The Postman

An interesting relic of the “men ruin everything” mentality that have us The Mists of Avalon, Goddesses in Every Woman, Dances with Wolves, and The Wheel of Time, this dystopian novel has an interesting main character in an interesting situation. It kind of drags in places, and most of the other characters aren't particularly deep although they try to be.

A much better written and overall more interesting and less predictable exponent of this kind of dystopian fiction is The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri Tepper. That will always be my favorite dystopian novel if not my favorite novel of all time.

This book, although fine to read, serves even better to document the hysteria that left wing authors propagated in the eighties. I hate to put it that way, because (a) I generally don't care about author politics UNLESS it's totally transparent in the work and (b) it's clear that David Brin is a fine writer and deserves his place in the pantheon of 80s-90s futurists. But the bad guys in this book are “survivalists.” It's just funny to see how seriously some people took things.

So all in all, pretty good but not great.