Davy (novel)

Davy is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by American writer Edgar Pangborn, nominated for the 1965 Hugo Award.

It is set in the Northeastern United States some centuries after an atomic war ended high-technology civilization, with some scenes on an unnamed Atlantic island.

The novel is a bildungsroman, following its title character, Davy (who grew up a ward of the state and thus has no last name) as he grows to manhood in a pseudo-medieval society dominated by a Church that actively suppresses technology, banning "anything that may contain atoms."

Eventually he becomes involved with a group of liberal, freethinking people forming around a reforming young ruler (a hereditary "President") who tries to defy the dominant "Holy Murkan Church" - to be eventually overthrown by the reactionaries, the dissidents fleeing into the ocean and setting up a community on an island (apparently in the Azores).

including those collected in Still I Persist in Wondering (1978) Algis Budrys gave Davy a mixed review in Galaxy Science Fiction, saying that while he enjoyed the novel and respected Pangborn, the book "achieves its marvelous effects by talking tough while following faithfully along a line of beloved cliches ... of the self-confident Establishment tickling itself".