What do you think?
Rate this book
A Scientific Romance
It is 1999, and David Lambert, jilted lover and museum curator, is about to discover the startling news of the return of H. G. Wells's time machine to London. Motivated by a host of unanswered questions and innate curiosity, he propels himself deep into the next millenium. As he sets foot in the luxuriant but menacing new landscape, he soon begins to explore the ruins of his life, a labyrinth of erotic obsession and remorse involving his old friend Bird, and Anita -- the beautiful, eccentric Egyptologist they both loved, mysteriously dead at thirty-two.
A Scientific Romance is a book of surpassing creativity and intelligence, as evocative as it is cautionary.
A Scientific Romance is a book of surpassing creativity and intelligence, as evocative as it is cautionary.
352 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
18 people are currently reading
621 people want to read
About the author
Ronald Wright
47 books158 followersRonald Wright is a Canadian author who has written books of travel, history and fiction. His nonfiction includes the bestseller Stolen Continents, winner of the Gordon Montador Award and chosen as a book of the year by the Independent and the Sunday Times. His first novel, A Scientific Romance, won the 1997 David Higham Prize for Fiction and was chosen a book of the year by the Globe and Mail, the Sunday Times, and the New York Times.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 67 reviews
November 6, 2018
All you Goodreaders know already, I'm sure, that H.G. Wells invented the concept of the time machine. Time travel had been written into stories before, but as an accidental journey. Wells gave the traveler agency and control in the form of the time machine, not a portal you fall through or a spirit who kidnaps you or an overlong sleep that you awaken from, but a conscious choice to travel and, by spinning some dials and pulling some levers, control over where (that is to say, when) you're going. It's really fascinating stuff, this literary history and analysis of the origin of tropes, and absolutely nailed to perfection here by Ronald Wright.
He gives us a narrator both pompous and overeducated, a guy who casually talks about Gauguin and Egyptology and jazz, but yet still warm and human and likeable. When I first started reading, I recoiled at what I saw as similarities to The Story of B, a book I loathed, but this narrator has human foibles we can all relate to. I was pleased by its surprisingly captivating format, which hints at a rich past between former friends turned enemies without expressly detailing it - much like real life, the way we talk about the past when we know something ugly happened back then. All this compiles into a richly developed inner character and a story that is very human in its emotional depth, filled with a lot of literary and historical allusions which are fun and yet not labored, despite the grandiose prose constructions:
3.5 stars out of 5. It starts strong enough: a well-executed example of the book-within-a-book framing device, a new take on H.G. Wells' now-classic story with a bit of self-parodying that makes it light and not overserious. And lovers of purple prose will enjoy the lavish language constantly on display. But the Lewis-and-Clark excitement of exploration in the world of the distant future runs too long, and things go off the rails in the third act. Speculation about our current cityscapes as future ancient ruins is offset jarringly by debauched erotica that pops in and out seemingly with no purpose and there's a vein of oh-so-1990s dread of HIV and mad cow disease (not to mention references to CD-ROM!) which seems ironically antiquated already, in this reader's estimation. It's too weighty to call light reading, and yet too pulpy to take seriously.
He gives us a narrator both pompous and overeducated, a guy who casually talks about Gauguin and Egyptology and jazz, but yet still warm and human and likeable. When I first started reading, I recoiled at what I saw as similarities to The Story of B, a book I loathed, but this narrator has human foibles we can all relate to. I was pleased by its surprisingly captivating format, which hints at a rich past between former friends turned enemies without expressly detailing it - much like real life, the way we talk about the past when we know something ugly happened back then. All this compiles into a richly developed inner character and a story that is very human in its emotional depth, filled with a lot of literary and historical allusions which are fun and yet not labored, despite the grandiose prose constructions:
Archaeologists are necromancers, not astrologers; aspiring to hindsight, not prognostication, though like astrologers we scan for patterns in events. And the price, of course, is loss of innocence. Who since Freud can feel anger or joy, love or jealousy - can operate as a social creature - without a chill self-awareness on his shoulder whispering of animal and childhood terrors, of shit and sex and death? So it is with us. The rear-view mirror breaks up the parochial landscape of the present. And our costly reward is to know that no culture is normal or inevitable; that none has a patent on wisdom or a guarantee of immortality; that civilizations, like individuals, are born, flourish, and die; that the very qualities which bring them into being - their drive, their inventions, their beliefs, their ruthlessness - become indulgences that in the end will poison them. (83)
3.5 stars out of 5. It starts strong enough: a well-executed example of the book-within-a-book framing device, a new take on H.G. Wells' now-classic story with a bit of self-parodying that makes it light and not overserious. And lovers of purple prose will enjoy the lavish language constantly on display. But the Lewis-and-Clark excitement of exploration in the world of the distant future runs too long, and things go off the rails in the third act. Speculation about our current cityscapes as future ancient ruins is offset jarringly by debauched erotica that pops in and out seemingly with no purpose and there's a vein of oh-so-1990s dread of HIV and mad cow disease (not to mention references to CD-ROM!) which seems ironically antiquated already, in this reader's estimation. It's too weighty to call light reading, and yet too pulpy to take seriously.
