Every once in a while, you visit a used bookstore and happen across a forgotten classic. In May, I drove through the little town of Kinsman, Ohio, on my way to Pymatuning to sit in a cabin and finish a novel that won’t be published for some time. A used bookstore has slowly eaten away most of the other businesses in town and now occupies several storefronts around a convenience store/soda stand. Near the register I noticed a shelf devoted to an author I’d never heard of. Turns out Leigh Brackett is a local legend, a woman from California! who moved there with her husband and wrote scifi novels in a house down the street.
Brackett, I learned, also wrote several screenplays. Big stuff. Rio Bravo. The Big Sleep. And, the first draft of The Empire Strikes Back. I picked The Long Tomorrow up because I thought this was such a beautiful cover. See more Brackett covers here.
I’m glad I did. The book is just wonderful, classic scifi. It begins in Pymatuning, 100 years after a nuclear war has destroyed every city on earth. In Brackett’s world, it’s the Amish and Mennonites who survive the apocalypse. One day, a precocious boy, Len, and his cousin, Esau, come across a radio, a forbidden piece of technology that may have come from the last remaining city. The object kicks off the adventure as Len and Esau set out into the territories in search of the truth.
Like all good sci fi, the story is compelling even as the bigger themes develop in the writing. Visit a used bookstore and get a copy for yourself!
