if i keep buying obscure and neglected books like this eventually i'm bound to come across a forgotten masterpiece. this wasn't it. this atom bomb novel published in 1950 takes place in the distant future of 1965. americanada and europasia are engaged in a cold war. greg robinson sits on his lime green sofa smoking a vitagrette waiting for news of the conflict to come over his telefacsimile machine. you have to give the author credit for his prescience--he correctly fortold the popularity of lime green sofas. the bombs fall and civilization is destroyed. greg and his wife hillary, along with other ragged, starving survivors, revert to their primeval instincts to survive. it's hard to tell what the point is. in one strange passage the author tells us an occurance took place which speaks volumes as to the high character of greg robinson. he is spying on some survivors he plans to attack and rob of their food and women. he watches as they slaughter a little girl and make a soup out of her. he is so disgusted and furious that he kills them all, including the women. although he drags the pot of soup home for his own brood to feast upon he does not have any himself, even though he has not eaten for three days.
that's what heroes are made of.
even the civilized survivors who have banded together in the cities to rebuild are chopping off the heads of people they kill for trophies.
near the novel's end greg spells it all out: "better to be a beast and not be cursed with the mind of a man. a beast didn't think . . . it knew no sorrow . . . better to be a beast and know the satisfaction of a full stomach." greg roars "let out the beast" in all caps and "screamed a mad defiance at the heavens." thus the title. eight pages later he's dead.
there's an ironic little twist at the end but you don't really need to know about it.
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