This is the story of a lie that became the most powerful kind of truth. A timeless novel as urgently compelling as War Day or Alas, Babylon, David Brin's The Postman is the dramatically moving saga of a man who rekindled the spirit of America through the power of a dream, from a modern master of science fiction.He was a survivor--a wanderer who traded tales for food and shelter in the dark and savage aftermath of a devastating war. Fate touches him one chill winter's day when he borrows the jacket of a long-dead postal worker to protect himself from the cold. The old, worn uniform still has power as a symbol of hope, and with it he begins to weave his greatest tale, of a nation on the road to recovery.From the Paperback edition.
"Cole: Kevin Costner was in a bad movie version of this… The themes that underlie the book are reasonably positive: the way the characters deal with their duty to each other, at a community level – in the story of post-apocalyptic survivors eking out a civilised existence – and what technology means to us. It explores questions of how much faith we should put in computers. It has a lot of value for the decades ahead. Singer: I will defend the film! For whatever reason, it’s constantly on cable TV and – for whatever reason – I can’t help myself. “It’s not just war, but how people react to it that determines the fate of society.” But the book is different in lots of ways. It’s not just the war, but how people react to it that determines the fate of society, whether we stick together or collapse. It also puts its finger on something we’re experiencing right now, the danger of some people who welcome the chaos. People who claim to be patriotic, but want to tear everything down. Yet this is a book written in 1982. One of the other powerful messages in it – is that what keeps us together is an idea. What is the US? It’s our belief and faith in it. This is a system that is getting challenged today. Like all great fiction and science fiction, it has the underlying themes that make you think and retain its relevance decades after it was written."
