Wow. I really enjoyed this one! Rye is the only one left of her family, all the others killed by a virus. The disease seems to degenerate humans, causing some to lose the ability to think, speak, reason and turn them back into pre-evolution animalistic creatures. There are different levels to this. Some are less impaired than others. Rye calls herself that because of a pin of rye that she affixes to her coat. As far as we know, she can't speak. She finds a bus (which are rare after the devastation) and attempts to venture to her brother’s home in Pasadena. A fight breaks out on the bus and she ends up meeting a man (she calls him Obsidian) who is going around policing and helping others. They talk through gestures and she ends up going in his car. They have sex and she asks him to stay with her. Apparently women need to have men to protect them due to the animalistic nature of the most impaired humans. When they see a man running toward a woman with a knife, Obsidian gets out to help; that’s his nature, to act as a cop and help people. The woman does end up getting killed, Obsidian shoots the man, but he ends up killing Obsidian too. And Rye ends up killing him. She’s upset that her life with Obsidian is over all too soon, but there is hope. The two young toddlers of the couple can actually speak. Rye reveals that she can speak too and takes the kids with her, hoping to start anew and create a family who can speak/have intelligent thought.

I loved this one. It apparently won the coveted Hugo Award in 1983 when it was released. Although scary, sad, and devastating, it offers a ray of hope. The idea for the virus is interesting, too. It’s an intriguing commentary on what would happen to the world if people went backwards in their evolution. But it’s nice to see that there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel. That through this illness and devastation, Rye will try and rebuild. And really that’s a lesson for us all. Have hope and when things take a turn for the better, try and make a world that was better than before the initial devastation.