June 20, 2011
This was my second reading of this book, and how glad I am that I went with the nagging conviction that this was indeed the book I needed to read next, for I got much more out of it this time.
.
Our hero is an archeologist of his own past. Even before his flight in the time machine, he is obssessed with his old lover and the unsatisfactory triangle with her other lover, his best friends. The details are revealed haphazardly but what seems to drive him the most is the desperate hope that he will eventually be able to calibrate his return to a time before it all flew apart.
Published in 1997, inspired by the works of H.G.Wells, A Scientific Romance is not romantic, unless you consider brooding about lost love romantic. It offers a grim forecast of a bleak future in such a way as to nail the reasons why to our current way of life. He does this without being evangelical and indeed his arduous trek throughout Britain, while studded with symbolism and loaded with irony, is well paced.
I never did warm to our neurotic hero, but I was pleased when it turned out that he was, after all that, a caring, decent individual willing to go that extra mile, for love. And his anylysis is so bang on, and he rarely panics, so that he is able somehow to throw his message across time so that we may wake out of our stupor and change our ways before they destroy us.
.
Our hero is an archeologist of his own past. Even before his flight in the time machine, he is obssessed with his old lover and the unsatisfactory triangle with her other lover, his best friends. The details are revealed haphazardly but what seems to drive him the most is the desperate hope that he will eventually be able to calibrate his return to a time before it all flew apart.
Published in 1997, inspired by the works of H.G.Wells, A Scientific Romance is not romantic, unless you consider brooding about lost love romantic. It offers a grim forecast of a bleak future in such a way as to nail the reasons why to our current way of life. He does this without being evangelical and indeed his arduous trek throughout Britain, while studded with symbolism and loaded with irony, is well paced.
I never did warm to our neurotic hero, but I was pleased when it turned out that he was, after all that, a caring, decent individual willing to go that extra mile, for love. And his anylysis is so bang on, and he rarely panics, so that he is able somehow to throw his message across time so that we may wake out of our stupor and change our ways before they destroy us.
January 19, 2015
I read and enjoyed several of Wright’s non-fiction books over the last year and I was aware that he had written a novel as well, so when I spotted this soft-cover edition on the clearance table at Book and Co. I picked it up on a whim. Maggee and I were between read-alouds at the time, and I suggested that I read her a sample few pages of this one, and it turned out to be a real “find”. David Lambert, an archeologist whose special field is nineteenth century technology (and the works of H.G, Wells) comes into possession of a document supposedly written by Wells that tell of his relationship with a young woman scientist at the turn of the century, a young woman who built a time machine in which she set of on a journey that would, hopefully, take her to the beginning of the year 2000. Wells urges the holder of the document to go to the address of her workshop in London on the eve of the millennium to see if the she and the machine arrive at the appointed time. The machine arrives, but she doesn’t. Lambert eventually use the machine to travel another five hundred years into the future. A fascinating read. We both enjoyed it a lot.
July 17, 2012
A post-dystopian, Wells patische where The Time Machine ( a la Wells) actually exists giving the lead character an opportunity to discover the future whilst ruminating on his past- chiefly in the form of a lost love and a lost best friend. this is a brave book in that the single narrative voice is present for most of the book along with descriptions of a totally transformed Britain and hints of social breakdown and state of emergency type history narrative lost in the mists of global warming and post pandemic apocalypse. That there is some resolution and a few key narrative gears is due to the confident writing liberally interspersed with quotation and allusion from our well educated narrator. Not quite HG (Horribly Good) and not quite Wells but a different and sufficiently well written idea that is well executed and ultimately satisfying.
March 31, 2008
This book was sent to me by someone as a gift. This is always a dangerous thing to do. The best way to get me to read a book is to somehow make that difficult for me. For example, you might suggest that the book is very hard to find because only one hundred copies remain after a warehouse fire and when ever one turns up, fist fights ensue. However, I had just finished The World Without Us, which I found a totally compelling read, and the subject of A Scientific Romance is tangentially related to that book, although, of course, this one is a novel. The narrator comes across H.G. Wells' time machine in a London basement and uses it to travel into the future, about five hundred years. This is to greatly abbreviate a rather overly complex and rather irritatingly postmodern plot. He discovers that global warming has partially flooded London and turned it into a tropical ruin, with no signs of recent human life. This suited me just fine, but not the narrator, who persisted (by heading north all the way to Scotland) until he found some surviving humans. Then, as always happens in stories like this, everything degenerates into irony, and one begins to skim. Happily, the narrator has got mad cow disease and his past eventually catches up with him, as happens to us all. To be recommended for the surrealistic landscape of a ruined London buried in dense jungle and the narrator's friendship with a black panther, but just barely. I could easily have skipped this book.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 18, 2014
I'm a completionist. I want every colour of nail polish, my favourite band's every remix, and I have a really, really hard time not finishing a book.
