''The Postman'' is a
post-apocalyptic
Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction in which the Earth's (or another planet's) civilization is collapsing or has collapsed. The apocalypse event may be climatic, such as runaway climate change; ast ...
dystopia science fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...
novel by
David Brin
Glen David Brin (born October 6, 1950) is an American scientist and author of science fiction. He has won the Hugo,[Oregon
Oregon () is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of its eastern boundary with Idaho. T ...]
countryside who finds a
United States Postal Service
The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or Postal Service, is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the U ...
uniform, which he puts on and then claims he is a mail carrier and federal inspector for the "Restored United States of America". His mail service and claims about the return of a central government gives hope to the people, who are threatened by a murderous,
neo-feudalist militia.
The first two parts were published separately as "The Postman" (1982) and "Cyclops" (1984). In 1997,
a film adaptation of the novel was released starring
Kevin Costner
Kevin Michael Costner (born January 18, 1955) is an American actor, producer, film director and musician. He has received various accolades, including two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and two Screen Actor ...
and
Will Patton
William Rankin Patton (born June 14, 1954) is an American actor and audiobook narrator. He starred as Colonel Dan Weaver in the TNT science fiction series '' Falling Skies''. He also appeared in the films ''Remember the Titans'', ''Armageddon'' ...
.
Plot
Despite the post-apocalyptic scenario and several action sequences, the book is largely about civilization and its symbols. Each of the three sections deals with a different symbol.
The first is the Postman himself, Gordon Krantz, who takes the uniform solely for warmth after he loses almost everything to bandits. He wanders amongst small communities performing scenes from
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
plays in return for food and shelter. Originally a drama student at the
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...
, he traveled west to Oregon in the aftermath of the worldwide chaos that resulted from several
EMPs, the destruction of major cities, and the release of
bioweapons
Biological warfare, also known as germ warfare, is the use of biological toxins or infectious agents such as bacteria, viruses, insects, and fungi with the intent to kill, harm or incapacitate humans, animals or plants as an act of war. Bi ...
. Taking shelter in a long-abandoned postal van, he finds a sack of mail and a postal uniform. He wears the uniform and takes the mail to a nearby community to barter for food and shelter. His initial claims to be a real postman start not because of a deliberate fraud (at least initially) but because people are desperate to believe in him and his claim that he represents the "Restored United States".
Later, in the second section, he encounters a community,
Corvallis, Oregon, which is led by Cyclops, who is apparently a
sentient
Sentience is the capacity to experience feelings and sensations. The word was first coined by philosophers in the 1630s for the concept of an ability to feel, derived from Latin '' sentientem'' (a feeling), to distinguish it from the ability to ...
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech r ...
created at
Oregon State University
Oregon State University (OSU) is a public land-grant, research university in Corvallis, Oregon. OSU offers more than 200 undergraduate-degree programs along with a variety of graduate and doctoral degrees. It has the 10th largest engineering c ...
which miraculously survived the cataclysm. In reality, however, the machine ceased functioning during a battle, and a group of scientists maintain the pretense of its working to try to keep hope, order, and knowledge alive. The scientists also claim to use Cyclops' advice and predictions to solicit contributions of food from citizens, an approach that Gordon compares to the
Delphi Oracle.
Eventually, in the third section, as the Postman joins forces with Cyclops's scientists in a war against an influx of "hypersurvivalist militia", the Postman begins to find that the hypersurvivalists are being pressed from Oregon's
Rogue River area to the south as well. The hypersurvivalists are more commonly referred to as Holnists, after their founder, Nathan Holn, an author who championed a violent, misogynistic, and militaristic society. Holn was executed sometime before the events in the novel, but in the time following what should have been a brief period of civil disorder, Holn's followers' attacks prevented the United States from recovering from the war and the plagues that followed.
