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The People of the Ruins
Trapped in a London laboratory during a worker uprising, a physicist and war veteran awakens 150 years later—on the eve of a new Dark Age!
In The People of the Ruins, Edward Shanks imagines England in the not-so-distant future as a neomedieval society whose inhabitants have forgotten how to build or operate machinery. Jeremy Tuft is a physics instructor and former artillery officer who is cryogenically frozen in his laboratory only to emerge after a century and a half to a disquieting new era. Though at first Tuft is disconcerted by the failure of his own era’s smug doctrine of Progress, he eventually decides that he prefers the postcivilized life. But, when the northern English and Welsh tribes invade, Tuft must set about reinventing weapons of mass destruction.
One of the most critically acclaimed and popular postwar stories of its day, The People of the Ruins captured a feeling that was common among those who had fought and survived the Great haunted by trauma and guilt, its protagonist feels out of time and out of place, unsure of what is real or unreal. Shanks implies in this seminal work, as Paul March-Russell explains in the book’s introduction, that the political system was already corrupt before the story began, and that Bolshevism and anarchism—and the resulting civil wars—merely accelerated the world’s inevitable decline.
A satire of Wellsian techno-utopian novels, The People of the Ruins is a bold, entertaining, and moving postapocalyptic novel contemporary readers won’t soon forget.
Edward Shanks (1892-1953) was an English author, poet, critic, and journalist. He was the editor of Granta just before serving in World War I and is perhaps best remembered today as a war poet. The People of the Ruins is his only science fiction novel.
In The People of the Ruins, Edward Shanks imagines England in the not-so-distant future as a neomedieval society whose inhabitants have forgotten how to build or operate machinery. Jeremy Tuft is a physics instructor and former artillery officer who is cryogenically frozen in his laboratory only to emerge after a century and a half to a disquieting new era. Though at first Tuft is disconcerted by the failure of his own era’s smug doctrine of Progress, he eventually decides that he prefers the postcivilized life. But, when the northern English and Welsh tribes invade, Tuft must set about reinventing weapons of mass destruction.
One of the most critically acclaimed and popular postwar stories of its day, The People of the Ruins captured a feeling that was common among those who had fought and survived the Great haunted by trauma and guilt, its protagonist feels out of time and out of place, unsure of what is real or unreal. Shanks implies in this seminal work, as Paul March-Russell explains in the book’s introduction, that the political system was already corrupt before the story began, and that Bolshevism and anarchism—and the resulting civil wars—merely accelerated the world’s inevitable decline.
A satire of Wellsian techno-utopian novels, The People of the Ruins is a bold, entertaining, and moving postapocalyptic novel contemporary readers won’t soon forget.
Edward Shanks (1892-1953) was an English author, poet, critic, and journalist. He was the editor of Granta just before serving in World War I and is perhaps best remembered today as a war poet. The People of the Ruins is his only science fiction novel.
360 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1920
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May 16, 2020
The publisher known as HiLo Books had a wonderful thing going back in 2012 with its Radium Age Science Fiction Series, the mission of which was to bring back into print the neglected works from the period 1904 - 1933. This reader had previously enjoyed several of the titles in this series via volumes from other publishers--novels such as Jack London's "The Scarlet Plague" (1912), William Hope Hodgson's "The Night Land" (1912), Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Poison Belt" (1913) and H. Rider Haggard's "When the World Shook" (1919)--had hugely enjoyed them all, and thought that it was high time for me to be diving into the half dozen or so Radium Age wonders that I had not as yet experienced. Choosing at random, I opted for the book in question, "The People of the Ruins," by the English author Edward Shanks; a most excellent choice, as it turns out!
This particular novel, it seems, originally appeared as an 18-part serial in the British magazine "Land & Water" during the period 10/16/19 to 2/12/20. It was then released as a hardcover book in 1920, not appearing again until June '47, when the entire novel was reprinted in the pages of the American pulp magazine "Famous Fantastic Mysteries" (which, despite its name, mainly dealt with sci-fi and fantasy), graced with a cover illustration by the great Virgil Finlay. And after that, the book sank into neglect for a period of 65 years. But thanks to the fine folks at HiLo, readers of today will not have to search, uh, high and low for a reasonably priced copy of what has turned out to be a simply marvelous work. "The People of the Ruins" was Shanks' only piece of science fiction. He was 27 at the time of its initial release, had already enjoyed a career as a magazine editor, and would later become a literary critic, journalist, essayist, novelist and, especially, poet. His decision to not try his hand at science fiction again was a loss to all fans of the genre, as he proves himself here to have a terrific imagination and a wonderfully readable and elegant prose style. His dystopian novel of the future is both poignant and haunting, and I despair of doing it justice here. Simply put, I just loved this book!
