Alas, Babylon is a 1959 novel by American writer Pat Frank. It is an early example of post-nuclear apocalyptic fiction and has an entry in David Pringle's book Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels. The novel deals with the effects of a nuclear war on the fictional small town of Fort Repose, Florida, which is based upon the actual city of Mount Dora, Florida, approximately 35 miles northwest of Orlando, Florida. The novel's title is derived from the Book of Revelation: "Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come." The cover art for the Bantam paperback edition was made by Robert Hunt.

Plot

The novel starts in early December of an unspecified year in the early 1960s; the Soviet Union has just launched Sputnik 23. Tensions have been escalating for two years between the United States and the Soviet Union for dominance in the Middle East and in the Mediterranean Sea. The Soviets are menacing Turkey from three sides through their proxies in Egypt, Syria and Iraq in order to gain control of the Bosporus and give free passage between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean to their large Mediterranean naval fleet. To counteract the Soviet threat, the United States established a military presence in Lebanon and is providing aid to their Turkish and Israeli allies. Meanwhile, the Soviets gained a temporary space supremacy through the launch of a fleet of militarized Sputniks; moreover, they are aware that, within three or four years, the United States will cover the gap. Intelligence from a Soviet officer who defected in Berlin provided information about a Soviet war plan involving a sudden, overwhelming nuclear first strike on U.S. and NATO military and civilian targets, in order to minimize retaliation and to ensure that the Soviet Union becomes the leading world power. According to the leaked war plan, the Soviet leadership considers acceptable the loss of 20 to 30 million of their own civilian population due to an anticipated retaliatory strike by NATO.

Randy Bragg, a failed political candidate and an attorney who occasionally practices law, lives an otherwise aimless life in the small Central Florida town of Fort Repose. The younger bachelor son of a prominent local family, his ancestors founded Fort Repose in the 1800s. Randy's older brother, Colonel Mark Bragg, a U.S. Air Force intelligence officer at Strategic Air Command (SAC) headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska, sends a telegram to Randy ending in the words, "Alas, Babylon", a pre-established code between the brothers to warn of imminent disaster. Shortly thereafter, Mark flies his family down to Orlando in order to stay with Randy at Fort Repose for their protection while Mark remains at SAC headquarters.

Following what is simply referred to as "The Day", Fort Repose descends into chaos: tourists are trapped in their hotels, communication lines fail, the CONELRAD radio system barely operates, convicts escape from prisons, and a run on the banks makes currency worthless. In the weeks and months after the attack, sporadic news gathered through an old but still-functioning vacuum tube radio receiver show that many major cities of the U.S. are in ruins and vast regions of the Continental United States are labeled by the government as off-limits "contaminated zones." Because of the numerous U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy installations from one end of the state to the other that were struck during the Soviet attack, Florida is among the contaminated areas, leaving the stranded survivors of Fort Repose without hope of immediate assistance. Most of the U.S. government has been eliminated, with the U.S. presidency defaulting to Josephine Vanbruuker-Brown, the former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare who is believed to be leading the nation from a location in Colorado.

Influence

thumb|right|150px|Cover of [[Bantam Books 1979 paperback edition, ]]

People

  • John Lennon, known for his pacifist views, was given a copy of Alas, Babylon by journalist Larry Kane in 1965. Lennon spent all night reading the book, fueling his anti-war fervor and envisioning the world's population attempting to crawl their way back from the horrors of a nuclear catastrophe.

Television

The post-apocalyptic TV series Jericho is partly inspired by Alas, Babylon. The story centers on the residents of the fictional city of Jericho, Kansas, in the aftermath of a nuclear attack on 23 major cities in the contiguous United States.

Literature

  • In his critical study The Modern Weird Tale (2001), S. T. Joshi compares Alas, Babylon favourably with Stephen King's The Stand, calling the former "a more interesting treatment of the same basic theme."
  • In the foreword of the 2005 edition of Alas, Babylon, David Brin notes that the book was instrumental in shaping his views on nuclear war and influenced his own book, The Postman (1982).
  • In the acknowledgements section at the beginning of his post-apocalyptic novel One Second After (2009), William R. Forstchen credits Alas, Babylon as an influence in writing his novel about the small town of Black Mountain, North Carolina. The novel is set in a time after numerous electromagnetic pulses strike around the world, cutting off all sources of electricity to the town, and depicts the ensuing aftermath of sociological breakdown.
  • John Ringo's 2013 Under a Graveyard Sky, the first in his Black Tide Rising series, starts with an emergency code using the phrase "AlasBabylon." Frank's book is referenced as the characters' inspiration for that code, and is briefly synopsized. It starred Don Murray, Burt Reynolds, and Rita Moreno.

See also

  • List of nuclear holocaust fiction
  • Survivalism

Notes

References

  • "Pat Frank's 'Alas, Babylon,' 50 years later" in The Florida Times-Union