In post-apocalyptic New York, three tribes of survivors (the Norms, the Mutates and the Upriver People) vie for the right to exist. When the treacherous Upriver People attack the Norms, kill their chief and take their people captive, two Norm refugee men must find a way to ally with the Mutates, who have previously kidnapped Norm women in an effort to reproduce healthy children, to rout the Uprivers, who also seek to kill off the Mutates.

One of the five sci-fi's I remember every single detail of from my earliest days as a fan. For the genre, I think it's considerably above average. The moor is nicely atmospheric. There's one of every character in the book: the good guy, the bad guy, the local sheriff, the lovely damsel, her father the old professor, etc. The scene where we're looking for the first time through the window of the ship and the visitor peeks out from the other side is easily as good as the three-fingered-hand-on-the-shoulder in War of the Worlds. Nice "character" to the visitor, for whom, like Karloff's Frankenstein, we end up feeling some empathy .