By The Waters Of Babylon by Stephen Vincent Benét, 1937
The magic trick:
Mixing society-level world-building with smaller, familial relationships
We close our week of islands with the strangest of the lot. Some retro-future craziness from SVB.
It’s remarkable how far ahead of its time this story is. It feels an AWFUL lot like the kind of thing Ray Bradbury would be writing in 15, 20 years. It feels like sci-fi. It feels like fantasy. It feels like Lord Of The Rings. It feels A LOT like Planet Of The Apes. It feels like freaking Neverending Story. So many debts to be paid by future masterpieces.
“Babylon” spends the first page world-building, establishing the rules of this society that we assume is set in the future. But then it really focuses on the earthly, familiar concerns of a father-son relationship. The boy respects his father, but at the same time, thirsts for his own experience and accomplishments. The story plays off those two things – the grand, society-level questions that drive the plot, along with the boy-seeking-to-become-a-man narrative – exceptionally well.
And that’s quite a trick on Benét’s part.
The selection:
After a time, I myself was allowed to go into the dead houses and search for metal. So I learned the ways of those houses – and if I saw bones, I was no longer afraid. The bones are light and old – sometimes they will fall into dust if you touch them. But that is a great sin.
I was taught the chants and the spells – I was taught how to stop the running of blood from a wound and many secrets. A priest must know many secrets – that was what my father said.
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