In it, the reader is introduced to a youngish physics lecturer named Jeremy Tuft. Like Shanks himself, Tuft had served with the British Army in France during WW1; unlike the author, he had then become a man of science, his greatest pride being his recent papers on "The Viscosity of Liquids." When we first encounter Jeremy, it is in the futuristic year of, er, 1924, and our young bachelor wakes to find London strangely quiet. As it turns out, a general workers' strike had just begun, and all the printers, the bus, truck and railway workers, the miners and other groups are demonstrating elsewhere and are busy shutting the city down. Undeterred, Jeremy decides to take the long walk to the East End, to keep his lunch date with Augustus Trehanoc, a fellow physicist who has just invented some kind of unusual contraption. Also at the luncheon in Trehanoc's converted-warehouse abode is Maclan, a slight acquaintance of Jeremy's, who ponders, vis-à-vis modern society, as the demonstrations and riots resound from outdoors: "...it's been a good time, and we seemed to be getting freer and freer and richer and richer. But now we've got as far as we can and everything changes...Change here for the Dark Ages...In fact, if I may put it so, this is where we get out and walk...." And boy, do those words ever prove prophetic!
Rioters abruptly storm into Trehanoc's house, shoot him and Maclan dead, and chuck a bomb down into the basement laboratory where Jeremy is cowering in fright. The bomb causes the entire ceiling to collapse, but not before Jeremy crawls under a laboratory table for protection...and inadvertently gets himself zapped by Trehanoc's new device, the mysterious rays of which had earlier held a rat in frozen stasis for six weeks. When Jeremy awakes, he is stunned to discover than not only is he somehow still alive, but that all of London has changed around him. As it develops, he has awoken 150 years later, and this new London of 2174 is a pre-Industrial realm that has reverted after the so-called "Troubles" of the 20th century. It is a world in which England's inhabitants have largely forgotten the methods of manufacturing, only barely keeping the trains going, and living without electricity and other scientific advancements. Jeremy befriends the first person he comes across, Roger Vaile, who works as a clerk in the Treasury building. And he later meets the head of London and of all southern England, the so-called Speaker, and falls in love with his beautiful daughter, Eva. The Speaker's interest in Tuft is redoubled when he learns that the 20th century revenant once worked as an artilleryman during WW1. He puts Jeremy in charge of a group of elflike octogenarians who are trying to construct a cannon, and not a moment too soon, what with civil war about to erupt, and the semi-barbarous hordes from both Yorkshire and Wales about to attack the city....
Those readers who might be a bit worried about Shanks' novel being a bit too polemical--as I myself admittedly was, going in--need not be concerned here. Unlike other dystopian novels, which often bombard the reader with philosophical, political and economic arguments, "The People of the Ruins" simply tells its story and lets us make up our own minds about things. Shanks seems to be implying that life in the early 20th century left much to be desired, but that life 150 years hence will hardly be a picnic either. As Tom Hodgkinson tells us, in his scholarly introduction to this HiLo edition, the novel is "...bleak and uninspiring, and its only conclusion as far as society goes appears to be: you can’t win!" But throughout the book, via Jeremy's thoughts and statements, we are given clues as to the author's attitudes. Thus, in one section, Tuft tells Roger:
"...You are happier than we were...though you are poorer. Your air is clean, you have room, you live at peace, you have time to live. But we were forced to live in thick, smoky air; we fought and quarreled, and disputed. The more difficult our lives became, the less time we had for them. This age seems to me...like a man who has been walking at full speed on a long dusty road, only trying to see how many miles he can cover in a day. Suddenly he grows exhausted and stops. I have done it. I can remember how delicious it was to lie down in a field off the road, to let the business all go, not to care where one got to or when. It was this peacefulness we should have been aiming at all the time, only we never knew...."
