Golden Age Sci-Fi 75 (39)
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September 4, 2016
One in a series of 75 posts about the best science fiction novels published during the genre’s so-called Golden Age (from 1934–63, according to HILOBROW’s Josh Glenn’s periodization schema). For the complete Golden Age Sci-Fi 75 list, click here.
Leigh Brackett’s The Long Tomorrow (1955).
A century after “The Destruction,” petulant juvenile delinquents Len and Esau dwell — as do most Americans — in a rural New Mennonite community which demonizes technology and science. Anyone who attempts to unearth such dangerous knowledge faces punishment — up to and including being stoned to death. (In a sense, The Long Tomorrow is a post-apocalyptic sequel to Cicely Hamilton’s Radium Age apocalypse Theodore Savage; and it seems as though it must have influenced later YA adventures, like Peter Dickinson’s Changes trilogy, and John Christopher’s Sword of the Spirits trilogy.) Len and Esau discover that legends of Bartorstown — a thriving technological utopia — may in fact be true. So they head out, on a long journey, to find it. Traveling down the Ohio River to the Mississippi, our heroes encounter dangers and marvels… but will Bartorstown be everything they hope?
Fun fact: Charlie Jane Anders, of io9.com, includes The Long Tomorrow on her list of “10 Science Fiction Novels You Pretend to Have Read.”
GOLDEN AGE SCIENCE FICTION at HILOBROW: Golden Age Sci-Fi: 75 Best Novels of 1934–1963 | Robert Heinlein | Karel Capek | William Burroughs | E.E. “Doc” Smith | Clifford D. Simak | H.P. Lovecraft | Olaf Stapledon | Philip K. Dick | Jack Williamson | George Orwell | Boris Vian | Bernard Wolfe | J.G. Ballard | Jorge Luis Borges |Poul Anderson | Walter M. Miller, Jr. | Murray Leinster | Kurt Vonnegut | Stanislaw Lem | Alfred Bester | Isaac Asimov | Ray Bradbury | Madeleine L’Engle | Arthur C. Clarke | PLUS: Jack Kirby’s Golden Age and New Wave science fiction comics.
JOSH GLENN’S *BEST ADVENTURES* LISTS: BEST 250 ADVENTURES OF THE 20TH CENTURY | 100 BEST OUGHTS ADVENTURES | 100 BEST RADIUM AGE (PROTO-)SCI-FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST TEENS ADVENTURES | 100 BEST TWENTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST THIRTIES ADVENTURES | 75 BEST GOLDEN AGE SCI-FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST FORTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST FIFTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST SIXTIES ADVENTURES | 75 BEST NEW WAVE SCI FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST SEVENTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST EIGHTIES ADVENTURES | 75 BEST DIAMOND AGE SCI-FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST NINETIES ADVENTURES (in progress) | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | NOTES ON 21st-CENTURY ADVENTURES.