Out of the thirteen books that I’ve read so far in 2021, this one is the first (and so far only) one that I’ve given five-stars.
I read this book just before the January 6th riots at the Capitol, where the lead-up to that event and the controversy surrounding the 2020 elections had acquired an apocalyptic feel. All of that really made the stories in this book stand out to me, because they all take place in a post-apocalyptic United States where the only subculture/community that survived intact through the collapse is the Latter-day Saints of the intermountain west.
The stories are very sparse on the details of the collapse itself. We only learn bits and pieces of what happened, for example that six nuclear weapons went off on the east coast, but that was the extent of the nuclear war. Also, we learn that there was an environmental collapse as well as a social one, but that the new western deserts are in the process of being reclaimed. The United States we know and love is dead beyond recovery, but there is still living memory of it, which helps to guide the rise of the society that will replace it. That new society, descended from our current one, is much more religiously orthodox than our current society, and Card masterfully portrays its strengths, its flaws, and its deepest yearnings, all from the perspective of those who don’t quite feel that they belong.
The first story, “West,” is definitely my favorite. I actually read it several years ago in a different anthology, while waiting on the train platform in Provo Utah at 4am (the only time when the eastbound California Zephyr passes through). I read it in an hour and was so completely engrossed in it that boarding the train was an inconvenience. When I finished it, I was literally weeping. Everything about that story felt so real, from the post-apocalyptic world itself to the characters themselves: ragtag survivors of an anti-Mormon pogrom all struggling to cross the wasteland and make it to the promised land, high in the Rocky Mountains. It was all so real, it almost felt prophetic, and yet the ending was so satisfying and uplifting that I couldn’t stop thinking about it for several days.
The other stories are all pretty good, but what really makes them stand out is the way they all tie together. Characters from one story appear in the next one in unexpected ways, sometimes finding the redemption that had previously eluded them, other times narrating events that happened to others. Taken together, these stories trace the arc of the new civilization that rises from the ashes of the old, and how it ultimately comes to orbit the new locus of power in the post-apocalyptic world.
Perhaps Card’s greatest strength as a writer is his ability to understand and skillfully portray all the complicated nuances of the relationships between his characters. It’s not just that he writes such interesting and believable characters, but that their relationships with each other feel so deep and so real. The story that shows this best is probably “Pageant Wagon,” though “West” was pretty good at it too. All of these stories are about individual people much more than they are about the world, the society, or anything else. And yet, because Card is so masterful at showing how these people relate to each other, the society, and the world at large, we cannot help but get those stories too, through the intimate and personal experiences of the people who live in them.
This book is really fantastic, and it is even more relevant in today’s crazy world than it was when it was originally published. Although most of the characters are Mormon, it isn’t exclusively written for that audience, and you don’t have to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to appreciate or enjoy it. A resounding five stars.
The Folk of the Fringe by Orson Scott Card
Only a few nuclear weapons fell in America-the weapons that destroyed our nation were biological and, ultimately, cultural. But in the chaos, the famine, the plague, there exited a few pockets of order. The strongest of them was the state of Deseret, formed from the vestiges of Utah, Colorado, and Idaho. The climate has changed. The Great Salt Lake has filled up to prehistoric levels. But there, on the fringes, brave, hardworking pioneers are making the desert bloom again.
A civilization cannot be reclaimed by powerful organizations, or even by great men alone. It must be renewed by individual men and women, one by one, working together to make a community, a nation, a new America.
