The Postman

The Postman (1985) is a post-apocalyptic novel by David Brin. A drifter stumbles across the uniform of an old United States Postal Service letter carrier and gives hope to a community threatened by local warlords with empty promises of aid from the "Restored United States of America". The first two parts were published separately as "The Postman" (1982) and "Cyclops" (1984). Both won Hugo Awards for Best Novella.

A film adaptation was released in 1997, directed by Kevin Costner and starring Costner, Will Patton, Larenz Tate, Olivia Williams, James Russo, Daniel Von Bargen, Tom Petty, Scott Bairstow, and Roberta Maxwell. Many critics dismissed the film as overlong and pompous.

Compared to the film, the book is generally seen to have more substance. Despite the post-apocalyptic scenario, and several actions sequences, the book is largely about civilisation and symbols. Each of the three sections deals with a different symbol. The first is the Postman himself, who takes the uniform solely for warmth after he loses everything but his sleeping clothes. His reputation as a real postman builds not because of a deliberate fraud (at least initially) but because people are desperate to believe. Later, in the second section, he encounters a community led by Cyclops, apparently a sentient artificial intelligence which miraculously survived the cataclysm. However the machine was actually destroyed, and the appearance of it is being maintained by a group of scientists trying to keep hope, order and knowledge alive.

Eventually, in the third section, as the Postman joins forces with the forces of Cyclops in a war against an influx of survivalists, he begins to find that the survivalists are being pressed from the south as well (Cyclops' land is in Oregon). As the story ends, and he comes close to the survivalists southern enemy, he begins to find traces of them, primarily in the symbol that they rally behind: the California bear flag. The final scenes give the impression that the three symbols may rally together in an effort to revive civilisation.

Another message of the plot deals with the backstory of the post-apocalyptic world: specifically, that it was not the electronics-destroying electromagnetic pulses, nor the destruction of major cities, nor the release of various bio-engineered plagues that actually destroyed society. It was the survivalists, those who maintained stockpiles of weapons and ammunition and who preyed on humanitarian workers and other forces of order. The message of this is obviously that what could really destroy civilisation is its own members.