The novel “The Eleventh Commandment” by Lester del Rey was published for the first time in 1962.
Boyd Jensen came to Earth as an exchange student. He knows that the situation on the planet is very different from that on Mars because in 2190 the Earth is still suffering the consequences of the atomic war of two centuries earlier. The situation for the boy becomes much more complicated when he discovers that he has actually been exiled from Mars.
Forced to reinvent a life in a society very different from the Martian one, Boyd Jensen nevertheless manages to exploit his scientific studies and be hired in a biological research laboratory. The searches are supervised by priests of the American Catholic Eclectic Church, a schismatic church that also holds the temporal power and imposed the eleventh commandment which requires people to be fruitful and multiply.
Post-apocalyptic stories telling of the aftermath of an atomic war were already a classic in the early 1960s. Lester del Rey addressed this issue by imagining American society two centuries after the nuclear apocalypse with some developments that are far from trivial.
In the 2190 imagined by Lester del Rey, a schismatic church took power in North America also taking advantage of the destruction that befell the Vatican during the war. Reproduction is imposed as a commandment, and the result is that at the end of the 22nd century, North America is populated by several billion people. They include mutants, but it doesn’t matter because everyone has a duty to have children.
Boyd Jensen was born and raised on Mars, where a colony was established before the atomic war. Martian society is very selective in admitting immigrants to avoid “polluting” its gene pool with harmful mutations. Despite that, Boyd discovers that he was exiled because he inherited some of those mutations.
In a novel less than 200 pages long, Lester del Rey offers through Boyd Jensen’s “alien” eye a portrait of that overpopulated America. Some technologies survived the atomic war, but most of the population lives in poverty and risks being struck by diseases that may be of genetic origin or spread in some epidemic.
One element that was out of the ordinary in a 1962 novel concerns the consequences of human action that are not limited to atomic devastation. Boyd Jensen discovers that some very serious environmental problems that can cause devastation and death are very long-term consequences of damage caused by humans even before the apocalypse.
Another merit of the novel is in the story of the dystopian society of North America that goes beyond superficiality. Boyd Jensen has the opportunity to hear the opinions and motivations of the faithful and priests, even at the highest levels of the ecclesiastical hierarchies, who also offer him non-trivial considerations. If anything, the novel appears dated in the presence of women who seem to be those who in particular want children at all costs.
Today, we often read long novels that perhaps would have been better if shortened, but in the case of “The Eleventh Commandment” the opposite could be true. Lester del Rey shows us a complexity in that future that is impossible to fully express in less than 200 pages, also in the development of the many characters who have a significant role. The author tells the bare minimum in particular about everything that goes beyond the situation in North America. The consequence is that, for example, in the end, we know what the protagonist tells about Martian society and very little else.
Despite its age, in my opinion, the merits of “The Eleventh Commandment” continue to overcome its flaws and limitations. The pace, often slow, helps to appreciate the food for thought and is also compensated by various twists. It remains a classic worth reading.