In another section, Jeremy thinks to himself:
"...We wretched ants...piled up more stuff than we could use, and though the mad people of the Troubles wasted it, yet the ruins are enough for this race to live in for centuries. And aren't they more sensible than we were? Why shouldn't humanity retire from business on its savings? If only it had done it before it got that nervous breakdown from overwork...."
But these early thoughts of Jeremy's regarding the desirability of late 21st century life, and of the idyllic nature of the London society in which he finds himself, are of course amended when violent conflict sweeps his country again.
As to those conflicts, Shanks, during the course of his novel, treats the reader to two tremendous battle sequences, the first against the Yorkshiremen and the second against the Welsh. Jeremy and his crew of geriatrics, lugging about the two dubious cannons that they have constructed, play a large role in both battles, although far be it from me to ruin any prospective reader's suspense quotient by revealing the outcomes of those titanic struggles. Shanks' descriptions of both battles are easy to follow and quite lucid, although I did find that a good map of the Berkshire countryside was helpful in appreciating the movements in the fight against the Welsh. Likewise, a street map of London was also useful for this reader, although most people should do just fine without one. Besides those two tremendous sequences, Shanks gives us an absolutely haunting finale, in which Jeremy, Eva and the Speaker make a desperate flight by horseback to Portsmouth, in the hopes of escaping thence to France, being pursued by the Welsh the entire way. It is a dreamy, romantic, lyrical windup, and again, I shouldn't reveal how things conclude here--whether happily or sadly--but will say that the book's final two pages might very well leave you with a tear in your eye. If they don't, well...you're a tougher person than me.
And, oh...it seems that I have neglected to mention what a wonderful bit of world building Shanks has given us here. Thus, we learn a bit about life in the Treasury, where Jeremy is housed; about the history of the intervening 150 years; and about the unusual religious leanings of the Yorkshiremen. We are given a tour of London and the surrounding countryside, and get to see what has withstood the test of time and what has been destroyed. And heaven only knows what the king and queen of England in 1920, George V and Mary of Teck, would have thought had they learned that Shanks depicted their Windsor Castle as a pile of rubble, its remaining stones used as a quarry by the nearby dwellers! Despite Jeremy's initial optimism after finding himself temporally displaced, it is a fairly grim environment, soon to be made even grimmer with the advent of those civil wars. Jeremy Tuft, I might add, ordinary everyman that he remains, is a wonderful guide for the reader, and he becomes both tougher and more sympathetic as the novel proceeds. "He felt himself a poor waif beaten down by circumstance, a child called on to carry an insupportable load. Only some kind of irrational obstinacy, a sort of momentum of the spirit, kept him upright," we are told, and he surely does have the reader's sympathy throughout.
On this HiLo edition's back cover, author Brian Stableford has a blurb that tells us "The People of the Ruins" is "one of the most widely read scientific romances of the post-war years," and that popularity is surely understandable. Fascinating, moving, and beautifully written, it truly is some kind of great work from Edward Shanks. Indeed, this reader was so impressed with Mr. Shanks' prose here that he would be more than willing to check out the author's other, nongenre novels, those being "The Old Indispensables" (1919), "The Richest Man" (1923) and "Old King Cole" (1936). Wish me luck as I endeavor to track them down. In the meantime, though, thanks to HiLo, we have "The People of the Ruins," and it is a book that I really cannot recommend highly enough....
(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at https://www.fantasyliterature.com/ ... a most ideal destination for fans of dystopian novels such as this....)
This particular novel, it seems, originally appeared as an 18-part serial in the British magazine "Land & Water" during the period 10/16/19 to 2/12/20. It was then released as a hardcover book in 1920, not appearing again until June '47, when the entire novel was reprinted in the pages of the American pulp magazine "Famous Fantastic Mysteries" (which, despite its name, mainly dealt with sci-fi and fantasy), graced with a cover illustration by the great Virgil Finlay. And after that, the book sank into neglect for a period of 65 years. But thanks to the fine folks at HiLo, readers of today will not have to search, uh, high and low for a reasonably priced copy of what has turned out to be a simply marvelous work. "The People of the Ruins" was Shanks' only piece of science fiction. He was 27 at the time of its initial release, had already enjoyed a career as a magazine editor, and would later become a literary critic, journalist, essayist, novelist and, especially, poet. His decision to not try his hand at science fiction again was a loss to all fans of the genre, as he proves himself here to have a terrific imagination and a wonderfully readable and elegant prose style. His dystopian novel of the future is both poignant and haunting, and I despair of doing it justice here. Simply put, I just loved this book!