Often, that results in some frustrating, 1-or-2-star reading experiences. This one started out that way -- and for the first time in recent memory, I was going to give up. "No more of this boring pseudo-Wellsian garbage, no more!...okay, a little more." And I'm really, really glad I kept on.
See, I didn't have a summary of the plot going in -- I found this, skimmed the style, liked the one-sentence thematic blurb, and went for it. So the beginning was fucking boring and I had no idea where it was going. But! Once the story actually starts (in part 2), it turns into a very cool time-travelling post-apocalyptic archaeological adventure.
I wish there'd been more time spent discovering the secrets of humanity's demise (especially instead of all the mostly-weird religious stuff when David meets the surviving tribes), and more time spent making use of the premise. The whinging about Anita got boring real fast, and I still don't understand why it was a necessary component -- had it just been a straight adventure story rather than an epistle to a dead chick, I probably wouldn't have banged my head against the desk so often in that first bit.
That said: fun, creative, an enjoyable throwback to turn-of-the-century catastrophic fiction, and also maybe I should read summaries of books sometimes.
Often, that results in some frustrating, 1-or-2-star reading experiences. This one started out that way -- and for the first time in recent memory, I was going to give up. "No more of this boring pseudo-Wellsian garbage, no more!...okay, a little more." And I'm really, really glad I kept on.
See, I didn't have a summary of the plot going in -- I found this, skimmed the style, liked the one-sentence thematic blurb, and went for it. So the beginning was fucking boring and I had no idea where it was going. But! Once the story actually starts (in part 2), it turns into a very cool time-travelling post-apocalyptic archaeological adventure.
I wish there'd been more time spent discovering the secrets of humanity's demise (especially instead of all the mostly-weird religious stuff when David meets the surviving tribes), and more time spent making use of the premise. The whinging about Anita got boring real fast, and I still don't understand why it was a necessary component -- had it just been a straight adventure story rather than an epistle to a dead chick, I probably wouldn't have banged my head against the desk so often in that first bit.
That said: fun, creative, an enjoyable throwback to turn-of-the-century catastrophic fiction, and also maybe I should read summaries of books sometimes.
May 10, 2010
I wanted to love it. It has so many elements I love. Instead I found it dull, plodding, heavy, and overly cerebral. It seemed to strive for wit, but was encumbered with convoluted threads of vague portent and overwrought sentimentality. Maybe I missed the point and it was meant ONLY to be tongue in cheek.
June 23, 2013
Wow. This was a stunning book. Compelling, emotional, original, and just plausible enough to make you worry (if you're the worrying type).
December 9, 2013
In the year 2500 it turns out that Oprah was right: Don't eat the hamburger.
"A Scientific Romance," by Canadian author Ronald Wright, is the latest warning from the dystopia department. It's been only a few months since John Updike published "The End of Time." Century marks have a way of inspiring such portents. In fact, Wright's novel picks up where H.G. Wells left off in "The Time Machine" a hundred years ago.
In 1999, David Lambert is a young archeologist from Cambridge, England trying to recover from the death of his brilliant girlfriend. His interest in antique machines leads him to an old letter from H.G. Wells, predicting the imminent reappearance of the device that inspired his classic science-fiction tale.
Driven by curiosity to pursue this clever hoax, David finds his skepticism blasted away when the Victorian engine crashes into the present and gives him an opportunity to escape his grief and failing health.
Looking ahead, he considers his future role as an expert on the past: "I can identify all those things my future colleagues have defined, in the way baffled archaeologists always do, as 'ceremonial objects': Rubik's cubes, wind chimes,...Franklin Mint models of the starship Enterprise. I can account for the fame of Warhol."
When he arrives in the year 2500, however, London offers none of the solace or employment he hoped to find. Completely abandoned, the city has lost its fight against nature. The sun burns freely through an atmosphere without ozone. The Thames sprawls far beyond its old banks through a tropical chaos of crumbling monuments and buildings. Crocodiles slink along the shore, competing for food with enormous feral house cats.
The forest has taken its revenge, a cleansing retribution for the arrogance of the 20th century's faith in "the divine right of things." mad cow disease has destroyed thousands of years of husbandry, the careless use of antibiotics has generated super-resistant viruses, and industrial waste has rendered human life almost impossible.
David tries to confront this lush but disastrous world as a trained professional, but he digs as much into the city's future as into his own past. Recording his findings on a solar-powered laptop, he muses, "Archaeologists are necromancers, not astrologers; aspiring to hindsight, not prognostication, though like astrologers we scan for patterns in events. And the price is loss of innocence."
