Black Swan, 1985, 362 p. Cover art by Eduardo Paolozzi.
During the late twentieth century this was considered as a classic Science Fiction novel of the post-apocalyptic variety. I bought it many moons ago but somehow never got round to it till now.
Our protagonist Isherwood Williams is bitten by a rattlesnake when out on a hunting expedition. When he recovers he finds the human world has succumbed to a disease of some sort. Cities and roads are mostly deserted (the book was first published in 1950 when cars were much scarcer than they are now) but infrastructure – electricity, water, fuel – is still working. Overcoming his reluctance to use what wasn’t his property he takes a car and rides from his home in California across what was the US to the east coast and finds very few people have survived. Those who have, are disorientated and demoralised though three “negroes” have gone back to living off the land. Williams (in what is to modern eyes clearly a racist assumption) thinks they are more suited to this due to the way they lived before.
Back home in California he sets about life on his own but one day, when the electricity has finally failed and the street lights have faded away he notices a light at night. This leads him to a woman called Emma and the pair get together. Emma is of black ancestry so Williams’s racism is not too overt. (But then again in such a situation you could not afford to be overly choosy.) Emma is a resourceful and wise woman so it is just as well.
The pair set about surviving as best they can and even decide to have children. Along with a man called Ezra and the family he had collected around himself they form a community, which over the years grows and forms rituals of its own. Ish’s hand-held hammer becomes a totem, the long-lost Americans (of which to his community he is the last) and their accomplishments held in awe by the younger members. The difficulties of coming to terms with a new mode of life and of meeting other survivors or their communities are explored briefly but mostly this is the story of Ish.
Some of the seeds of later post-apocalypse novels – especially the ‘cosy catastrophes’ of 1960s British SF – can be discerned in this book, so in that sense it can still be seen as a classic.
Pedant’s corner:- “extra ordinarily pleased” (extraordinarily,) “upon articles of dust” (particles of dust,) “but he heard only far off, the rasp and crackle of static” (needs a comma before ‘only’, “had take command” (had taken,) wistaria (x2, wisteria,) “whimpered her sleep” (whimpered in her sleep,) grape-fruit (grapefruit,) “what might, by generous interpretation, he called a social group” (be called a social group,) generaly (generally,) “electrical impluses” (impulses,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech (x 2.) “Near by a smooth rock surface” (Nearby,) youngesters (youngsters,) geograhy (geography,) feminity (femininity,) Mohenjadaro (Mohenjo-daro.)
