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The Long Tomorrow (novel)
Encyclopedia
The Long Tomorrow is a science fiction
novel
by Leigh Brackett
, originally published by Doubleday & Company, Inc in 1955. Set in the aftermath of a nuclear war, scientific knowledge is feared and restricted.
Religious sects which even before the war opposed modern technology and avoided its use in their daily life have adjusted to the post-apocalypse situation far more easily than anyone else, and feeling themselves vindicated have come to dominate the post-war society. They gained an enormous number of new members, though those families which had been such before the war are honoured and privileged, their special status indicated by slightly different clothing.
All the pre-war American cities have been destroyed in the war, and their re-construction is expressly forbidden. The US Constitution has been amended to now disallow the presence of more than a thousand residents or the existence of more than two hundred buildings per square mile anywhere in the United States.
Len Colter and his cousin Esau are adolescent members of the New Mennonite community of Piper's Run. Against their fathers' wishes, the boys attend a preaching where a trader named Soames is accused and stoned to death for his apparent involvement with a forbidden bastion of technology known as Bartorstown.
Though sickened by the stoning and harshly punished by their fathers, Len and Esau are fascinated by the idea of a community that secretly still holds and harnesses the forbidden technologies. Len's grandmother, a little girl at the time of the destruction, sparks his interest in the technological past with her stories of big, brightly lit cities and little boxes with moving pictures.
Despite even harsher punishment after being caught with a simple radio previously stolen from Soames' wagon, Esau and Len become determined to find their way to the fabled Bartorstown and leave Piper's Run for the Ohio River
trading town of Refuge. Refuge - founded, as its name indicates, as a place of refuge for people fleeing the destruction - is straining at its constitutionally limited size and some of the local traders are frustrated to see the new town of Shadwell growing across the river begin to take the additional business that Refuge cannot.
wrote of the novel:
Writing in the New York Times
, J. Francis McComas
described The Long Tomorrow as "Brackett's best novel to date [and] awfully close to being a great work of science fiction." He declared that "Brackett has written a moving but always objective account of the ever-recurring clash between action and reaction in human thought and feeling." Galaxy
reviewer Floyd C. Gale praised the novel as a "powerful and sensitive opus."
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by Leigh Brackett
Leigh Brackett
Leigh Douglass Brackett was an American author, particularly of science fiction. She was also a screenwriter, known for her work on famous films such as The Big Sleep , Rio Bravo , The Long Goodbye and The Empire Strikes Back .-Life:Leigh Brackett was born and grew up in Los Angeles, California...
, originally published by Doubleday & Company, Inc in 1955. Set in the aftermath of a nuclear war, scientific knowledge is feared and restricted.
Plot summary
In the aftermath of a devastating nuclear war, Americans have come to blame technology for the disaster, and far from seeking to recover what was destroyed, are actively opposed to any such attempt.Religious sects which even before the war opposed modern technology and avoided its use in their daily life have adjusted to the post-apocalypse situation far more easily than anyone else, and feeling themselves vindicated have come to dominate the post-war society. They gained an enormous number of new members, though those families which had been such before the war are honoured and privileged, their special status indicated by slightly different clothing.
All the pre-war American cities have been destroyed in the war, and their re-construction is expressly forbidden. The US Constitution has been amended to now disallow the presence of more than a thousand residents or the existence of more than two hundred buildings per square mile anywhere in the United States.
Len Colter and his cousin Esau are adolescent members of the New Mennonite community of Piper's Run. Against their fathers' wishes, the boys attend a preaching where a trader named Soames is accused and stoned to death for his apparent involvement with a forbidden bastion of technology known as Bartorstown.
Though sickened by the stoning and harshly punished by their fathers, Len and Esau are fascinated by the idea of a community that secretly still holds and harnesses the forbidden technologies. Len's grandmother, a little girl at the time of the destruction, sparks his interest in the technological past with her stories of big, brightly lit cities and little boxes with moving pictures.
Despite even harsher punishment after being caught with a simple radio previously stolen from Soames' wagon, Esau and Len become determined to find their way to the fabled Bartorstown and leave Piper's Run for the Ohio River
Ohio River
The Ohio River is the largest tributary, by volume, of the Mississippi River. At the confluence, the Ohio is even bigger than the Mississippi and, thus, is hydrologically the main stream of the whole river system, including the Allegheny River further upstream...
trading town of Refuge. Refuge - founded, as its name indicates, as a place of refuge for people fleeing the destruction - is straining at its constitutionally limited size and some of the local traders are frustrated to see the new town of Shadwell growing across the river begin to take the additional business that Refuge cannot.
Critical reception
Damon KnightDamon Knight
Damon Francis Knight was an American science fiction author, editor, critic and fan. His forte was short stories and he is widely acknowledged as having been a master of the genre.-Biography:...
wrote of the novel:
Unhappily, as the story progresses, it seems more and more to support Koestler's assertion that literature and science fiction cancel each other out. Most of the book, particularly the early part, is compellingly written, but not speculative... as the invented elements of the story grow more important, the vision dims... This novel illustrates a problem which science fiction writers are going to have to solve before long: how to write honestly about a mildly speculative future without dragging in pseudoscientific props by the cartload.
Writing in the New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, J. Francis McComas
J. Francis McComas
Jesse Francis McComas was an American science fiction editor. McComas wrote several stories on his own in the 1950s using both his own name and the pseudonym Webb Marlowe....
described The Long Tomorrow as "Brackett's best novel to date [and] awfully close to being a great work of science fiction." He declared that "Brackett has written a moving but always objective account of the ever-recurring clash between action and reaction in human thought and feeling." Galaxy
Galaxy Science Fiction
Galaxy Science Fiction was an American digest-size science fiction magazine, published from 1950 to 1980. It was founded by an Italian company, World Editions, which was looking to break in to the American market. World Editions hired as editor H. L...
reviewer Floyd C. Gale praised the novel as a "powerful and sensitive opus."