In it, the reader is introduced to a youngish physics lecturer named Jeremy Tuft. Like Shanks himself, Tuft had served with the British Army in France during WW1; unlike the author, he had then become a man of science, his greatest pride being his recent papers on "The Viscosity of Liquids." When we first encounter Jeremy, it is in the futuristic year of, er, 1924, and our young bachelor wakes to find London strangely quiet. As it turns out, a general workers' strike had just begun, and all the printers, the bus, truck and railway workers, the miners and other groups are demonstrating elsewhere and are busy shutting the city down. Undeterred, Jeremy decides to take the long walk to the East End, to keep his lunch date with Augustus Trehanoc, a fellow physicist who has just invented some kind of unusual contraption. Also at the luncheon in Trehanoc's converted-warehouse abode is Maclan, a slight acquaintance of Jeremy's, who ponders, vis-à-vis modern society, as the demonstrations and riots resound from outdoors: "...it's been a good time, and we seemed to be getting freer and freer and richer and richer. But now we've got as far as we can and everything changes...Change here for the Dark Ages...In fact, if I may put it so, this is where we get out and walk...." And boy, do those words ever prove prophetic!
Rioters abruptly storm into Trehanoc's house, shoot him and Maclan dead, and chuck a bomb down into the basement laboratory where Jeremy is cowering in fright. The bomb causes the entire ceiling to collapse, but not before Jeremy crawls under a laboratory table for protection...and inadvertently gets himself zapped by Trehanoc's new device, the mysterious rays of which had earlier held a rat in frozen stasis for six weeks. When Jeremy awakes, he is stunned to discover than not only is he somehow still alive, but that all of London has changed around him. As it develops, he has awoken 150 years later, and this new London of 2174 is a pre-Industrial realm that has reverted after the so-called "Troubles" of the 20th century. It is a world in which England's inhabitants have largely forgotten the methods of manufacturing, only barely keeping the trains going, and living without electricity and other scientific advancements. Jeremy befriends the first person he comes across, Roger Vaile, who works as a clerk in the Treasury building. And he later meets the head of London and of all southern England, the so-called Speaker, and falls in love with his beautiful daughter, Eva. The Speaker's interest in Tuft is redoubled when he learns that the 20th century revenant once worked as an artilleryman during WW1. He puts Jeremy in charge of a group of elflike octogenarians who are trying to construct a cannon, and not a moment too soon, what with civil war about to erupt, and the semi-barbarous hordes from both Yorkshire and Wales about to attack the city....
Those readers who might be a bit worried about Shanks' novel being a bit too polemical--as I myself admittedly was, going in--need not be concerned here. Unlike other dystopian novels, which often bombard the reader with philosophical, political and economic arguments, "The People of the Ruins" simply tells its story and lets us make up our own minds about things. Shanks seems to be implying that life in the early 20th century left much to be desired, but that life 150 years hence will hardly be a picnic either. As Tom Hodgkinson tells us, in his scholarly introduction to this HiLo edition, the novel is "...bleak and uninspiring, and its only conclusion as far as society goes appears to be: you can’t win!" But throughout the book, via Jeremy's thoughts and statements, we are given clues as to the author's attitudes. Thus, in one section, Tuft tells Roger:
"...You are happier than we were...though you are poorer. Your air is clean, you have room, you live at peace, you have time to live. But we were forced to live in thick, smoky air; we fought and quarreled, and disputed. The more difficult our lives became, the less time we had for them. This age seems to me...like a man who has been walking at full speed on a long dusty road, only trying to see how many miles he can cover in a day. Suddenly he grows exhausted and stops. I have done it. I can remember how delicious it was to lie down in a field off the road, to let the business all go, not to care where one got to or when. It was this peacefulness we should have been aiming at all the time, only we never knew...."
In another section, Jeremy thinks to himself:
"...We wretched ants...piled up more stuff than we could use, and though the mad people of the Troubles wasted it, yet the ruins are enough for this race to live in for centuries. And aren't they more sensible than we were? Why shouldn't humanity retire from business on its savings? If only it had done it before it got that nervous breakdown from overwork...."
