The wild shore, by Kim Stanley Robinson
After a nuclear Armageddon, Californians live in primitive conditions on the ruins of a glorious and mythical American civilisation. Some live in small villages, of fishing and various agricultural activities. Scavengers are nomads among the radioactive ruins, they have kept some luxuries and class. The past is unequally remembered and generally misunderstood. Sometimes Asian bodies wash up ashore pierced by bullets, signs of war on the shore across.
The narrator, Henry, gravitates around his fun and dangerous friend, Steve Nicolin, and Tom, the oldest man in the village and one of the few survivors who remember the old time. He is eager to learn of the past, but keeps his critical faculties when Tom's lessons touch the subject of men on the moon, or when experience proves that the old Americans' coffins aren't made of solid silver.
Story-wise, the stuff I found interesting was finding out about the wider world's relationship to what has become a kind of third-world country.
I'll have a look at the rest of the Three Californias triptych (three alternative futures set in California), especially to the more utopian take on the theme.
The narrator, Henry, gravitates around his fun and dangerous friend, Steve Nicolin, and Tom, the oldest man in the village and one of the few survivors who remember the old time. He is eager to learn of the past, but keeps his critical faculties when Tom's lessons touch the subject of men on the moon, or when experience proves that the old Americans' coffins aren't made of solid silver.
Story-wise, the stuff I found interesting was finding out about the wider world's relationship to what has become a kind of third-world country.
I'll have a look at the rest of the Three Californias triptych (three alternative futures set in California), especially to the more utopian take on the theme.