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, with the Thirtieth Amendment disallowing 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. They are saved when a trader, Ed Hostetter, intervenes. Hostetter grabs a box from Soames' wagon, from which Esau steals a radio.
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, even a red dress.
Esau and Len begin to work the radio, trying to make 'noise' come out of it. Esau steals three books from the schoolhouse in the hope that they would teach the boys to utilise the radio. The two are punished harshly after Hostetter outs them as thieves. The radio is smashed by Esau's father in rage, and Hostetter demands his wagon be searched lest he be accused of being a member of Bartorstown. Esau is whipped and Len's father is visibly disappointed. Subsequently, Esau and Len become determined to find their way to the fabled Bartorstown and leave Piper's Run in search of it, following broken dialogue heard over the radio towards a river.
The boys make their way to a town called Refuge, living with Judge Taylor and his family and working for a warehouse owner, Mike Dulinsky. Esau starts a romantic relationship with the judge's daughter, Amity Taylor. Dulinsky wants to build a fifth warehouse to compete economically with the town on the other side of the river, Shadwell. However, this would violate the Constitution's Thirtieth Amendment as the number of buildings would exceed two hundred. He rallies the Refuge residents, who initially pledge their support, but Judge Taylor warns Len and Dulinsky of the consequences and that he would go to the state authority. The Judge eventually betrays Dulinsky to the Shadwell residents. The Shadwell residents double-cross the Judge and kill Dulinsky and set fire to Refuge.
Len, Esau and Amity are saved by Hostetter, who is revealed to be an actual member of Bartorstown. Previously, he had to out Esau as a thief to conceal his own identity. Len is let down when Hostetter's ship turns out to be a regular coal-powered steamship, though eventually understanding it was for concealment. Strangely, Hostetter wishes to settle in a place like Piper's Run, but is unable to do so. They make a long journey to Bartorstown, a place called Fall Creek Canyon. Hostetter remarks that even those who set foot in Bartorstown do not know it is the Bartorstown, as the scientific facilities were buried, and Fall Creek Canyon resembles any ordinary settlement. Before the journey is complete, Len begins to think of Hostetter as a father-figure, the latter reciprocating that sentiment.
In Fall Creek, Amity and Esau are wed, while the three are sworn to secrecy and are told they will be shot if they attempt to leave. The town's leaders seek to use the childlike vision that Len and Esau had of Bartorstown to inspire the workers, who have been working for a long time without an end in sight. Len becomes romantically tangled with Joan Wepplo, who possesses a red dress. Joan, in contrast to Len, has resented her upbringing in Bartorstown and seeks to leave, though the residents of Bartorstown are unable to.
The scientists of Bartorstown have been working on a long-term project with an artificial intelligence, Clementine, aimed at creating a forcefield that would eradicate the splitting of atoms, preventing future misuse of nuclear technology. They feed Clementine equations in the hope of creating the ultimate equation to produce the forcefield. Len is shocked to find that Bartorstown relies on nuclear power, conflicting firmly with his religious beliefs that the devilish nuclear power which annihilated society should be abstained from entirely. The community's rationalisation that sooner or later, others would unlock the lost secrets of nuclear technology and that it would be better to take preventive measures does not sit well with Len and his religious upbringing.
Len and Joan, now married, plot an escape from Bartorstown, and the two succeed, blending in with tribals to evade Bartorstown's surveillance. Len's journey is painful and he thinks of the long walk back to Piper's Run as his religious redemption. However, they are tracked down by Hostetter. The three sit together in a small town where a preaching is occurring, in similar circumstances where Soames was stoned. Len mentally prepares for himself to die, thinking of Soames and Dulinsky and the disillusioned Bartorstown scientists and acknowledging that change would come around eventually, even if he as an individual passed on. Len gives up the opportunity to out Hostetter as a Bartorstown member to the crowd to be stoned, and Hostetter reciprocates by not outing Len. Later, Hostetter is revealed to have armed backup that would have shot Len and Joan if he had outed Hostetter, but Hostetter reiterates that he knew and trusted Len so long that he never would have needed the backup. Hostetter, Len and Joan then make their way back to Bartorstown.
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, 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".[2]Galaxy reviewer Floyd C. Gale praised the novel as a "powerful and sensitive opus".[3] In 2012 the novel was included in the Library of America two-volume boxed set American Science Fiction: Nine Classic Novels of the 1950s, edited by Gary K. Wolfe.[4] That July, io9 included the book on its list of "10 Science Fiction Novels You Pretend to Have Read".[5]
Leigh Douglass Brackett was an American science fiction writer known as "the Queen of Space Opera." She was also a screenwriter, known for The Big Sleep (1946), Rio Bravo (1959), and The Long Goodbye (1973). She worked on an early draft of The Empire Strikes Back (1980), elements of which remained in the film; she died before it went into production. In 1956, her book The Long Tomorrow made her the first woman ever shortlisted for the Hugo Award for Best Novel, and, along with C. L. Moore, one of the first two women ever nominated for a Hugo Award. In 2020, she posthumously won a Retro Hugo for her novel The Nemesis From Terra, originally published as Shadow Over Mars.
A future history is a postulated history of the future and is used by authors of science fiction and other speculative fiction to construct a common background for fiction. Sometimes the author publishes a timeline of events in the history, while other times the reader can reconstruct the order of the stories from information provided therein.