But these early thoughts of Jeremy's regarding the desirability of late 21st century life, and of the idyllic nature of the London society in which he finds himself, are of course amended when violent conflict sweeps his country again.
As to those conflicts, Shanks, during the course of his novel, treats the reader to two tremendous battle sequences, the first against the Yorkshiremen and the second against the Welsh. Jeremy and his crew of geriatrics, lugging about the two dubious cannons that they have constructed, play a large role in both battles, although far be it from me to ruin any prospective reader's suspense quotient by revealing the outcomes of those titanic struggles. Shanks' descriptions of both battles are easy to follow and quite lucid, although I did find that a good map of the Berkshire countryside was helpful in appreciating the movements in the fight against the Welsh. Likewise, a street map of London was also useful for this reader, although most people should do just fine without one. Besides those two tremendous sequences, Shanks gives us an absolutely haunting finale, in which Jeremy, Eva and the Speaker make a desperate flight by horseback to Portsmouth, in the hopes of escaping thence to France, being pursued by the Welsh the entire way. It is a dreamy, romantic, lyrical windup, and again, I shouldn't reveal how things conclude here--whether happily or sadly--but will say that the book's final two pages might very well leave you with a tear in your eye. If they don't, well...you're a tougher person than me.
And, oh...it seems that I have neglected to mention what a wonderful bit of world building Shanks has given us here. Thus, we learn a bit about life in the Treasury, where Jeremy is housed; about the history of the intervening 150 years; and about the unusual religious leanings of the Yorkshiremen. We are given a tour of London and the surrounding countryside, and get to see what has withstood the test of time and what has been destroyed. And heaven only knows what the king and queen of England in 1920, George V and Mary of Teck, would have thought had they learned that Shanks depicted their Windsor Castle as a pile of rubble, its remaining stones used as a quarry by the nearby dwellers! Despite Jeremy's initial optimism after finding himself temporally displaced, it is a fairly grim environment, soon to be made even grimmer with the advent of those civil wars. Jeremy Tuft, I might add, ordinary everyman that he remains, is a wonderful guide for the reader, and he becomes both tougher and more sympathetic as the novel proceeds. "He felt himself a poor waif beaten down by circumstance, a child called on to carry an insupportable load. Only some kind of irrational obstinacy, a sort of momentum of the spirit, kept him upright," we are told, and he surely does have the reader's sympathy throughout.
On this HiLo edition's back cover, author Brian Stableford has a blurb that tells us "The People of the Ruins" is "one of the most widely read scientific romances of the post-war years," and that popularity is surely understandable. Fascinating, moving, and beautifully written, it truly is some kind of great work from Edward Shanks. Indeed, this reader was so impressed with Mr. Shanks' prose here that he would be more than willing to check out the author's other, nongenre novels, those being "The Old Indispensables" (1919), "The Richest Man" (1923) and "Old King Cole" (1936). Wish me luck as I endeavor to track them down. In the meantime, though, thanks to HiLo, we have "The People of the Ruins," and it is a book that I really cannot recommend highly enough....
(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at https://www.fantasyliterature.com/ ... a most ideal destination for fans of dystopian novels such as this....)
June 28, 2022
The People of the Ruins by Edward Shanks
Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...
This is an oddball book that reminded me of Jack London's "The Scarlet Plague" and "The Iron Heel" or Milo Hasting's "The City of Night." This book was written in 1920, shortly after the Great War, during a period when England was facing labor unrest. Shanks hero - Jeremy Tuft - is a scientist, who is bathed in experimental "rays" by a friendly scientist in1920. The rays freeze Tuft for 150 years.
When he escapes stasis, he discovers that the labor unrest he witnessed grew in global scope and disrupted civilization. The world he discovers is feudal and science has been forgotten.
One interesting aspect of the book is that Shanks posits a breakdown of society without nuclear weapons. In two decades, there would be a growth industry in collapse-of-civilization stories caused by nuclear wars. Shanks imagines it happens through labor unrest, which seems unlikely, albeit having gone through the Great War, it must have seemed plausible.
Another interesting aspect is how future history morphs into alternate history. When Shanks wrote this book, he was imaginatively projecting into the future. Now that we are one-hundred years on, it seems more like an alternative history with a point of departure in 1920.
