"I am the last. And I am afraid."
— Jeff, the Captain
The Quiet Place (also titled The Return in another edition) is a 1988 post-apocalyptic science fiction novel written by UK-born Australian author Richard Maynard.
In the not too distant future, seven British astronauts venture beyond Earth to locate another planet known as M2, in the Alpha Centauri system, in order to attempt a possible first contact with alien life. However, due to 'cosmic refraction' they're unable to find their destination and end up spending 12 years in space, searching aimlessly for M2. For every year they spend in space, four years pass on Earth...or so it seems. They eventually return to Earth and land in the Atlantic Ocean. Their attempts to contact Mission Control up to this point only results in radio silence.
Using a raft to reach the French mainland, they discover the worst: civilization has collapsed and man has turned to savagery. Small hunter-gatherer tribes are scattered throughout the country, with women outnumbering the men. Their language is a primitive form of French and their main means of hunting and defending themselves boil down to spears and wooden shields. Once-domesticated animals roam the wilderness and abandoned city streets. From studying the ruins of civilization, the astronauts conclude that it must have been centuries since they left Earth.
Upon returning to the beach (having split up into two groups earlier), one of the astronaut search parties finds the raft missing and the decapitated, mutilated head of one of their own in the sand. The true horror was just beginning...
An obscure novel from the late phase of 20th century sci-fi literature, The Quiet Place is a grim tale of survival and the futile attempts to rebuild civilization, told from the first-person perspective of Jeff, the captain and leader of the astronauts. The story pulls no punches as Jeff and his friends are thrown from one life-or-death situation to another as they try to make sense of what happened to the world they once knew.
Think of the novel as a Darker and Edgier mash-up of The Time Machine and Earth Abides.
The Quiet Place provides examples of:
- After the End: Civilization seems to have fallen due to an unspecified disaster. There are no signs of nuclear war or an environmental catastrophe. The scientists postulate that the rest of the world is in a similar state. It turns out that Biocinetine, an anti-aging drug, led to women becoming infertile for several decades, which eventually led to societal collapse.
- Age-Gap Romance: Middle-aged Barry becomes infatuated with Oona, a 16-year-old girl. Pip hooks up with Zo, another teenage girl.
- An Arm and a Leg: After catching Oona cheating on him with Pip in a barn, an enraged Barry assaults his best friend and gets shot in both legs by a single bullet from Pip's gun. Oona sacrifices herself to save an immoblised Barry from a wild lioness. Barry's infected legs are later amputated when Paul, the tribe's doctor, takes too long to arrive with a traumatised Pip.
- Anyone Can Die: By the end of the novel, only Jeff is the sole survivor among the main characters.
- Awful Wedded Life: Both Barry and Paul were in loveless marriages before they left for Earth. In Barry's case he married a wealthy, overweight woman in order to secure her finances for his experiments and space voyage. For Paul, the woman he married frequently cheated on him and he realized it would be cost-effective to keep her around rather than pay alimony.
- Bittersweet Ending: While retaking their livestock from the western men at Windsor Castle, Barry is killed and Lian and Wani - the wives of Jeff and Paul, respectively - are taken prisoner. Jeff and Paul attempt a rescue that ends with Jeff getting caught in a trap and Paul abandoning Lian to save Wani instead. Lian is caught again, raped and killed. Back with the tribe, a jaded Jeff becomes a hermit and shuns Paul. The tribe isolates Jeff, all except his children and Pip. Years pass and a cholera epidemic ends up killing Pip. Paul is eventually killed by the now grown up men of the tribe, who usurp leadership from the older generations. Jeff, the only survivor among the astronauts, is feared by the usurpers and suspects they'll kill him next. He decides to write a memoir (the text of the novel itself) to leave behind to future historians and archeologists. He then emerges from his solitude and walks away from the tribe with his children, their fate left unknown.
- Eye Scream: When Jeff, Barry, Pip and Paul return to the raft where Lucky is waiting, they discover the raft missing and his sliced up, decapitated head buried in the sand, complete with empty eye sockets.
- Gender Rarity Value: Each tribe contains more women than men to the point where polygamy is seen as normal. The astronauts, with their old school British sensibilities, try to stay monogamous, but it's not easy and some of them take multiple wives.
- Gentle Giant: Bartholomew "Barry" Mann is usually very easy-going and can tolerate Pip's comedic jabs at him. He's also very good with kids and offers to teach the new generations the ways of the old world. However, he can become a fearsome berserker when presented with a life-or-death situation, such as when Oona is attacked and raped by a group of Mekans.
