Doomsday Morning

In my journey through 1950s sci-fi there have been great books and clunkers. When I first finished Doomsday Morning, I couldn't quite place it in either category, but the more it sits with me, the more it improves. The book follows Howard Rohan a washed-up actor as ComUS, the government formed under the benevolent dictatorship of Andrew Raleigh, recruits him to put on a play in the streets of cities in California, which is in rebellion.

It's a simple story and a simple premise that, even through detours, takes the reader from Point A to Point B. The methods of ComUS are briefly described, but neither dumped nor languished over. And yet for all of its simplicity, the characters and story are well executed. The parralels between the life of Rohan, the play "Crossroads", and the path of the US as a whole, are satisfying, walking the line of being neither subtle nor over-played.

None of this is to say that the book is perfect, but its flaws are consistent with the predominant ones in this era's writing (what feels like clunky dialogue of which a small amount is attributable to actual language drift over 60 years) and are forgivable. I highly recommend it.