Davy (novel)
Davy is a
The novel is a bildungsroman, following its title character, Davy (who grew up a ward of the state and thus has no last name) as he grows to manhood in a pseudo-medieval society dominated by a Church that actively suppresses technology, banning "anything that may contain atoms."
Davy begins as an
The novel's post-apocalyptic setting was also used in the novel The Company of Glory (1975) (set several centuries earlier). The fall of old technological culture and the rise of the religion of "Abraham" is narrated in the 1954 story "The Music Master of Babylon".[1] Numerous other short stories are set in that world. including those collected in Still I Persist in Wondering (1978)
Reception
Algis Budrys gave Davy a mixed review in Galaxy Science Fiction, saying that while he enjoyed the novel and respected Pangborn, the book "achieves its marvelous effects by talking tough while following faithfully along a line of beloved cliches ... of the self-confident Establishment tickling itself". Budrys concluded that although Pangborn "had done a rare and wonderful thing in making his protagonist "a believable, impressive, vivid and memorable character", the novel became innocuous, "totally acceptable entertainment around characters and events which would actually have made the audience run in panic ... just the perfect cheap thrill".[2]
References
- ^ Published 1954 by Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine, appeared 1959 in The World That Couldn't Be, Ed. H. L. Gold, Doubleday.
- ^ Budrys, Algis (June 1965). "Galaxy Bookshelf". Galaxy Science Fiction. pp. 164–169.