- Happily Married: The astronauts to the women they liberate from Oa's tribe and his rivals, the Mekans. They end up inspiring monogamy among the polyandrous tribal women.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Oona sacrifices herself by jumping into the mouth of a lioness to save a wounded Barry. Later on, Barry sacrifices himself at Windsor Castle holding back the hordes of western men to give his friends time to escape.
- Hope Springs Eternal: Despite losing all of his comrades, the love of his life and the world he knew before the collapse, Jeff is optimistic that his tribe, now the largest in England, will conquer the other tribes and unify the country into a new nation. He also hopes that his buried memoir about his experiences will be discovered by a future civilization and that his efforts will be remembered.
- Humans Are Bastards: The classic British pessimism is rife throughout the entire story. Despite the best efforts of the astronauts to bring the tribal societies out of their hunter-gatherer lifestyle, the people they're trying to help are too stubborn and violent to accept change. This is evidenced by the murder of Paul at the hands of the adolescent boys who once idolized Jeff's men, and who now plan to kill Jeff in order to eliminate any competition for leadership.
- Ironic Nickname: Luciano "Lucky" Cragnolini. He's the first among the astronauts to die.
- Living Legend: The surviving astronauts live long enough, and go through many trials, that they are elevated to the status of legendary heroes in the lore of their tribe. This is why the grown up boys who once worshipped them end up fearing Jeff, who is regarded as unkillable and competition to the right of leadership.
- Odd Friendship: Between Pip and Barry. One is a giant stoic man and the other is a short comedic oddball, yet they have the best chemistry. Even when Oona cheats on Barry with Pip and then sacrifices herself to save him from a lioness, the two are still able to reconcile before the tribe arrives in England.
- Off with His Head!: Lucky is the first person to be beheaded in the novel by one of the tribes. He's later joined by John and Terry.
- Plucky Comic Relief: Philip "Pip" Quincy-Jones is a short, unattractive man, but has no troubles making his friends laugh with his antics. He can be surprisingly philosophical and insightful when the astronauts muse about the fall of mankind and their current plight.
- Red Shirt: Lucky's death by beheading in the first chapter sets the tone for the rest of the novel.
- Science Hero: Every single one of the astronauts has an expertise in something, which aides their chances of survival and helps them win over the primitive women.
- Science Is Bad: The world collapsed because Pip and his research team attempted to play God by reversing the aging process with an experimental drug. Meanwhile, the tribal men refuse to move beyond spears and other primitive means of gathering food and they seem indifferent to the astronaut's attempts at providing them with better technology.
- The Reveal: While scavenging in a London pharmacy, Pip discovers a bottle of a drug called Biocinetin. Pip later reveals the reason for the world's demise to his fellow astronauts. It turns out that Biocinetin was an anti-aging drug of the highest calibre that's Pip's research team peddled to the medical industry. It rejuvenated a person physically, but the mental and biological effects of aging would remain unaffected leading to 'death by old age' decades later. The drug's major side effect was infertility, leading to an underpopulation crisis when it spread to shelves all over the world. When most of the world's adults died in the ensuing chaos, it was mainly children that remained. With nobody to guide them they regressed to a primitive way of life.
- The Siege: The astronauts' tribe use a hotel in Bordeaux twice to hold off the Mekans and the north men. Later, in the novel's climax, they chase the western men to Windsor castle in order to breach the building and take back their lifestock.
- Time Dilation: The astronauts miscalculate their time out in space and return to Earth centuries later. Their families and all the friends they knew are long gone.
- Time Skip: Several of these happen that by the time we get to the end of the novel the astronauts' tribe has grown larger and the surviving main characters are developing grey hairs.
- Title Drop: After leaving France via a flooded English Tunnel, the astronauts and their tribe reach England, which Jeff then refers to as a 'quiet place'.
- Tongue Trauma: Oa, Lian's first husband, cut her tongue off to prevent her from screaming when he captured her.
- Tragic Hero: The surviving astronauts lost friends and family to the time dialtion and continue to keep losing people throughout the novel. Their own personal demons and interpersonal conflicts only result in more tragedy by the end of the novel.
- Whole Episode Flashback: The entire novel is Jeff's memoir, which he buries next to his shack, in case future historians discover it and put the pieces together regarding this dark chapter in mankind's history.