The book itself is engaging. I was curious about how the story would play out. There are problems with the writing. Tuft seemed a lightweight character who was thrust into an important position. The story is ultimately a downer. If you were expecting Tuft to reignite the world of the future with forgotten science, and I was, you will be disappointed.
Nonetheless, it might be worth a read for anyone interested in early 20th century imaginative fiction.
Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...
This is an oddball book that reminded me of Jack London's "The Scarlet Plague" and "The Iron Heel" or Milo Hasting's "The City of Night." This book was written in 1920, shortly after the Great War, during a period when England was facing labor unrest. Shanks hero - Jeremy Tuft - is a scientist, who is bathed in experimental "rays" by a friendly scientist in1920. The rays freeze Tuft for 150 years.
When he escapes stasis, he discovers that the labor unrest he witnessed grew in global scope and disrupted civilization. The world he discovers is feudal and science has been forgotten.
One interesting aspect of the book is that Shanks posits a breakdown of society without nuclear weapons. In two decades, there would be a growth industry in collapse-of-civilization stories caused by nuclear wars. Shanks imagines it happens through labor unrest, which seems unlikely, albeit having gone through the Great War, it must have seemed plausible.
Another interesting aspect is how future history morphs into alternate history. When Shanks wrote this book, he was imaginatively projecting into the future. Now that we are one-hundred years on, it seems more like an alternative history with a point of departure in 1920.
The book itself is engaging. I was curious about how the story would play out. There are problems with the writing. Tuft seemed a lightweight character who was thrust into an important position. The story is ultimately a downer. If you were expecting Tuft to reignite the world of the future with forgotten science, and I was, you will be disappointed.
Nonetheless, it might be worth a read for anyone interested in early 20th century imaginative fiction.
July 9, 2021
A nitpicker’s combo plate, but I still liked it. I was moved by the ending, where I had thought by the middle chapters that this book could not affect me on an emotional level. It is perhaps this reaction to a very bleak finale that stirs me to jump up to four out of five stars, in rating it.
This is a post apocalyptic novel published in 1929, set primarily in 2074, in and around London. A bomb thrown into a basement laboratory messes up a weird experiment in such a way that Jeremy sleeps. Sleeps long - wakes up in a world that has gone backward, from a technological standpoint. Farms and little villages, thriving on, in, and around the rubble of cities, and landmarks that have disappeared or decayed over 150 years…but overnight, for Jeremy.
A love story (not the highlight of the book, but a contributing factor to the powerful finale),a slow-burn trek to a war story (the people of the North, and the West, are threatening to invade the relative peace of London’s scattered denizens, now ruled by The Speaker), and, of all things, a sinister Canadian (!?). The book has pacing problems, but the war angle has a payoff, and doesn’t just fizzle out and blow its promise; the Speaker urges Jeremy - former artillery man during The Great War - to recreate forgotten weapons that will guarantee victory, but Jeremy has looked upon a world that has gained something by losing much, and does not want to do it.
The first few chapters suggest the book will be rather whimsical and funny throughout, but that sort of evaporates with each succeeding page. Most of the time I was convinced that this was a solid 3 star experience, with the potential for the wheels to come off at any moment, but I really feel the author carried things through the slow stretches and the cringy bits, to a rewarding, and stunningly bleak, conclusion, that worked for me.
This is a post apocalyptic novel published in 1929, set primarily in 2074, in and around London. A bomb thrown into a basement laboratory messes up a weird experiment in such a way that Jeremy sleeps. Sleeps long - wakes up in a world that has gone backward, from a technological standpoint. Farms and little villages, thriving on, in, and around the rubble of cities, and landmarks that have disappeared or decayed over 150 years…but overnight, for Jeremy.
A love story (not the highlight of the book, but a contributing factor to the powerful finale),a slow-burn trek to a war story (the people of the North, and the West, are threatening to invade the relative peace of London’s scattered denizens, now ruled by The Speaker), and, of all things, a sinister Canadian (!?). The book has pacing problems, but the war angle has a payoff, and doesn’t just fizzle out and blow its promise; the Speaker urges Jeremy - former artillery man during The Great War - to recreate forgotten weapons that will guarantee victory, but Jeremy has looked upon a world that has gained something by losing much, and does not want to do it.
