The Postman
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LC Class | PS3552.R4825 P6 1985 |
The Postman is a post-apocalyptic dystopian science fiction novel by David Brin. It is about a man wandering the desolate Oregon countryside who finds a United States Postal Service uniform, which he puts on and then claims he is a mail carrier and federal inspector for the "Restored United States of America". His mail service and claims about the return of a central government gives hope to the people, who are threatened by a murderous, neo-feudalist militia.
The first two parts were published separately as "The Postman" (1982) and "Cyclops" (1984). In 1997, a film adaptation of the novel was released starring Kevin Costner and Will Patton.
Plot
Despite the post-apocalyptic scenario and several action sequences, the book is largely about civilization and its symbols. Each of the three sections deals with a different symbol.
The first is the Postman himself, Gordon Krantz, who takes the uniform solely for warmth after he loses almost everything to bandits. He wanders amongst small communities performing scenes from
Later, in the second section, he encounters a community,
Eventually, in the third section, as the Postman joins forces with Cyclops's scientists in a war against an influx of "hypersurvivalist militia", the Postman begins to find that the hypersurvivalists are being pressed from Oregon's Rogue River area to the south as well. The hypersurvivalists are more commonly referred to as Holnists, after their founder, Nathan Holn, an author who championed a violent, misogynistic, and militaristic society. Holn was executed sometime before the events in the novel, but in the time following what should have been a brief period of civil disorder, Holn's followers' attacks prevented the United States from recovering from the war and the plagues that followed.
As the story comes to a climax, the Postman allies with a tough tribal group made up of descendants of ranchers, loggers and Native Americans from Southwestern Oregon's
Another message of the plot deals with the backstory of the post-apocalyptic world: specifically, that it was not the electronics-destroying
Reception
Dave Langford reviewed The Postman for White Dwarf #83, and stated that "The story is complicated by Krantz's intersection with another myth in the making, and then by a muddle of battle, murder and enhanced super-guerillas, all a bit of a needless distraction, but never mind. It's nicely written, sometimes moving, and ends as it should. Well worth reading."[1]
Both of the initial parts were nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Novella.[2][3] The completed novel won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel and the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, both for 1986.[4] It was also nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel for 1986.[5]
Brin has suggested that he wrote The Postman as a rebuke to the celebrations of
See also
- Lucifer's Hammer: After the comet strike, Harry, the senator's local mailman, becomes very important as someone recognized by different communities of survivors.
References
- ^ Langford, Dave (November 1986). "Critical Mass". White Dwarf (83). Games Workshop: 8.
- ^ "1983 Hugo Awards". The Hugo Awards. 26 July 2007. Retrieved 2020-12-31.
- ^ "1985 Hugo Awards". The Hugo Awards. 26 July 2007. Retrieved 2020-12-31.
- ^ "1986 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 2009-07-17.
- ^ "1986 Hugo Awards". The Hugo Awards. 26 July 2007. Retrieved 2020-12-31.
- ^ John Hay, "The American Mad Max: The Road Warrior versus the Postman," Science Fiction Film and Television, vol. 10, no. 3 (2017), p. 320.
External links
- The Postman title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- The Postman: The Movie, An Impression by the Author of the Original Novel by David Brin
- The Postman at Worlds Without End