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Book Review of Alas, Babylon

Alas, Babylon
Alas, Babylon
Author: Pat Frank
Genre: Science Fiction & Fantasy
Book Type: Paperback
reviewed on + 15 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1


The day after the bomb dropped, the thousands of years of "progress" that had covered the treacheries and weaknesses of ordinary men with a thin veneer of civilization were dissolved and melted like snow on the desert's dusty face. Then - the law of the jungle reignes, but in the wreckage a few courageous survivors, men and women with the guts to have hope, were determined to build a new and better world on the ruins of the old. This is their story.
Perhaps the first post-apocalyptic book ever, and still one of the best. Written in 1959, the early days of the cold war in the shadow of the nuclear bomb, a well-imagined description of the end of the world as we know it - and what might happen next. I first read this as a teenager, and it has informed a small part of my world ever since: how to survive the worst imaginable disaster.