Survivor: Classic Book Guide and Free Edition
Survivor: author and translator credits, catalogue synopsis, subjects and links to the Gutenberg reading formats.
Survivor is catalogued by Project Gutenberg with author credits for Cox, Irving E., Jr. (1917–2001).
Catalogue synopsis
Project Gutenberg supplies this automated synopsis of the opening text:
Survivor by Jr. Irving E. Cox is a science fiction short story written in the mid-20th century. It portrays an alien conquest by impersonal “gray men” and the stark, instinctive struggle for survival that strips humans of their comforts, illusions, and moral certainties. The story follows Vernon Randall Hume, a once-complacent lawyer, as he flees across a devastated landscape toward a mountain pass and a rumored refuge beyond a river. He hides from mechanized patrols, scavenges a ransacked farmhouse, and crosses the desert, where fear and hunger harden into a predatory impulse—he kills small animals for sport, then bludgeons a gray sentry and takes his coat. Intercut scenes reveal a boy and his father tracing Hume’s path: they eat the food he thought he had saved and find the sentry’s gun he left behind. When the wounded Hume, now wearing the gray coat, nears the boy’s cave, the child—following his father’s instructions—mistakes him for the enemy and shoots him. Seeking safety, the boy then discovers his father crushed by treads at the river, and he himself is captured, netted, and caged by the invaders—an ending that mirrors the story’s bitter theme of roles reversed, with humans reduced to the studied creatures they once casually dominated.
Book and edition facts
- Title: Survivor
- Author credits: Cox, Irving E., Jr. (1917–2001)
- Catalogue language: English
Catalogue subjects
- Earth (Planet) -- Fiction
- Fathers and sons -- Fiction
- Human-alien encounters -- Fiction
- Science fiction
- Short stories
- Survival -- Fiction
- War stories
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Source notes
Catalogue metadata is public domain and is supplied through Gutendex, which imports Gutenberg's machine-readable catalogue. The automated synopsis is source-supplied, not an independently verified review. Author dates above describe the credited people; no ebook release date is presented as the book's original publication date.
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