been a comforting balm for the 1950's readers of his novel.  Though we're not quite sure how they took to Frank's brutal, direct assertion that nuclear war would most certainly put an end racism and segregation.......(nothing like scrounging for food, water and medicine to make you realize we're all in this together .....)

            But this book is very much a product of its era, a time when U.S. Presidents were men like Truman and Eisenhower.......and American institutions and values were held in awe and respect.

            Compare that era to the America we face today.........an America whose every dearly held value is under systematic attack by a mad psychopath and his vile collection of minions and sycophants.

            Pat Frank's 1959 characters remain decent, coureagous and self-sacrificing in the face of overwhelming, daunting adversity.........we wish we could feel as sure about the real populace of today.......especially the 30 per cent of them who've so readily surrendered their hearts and mind to an individual who's both heartless and mindless.....

          We wonder what Frank would have made of today's American.........governed by people who celebrate inhumanity, bigotry, rage and hatred.

           We doubt he would have ended a 2018 version of "Alas Babylon" as optimistically as the one in 1959.