Review of “Small World” (1957)
William F. Nolan (writer).
Read in 2025.
Three years after the other survivors drove him into exile, the only intelligent man in Los Angeles lives in the storm drains that saved him from the apocalypse.
It’s nice to see a working-class hero, but Nolan focuses on the gun-nut adventuring over the sfnal qualities of the premise. It’s not a cozy catastrophe like The Day of the Triffids (1951), because there is no company to be had, and no thought of a wholesome farming solution. Instead, this is a zombie apocalypse: The majority of survivors were somehow poisoned by aliens in such a way that they lose their intelligence as they mature. They have claws and they are violent, but they’re not dead. They may be breeding, and their hostility to the protagonist is not necessarily intrinsic.
This story had the potential to be a more elegant remake of Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend (1954), but its premises are not explored in enough detail.