Customer Reviews

The Postman

5 star:		(55)
4 star:		(28)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Do yourself a favour and buy or borrow this book before you watch the movie. This is a great book for people who enjoy apocalyptic stories. It's a fast, easy read, but the story unfolds well. The character development is quite strong and is effective in drawing the reader into the story. The author does a good job of describing the world that the Postman is living in and how that dismal existence came to be.

I would suspect that a lot of people form their opinion of this story from the way the movie played out. The book is a much more detailed and effective story. There are more characters that are reasonably complex and believable. There are also a number of communities, or regions, that factor into the book itself and the author does a good job of explaining the dynamic of the world that the Postman is living in. In the movie, General Bethlehem notes that "this is a feudal system", but the book makes it clear that civilization (at least on the west cost of the former USA) has reverted to a more primitive form of governance, without having to come out and say it. A written story is often so much more effective than a story told through film. That is the case with this story.

There are very few Armageddon tales that are as well constructed as this one is. 'The Handmaid's Tale", the trend-setting "We" and "A Canticle for Leibowitz" while also being well done, lack the overall atmosphere created in this dystopic novel. David Brin not only creates a believable tale of the future destruction of the planet but he brings so many other concepts into it as well. Women's equal role in society, the possible dark future of technology, the innate bruteness of some of society's males, the roles that hope, responsibility, honesty and altruism play in social structure, and what is necessary to become a 'hero' in a world that needs it most. The ending, in itself, is highly realistic insomuch that we are left with hope for the future that is clouded over by the sadness of the past.

Please do not equate this novel with Kevin Kostner's movie of the same title. While both attempt to deal with the same concept, they are as different as chocolate and chalk.......

I loved this book when I read it the for the first time 10 years ago. It's a great post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel as it shows you how the world could look after a nuclear holocaust. The world David Brin invents is interesting and believable. I recommend this to anyone who likes post-apocalyptic sci-fi books.

I should also note that the books is MUCH better than the movie! Do not judge this book on the awful Kevin Costner movie!

You know, without having to look at Kevin Costner, this is a pretty good story. I haven't seen the movie, but I have read many other books by David Brin, and they've all been enjoyable, so I decided to give this one a try. It's a philosophical story more than anything else, but set in a nice post apocalyspe landscape that makes the abstract issues a little more urgent. Is it wrong to deceive people, possibly into giving their lives, if the myth you are pushing might eventually bring great benefits? Is it possible to have a system where the powerful do not abuse their power? Most impressive of all, this book avoided the standard hollywood ending, and left us wondering if there really was any hope, if the myth was really true or not. It's even aged well, unlike a lot of other science fiction books set in "futures" that are already in the past.

Book Review by C. Douglas Baker

THE POSTMAN is set sixteen years after a cataclysmic event (presumably a nuclear war although there is room for speculation that it may have been some other disaster such as a large comet hitting the earth) has plunged the world to the brink of a dark age. Trying to survive in Oregon's Cascade Mountains, Gordon Krantz happens upon a run-down United States Postal Service jeep while trying to find a warm place to sleep and spends the night. Taking the leather jacket and cap off the skeleton of his unfortunate bunk-mate, with the full regalia of the U.S. Postal Service as accoutrements, and a sack full of old mail, Gordon sets off to hunt supplies. Thus begins Gordon's almost unconscious generation of a false legend.

Attempting to extort supplies from settlement in the mountains, Gordon comes up with a story about a "Reformed United States" to the east and the reorganization of a Postal Service. Using his newly acquired postal gear as props, Gordon takes upon himself the role of a "postal inspector" who has come to reestablish postal routes and "inspect" local governmental institutions. He even, luckily, comes up with a few letters from the mailbag addressed to relatives of people in the community as a ruse to bolster is story. Through this reckless prevarication Gordon weaves his way into the good graces of the people he comes into contact with, simply by being a catalyst to their nostalgic remembrance of a time when the United States was a superpower and the postal service was so reliable as to be taken for granted. Gordon's "big lie" offers hope of a return to better times.