Indeed, as he considers the carelessness and betrayal that led to his lover's death, David comes to realize his own participation in the collapsed culture that lies before him.
Wright's description of the dilapidated city and his analysis of the social and economic forces that led to this disaster are haunting and troubling. Dark as such apocalyptic warnings can seem, however, they're generated by a profound faith in mankind's ability to perceive the dangers ahead and change course. If Wright were a true pessimist, he wouldn't bother to raise such a compelling alarm.
It's unfortunate that the novel's frank sexual content makes it inappropriate for young readers who have enjoyed Orwell's "1984" and Huxley's "Brave New World," because Wright has written a tale of great suspense and insight. Here is a novel to remind us of our responsibilities to one another and our planet.
"One thing seems clear enough," David writes in horrible isolation, "nature didn't clobber us, except in self-defense."
http://www.csmonitor.com/1998/0429/04...
"A Scientific Romance," by Canadian author Ronald Wright, is the latest warning from the dystopia department. It's been only a few months since John Updike published "The End of Time." Century marks have a way of inspiring such portents. In fact, Wright's novel picks up where H.G. Wells left off in "The Time Machine" a hundred years ago.
In 1999, David Lambert is a young archeologist from Cambridge, England trying to recover from the death of his brilliant girlfriend. His interest in antique machines leads him to an old letter from H.G. Wells, predicting the imminent reappearance of the device that inspired his classic science-fiction tale.
Driven by curiosity to pursue this clever hoax, David finds his skepticism blasted away when the Victorian engine crashes into the present and gives him an opportunity to escape his grief and failing health.
Looking ahead, he considers his future role as an expert on the past: "I can identify all those things my future colleagues have defined, in the way baffled archaeologists always do, as 'ceremonial objects': Rubik's cubes, wind chimes,...Franklin Mint models of the starship Enterprise. I can account for the fame of Warhol."
When he arrives in the year 2500, however, London offers none of the solace or employment he hoped to find. Completely abandoned, the city has lost its fight against nature. The sun burns freely through an atmosphere without ozone. The Thames sprawls far beyond its old banks through a tropical chaos of crumbling monuments and buildings. Crocodiles slink along the shore, competing for food with enormous feral house cats.
The forest has taken its revenge, a cleansing retribution for the arrogance of the 20th century's faith in "the divine right of things." mad cow disease has destroyed thousands of years of husbandry, the careless use of antibiotics has generated super-resistant viruses, and industrial waste has rendered human life almost impossible.
David tries to confront this lush but disastrous world as a trained professional, but he digs as much into the city's future as into his own past. Recording his findings on a solar-powered laptop, he muses, "Archaeologists are necromancers, not astrologers; aspiring to hindsight, not prognostication, though like astrologers we scan for patterns in events. And the price is loss of innocence."
Indeed, as he considers the carelessness and betrayal that led to his lover's death, David comes to realize his own participation in the collapsed culture that lies before him.
Wright's description of the dilapidated city and his analysis of the social and economic forces that led to this disaster are haunting and troubling. Dark as such apocalyptic warnings can seem, however, they're generated by a profound faith in mankind's ability to perceive the dangers ahead and change course. If Wright were a true pessimist, he wouldn't bother to raise such a compelling alarm.
It's unfortunate that the novel's frank sexual content makes it inappropriate for young readers who have enjoyed Orwell's "1984" and Huxley's "Brave New World," because Wright has written a tale of great suspense and insight. Here is a novel to remind us of our responsibilities to one another and our planet.
"One thing seems clear enough," David writes in horrible isolation, "nature didn't clobber us, except in self-defense."
http://www.csmonitor.com/1998/0429/04...
September 16, 2008
I wasn't sure I was going to finish this at 50 pages. The first part of the book seems poorly put-together and doesn't draw the reader to seek the conclusion. I was predicting the ending by that point and I was pleased and surprised to find that my expectations were wrong. It took a strange turn.
I didn't like the ending either, and yet here I am giving it three stars. Maybe I'd give it 2.5 if I could.
I didn't like the ending either, and yet here I am giving it three stars. Maybe I'd give it 2.5 if I could.
January 18, 2009
Unsettling and provocative examination of how human behaviour contributes to our demise. Set in the UK of the future, the character trips forward in time with all his 'baggage' (including his reasons for time travel)and comes to face the nature of our being. Imagine facing the "ladder of technology which is missing the bottom rungs" or a warmer earth climate where our indoor plants thrive and GMOs survive. animals survive
August 4, 2009
Ronald Wright's books on the Maya were always important to me and this novel, I believe his first, had everything going for it...dystopian vision (always a sure winner with me but then I might be a pessimist) and a wise sense of work that had come before. Want a stark vision of how it might all turn out...read this before you read his marvelous Massey Lecture on progress.
