Age of Aquarius eBook William Barton
Download As PDF : Age of Aquarius eBook William Barton 
Originally published in
Asimov's Science Fiction, May 1996
1997 Hugo Award Finalist
18,000 words
Imagine you're a little boy, living a life straight out of "Leave It to Beaver," back in October 1962. That would be a good description of a boy named Alan Burke, usually called Burke the Jerk by his friends. Alan likes to play in the woods and hang out with those friends, drink Cokes at the drugstore and read paperback fantasy novels. Sometimes young Alan wonders what life will be like, when he grows up, wonders if he'll manage to become a paleontologist, or whether he'll grow up like most men in early 1960s America, grow up to sell cars, or maybe life insurance. But it's October 1962, and in Alan Burke's version of that familiar old world, things are about to go horribly wrong.
Age of Aquarius eBook William Barton
Growing up in the '80s, I read tonnes of books about the ever-looming Nuclear Apocalypse and the wild, mutant-haunted days after. In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell and that was that: no end-of-the-world fun for me. Nowadays I thank every god in every pantheon ever worshipped by Mankind that my fantasies never came to life.But the world never would've ended in the '80s, or the '90s, because it almost DID end twelve years before I was even born. The Cuban Missile Crisis was the closest the United States and the Soviet Union ever came to actual global thermonuclear war...but, fortunately, Kennedy and Krushchev both backed down at the last minute.
Well, what if they hadn't?
I read this novella when it was first printed in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine years ago and it has haunted me since. The world COULD have ended...and life after the apocalypse would have been nothing whatsoever like my idiotic childhood Mad Max fantasies. William Barton, much like Cormac McCarthy, pulls no punches in telling a tale of youth brutally murdered by The Bomb, and a nation's greatest glory killed before it could ever blossom. It's a hard story to read, but worth it for all the tears and the blood and radioactive cesium spent to tell it.
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Age of Aquarius eBook William Barton Reviews
A rather good short postapocalyptic story, and also a rather good post-postapocalyptic story.
This is my favorite AH PoD. I have read a number of stories set in world where the CMC went hot.
First, Barton is a little pessimistic in the numbers of nukes hitting America...Russia did not have that many capable of reaching the US in 1962 (in 1965 or even 1964, yes, but not 1962). Then he has the country recovering in only a few years, where a few decades at best would be more likely from his attack scenario, or generations if a Luddite reaction to the war occurred. But in between is a good depiction of how bad it would be (ex. eating dogs to survive).
Starts-out as "Leave it to Beaver" with hormones, then the world falls-apart and things turn decidedly dark. Distinctly disturbing in the latter half. Still, a good read overall.
The greatest nuclear war story of all time. The biggest surprise the character's interest in manned spaceflight
Growing up in the '80s, I read tonnes of books about the ever-looming Nuclear Apocalypse and the wild, mutant-haunted days after. In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell and that was that no end-of-the-world fun for me. Nowadays I thank every god in every pantheon ever worshipped by Mankind that my fantasies never came to life.
But the world never would've ended in the '80s, or the '90s, because it almost DID end twelve years before I was even born. The Cuban Missile Crisis was the closest the United States and the Soviet Union ever came to actual global thermonuclear war...but, fortunately, Kennedy and Krushchev both backed down at the last minute.
Well, what if they hadn't?
I read this novella when it was first printed in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine years ago and it has haunted me since. The world COULD have ended...and life after the apocalypse would have been nothing whatsoever like my idiotic childhood Mad Max fantasies. William Barton, much like Cormac McCarthy, pulls no punches in telling a tale of youth brutally murdered by The Bomb, and a nation's greatest glory killed before it could ever blossom. It's a hard story to read, but worth it for all the tears and the blood and radioactive cesium spent to tell it.
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