Book review: The Long Tomorrow

The Long Tomorrow is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by American writer Leigh Brackett, wiki sez correctly. I'll assume you've read their article.

It's a decent book, I got quite absorbed in it, but a quote from a review struck a chord: Most of the book, particularly the early part, is compellingly written, but not speculative... as the invented elements of the story grow more important, the vision dims. The idea of Bartorstown as an ideal in the minds of our protagonists works so much better than the "actual reality" LB is able to conjure up.

I didn't really like "Clementine" the computer, especially since anything they had then would so obviously have been too primitive to talk / think / analyse in the way that was required. Or even, to remain functioning without spare parts. If you remove that, and the dream of the force-field, then the book could have been a return-science-to-the-world type book, which is what I was expecting. Instead it turns into a "small remaining core of science that is obviously too small to actually support progress, gradually falls away".

You could perhaps consider it a meditation on the respective virtues of the simple, low-tech life versus the risks of tech. Personally, I'll take the risks of tech, because voluntarily sinking back into the pool of the folk is intellectual death.