May 22, 2012
I love literature that is literary... this book is full of quotes of poems and prose. The biggest inspiration is HG Wells The Time Machine, in fact I wish I'd read that already, although A Scientific Romance stands on its own.
December 22, 2024
Excellent book, definitely a page turner. Narrative is sophisticated where hints that are planted at the beginning of the novel emerge later in the story. The creative dystopian plot, the style of writing and the wittiness of its narrator in Wright’s A Scientific Romance is reminiscent of Margaret Atwood’s style.
January 11, 2021
Interesting dimension to an old story.
April 11, 2013
I'm sick of saying I when i write reviews and I'm just as fed up of saying 'this book is..' so I'm going to miss that bit out now on the assumptions that everybody reading this will know that it is 'I' reviewing and that is it is 'this book' that is being reviewed. Thus we learn. So..
Thought provoking and disturbing.
Hmm.. maybe needs some embellishment. OK..
Provoking thoughts of worry and concern that the things we are doing to this world will lead to a loss of habitat and subsequent catastrophic population decrease sending the world back to the civilisation level of mammoth hunters (but without the mammoths).. and that is a disturbing thing to contemplate because it's difficult to see what one person (me) can do about it.
Cool.
On writing reviews, the urge to talk about 'me' surfaces. Like.. 'Whilst consuming this book I got a cold that wasn't really a cold because when I decided that it was hayfever and rinsed my nasal cavities with a saline solution, the symptoms went away' but often I decide that this has nothing to do with my experience of the story, so I desist. But still the urges come. It crosses my mind that I'm not really writing reviews, but I'm journalling of my life via books.
Well in that case, perhaps it would be more appropriate to say how this book changed me and my world view. OK.. it made me more aware of how we, no, I take the comforts of the 'modern age' for granted and give so very very little thought to how my consumption of plastics and metals and edibles and gasoline affects the world around me and the effect this will have on 'future generations'.
Gotta stop now; depressing the heck out of myself.
Thought provoking and disturbing.
Hmm.. maybe needs some embellishment. OK..
Provoking thoughts of worry and concern that the things we are doing to this world will lead to a loss of habitat and subsequent catastrophic population decrease sending the world back to the civilisation level of mammoth hunters (but without the mammoths).. and that is a disturbing thing to contemplate because it's difficult to see what one person (me) can do about it.
Cool.
On writing reviews, the urge to talk about 'me' surfaces. Like.. 'Whilst consuming this book I got a cold that wasn't really a cold because when I decided that it was hayfever and rinsed my nasal cavities with a saline solution, the symptoms went away' but often I decide that this has nothing to do with my experience of the story, so I desist. But still the urges come. It crosses my mind that I'm not really writing reviews, but I'm journalling of my life via books.
Well in that case, perhaps it would be more appropriate to say how this book changed me and my world view. OK.. it made me more aware of how we, no, I take the comforts of the 'modern age' for granted and give so very very little thought to how my consumption of plastics and metals and edibles and gasoline affects the world around me and the effect this will have on 'future generations'.
Gotta stop now; depressing the heck out of myself.
March 12, 2018
If you state the concept of this novel out-loud it sounds a little silly: "A man discovers that HG Wells' time machine actually exists..." But get past that, and the slow start, and there's actually some pretty good dystopian ideas in this novel. Wright's story is quietly sinister as it presents a near-future collapse of human society that feels all-too-possible, brought about by excessive consumerism, global warming and over-population. Towards the end of the tale there's a cautionary note about the depletion of fossil fuels and the fact that the human race only gets one chance to make use of the earth's supply - this certainly gave me pause for thought.
For all the stuff I liked about this book, however, there was plenty to dislike or struggle with. I didn't like the portrayal of women - either damaged goods to be used by the protagonist or idealised (absent) female perfection to be lamented. I particular struggled with the (small spoiler alert) breastfeeding ridiculousness. What purpose in the narrative did that serve? It simply felt like the author living out some bizarre fantasy on the pages of the novel, a bizarre fantasy that felt borderline abusive as the girl in question was a teenager and obviously emotionally vulnerable. A smaller annoyance, but one that nonetheless stayed with me, was how easily the protagonist could verbatim recite lengthy tracts of poetry and literature - even the ones he hadn't carried with him on his oyster. Noone is that educated!
Overall I'm glad I read the book, the author writes descriptive prose very well and had some important points to make about the way society is heading. But it wasn't a perfect novel - not by a long shot.
