Some people, plants, and animals survived, of course — some underground, like in Strange Tomorrow, another novel set in this world; some in the spaces between the Sweep’s overlapping fields, as in the first story of this collection.

The stories go on: people live in tiny fertile valleys, often only big enough for a family, and when a new person comes along, someone has to leave and find a new home (or, more likely, perish in the badlands in between valleys). As fertility returns to the land, villages get bigger. People start rediscovering the technology of the pre-Sweep Old Ones, and developing their own.

And then, because this was the ’70s, people discover that the Sweep changed them. They have mental powers we never had, “a force, an energy within [them]selves.” It’s not telepathy; more like the Force of Star Wars. Children go on “sequesterings” to learn to use this force, to “develop [their] inner unity.” When the Clordians come back, this force shows the aliens that humans cannot be conquered, but must be left alone with their inner unity and their one-ness with all life.

From there the stories get really hippie-dippy, as humans learn the awkwardly named “self-space-placement” (they couldn’t just say “teleportation”?) and start exploring other planets populated by sentient, meditative plants and whatnot.

13 vs. 31: I loved the hippieness of it all as a kid, the hope represented by humans moving away from violence and towards unity with all life. As an adult, it makes me roll my eyes a little bit, but it’s still hard not to feel soothed by it. By the end, humans have created something of a galactic utopia, and I am enough of a naive optimist to be drawn to that.

My favorite part of the book, when I first read it and now, is the conceit that it’s “Stories of a Future Past” (as the subtitle claims). These stories are meant to be historical fiction, written from the point of view of that galactic utopia. There are “Notes on Sources” at the end, little write-ups of what is known about each time period, given the surviving records or lack thereof. Nothing says “hope” like the idea that happy, fulfilled humans are telling the story of an apocalypse from far in the future. “It’s going to be rough for a while, guys, but it all gets better. We promise.”

Fun fact: Jean E. Karl was a bigshot in children’s publishing as well as an author. She edited the Earthsea trilogy and From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler!(!!) (Her own writing is somewhat less luminous, though she does tell some damn inventive stories.)

Covers: Man, these are some weak covers! The top one is the edition I have now, which makes it look like a collection of sci-fi horror stories. The second one was the edition of my childhood. It’s a good thing the book has a good title and my library had a small children’s science fiction section, or I would never have picked this up. It looks like a geometry textbook.

Hey, everybody, it’s post-apocalyptic YA from the ’80s! Home, sweet home. It even has a watercolory cover and a fresh-faced, all-American heroine named “Janie Johnson”! This book was brought to my attention recently [and by "recently," I mean about six months ago, when I actually read it -- Ed.] by an old friend, who presented me with this name-that-book challenge over the phone: “It’s a book I read when I was a kid. Some kids are hiding underground when aliens attack and destroy the whole world.”

At first I was shamed, because how is it possible that there’s a book I haven’t read fitting that description? But when my friend figured out the title and emailed it to me, I realized that it’s set in the same universe as The Turning Place, one of my favorite childhood books! The Turning Place tells the story of humanity after the Clordian Sweep (the aforementioned alien apocalypse) in a series of short stories, skipping hundreds of years or more between each tale. I’m a sucker for sci-fi that leaps centuries in a single bound; it’s comforting somehow. If things suck now, shall we try 300 years in the future?

Strange Tomorrow is only two stories, but it uses the same trick. The first half is about the first Janie, who is alone with her military father and younger brother in the President’s Cold War bunker when the Sweep destroys (almost) every living thing on earth. Janie is able to convince her family to want to survive and make the best of their worst possible situation.

The second half follows Janie #2, named for that first Janie a couple of generations later. It turns out that some life survived in valleys and caves, so the handful of survivors were able to grow food and live outside the bunker. Janie is part of a small group ordered to start a new village in a different valley a few days’ walk away. She fears the isolation, and is convinced that it must be better to stay in contact, but that is not The Way Things Are Done.

If you need more 80s post-apocalyptic YA in your life (and who doesn’t?), give this a go. I can’t imagine a much more complete devastation than the Clordian Sweep, but the charmingly resilient heroines will make you feel hopeful, even though the only animals left in the world are the bees, rabbits, and chickens whose eggs were frozen in the bunker. And probably some cockroaches.

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But he’s right; the cover doesn’t really convey that. You can’t see it from my jpg, but the letters are sparkly gold stars, like the cover of some straight-to-video Disney junk. Shirin is shown looking all sexy with long hair and cleavage, even though she spends most of the book with short hair, kicking ass. And the prince at the top is posed like Super Mario jumping over a koopa. The whole thing says “cheesy video game nostalgia fest,” and that’s a shame, because I rather enjoyed the book within.

There’s a lot going on in the plot, but basically it switches back and forth between two time periods in early-C.E. Persia. In the first, there’s a power struggle for the throne, which leads ousted prince Guiv to disappear to the desert. A few centuries later, Shirin, the daughter of the decadent governor, finds out that there’s some bad stuff going on outside her sheltered palace, so she poses as a boy and runs away to find out for herself. She ends up hooking up with a young man obsessed with the stories from Guiv’s day, and leading a revolution with him against her own father.

Some bits were a little hard to follow, but the story kept me turning the pages. It has all the “we must wait for the one who is destined to rule us” garbage that I’m so tired of, but that’s moderated by some strong female characters who are unhampered by destiny.

I was also impressed by the way the art delineates the older story from the newer one. Guiv’s story uses super-saturated bright, warm tones. Shirin’s story uses more muted blues and purples. Even at the end, when the story switches back and forth between the two time periods quickly, I could always tell which one was which. It’s an elegant and beautiful solution.

I have no idea how much the story has to do with the game(s), but of course that doesn’t really matter — the book has to stand alone, and it does.

* The credits are too long for the title on this one, but credit where it’s due:
[Original game] Created by: Jordan Mechner
Written by: A. B. Sina
Artwork by: LeUyen Pham and Alex Puvilland
Color by: Hilary Sycamore

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