What I Thought Of... By the Waters of Babylon!

I enjoyed reading "By the Waters of Babylon". As I was reading it, I imagined the setting to be hundreds, maybe thousands of years ago, in either Europe or North America, but it turned out to be far from that. The story is actually set in the future, in what is a post-apocalyptic city in New York, turned this way by bombings. John, the main character of the story, is one of the Hill People that lives in what I think is a wooded area of New Jersey. He has dreams of going by himself into what they know as the forbidden "Place of the Gods", which is actually just a city in New York. The gods were really just humans who lived there. I think the reason they referred to the people as gods is because of the abundance of giant skyscrapers, cars which the Hill People knew as chariots, and the streets, which the Hill People called "God Roads". Towards the end of the story, John goes into a house and finds a "dead god" in a chair facing his window. It was here that he realized the people he thought were gods were not gods, but men and women like himself.

This story reminds me of the movie I Am Legend but without the zombies. The overall setting and loneliness John feels when in the city, like Will Smith does in the movie, gives it that type of feel to me. I recommend one reads this story!