For all the stuff I liked about this book, however, there was plenty to dislike or struggle with. I didn't like the portrayal of women - either damaged goods to be used by the protagonist or idealised (absent) female perfection to be lamented. I particular struggled with the (small spoiler alert) breastfeeding ridiculousness. What purpose in the narrative did that serve? It simply felt like the author living out some bizarre fantasy on the pages of the novel, a bizarre fantasy that felt borderline abusive as the girl in question was a teenager and obviously emotionally vulnerable. A smaller annoyance, but one that nonetheless stayed with me, was how easily the protagonist could verbatim recite lengthy tracts of poetry and literature - even the ones he hadn't carried with him on his oyster. Noone is that educated!
Overall I'm glad I read the book, the author writes descriptive prose very well and had some important points to make about the way society is heading. But it wasn't a perfect novel - not by a long shot.
August 8, 2010
A Scientific Romance is one of my favourite books. I recently reread it and found it holds up extremely well. It is the story of anthropologist David Lambert, who finds H.G. Wells' time Machine (or more accurately, Wells' lover Tatania's machine) and sets off for 500 years in the future. I'm not giving much away when I reveal that the world he discovers there is completely changed by a catasphrophic increase in global temperatures. The 20th century Britain he leaves is utterly gone, replaced by a lush jungle slowly breaking down the remaining traces of civilization. Lambert narrates the story of his travels through this new Britain, his surprising friendship with one of its denizens, and in flashbacks looks back at his lost love and sundered friendships.
There is so much fascinating detail about anthropology, archaeology, the 19th, 20th and 26th centuries that there is never a dull moment. Wright's ideas about sustainable civilization, which he has written about in his acclaimed "A Short History of Progress," are here seen not as warnings about the future but looked back on as as tragic history. The fragments of human history that Lambert eventually uncovers and pieces together paint a dark and foreboding picture of the next hundred years or so.
Wright's prose is beautfully written, wry and often quite funny, even as catastrophes overwhelm both the protagonist and his world. Can't recommend this highly enough.
There is so much fascinating detail about anthropology, archaeology, the 19th, 20th and 26th centuries that there is never a dull moment. Wright's ideas about sustainable civilization, which he has written about in his acclaimed "A Short History of Progress," are here seen not as warnings about the future but looked back on as as tragic history. The fragments of human history that Lambert eventually uncovers and pieces together paint a dark and foreboding picture of the next hundred years or so.
Wright's prose is beautfully written, wry and often quite funny, even as catastrophes overwhelm both the protagonist and his world. Can't recommend this highly enough.
June 2, 2012
I remember buying this book when it first came out in 1998 after reading a review of it in the Washington Post and have finally gotten around to reading it. Time travel stories and movies have always fascinated me and this story of travel to the year 2500 A.D. was no exception. In this, the protagonist discovers that the time machine of H.G. Wells was returning to London in 1999. He also learns that he is afflicted with CJD (mad cow disease) and so decides to travel to the future in hopes of a cure and then perhaps to the past (if possible) to save the love of his life who died from CJD. Well the future is not what he expected. The human population is decimated by disease, global warming, and war - there is no one left in London and it is all but gone, covered with tropical growth in a hot and humid climate. Without giving away too much of the story, as he explores this new world, he is able to piece together what happened and reflects on his past life and the mistakes he made. I was a little disappointed with the ending and sometimes the language used in the novel was a little hard to follow without using a dictionary, but overall, I would give this a mild recommendation.
February 18, 2014
**spoiler alert**
This isn't a book you can review without talking about all of it. It's not a quick read, and is packed full of ideas - it is as much about history, and how we interpret it, as the here and now (now 15 yrs or so from when it was written, which already adds another level) and the future - the story echoes this by continually moving backwards and forwards.
I liked the writing, the chatty style, the evocative descriptions, and I really liked the way the author interweaves quotes from a wide variety of sources.
However, I got rather bored by his trek to Scotland, and I found his time there, although interesting, and just as full of ideas as the earlier part, to be disappointing and it's largely why the book went from 4 to 3 stars. Not sure why - it brought to mind the film "Highlander", and not in a good way, and the "let's kill the foreigner" storyline isn't new - but perhaps it was just too plausible, and by extension, too depressing.
(Book Club)
This isn't a book you can review without talking about all of it. It's not a quick read, and is packed full of ideas - it is as much about history, and how we interpret it, as the here and now (now 15 yrs or so from when it was written, which already adds another level) and the future - the story echoes this by continually moving backwards and forwards.
I liked the writing, the chatty style, the evocative descriptions, and I really liked the way the author interweaves quotes from a wide variety of sources.
However, I got rather bored by his trek to Scotland, and I found his time there, although interesting, and just as full of ideas as the earlier part, to be disappointing and it's largely why the book went from 4 to 3 stars. Not sure why - it brought to mind the film "Highlander", and not in a good way, and the "let's kill the foreigner" storyline isn't new - but perhaps it was just too plausible, and by extension, too depressing.