As the story comes to a climax, the Postman allies with a tough tribal group made up of descendants of ranchers, loggers and Native Americans from Southwestern Oregon's
Umpqua Valley region who are led by a Native American who is a former member of an airborne regiment of the U.S. military. The Umpqua people have developed a warrior culture similar to Native Americans of the
Old West
The American frontier, also known as the Old West or the Wild West, encompasses the geography, history, folklore, and culture associated with the forward wave of American expansion in mainland North America that began with European colonial ...
and are bitter enemies of the Holnists; they have defeated the Holnists at every turn but until the Postman's arrival, they were not inclined to help the "weak" townsfolk of the
Willamette Valley
The Willamette Valley ( ) is a long valley in Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. The Willamette River flows the entire length of the valley and is surrounded by mountains on three sides: the Cascade Range to the eas ...
against the Holnists. At the end of the novel, the Postman discovers the Holnists have another organized enemy to the South, identified only by the symbol they rally behind: the
Bear Flag
The Bear Flag is the official flag of the U.S. state of California. The precursor of the flag was first flown during the 1846 Bear Flag Revolt and was also known as the Bear Flag. A predecessor, called the Lone Star Flag, was used in an 183 ...
. The final scenes of the novel give the impression that the groups (symbols) may come together in an effort to revive civilization.
Another message of the plot deals with the backstory of the post-apocalyptic world: specifically, that it was not the electronics-destroying
EMPs, the destruction of major cities, or the release of various
bio-engineered plagues that completely destroyed society, but rather it was the Holnists, who preyed on humanitarian workers and attacked communities during this difficult period.
Reception
Dave Langford
David Rowland Langford (born 10 April 1953) is a British author, editor, and critic, largely active within the science fiction field. He publishes the science fiction fanzine and newsletter ''Ansible'', and holds the all-time record for mos ...
reviewed ''The Postman'' for ''
White Dwarf
A white dwarf is a stellar core remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. A white dwarf is very dense: its mass is comparable to the Sun's, while its volume is comparable to the Earth's. A white dwarf's faint luminosity comes ...
'' #83, and stated that "The story is complicated by Krantz's intersection with another myth in the making, and then by a muddle of battle, murder and enhanced super-guerillas, all a bit of a needless distraction, but never mind. It's nicely written, sometimes moving, and ends as it should. Well worth reading."
Both of the initial parts were nominated for a
Hugo Award for
Best Novella.
The completed novel won the
John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel
The John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, or Campbell Memorial Award, is an annual award presented by the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas to the author of the best science fiction no ...
and the
Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel
The Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel is one of the annual Locus Awards
The Locus Awards are an annual set of literary awards voted on by readers of the science fiction and fantasy magazine '' Locus'', a monthly magazine based in Oaklan ...
, both for 1986.
It was also nominated for the
Hugo Award for Best Novel
The Hugo Award for Best Novel is one of the Hugo Awards given each year for science fiction or fantasy stories published in, or translated to, English during the previous calendar year. The novel award is available for works of fiction of 40,000 ...
for 1986.
Brin has suggested that he wrote ''The Postman'' as a rebuke to the celebrations of
mayhem in the many derivative post-apocalyptic fictions that appeared in the wake of the popular ''
Mad Max
''Mad Max'' is an Australian post-apocalyptic action film series and media franchise created by George Miller and Byron Kennedy. It began in 1979 with '' Mad Max'', and was followed by three sequels: ''Mad Max 2'' (1981, released in the Unite ...
'' movies.
[John Hay, "The American ''Mad Max'': The Road Warrior versus the Postman," ''Science Fiction Film and Television'', vol. 10, no. 3 (2017), p. 320.]
See also
*''
Lucifer's Hammer
''Lucifer's Hammer'' is a science fiction post-apocalypse-survival novel by American writers Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle that was first published in 1977. It was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1978. Two issues of a planned si ...
'': After the comet strike, Harry, the senator's local mailman, becomes very important as someone recognized by different communities of survivors.
References
External links
*
The Postman: The Movie, An Impression by the Author of the Original Novelby David Brin
The Postmanat Worlds Without End
{{DEFAULTSORT:Postman, The
1985 American novels
1985 science fiction novels
American novels adapted into films
American post-apocalyptic novels
Dystopian novels
John W. Campbell Award for Best Science Fiction Novel-winning works
Novels by David Brin
Novels set in Oregon
Novels about the United States Postal Service
American alternate history novels
Survival fiction