David Brin · 1985 · survival

David Brin's 1985 novel, a quiet rebuke to apocalypse-as-spectacle. Sixteen years after a war and the plagues that followed, the wanderer Gordon Krantz pulls a dead letter carrier's jacket from a wrecked jeep for warmth, and finds that the uniform, and his lie about a Restored United States, gives people something they had lost: hope. Across the ruins of Oregon, a fragile myth gathers strength against the brutal Holnist militias.

1. 1
   Eastern Oregon

   Robbed of everything in the cold high desert, Gordon finds a dead postman's uniform and a bag of sixteen-year-old mail.

2. 2
   Pine View

   Posing as a letter carrier of the Restored United States, he brings impossible hope to a small valley town.

3. 3
   Corvallis

   North to Corvallis, where the supercomputer Cyclops gives the Willamette Valley a reason to believe.

4. 4
   The Umpqua Valley

   And south to the warrior clans of the Umpqua, to make a stand against the Holnists pushing up from the Rogue.