Bring the Jubilee by Ward Moore -Vintage Science Fiction Complete Novel Audiobook human voice
Channel: Stories of Futures Past
Date: 2024-02-17

Please forgive the many formatting issues in the on-screen text of this narration. There were some challenges with preparing the text.

Purported to be a recounting written in 1877 of the life and times of the protagonist Hodgins Backmaker, born in 1921. The story progresses glacially, but paints a vivid and compelling picture of the brutal life in the destitute rump of the United States a few generations after their catastrophic loss of the War of Southron Independence in 1865. This US of the 1930s to 1950s is a backwards, deeply bigoted country crippled by war reparations, its economy in ruins and with most people so poor they have to sell themselves into indentured servitude to survive. It is a harsh and unforgiving society with what we today would call steampunk technology, and with a distinctly different development of world history.

The history and state of this dark world is plausibly portrayed, and the novel is a thoughtful and compelling look at how things might have turned out - not just for the United States, but also for the world at large - if the American Civil War had had a different outcome. It also is a bit of a cautionary tale about meddling with the past. The story moves at a sedate pace, and there is not much action as such, but still, I find it to be a well written page turner. The characters we meet are distinct and believable. There is a lot of detail throughout that affects what comes later, and it all really comes together quite elegantly at the end.

Note that this is not an action story. I would describe Bring the Jubilee as more like being the introspective memoirs of one man's life, growing up and living in an alternative history, with an added splash of time travel and dollops of philosophical ruminations throughout. 

It is worth noting that it was published as early as 1953, and many of the issues - especially ruminations on immigration, societal views on education, and racial issues - written about in the book are as (frighteningly) relevant today as over seventy years ago.

Ward Moore (1903-1978) wrote several novels and many short stories in the golden age, some of which were not Science Fiction. Bring the Jubilee is probably his best known work, although almost all his SF works are hailed as being significant contributions to the corpus of Science Fiction canon.

No background music, by popular demand. Only my voice, croaks, wheezes, and all. Enjoy!

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Stories of Futures Past presents a vintage science fiction novel, narrated by myself, Tom Trussel. An actual, real living human being, warts and all. 

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