Traveling around in this persona, Gordon lets the legend grow, even appointing "postal inspectors" in various areas as he goes along, creating a loyal cadre of "followers". As the legend takes hold, Gordon finds that he cannot tell the truth or back out of the duty that communities impose on him--that being giving them some hope that a better world is ahead and doing something to bring that future about. They believe in Gordon and his
"Reformed United States" and he cannot let them down.

Despite a very promising plot, THE POSTMAN is a bit frustrating. Authors using a lost-holocaust world as their setting must viscerally convey the extent of the catastrophe and the eeriness of a post-technological world. Brin in THE POSTMAN fails to do so. The reader never really emotionally feels the impact of the disaster and the odds facing the main character, Gordon. As a result, the book never delivers the emotional blow that is necessary to make the struggle back to a semblance of civilization satisfying to the reader. Brin is too contrite in his brief descriptions of run down cities, empty wildernesses, and struggling communities. The novel just does not "feel" like it is set in a post-holocaust society, despite that the characters and actions take place there.

Brin also fails to bring life to his characters. Even the main character, Gordon, is not as well drawn as he could be. Brin does an even less stellar job at developing his peripheral characters. When important persons are suddenly killed the reader does not feel the sense of grief that great authors can convey, because the reader never really "knew" the character. This is particularly true of his female hero Dana. Her attempts to save her community and the fate of her band of "scouts" does not touch the reader because Brin never fully cultivates the reader's sympathy or understanding for her or her comrades.

That being said, I actually enjoyed the novel (surprise!). Despite feeling estranged from the characters and plot, Brin's prose and ability to write action scenes and keep the story moving made it an enjoyable reading experience.

The postman never believed he was one until he stood back and saw the effects of his lie. He was a wanderer, a man with no plan that had survived an unthinkable war ending the United States. His calling came on accident and then a lie, but it gave hope to all he spoke with and all those people spoke with. He accidentally started a fight to bring back the United States. This story is truly amazing and makes the book a must read, though it isn't written all that well and is not considered David Brin's best writing. The idea will keep the reader intrigued and is a must read for anyone that likes an adventure incorporating love and hope.

...wasted. It's hard to say how good a book this could have been based on the concept, but the execution was just, well, terrible. One of the best (worst?) examples I can think of where an incompetent protagonist survives much longer than he/she has any right to, or than a reader can believe. Goofy plot elements abound along with the introduction of incredible (as in not credible, not as in "wow!") characters to create even more dire challenges, when mere bad guys were would have fit the existing storyline better.

What's really frustrating are the glimpses of Brin's obvious skills. These keep you going until the end, but just barely.

Now about the movie...

Brin's tale of a loner's midlife journey in a world devastated by warfare, climate change, and disease is exactly what genre-bound science fiction readers expect. The protagonist, Gordon, is an intellectual male whose resourcefulness has helped him adapt to a world whose institutions have collapsed and whose people live in tiny, scrabbling communities. He traverses the (former) Northwestern United States in vague search of something hope for - but accidentally, by way of a postman's uniform he finds in a moment of desperation, brings hope to everyone he encounters. Ultimately he must reconcile himself to the world as it has become and decide what is truly worth fighting for.

"The Postman" fancies itself an ideological novel, and Brin lays it on thick. Gordon's search for meaning is unceasing, and unceasingly discussed. While his crusade is at first sympathetic, it quickly wears thin under the novel's weight as, instead of developing Gordon's character, Brin attributes his every decision to the increasingly desctructive cause.

More than just lazily written, "The Postman" can be frustratingly immature. The protagonist's - and the book's - tone toward technology is plausible for the young college student Gordon once was, but inappropriate for a middle-aged man whose life and country have been destroyed by a machine society. Brin's version of feminism seems designed to win bonus points with female fans, but its heavy-handedness and condescension are no less alienating than outright sexism. These flaws, combined with Brin's broad-stroked, barely-serviceable prose, undermine any serious reader's enjoyment.

