⇒ Read The Postman David Brin 9780553278743 Books

The Postman David Brin 9780553278743 Books

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The Postman David Brin 9780553278743 Books

I always wonder, someone in Hollywood reads a book, falls on love with it and thinks "This would make a great movie". Then they proceed to change pretty much the entire story until it is barely recognizable as the source material.

Is it studio bigwigs interfering or simply hubris? Either way the end is nearly always the same with the book being much better than the film.

I didn't hate Kevin Costner's The Postman. I kind of like the movie but it could have been SO much better if it had adhered to the book more than it did. (It is far enough away from this book that it only vaguely resembles it).

If you liked the movie, read the book, if you hate the movie, read the book.


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The Postman David Brin 9780553278743 Books Reviews

This book is the first fiction book I have really enjoyed in many years. I had come to the conclusion that no one can write good stories anymore (well, this was written in 1985 so maybe that is still true). I have been unable to put this book down - I haven't done that since...well a long time ago. Good writing, easy to read, a few words I have had to look up, and a compelling story that is very different than the movie (better than the movie, at least so far - I still have to finish the story).
I've liked science fiction my whole life, and it's currently popular to do the whole post-collapse thing, but I always chuckle a little at the idea that one person (or even one small group) surviving with toilet paper intact and plenty of ammo somehow means victory over chaos. Civilization is a large group, cooperating for the benefit of all, and identifying with each other as "all of us, together". This book is about creating that, from the scattered pieces of post-collapse.
I wasn't a fan of the movie. I've seen Kevin Costner play the reluctant curmudgeon-hero just once too often. This book isn't the movie.
Some years ago there was a movie titled “The Postman” with Kevin Costner that was loosely based on this novel by science fiction writer David Brin.

There is nothing science fiction about The Postman. It’s a post-apocalyptic story that plays in Oregon.

The book was first copyrighted in 1985 and Brin, being a science fiction writer, created an all-out nuclear war that took place in the early 1990-ies and that brought down civilization worldwide.

I like to read science fiction written about a time way in the future from the writer’s present perspective, which also happens to be the present time for me. To do that, you have to not read a new book for 25 or more years.

This story takes place in the 2010 to 2012 timeframe, referencing the war that took place 16 years before the start of the story.

The immediate aftermath of the war caused a three-year-winter and lawlessness. Massive extinction took crops, animals and people. In the U.S., the government collapsed, and civilization was reduced to marauding bands of violent survivalists and homesteaders who sometimes banded together for mutual support and protection in small communities.

Gordon Krantz, the protagonist, is a lone survivor who wandered from St. Paul all the way to eastern Oregon over a period of 16 years, keeping a journal of his travels, surviving somehow off the scraps left by a looted civilization. When the story begins he is robbed of all his possessions by bandits that outnumbered and outgunned him. Faced with imminent death from freezing and starvation in winter in the mountains in eastern Oregon, he must get creative quickly.

When he stumbles upon a corpse of a former postman in a Post Office Jeep, he takes the uniform for warmth and the bag as a container – and then he has an idea that changes his life and that of all the people he encounters.

Like in most apocalypse stories, there must be some evil besides just the natural disasters that cause impossible situations for the people. In Stephen King’s The Stand, that’s Randall Flagg, the dark lord that takes over Las Vegas and builds an evil empire. In The Postman, the evil people are, ironically, the remaining militant survivalists who concentrated in the Pacific Northwest before the war, digging bunkers, hoarding supplies and ammunition, training in hunting and warfare, with the sole objective to survive in the case of a holocaust. As it turns out, the survivalists, due to competition with each other, pretty much kill each other off, but in the end, after things settle down, they have coalesced into an empire of abuse, slavery, and exploitation – feudalism in the American mainland. And they go to war against the villages and settlements who try to survive against all odds and build a new civilization.

Gordon, unwittingly and not really a hero, through the circumstances he creates for himself, becomes key to the solution of this conflict.

The Postman is a captivating read, stronger in the first two-thirds of the book which deals with his discoveries. Things get complicated in the end, and the climax is somewhat quick with a deus-ex-machina-flavored solution in the end.

Overall, The Postman is a good, credible and entertaining story of a post-apocalyptic America.
A favorite post apocalyptic book by a favorite author of the Uplift Wars and many others...I think I read this when it came out, perhaps 35-40 years ago. Bought it for my 12 yo, perhaps too advanced, but he reads at college level and has read hundreds of books so far. Not sure if this is more or less disturbing than Ender's Game, but similarly has a deep moral message. I've since seen movies that seem to try to play the context and theme treated in this book, but they always disappoint compared to my memory of this remarkable story. I remember crying and laughing and wanting to share it... perhaps I was still young, but I bought it on kindle so both of us could read it. Please let me know if this fuzzy recollection was helpful to you.
I picked up this book because as a teenager I loved the movie. The movie The Postman, starring Kevin Costner, came out in 1997, and was one of my first exposures to the post apocalyptic genre. It was based on this book which was published in 1985. So recently I decided to read the novel. It’s much better than the movie, of course, when isn’t the novel better than the movie? With the novel we are able to get much more in depth descriptions and the characters are fleshed out with descriptive back stories. There was a lot left out of the movie, this novel is so much more than the movie even dreamed of being. The Postman is a novel about hope, and the effect hope can have on a community.

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I always wonder, someone in Hollywood reads a book, falls on love with it and thinks "This would make a great movie". Then they proceed to change pretty much the entire story until it is barely recognizable as the source material.

Is it studio bigwigs interfering or simply hubris? Either way the end is nearly always the same with the book being much better than the film.

I didn't hate Kevin Costner's The Postman. I kind of like the movie but it could have been SO much better if it had adhered to the book more than it did. (It is far enough away from this book that it only vaguely resembles it).

If you liked the movie, read the book, if you hate the movie, read the book.