Though the attempts by Mr. Brin's post-apocalyptic novel, The Postman, to anticipate future events have proven to be dramatic failures -- his fears of a United States dominated by well-armed survivalists is a hopelessly dated notion that did not foresee the rise of the national security state --, his book is, nonetheless, a classic of science fiction. In a world destroyed by technology and ignorance, a drifter wandering through the American west stumbles across the uniform of a US postal worker. The drifter, who seems to remember the technological past all too well, dons the uniform, taking upon himself some measure of the dead man's obligation. In doing so, he ignites a quiet movement, through the loosely connected hamlets of the west, to establish a network of postal routes capable of both delivering letters to family members thought lost and to exchange information in a time when communication beyond ones village seems to have been reduced to nothing.
Mr. Brin has put together a beautifully bleak novel set in a world shattered by a faceless war. In the remnants of what's left, well-armed survivalists terrorize the communities that have managed to piece together something like civilization. Holnists, named after their racist, anarchist leader, seem to have the run of the place until our postman stumbles across a rare beacon of civilization in a world cloaked in darkness, a haven grown up around an Oregon university which may hold the hopes for a better future. But it's far from clear if even the university can fend off the virulent hate of the Holnists and the other threats that persist out in an unmapped and unknowable beyond.
The Postman is not without its flaws. Its villains, the Holnists, are two-dimensional savages whose ambitions seem to be confined to the smashing and thrashing of things. What's more, Mr. Brin gives every indication that some considerable time has passed since civilization's fall -- at least ten years -- and yet no one has beaten our postman to the notion of a mail route, of connectivity amongst homesteads? In order to survive, communities would need to cooperate, collaborate. But it's as if they've been bunkered down, just waiting for the Postman to come along and plug them back into some semblance of a society. But the worst flaw is the novel's final act which veers sharply off the road of science fiction and straight into the wilderness of pure fancy! With the benefit of years, this section reads like a sloppy attempt to force the good guys and the bad guys to work together towards a common goal and not as a piece of social critique as it was probably intended. Nonetheless, Mr. Brin has a wonderful eye for atmospherics. The desolation is palpable, but his best work is reserved for the sadness that infects the non-Holnist survivors of the end times. They seem so bowed under the weight of their loss, so paralyzed by the prospect of moving forward and reclaiming what's gone. It's beyond poignant.
Mr. Brin struggles to bring The Postman to anything like a logical or satisfactory conclusion, but the plaintiveness of the piece lends it a wonderful gravitas that makes up for its failings. (3/5 Stars)
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