#18: The Long Tomorrow (1955) by Leigh Brackett

“No city, no town, no community of more than one thousand people or two hundred buildings to the square mile shall be built or permitted to exist anywhere in the United States of America.”--13th Amendment of the US Constitution

“There’s never been an act done since the beginning, from a kid stealing candy to a dictator committing suicide, that the person doing it didn’t think he was fully justified. That’s a mental trick called rationalizing, and it’s done the human race more harm than anything else you can name.”

“There are those who think that life has nothing left to chance. A host of holy horrors to direct our aimless dance.”--Rush, “Free Will”

Two generations in the past, an all-out nuclear war ruined the cities of the world and led to the question of whether technology and scientific knowledge are worthwhile pursuits. The new ruling class of America, the agrarian New Mennonites, said no. Machines, electric power, atomic energy all come from the same source--evil. The New Mennonites enacted the 13th Amendment, a de facto ban on cities and progress. Civilization now stands still in the middle of a wheat field.

Leigh Brackett (1915-1978) is best known for her career as a Hollywood screenwriter. Among other works, she penned, at least in part, two great Raymond Chandler adaptations: The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye. And she also cowrote a little sci-fi picture known as The Empire Strikes Back. Many of her novels and short stories were seen as pulp, which isn’t accurate, at least in the case of The Long Tomorrow, a novel that is decidedly literary.

The narrative follows two young New Mennonite boys, cousins Esau and Len Colter. They live a small community called Piper’s Run. But they long for more. They desire a place where ideas are freely exchanged and machines aid human civilization. The main catalyst for these desires is the boys’ grandmother, who tearfully recalls her childhood days when planes filled the air, cars and busses crowded the streets, and folks had leisure and luxury. After witnessing the horrific stoning of an outsider thought to be from the mythical “Bartorstown” (perhaps the last city) and coming to realize the limits of New Mennonite living, the boys set off to find this last refuge of human progress.

However, Bartorstown may not exist. Or it may not be what they think it is. If it’s out there, it’s somehow connected to a traveling trader named Mr. Hostetter. And the journey contains many obstacles: lust, jealousy, ignorance, and fanaticism. The West, for instance, has wandering bands of New Ishmaelites, a group that renounces all possessions and who frequently and randomly rise up violently against the followers of the flesh (i.e., everyone who isn’t a New Ishmaelite) when called by God in a moment of religious ecstasy. And in the end, the boys must decide which is more frightening, the monster closely regarded in its cage or the monster pushed to the fringe of society and ignored. And just what is this monster anyway?