I Will Fear No Evil is a science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, originally serialised in Galaxy and published in hardcover in 1970. The title is taken from Psalm 23:4.
Science fiction comedy or comic science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction or science fantasy that exploits the science fiction genre's conventions for comedic effect. Comic science fiction often mocks or satirizes standard science fiction conventions, concepts and tropes – such as alien invasion of Earth, interstellar travel, or futuristic technology. It can also satirize and criticize present-day society.
On the Beach is an apocalyptic novel published in 1957, written by British author Nevil Shute after he emigrated to Australia. The novel details the experiences of a mixed group of people in Melbourne as they await the arrival of deadly radiation spreading towards them from the Northern Hemisphere, following a nuclear war some years previous. As the radiation approaches, each person deals with impending death differently.
Science fiction is a film genre that uses speculative, fictional science-based depictions of phenomena that are not fully accepted by mainstream science, such as extraterrestrial lifeforms, spacecraft, robots, cyborgs, mutants, interstellar travel, time travel, or other technologies. Science fiction films have often been used to focus on political or social issues, and to explore philosophical issues like the human condition.
Pebble in the Sky is a science fiction novel by American writer Isaac Asimov, published in 1950. This work is his first novel — parts of the Foundation series had appeared from 1942 onwards in magazines, but Foundation was not published in book form until 1951. The original Foundation books are also a string of linked episodes, whereas this is a complete story involving a single group of characters.
Military science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction that depicts the use of science fiction technology, including spaceships and weapons, for military purposes and usually principal characters who are members of a military organization, usually during a war; occurring sometimes in outer space or on a different planet or planets. It exists in a range of media, including literature, comics, film, television and video games.
Robots and Empire is a science fiction novel by the American author Isaac Asimov, published by Doubleday Books in 1985. It is part of Asimov's Robot series, which consists of many short stories and five novels.
The Stars, Like Dust is a 1951 science fiction mystery book by American writer Isaac Asimov.
Barry Nathaniel Malzberg is an American writer and editor, most often of science fiction and fantasy.
The concept of a mutant is a common trope in comic books and science fiction. The new phenotypes that appear in fictional mutations generally go far beyond what is typically seen in biological mutants and often result in the mutated life form exhibiting superhuman abilities or qualities.
The Snow Queen is a 1980 science fiction novel by American writer Joan D. Vinge. It won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1981, and was also nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1981.
The Golden Age of Science Fiction, often identified in the United States as the years 1938–1946, was a period in which a number of foundational works of science fiction literature appeared. In the history of science fiction, the Golden Age follows the "pulp era" of the 1920s and 1930s, and precedes New Wave science fiction of the 1960s and 1970s. The 1950s are, in this scheme, a transitional period. Robert Silverberg, who came of age in the 1950s, saw that decade as the true Golden Age. According to historian Adam Roberts, "the phrase Golden Age valorises a particular sort of writing: 'Hard SF', linear narratives, heroes solving problems or countering threats in a space-opera or technological-adventure idiom."
The Space Merchants is a 1952 science fiction novel by American writers Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth. Originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine as a serial entitled Gravy Planet, the novel was first published as a single volume in 1953, and has sold heavily since. It deals satirically with a hyper-developed consumerism, seen through the eyes of an advertising executive. In 1984, Pohl published a sequel, The Merchants' War. In 2012, it was included in the Library of America omnibus American Science Fiction: Four Classic Novels 1953–1956. Pohl revised the original novel in 2011 with added material and more contemporary references.
David McIlwain better known by his pen name, Charles Eric Maine, was an English writer best known for several science fiction serials published in the 1950s and 1960s. He also wrote detective thrillers under the pen names Richard Rayner and Robert Wade.
The Vortex Blaster is a collection of three science fiction short stories by American writer Edward E. Smith. It was simultaneously published in 1960 by Gnome Press in an edition of 3,000 copies and by Fantasy Press in an edition of 341 copies. The book was originally intended to be published by Fantasy Press, but was handed over to Gnome Press when Fantasy Press folded. Lloyd Eshbach, of Fantasy Press, who was responsible for the printing of both editions, printed the extra copies for his longtime customers. The stories originally appeared in the magazines Comet and Astonishing Stories.
Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes space warfare, with use of melodramatic, risk-taking space adventures, relationships, and chivalric romance. Set mainly or entirely in outer space, it features technological and social advancements in faster-than-light travel, futuristic weapons, and sophisticated technology, on a backdrop of galactic empires and interstellar wars with fictional aliens, often in fictional galaxies. The term does not refer to opera music, but instead originally referred to the melodrama, scope, and formulaicness of operas, much as used in "horse opera", a 1930s phrase for a clichéd and formulaic Western film, and "soap opera", a melodramatic television series. Space operas emerged in the 1930s and continue to be produced in literature, film, comics, television, video games and board games.
Pastoral science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction which uses bucolic, rural settings, like other forms of pastoral literature. Since it is a subgenre of science fiction, authors may set stories either on Earth or another habitable planet or moon, sometimes including a terraformed planet or moon. Unlike most genres of science fiction, pastoral science fiction works downplay the role of futuristic technologies. The pioneer is author Clifford Simak (1904–1988), a science fiction Grand Master whose output included stories written in the 1950s and 1960s about rural people who have contact with extraterrestrial beings who hide their alien identity.
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