(Book Club)
July 4, 2018
This is a tremendously interesting book, from many points of view: because it has been written with intelligence, because its word use and imagery is so fresh and startling, because it manages to combine dystopia, adventure, science fiction, and a good deal of well-researched hard science as well, because it provides contemporary social commentary in a dystopic, futuristic, but relevant context, because it manages to bring in literary references with ease, because it unfolds such an interesting and ingenious plot, because it presents a very nice combination of H.G. Wells and George Orwell, and because it delivers a powerful message.
I have now read this book twice, the readings separately by more than ten years. It was even better the second time round.
I have now read this book twice, the readings separately by more than ten years. It was even better the second time round.
February 11, 2010
My first instinct was to give this book three stars because in a small way I felt jipped. I can't say more otherwise I will give the plot away but in the end I decided on the four because the writing is just that good. The discriptions are amazing and the references within the text often beyond me but one or two I looked up. For a quite indefinable reason, I couldn't put this book down.
May 25, 2015
You know whats kind of spooky? Reading a book about time travel and having the nagging feeling that I've read it before. This has never happened to me before, and although it could be a coincidence, I'm not convinced it is. I wonder if I read this in the past, or if this was the first time I read it and will read it again in the future.
December 2, 2015
a sci-fic so i wasn't sure id like it but it got me from the first page. starts out as if you know everything that's happened to them and he's giving you info that has only just happened so you need to keep reading to get all caught up as it slowly becomes revealed to you.
June 19, 2011
Dull, and dull and depressing. I think I have just realized that books which are mostly one person with little human interaction in them are not for me. Read about 200of about 350 pages and giving it up.
June 13, 2009
Yes, I too want a time machine.
September 27, 2013
terrifically purple.
January 4, 2014
So boring that I contemplated suicide until I realized that I didn't have to finish this book.
August 8, 2022
SPOILER ALERT
I first read this book pre-2000, so not too long after it was published. It became a Desert Island book, one that I always list as an all-time favourite. Like others on this year's list for me, it's a favourite that I had not read in many years, so decided to revisit it. I can confirm it remains a favourite, and as with the other long-since-read books this year, was delightful and surprising - being so long since I read it, many elements were fresh and new.
The story is primarily science fiction (what the Victorians referred to as scientific romance), using some familiar main elements:
•time travel, and specifically the titular Time Machine from the HG Wells story (another scientific romance). David Lambert, the main character in the novel, is an archeologist by training, with an interest in machines from the 18th and 19th century. He learns of a letter from HG Wells purporting that the time machine was actually built and successfully used by a scientist in 1899, with a scheduled return on 31 December 1999 (in the midst of Y2K hysteria). David secures access to the London location of the machine's alleged travel, and lo and behold it reappears as scheduled, empty but in working order.
•Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). While no longer the worry it once was, in the mid-90s it was verging on hysteria. A colleague and former lover of David's dies of vCJD, and David is subsequently diagnosed with it. This looming death sentence motivates the main actions of the rest of the story.
•Climate change, or global warming as it was known then. While not as prevalent in the news back in the 90s, it was nonetheless an emerging concern. As the story progresses, the very long term effects become clear.
•Genetically modified organisms (GMOs), specifically cultivated lawn products and the development of grasses that grow anywhere. This was an early, and prescient, recognition of the challenges of messing with Mother Nature. Again, the very long term effects are startling.
•Pandemic, specifically something called Rapid Immune System Collapse or RISC. This, combined with vCJD and HIV (or Henry the Fourth, as they refer to it), coincidental with the changing climate, became insurmountable for the human race. "As society disintegrated and solar radiation rose, evolution would have smiled on in the dark. The cruel triage of natural selection, stalled by medicine for generations, would have resumed."
With his vCJD diagnosis, David decides to go all in on the time machine. He rejigs it with the then-latest in computer technology and safety, and executes a departure in the year 2000 for a date 500 years in the future. His rationale: by then, there should be a cure for vCJD. The reality: vCJD is the least of the problems of the future. Climate change has turned London into a mostly-underwater wreckage and a tropical lagoon. Those lawn products have expanded and evolved to be a hardy never-dying sward across the countryside. In this watery jungle world, there is little evidence of what happened to people and civilization, so David decides to trek North in the hopes of finding more answers. In Scotland, he finds more pieces of information but then finds himself the captive of a small tribe of people (the MacBeaths) near Loch Ness; in a wry bit of comic relief, the MacBeaths' mortal enemies are the tribe known as the MacDonalds, who's sigil is a large M made from two golden arches.
Eventually escaping and returning to London, the novel ends with David's departure in the time machine, aiming for the year 1988 and the time before so much went wrong, with the hope of trying to avert the catastrophes, even if just for himself and his friends. His final observations are not optimistic: "...human numbers may eventually rebuild...but the ready ores and fossil fuels are gone. Without coal there can be no Industrial Revolution; without oil no leap from steam to atom...A civilization such as ours ploughs up the rails behind; we had at best one chance to get it right." (Aside: part of my affection for Wright's writing is based on his splendid and prolific use of my favourite punctuation, the semi-colon.)
