{"id":10981,"date":"2014-02-18T15:24:59","date_gmt":"2014-02-18T19:24:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=10981"},"modified":"2014-02-19T18:19:47","modified_gmt":"2014-02-19T22:19:47","slug":"leigh-brackett-the-long-tomorrow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2014\/02\/18\/leigh-brackett-the-long-tomorrow\/","title":{"rendered":"Leigh Brackett: The Long Tomorrow<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have to admit that I didn’t know Leigh Brackett was a renowned science fiction author. I only knew\u00a0her\u00a0through\u00a0her screenwriting credits. In 1946 she\u00a0worked with William Faulkner on Howard Hawks’ film\u00a0adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s\u00a0The Big Sleep<\/em>. In 1959, she\u00a0worked\u00a0with Hawks again on\u00a0his 1959 film Rio Bravo<\/em>, one of my favorites. She returned to\u00a0Raymond Chandler in 1973, writing the screenplay for Robert Altman’s\u00a0film adaptation of The Long Goodbye<\/em>:. And, perhaps most famously these days, before she died\u00a0in 1978, she\u00a0completed the first draft of George Lucas’s The Empire Strikes Back<\/em> (though\u00a0she died before she had a chance to revise it and\u00a0her\u00a0draft was substantially rewritten by both Lucas and Lawrence Kasdun (you can see her script online here<\/a>, where you might be surprised to meet Minch rather than Yoda, as well as the ghost of Luke’s father — that’s right, it isn’t Darth Vader yet)). I was excited, then, to find her\u00a0book\u00a0The Long Tomorrow <\/em>(1955) (with its Chandleresque title)\u00a0in\u00a0The Library of America’s box set American Science Fiction: Classic Novels of the 1950s<\/em>, a set\u00a0that just keeps getting better.<\/p>\n

\"Review
Review copy courtesy of The Library of America.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For me, one of the most striking things about this science fiction novel\u00a0is its\u00a0opening third, which has a near complete lack of technology. The\u00a0story takes place in\u00a0the United States in the future, but it feels like\u00a0United States\u00a0in the 1850s.\u00a0The protagonist, Len Colter, would feel at home in\u00a0Huckleberry Finn<\/em>, as Len too struggles to make sense of\u00a0the surrounding conventions.\u00a0The severe religious atmosphere, with its satisfied sense of certainty\u00a0and\u00a0distrust of technology and change, is wonderfully handled in layers composed of criticism and respect.\u00a0The outside world is richly presented, yet this is a story of an inner world and the loss of innocence, when innocence is forced upon you.<\/p>\n

The epigraph to the story is the fictional Thirtieth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States:<\/p>\n

No city, no town, no community of more than one thousand people or two hundred buildings to the square mile shall be built or permitted to exist anywhere in the United States of America.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sometime a couple of generations before there was some kind of nuclear war. The fear of large cities is the fear of technology, the fear of amassing power, and also the fear of seeing so much destruction in the blink of an eye. The destruction was so great that essentially there is nothing left. Those best able to survive in such a world happened to be those who were already preparing to live in it: religious sects that advocated simple living all along, and they now hold power, nationally (not that a lot of trans-national communication appears to be happening) and locally. They simply will not let things get out of hand again.<\/p>\n

The Long Tomorrow<\/em> is divided into three sections. In the first, we are immersed in this antique world, populated by New Mennonites, where a religious revival — and a stoning — are commonplace. It’s on a farm in Piper’s Run, “where opportunities for real sinning were comfortably few,” where we first meet fourteen-year-old Len Colter.<\/p>\n

Len’s family represents the relationship of three generations to the great destruction — or scourge. Len’s grandmother lived in the world before the destruction, and she mortifies her family when she slips and says, “It was a good world! I wish it hadn’t ended.” Len’s father is severe, though loving, and represents the first generation born in and right after the world ended. He has had a hard life and internalized the post-destruction messages — it helps that things are noticeably better in Piper’s Run in this new world than they had ever been when he was growing up.<\/p>\n

But Len (and his friend Esau) is\u00a0removed from the terror. In fact, the terror he witnesses is the suppressive violence enacted on anyone who\u00a0seems even an ambiguous advocate\u00a0for\u00a0change.<\/p>\n

I want to step in here and say that I didn’t find the world Brackett rendered to be one-dimensional. It’s easy to imagine such a world because we see it so often in fiction. Piper’s Run, though, is extreme but presented in a way that also makes it somewhat understandable. Len’s father comes from a place of love and protection and is not presented as maniacal. Len truly loves and understands his father. He just thinks he’s wrong. I think this is a delicate\u00a0impression, and Brackett does it well.<\/p>\n

Len loves to hear his grandma’s stories, and he’s happy that in her old age she’s more reckless in telling them. His dreams are fed by her stories of cities, cars, colors. His dreams, becoming more voracious, are also tantalized by the rumor that one city still exists somewhere out west, a city called Bartorstown. One day he and Esau find a functioning radio receiver and are certain it’s a sign that Bartorstown really exists.\u00a0They listen to it when they can, hoping something will be transmitted.<\/p>\n

The book doesn’t necessarily go where I thought it would. To summarize without spoiling, in the second (and unfortunately slightly dull) section, Len and Esau have abandoned Piper’s Run and go to work in one of the larger cities by the river.\u00a0Here economic forces have stamped out some — not all, but some — of the religious fervor as well as\u00a0exposed problems with\u00a0the country’s current plan. Change is still feared,\u00a0yet\u00a0here it is a bit harder to hide all thoughts of change.<\/p>\n

Things pick up again nicely when in\u00a0part\u00a0three\u00a0— it can’t be a spoiler, can it? — they go to Bartorstown and find themselves severely disappointed, and not in the way one might expect.<\/p>\n

I bring up part three because it’s there that the themes of the book are most satisfyingly explored. Len’s loss of innocence leads him exactly where he always wanted it to be, but he finds there more oppressive forces that he never could have anticipated. He finds there people who want to escape their own inescapable\u00a0prisons. And he finds himself unable to return to where he once was.<\/p>\n

I know this sounds like he finds evil and corruption at Bartorstown, as if Brackett is\u00a0warning us to\u00a0be careful what you wish for. But it’s not that at all. It’s simply not that simple. Again, Brackett shows that while she’s created a convincing, interesting world, she’s much more interested in exploring the human conscience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have to admit that I didn’t know Leigh Brackett was a renowned science fiction author. I only knew\u00a0her\u00a0through\u00a0her screenwriting credits. In 1946 she\u00a0worked with William Faulkner on Howard Hawks’ film\u00a0adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s\u00a0The Big Sleep. In 1959, she\u00a0worked\u00a0with Hawks again on\u00a0his 1959 film Rio Bravo, one of my favorites. She returned to\u00a0Raymond Chandler in … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[488],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-10981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leigh-brackett"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-2R7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10981"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10998,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10981\/revisions\/10998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10981"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=10981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}