The novel tells the story of the fall of civilization from deadly disease and the emergence of a new culture with simpler tools.

Set in the 1940s in Berkeley, California, the story is told by Isherwood Williams, who emerges from isolation in the mountains to find almost everyone dead.

As he travels, he finds small groups of survivors, but has doubts about humanity's ability to survive the loss of civilization.

Over time the electricity (which had been provided by automated hydro power station) fails and the comforts of civilization recede.

As the children grow, Ish tries to instill basic academics by teaching reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography, but he is largely unsuccessful due to a lack of interest by the others.

They come to have a better grasp of the natural world than the adults, and when running water fails, the younger generation comes to the rescue, knowing where flowing streams may be found.

The older boys return from a cross country trip with a stranger named Charlie, who exposes the tribe to typhoid fever which kills many, including Joey.

His ambition to restore civilization to its original state is replaced by a more modest, practical one to simply convey a few basic survival skills, such as making bows and arrows, which the children think are great playthings.

The author may have been taking a chance with this character, who is, at least partially, African-American,[4] while Isherwood is white; when the book was written, interracial marriages were heavily discouraged in American society.

Charlie is a stranger who arrives from Los Angeles after two of the "boys" (the second generation) make a scouting expedition in a refurbished Jeep to see what is left of America.

On the title page, Stewart immediately starts with the theme, quoting Ecclesiastes 1:4 — "Men go and come, but earth abides."

[9] On the first page, Stewart tells readers how contagion could bring the end very quickly for mankind: "If a killing type of virus strain should suddenly arise by mutation... it could, because of the rapid transportation in which we indulge nowadays, be carried to the far corners of the earth and cause the deaths of millions of people."

"[11]Reviewer Noel Perrin has pointed out that George R. Stewart had written two books before this, in which the main character was not a person, but "a natural force."

Stewart chose to make his main human character an ecologist, and sends him on a cross-country tour, to see what the world is like without people.

As animals and plants no longer have humans taking care of them or controlling them, they are free to breed uncontrolled and to prey upon one another.

Reviewer Lionel Shriver points out this theme in an article about literature which features human extinction: But as Stewart tracks three post-plague generations, he vividly demonstrates that advanced civilisation depends on numbers.

The last Americans plunder canned goods (with little respect for sell-by dates), and literacy atrophies; electrical and water systems break down.

[13]Stewart uses the second half of his book to show that, if humans are reduced to low numbers, it will be difficult for them to continue civilization as we know it.

A 1949 book review says that Earth Abides parallels two biblical stories that shows mankind spreading out and populating the world: ...the dual themes are as old as Genesis...Not a flood but a swift and deadly new disease wipes out all but a few of the human race.

As material civilization begins to crumble, Ish gradually devolves into a kind of Adam who, inevitably, finds his Eve, Em (For "Emma"), a level-headed lady with Negro blood, and nature takes its time-worn course.

[15] Earth Abides belongs to the subgenre of apocalyptic science fiction featuring a universal plague that nearly wipes out humanity.

Other examples include Mary Shelley's The Last Man (1826), Jack London's The Scarlet Plague (1912), Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain (1969), and Stephen King's The Stand (1978).

James Sallis, writing in 2003 in the Boston Globe: This is a book, mind you, that I'd place not only among the greatest science fiction but among our very best novels.

Epic in sweep, centering on the person of Isherwood Williams, Earth Abides proves a kind of antihistory, relating the story of humankind backwards, from ever-more-abstract civilization to stone-age primitivism.

Miller praised Stewart for "the intricacy of detail with which he has worked out his problem in ecology" and for writing "quietly, with very few peaks of melodrama as seem necessary in much popular fiction.

In the American Quarter article California's Literary Regionalism, Autumn 1955, George R. Stewart is seen as a "humanist in the old classical sense.

His novels, Storm, Fire, East of the Giants, Earth Abides, demonstrate the complex interlocking of topography, climate, and human society; and their general tone is objective and optimistic."

In November 1950, the book was adapted for the CBS radio program Escape as a two-part drama starring John Dehner.

[24] He looks at the ship in The Swiss Family Robinson as an "infinite grab-bag from which at any time they might take exactly what they wanted,"[25] which is similar to the situation of those living after the Great Disaster.