Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank

I've had Alas, Babylon sitting on my shelf since I was in high school, meaning that it's been on my to-be-read pile for about fourteen years now. The edges of the pages have yellowed and I had to blow a bit of dust off the top of it when I picked it up. Clearly, it's way past time that I actually read it. I initially purchased this book during my "buy anything that is a classic" phase, so aside from a vague recognition that the book was famous, I knew nothing about it. Up until a week ago, that was still true. I went into reading this completely blind, with no real idea about the plot, characters, or author. Naturally, that made it a perfect fit for my "classic by an author that's new to you" category in the Back to the Classics challenge. I went into my reading hopeful that I would find a new favorite.

The plot shifts between a handful of characters, but it mostly focuses on Randy Bragg, a rather aimless man living in central Florida in the 1950s in a tiny town called Fort Repose. He comes from a prominent political family in his hometown, but his own attempts to be elected to an office have failed. Mildly embarrassed, he lives alone in the house he inherited from his parents and makes his living from a family citrus grove.

As the story begins, Randy receives a mysterious message from his brother Mark that ends with the phrase, "Alas, Babylon." This phrase is a code from their childhood, and means that some disaster is about to happen. Alarmed, Randy goes to his brother who explains that Russia is poised to attack America with nuclear weapons. Mark, a high-ranking military official, is required to stay at his base and fulfill his army duties, but he tells Randy that he wants to send his wife and children to live with him for a while. Shaken, Randy accepts his brother's proposition and begins to prepare for the worst.

Mere days after this meeting, Mark's prediction comes true and atomic bombs begin to rain down on America. Randy's town is spared a direct hit, but he can see and hear several explosions from a distance. In an instant, the country is almost completely crippled. Electricity is lost immediately, food and gasoline run out shortly after that, and radio news updates are scattered and brief. Randy has no reliable way to figure out what's going on in the rest of the country and he feels alone and frightened. He pulls himself together, however, for his brother's family, who he is now responsible for. He takes on a leadership role within his neighborhood and begins, slowly, to learn how to survive in a world that has suddenly become alien to him.

Alas, Babylon was published during the height of the Cold War--a time when fears of nuclear exchange weighed heavily on the minds of Americans. Pat Frank worked as a war correspondent and served on several government committees before writing it, and these experiences allowed him to write a novel full of details that feel credible. He firmly believed that if America were to come under a nuclear attack, the government would not be prepared to handle it in an efficient and orderly manner, and the plot of Alas, Babylon reflects that belief. Once the bombs fall, the characters become cut off from the wider world. They don't know what other areas of the country were affected, if their government still existed, or even who was "winning" the conflict. They don't end up finding out any details at all until months and months after the bombings. Only by working together and sharing resources are they able to form their own functioning society, and they do it all on their own. In this way, the novel is ultimately hopeful about the future of mankind, but it is still a chilling examination of what might happen if a war breaks out in the atomic age.

That being said, I didn't enjoy this novel as much as I hoped I would. While Frank's insights into the military and how victims of war behave were undoubtedly valuable, his writing style and characterization missed the mark for me. The book was littered with dramatic moments that lacked proper build-up and his characters were often bland or weirdly hysterical. The prose demanded an emotional response from the reader that it hadn't earned, as it was difficult to care for anyone in the story. I found myself in the odd position of thinking that the situations in the story were realistic, but the characters themselves weren't. A lot of the narration was quite heavy-handed as well, with Frank's overly dramatic pronouncements sounding plain silly sometimes. It made the reading a bit of a slog, to be honest.

Another issue that consistently bugged me was the blatant racism and sexism present throughout the story. While I know that this is a reflection of the time period that the book was written in, there were several moments or comments that felt unnecessary. For example, when discussing inviting a black family to their house for dinner, one of the characters blithely remarks, "I've always believed in mixing crowds at my parties...but what about mixing colors?" In another section, a female character discovered a freezer full of melted, spoiled food and, "as any housewife would do under the circumstances, she wept." Later in the novel, Randy allows two of the younger children in the community to carry out guard duty at night. The young white boy in the group totes a gun, while the young black boy carries a spear. Perhaps my favorite moment, however, is when a few of the female characters become upset over the loss of a pet and the disobedience of a child and Randy comments that, "The more he learned about women the more there was to learn except that...they needed a man around." I do not think that Pat Frank was deliberately trying to be racist or sexist (in fact, he was probably pretty forward thinking for his time based on how he has Randy behave throughout the story), but he certainly wrote several cringe-worthy lines that had me rolling my eyes.

Ultimately, Alas, Babylon was only an okay read. I appreciated the ideas and professional expertise that Frank brought to the novel. I thought the story asked interesting questions, the plot was mostly engaging, and the ending was pretty good. My enjoyment of it was limited, however, by the odd writing style, wooden characters, and stereotypical beliefs. I don't think that Pat Frank is destined to become a favorite of mine, but I am glad that I gave his book a shot. It was an interesting look at a possible future that I hope never actually comes about.  


Challenge Tally:
Back to the Classics (a classic by an author that's new to you): 5/12
Classics Club (#31 on my list): 26/100

Total Books Read in 2018:14