Book Journeys: Greybeard

I'm reading a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction at the moment. I've always been drawn to this genre but recent times have pushed me into its arms even further, for better or for worse. As far as the genre goes, I tend to find that the end of the world presented in each of these possible futures falls in one of the five general scenarios:

1. A virus eradicates most of humanity (The Earth Abides, The Last Man on Earth, Station Eleven)
2. Nuclear war or some other technology reduces the Earth to a wasteland (A Canticle for Leibowitz, The Last American, The Quiet Earth)
   
3. Resource shortages (Dry, Mad Max, Soylent Green)
4. Natural disaster (The Voyage of QV66, Waterworld, The Drowned Earth)
5. Alien invasion (A Quiet Place, War of the Worlds)

The novel Greybeard by Brian Aldiss falls into the category of nuclear destruction, which is probably to be expected from a text written during the Cold War. In this vision of the future humanity doomed itself in the early 1980s after exploding experimental nuclear weapons in orbit around the Earth. The dispersion of radiation renders the entire human race and many larger mammals sterile. 

Aldiss has twin narratives running alongside each other. One is set in the 2030s and follows 'Greybeard', a 'young' fifty year old who takes a boat down the Thames to escape the exponentially growing packs of stoats that attack and consume all animals in their path. The other thread moves back through the past in segments to show how the world has changed in the 50 years since 'the Accident'.

It's a very British story with a strong sense of pathos... this is a world where humanity is moving closer and closer to extinction as the last survivors become increasingly geriatric. On every step of his journey Greybeard seeks out hope in the various rumours and folk tales of humanity's potential survival. This is a world, however, where there is no second generation waiting in the wings... a world without children, without a future. 

It's an affecting sci-fi classic.

But now, let's look at the various covers it's had, which have stories of their own to tell...

I like this cover as it has a sort of ethereal quality to it. As a cover for this novel though? The figure on the front does not resemble the main character in any way - the main character is a healthy 50 year old who just happens to have a long grey beard, whereas the guy on the cover looks decrepit. Don't even get me started on what appears to be his wife wandering listlessly in the background... The desert-like environment is also not related to the novel at all either.

A more abstract cover that's suggestive of the theme if not actually that reflective of the novel's content.

I actually don't mind this cover - the dark, evocative illustration feels 'right' in terms of some of the novel's more grotesque elements.

A more straightforward approach. It's not inaccurate but the cartoonish style, while reflective of trends in 1970s science fiction illustration, is just a bit too goofy for my tastes.

The more serious literary approach. Boring.

This one makes it look like a fantasy novel in the style of J.R.R. Tolkien.

A Scandinavian edition - actually a mostly accurate depiction of the character, theme, and tone.

Another Scandinavian edition... this is an appalling idea for a cover because it depicts the final scene in the novel. Why would you give away the book's ending ON THE FRONT COVER?!

I like this one. There's nothing in the novel like this but it kind of works in terms of being suggestive of the novel's theme of nature taking back over the Earth.

I'm struggling with this one. What is even going on here? This has little to do with what happens in the novel.

This one looks like Charles Dickens meets Charles Bronson. Actually, in some ways that's a good description of the book itself...

Does the main character swagger around with a big gun? I'm starting to second-guess myself. I only finished reading this book yesterday but all these covers are gaslighting me into thinking that maybe Greybeard does walk around with a big gun. Even if he does, it isn't the point of the book and he doesn't really shoot it that much.

Every other cover, no matter how ridiculous, is better than this one. Boring.

This very 1980s looking cover is from a German edition. Another 'thematic' approach.

The woman on the front (presumably Greybeard's wife Martha) isn't even remotely close in appearance to any characters in the novel. That aside, this is a pretty accurate depiction... it's how I imagined Greybeard to look and the background seems suggestive of a post-apocalyptic Oxford, which is one of the novel's settings.

Okay. My Dad has this edition and I used to look at it all the time when I was a kid. I would look at it and I would be freaked out by every single element... the weird plants, the mismatched eyes, the random tusks growing out of his cheek and shoulder, the stringy beard, the brick in his throat, the black bird with human hands and a weird human mouth underneath its beak, the lack of sleeves on the guy's shirt. It fired my imagination... what on Earth is going on here? But now that I've read it, 30 years later, I can look at this cover and confidently say that this illustration is absolute bullshit. There is NOTHING in this book that connects to this image. Greybeard has no strange mutations, and there is no half-human half-bird character... in fact, there isn't even a bird in the book! Amazing.