But "The Postman" is appealing nonetheless. It's easy to get into, and the action sequences are freqent and page-turning. The plot meanders pleasantly, making the book seem longer and meatier than it actually is, and although the ending is both sudden and predictable, it's not unsatisfying. And ultimately, Brin offers what many sci-fi readers are looking for: a world in which things are different, a new set of rules and a history that comments on our own. This is not great literature, but it's a fairly good book.

In David Brin's postapocalyptic novel, The Postman, the civilized world has been destroyed by a brief nuclear war and the ensuing nuclear winter, diseases, and barbarism. Set in what used to be Oregon, remnants of civilization exist in small independent towns inhabited by survivors and their offspring eking out a living through agriculture and trades.

Gordon Krantz is a lone wanderer, surviving by moving from village to village as a storyteller and minstrel. He finds a dead postal worker's skeleton in the woods and co-opts his clothing to stay warm. With the bag of postage, he hits upon a scam of representing himself as a postal inspector of the "Restored United States," sent to establish post offices in each town and re-establish mail service. He is surprisingly embraced everywhere he travels because of people's thirst for community and communication... and hope. He unwittingly becomes a victim of his own scam and is reluctantly thrust into a leadership role in reuniting Oregon, and by implication the rest of the nation in the future. Along the way, he discovers the way each town coped with the aftermath of the war, makes various friendships, falls in love, and leads the war against the rogue survivalists from the south.

I quite enjoyed this novel and found it uplifting in the message of a regular man who had greatness thrust upon him and came to realize that he had to take responsibility. The movie, starring Kevin Costner, is also good but diverges a good bit from the book, especially in the second half. As is often the case, the book is better.

Before SF novelist David Brin became known as one of the "Killer Bs" of 80s and 90s SF, he penned a serial novel called "The Postman," a post-apocalyptic romp through the Williamette Valley in Oregon. Set in an area dominated by militias, survivalists, and the kinds of folks who like to blame Jewish people and blacks for America's troubles, Brin lampooned the typical, gutsy, survival-of-the-fittest attitude in post-apocalyptic (PA) fiction, creating a unique blend of adventure story and important moral lesson. In an interview, Brin said that most PA fiction revels in the downfall of civilization, creating a kind of macho paradise which would be great if you were a gun-toting conservative white male. For everyone else, it would be hell, and that is exactly what "The Postman" tackles.

Fifteen years after the Doomwar, a combination nuclear, biological, and chemical exchange between the US and an unknown enemy, Gordon roams the landscape looking for a cause to follow. The largest organization in this atmosphere are a loosely-organized militia-army, who follow the teachings of the deceased Nathan Holn, a racist whose beliefs about life and freedom were a mix of Ayn Rand, David Duke, and a badly warped Charles Darwin. Gordon, a college-educated thinking man, wants nothing to do with the militias, but is inadvertantly forced into acting when bandits steal his clothes and he is forced to dress as a postman and invent a story about the Restored United States to get some food.

On his way, Gordon meets towns wallowing in drugs and violence, paranoid people so scared by oppression they trust no one, and an organization seemingly controlled by a computer artificial intelligence. When the militias begin attacking the Williamette Valley in far greater fervor, Gordon begins to organize the resistance, aided in part by George Powhatan, an organizer who has begun to rebuild civilization in his own way.

"The Postman" makes clear that the downfall of civilization would not be a good thing, especially if you happened to be a woman, or black, or anything else not conforming to the WASP-militia stereotypes. Aside from a good adventure story, Brin's book bucks convention and treads new groud, providing an obvious stepping stone for later SF novels in the genre like "The New Madrid Run" and "The Rift." The prose can be rocky, but given "Postman" was published serially (and wasn't necessarily aspiring to high literature), this can be overlooked for the far more positive points of its content.

Final Grade: B-