![]() The Sioux, rather than George Washington, cross the Delaware at Trenton (a reference to the pivotal Battle of Trenton in the Revolutionary War) (75). William Tenn’s “Eastward Ho!” is all about the groves etched into our memories by the grand narratives of the Golden Age, albeit grooves jumbled and decontextualized in the post-nuclear world. Miller, Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959). A famous example that most will recognize are the fragments of circuit designs, grocery lists, fallout shelter warnings, and other textual ephemera woven into the “Fiat Homo” portion of Walter M. In Peter Schwenger’s Letter Bomb (1992), he develops the idea that nuclear fiction, in an effort to decipher the nature of the cataclysm, foregrounds the cryptic nature of signifiers of the long pre-nuclear past that the protagonists must attempt to read (and more often than not misread). Jerry must think on his feet and channel the grand lineage of Senators from Idaho he imagines he is part of (the concept of democracy no longer exists–just the titles and phrases). The Sioux have stolen a march on the Seminole and threaten the few remaining territories of the United States. ![]() But instead of the Seminole, Jerry encounters the Sioux, decked out in buffalo robes and served by white servants. Their mission? Attempt to convince Osceola VII, Ruler of all the Seminoles, to abide by earlier treaties with the United States. The plot: A diplomatic mission from the President of the United States, who sleeps on a straw pallet in New York City, led by Jerry Franklin, son of the Senator of Idaho, heads towards the Seminole. The time: sometimes after a nuclear conflict with Soviet Russia in which the United States is beset on all sides by resurgent Native American tribes. The location: The crumbling remains of the New Jersey Turnpike. William Tenn’s “Eastward Ho!” first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Ed Emshwiller’s cover for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed.The kindness of Pluckett’s wife shines forth. As with Ward Moore’s “Lot” (1953), Tenn ridicules the middle-aged American father who yearns to make anew. This is a well-wrought commentary on the destructive nature of hypermasculine world-views that threaten to obfuscate human kindness. Tenn points out in the author’s note to the collection The Wooden Star (1968) that “Generation of Noah” was “rejected across the board by the general-fiction magazines in 1949.” Thankfully he found a home for this smart and incisive near-future satire in Suspense Magazine in 1951. The shape of the future is unclear through the dust-filled air above the family huddled underground. But with most great nuclear war fictions, the endings are problematized. He violates his own creed with a moment of weakness. The edifice of purpose-driven cruelty comes crashing down in the final terror of the moment. And when the sky fills with explosions, Plunkett buckles. Word travels that there’s a new bomb on the horizon and new tensions afoot. Plunkett reiterates that he will lock out anyone not to the shelter in time! I’d burn like the head of a match an’ the only thing left of me would be a dark spot on the ground, shaped like my shadow An’ if it was ra-dio-a-ac-tive dust ‘stead of atom bombs, my skin would come right off my body, an’ my lungs would burn up inside me An’ my eyes would fall out, an’ my teeth would fall out, and I’d feel such terribly terribly pain” (14). And Plunkett even developed a “catechism” for the new cruel religion he embodies that his children must memorize: “When the bombs fell, I’d have no place to hide. “More than three minutes” Plunkett says, “Don’t cry son it isn’t any use” as “the big doors would be shut” (14). If Plunkett’s young son travels past the white chalk line, he pulls out his watch. “Generation of Noah” reveals the profound cruelty Plunkett deploys to beat in his vision of the new morality (placed in stark contrast to the adoring kindness of his wife). But this is not survivalist manifesto Dean Ing style or a messianic Heinlein narrator. ![]() He selects the virtues that his children might need in the new future–“strength and self-sufficiency” (19). He teaches his children in a “scientific way” in “keeping with the latest discoveries” (13). He inundates his conversations with quotes from issues of Survivor magazine (16). His rural poultry farm raises money for a complex of underground living and store rooms with generators, supplies, Geiger counters, and lead-lined suits (16). You can read it online here if you have an Internet Archive account.Įlliot Plunkett, WWII veteran and one-time company man, abandons his previous life in order to train his family to survive future nuclear apocalypse. William Tenn’s “Generation of Noah” first appeared in Suspense Magazine, ed. Theodore Irwin (Spring 1951). Uncredited cover for the 1955 edition of Frontiers in Space: Selections from The Best Science Fiction Stories, ed.
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