The majority of the novel describes David's explorations of this future ruined world and its pitiful remaining humans, with minimal technical explanation of the time travel itself. He does not find what he's looking for, but instead what he needed in order to make sense of his own life and his next steps. The story is well told, and David is a likeable and reliable narrator. You want him to find...something, but also perhaps to learn how to be content with what he has or had.
I first read this book pre-2000, so not too long after it was published. It became a Desert Island book, one that I always list as an all-time favourite. Like others on this year's list for me, it's a favourite that I had not read in many years, so decided to revisit it. I can confirm it remains a favourite, and as with the other long-since-read books this year, was delightful and surprising - being so long since I read it, many elements were fresh and new.
The story is primarily science fiction (what the Victorians referred to as scientific romance), using some familiar main elements:
•time travel, and specifically the titular Time Machine from the HG Wells story (another scientific romance). David Lambert, the main character in the novel, is an archeologist by training, with an interest in machines from the 18th and 19th century. He learns of a letter from HG Wells purporting that the time machine was actually built and successfully used by a scientist in 1899, with a scheduled return on 31 December 1999 (in the midst of Y2K hysteria). David secures access to the London location of the machine's alleged travel, and lo and behold it reappears as scheduled, empty but in working order.
•Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). While no longer the worry it once was, in the mid-90s it was verging on hysteria. A colleague and former lover of David's dies of vCJD, and David is subsequently diagnosed with it. This looming death sentence motivates the main actions of the rest of the story.
•Climate change, or global warming as it was known then. While not as prevalent in the news back in the 90s, it was nonetheless an emerging concern. As the story progresses, the very long term effects become clear.
•Genetically modified organisms (GMOs), specifically cultivated lawn products and the development of grasses that grow anywhere. This was an early, and prescient, recognition of the challenges of messing with Mother Nature. Again, the very long term effects are startling.
•Pandemic, specifically something called Rapid Immune System Collapse or RISC. This, combined with vCJD and HIV (or Henry the Fourth, as they refer to it), coincidental with the changing climate, became insurmountable for the human race. "As society disintegrated and solar radiation rose, evolution would have smiled on in the dark. The cruel triage of natural selection, stalled by medicine for generations, would have resumed."
With his vCJD diagnosis, David decides to go all in on the time machine. He rejigs it with the then-latest in computer technology and safety, and executes a departure in the year 2000 for a date 500 years in the future. His rationale: by then, there should be a cure for vCJD. The reality: vCJD is the least of the problems of the future. Climate change has turned London into a mostly-underwater wreckage and a tropical lagoon. Those lawn products have expanded and evolved to be a hardy never-dying sward across the countryside. In this watery jungle world, there is little evidence of what happened to people and civilization, so David decides to trek North in the hopes of finding more answers. In Scotland, he finds more pieces of information but then finds himself the captive of a small tribe of people (the MacBeaths) near Loch Ness; in a wry bit of comic relief, the MacBeaths' mortal enemies are the tribe known as the MacDonalds, who's sigil is a large M made from two golden arches.
Eventually escaping and returning to London, the novel ends with David's departure in the time machine, aiming for the year 1988 and the time before so much went wrong, with the hope of trying to avert the catastrophes, even if just for himself and his friends. His final observations are not optimistic: "...human numbers may eventually rebuild...but the ready ores and fossil fuels are gone. Without coal there can be no Industrial Revolution; without oil no leap from steam to atom...A civilization such as ours ploughs up the rails behind; we had at best one chance to get it right." (Aside: part of my affection for Wright's writing is based on his splendid and prolific use of my favourite punctuation, the semi-colon.)
The majority of the novel describes David's explorations of this future ruined world and its pitiful remaining humans, with minimal technical explanation of the time travel itself. He does not find what he's looking for, but instead what he needed in order to make sense of his own life and his next steps. The story is well told, and David is a likeable and reliable narrator. You want him to find...something, but also perhaps to learn how to be content with what he has or had.
June 2, 2021
How to describe this book? You have to be very patient with the book and let it play out. A reflective story set in late 20th-century London that is a homage to H.G. Wells and his 1895 book The Time Machine. David Lambert finds Wells' time machine has returned from the past. While still grieving his lost love, he learns that she died of a fatal disease which he also acquired. With the help of a friend he decides to use the machine to travel 500 years into the future hoping that a cure has been found that will allow him to live. What he finds is a dystopian world where London has been transformed into a tropical jungle and no humans survive. He travels north to Scotland in hopes of finding some remnants of humanity only to be captured by those remnants in a society that is a wild mix of old Scottish culture, Shakespeare, Christianity, whisky and Africa. The culture shock doesn't go well.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 67 reviews