Book Review: Survivors by Terry Nation

 APRIL is MORE 'Dystopian Britain Novels' Month

 

Book Review: 'Survivors' by Terry Nation

5 / 5 Stars

'Survivors' first appeared as a BBC TV series, airing for 38 episodes from April 1975 to June 1977. I first learned of it from the pages of Stephen Brotherstone's 'Scarred for Life,' as the series didn't make it to U.S. television.

(A reboot, airing in 2008, suffered from Wokeness and was not well received.) 

Terry Nation (1930 - 1997) was a UK screenwriter and producer who, during the 1960s and 1970s, worked on a number of science fiction TV series, including Dr. Who and Blake's 7. In 1980 he moved to Los Angeles and wrote scripts for American series such as MacGyver.

In 1976 Futura released Nation's novelization of the series as a paperback. In 2008, to coincide with the reboot, UK publisher Orion released a trade paperback version and this is the one I read and am reviewing.

'Survivors' starts off with a plague depleting the population of the entire world, including the UK. In short order, civilization breaks down, and the few survivors wander the empty landscape scavenging for supplies.

 

Lead character Abby Grant is obliged to abandon her life of upper-class comfort and privilege, but she holds on to the hope that her son Peter may have survived the plague and is alive and well somewhere in the countryside. Jenny Richards, a younger woman from a working-class background, and Greg, an engineer, eventually meet up with Abby and decide to set up camp in a rural household called The Grange. Other survivors join up and assist with establishing a farm, and a foraging system to secure supplies in the wider area.

 

There is tension in this post-apocalyptic UK in the form of a classic 'survivalist' encampment, the 'National Unity Force,' formed by a trade union president named Arthur Wormley (it's very British to have the villain arise from unionism, as opposed to the American practice of having these characters derive from 'survivalist' / right wing origins). 

 

The NUF have a habit of seizing things by force from those unwilling to defend themselves. Other, less organized bands of marauders also pose a threat to the welfare of the Grange colony.  

 

In relating the adventures of Abby, Jenny, and Greg, Nation takes pains to portray how poorly equipped modern society and its denizens are for a collapse. Early on in the novel, Abby has a conversation with the headmaster of her son's boarding school: 

 

He moved quickly to a workbench and picked up a glass test tube. "Look at that. We've been making things of glass for thousands of years. But could you make it ? It's silica, potash, high temperature and a great deal of skill. Don't you see, our civilization has the benefit of knowledge that has been accumulated since the beginning of time, and yet most of us are less practical than Iron Age man." 

 

The struggle to grow enough food to support the Grange, and the battle with the elements and the native flora and fauna who quickly assert themselves in the absence of civilization, is a major theme in 'Survivors.'

 

With only 254 pages to work with in his paperback, Nation obviously could not present all of the storyline from the 38-episode television run. But his narrative is crisp and declarative, and devoid of much in the way of psychological angst; the people in 'Survivors' are too consumed with simply staying warm, and having enough to eat, to indulge much in the way of PTSD.

 

As I indicate above, 'Survivors' adopts a 'British' tone to its post-apocalyptic story. There is limited gunplay and assistant casualties, thus, readers hoping for the gleeful violence of American 'Radioactive Rambo' novels will be disappointed. 'Survivors' also is devoid of the facetious humor that marks the American franchise Fallout. In Nation's novel, the post-plague world is marked by unrelenting bleakness. And it's done well enough for me to grant the novel a Five Star Rating.

 

For another, rather frenetic, take on 'Survivors,' readers are directed to 'The Diesel-Electric Elephant Company blog.