The first few chapters suggest the book will be rather whimsical and funny throughout, but that sort of evaporates with each succeeding page. Most of the time I was convinced that this was a solid 3 star experience, with the potential for the wheels to come off at any moment, but I really feel the author carried things through the slow stretches and the cringy bits, to a rewarding, and stunningly bleak, conclusion, that worked for me.
May 4, 2020
Hmm... Well, the first couple of chapters were good. The first couple of chapters were very good indeed, with a freshness and a decent sense of humour. After that it went slightly downhill, which was unfortunate; the idea of a Rip van Winkle figure waking to a world not technologically advanced, but sunk back into a kind of mediaevalism had distinct possibilities. It wasn't bad as such, just, perhaps, not great, and with one or two (in retrospect) slightly unfortunate decisions made. There's something missing, but I'll be damned if I know what it is.
Influences? A Connecticut Yankee at the Court of King Arthur and Henry IV parts 1 and 2 spring to mind. Possibly a touch of that aesthetic revulsion C P Snow so eloquently referred to, though post World War I that's hardly surprising.
Oh, and there's no happy ending. Sorry.
Influences? A Connecticut Yankee at the Court of King Arthur and Henry IV parts 1 and 2 spring to mind. Possibly a touch of that aesthetic revulsion C P Snow so eloquently referred to, though post World War I that's hardly surprising.
Oh, and there's no happy ending. Sorry.
February 7, 2014
With the Great War a few years over, WWI artillery vet Jeremy Tuft is just settling back into his former life as a physicist, when labor and political strife escalate into a complete world-wide societal breakdown. Just as the conflict emerges into the streets, our hero is accidentally struck by his friend Trehanoc's experimental physics rays. The rays zap him (and a rat) into the 21st century, just in time to escape the angry mob entering his friend's building. He awakens to version of London that's largely agrarian with only a few half-working vestiges of technology - a few trains that sort of work, primitive musket-y guns, etc. As the story progresses you learn more about the rest of this world - The U.S. has broken apart, Canada has become a kind of warlord/mercenary state(!), etc. But England is largely peaceful, if a little slow and backward. Jeremy takes a while to figure things out and eventually is discovered and taken in by the current leader of greater London, referred to as "The Speaker", but also frequently (by the author) as the Jew - so, there are some race issues to navigate as well. Jeremy works to develop big artillery guns which will aid (and warp)the Speaker's plan to unite and rebuild Britain. All the while Jeremy falls hard and floridly for the Speaker's daughter, Eva, who is more of a 20's girl trapped in a pre-Victorian world.
There is definitely an anti-war vibe to People of the Ruins as a reaction to the author's experiences in WWI. Our hero recognizes the chaos and horror of modern warfare but has a hard time convincing people who've never lived through it. From this theme, the book leads to an ending that is natural, but still surprising to me, so I won't spoil it for you. I read the uncut public domain version of the book and overall it was a little slow but enjoyable - it especially picked up in the second half.
The romantic scenes between Jeremy and Eva are full of overwrought longing (not uncommon for the time), but that's how you get gems like this:
"Could he be certain yet what trick it was that Trehanoc's ray had played on him? Might he not, one day, tomorrow, or a year hence, perhaps in her very arms, suddenly expire, even crumble to dust?
There is definitely an anti-war vibe to People of the Ruins as a reaction to the author's experiences in WWI. Our hero recognizes the chaos and horror of modern warfare but has a hard time convincing people who've never lived through it. From this theme, the book leads to an ending that is natural, but still surprising to me, so I won't spoil it for you. I read the uncut public domain version of the book and overall it was a little slow but enjoyable - it especially picked up in the second half.
The romantic scenes between Jeremy and Eva are full of overwrought longing (not uncommon for the time), but that's how you get gems like this:
"Could he be certain yet what trick it was that Trehanoc's ray had played on him? Might he not, one day, tomorrow, or a year hence, perhaps in her very arms, suddenly expire, even crumble to dust?
December 15, 2024
Science fiction is a funny thing. We always think of the future, but it’s interesting to see what exactly the past thought the future was going to be. In this book, written in 1920, a young physicist is accidentally transported a century and a half into the future - 2070 - where society has broken down and regressed to an almost-medieval state. With his scientific knowledge - especially about artillery, as he fought in WWI - Jeremy, the young physicist, becomes a very important figure indeed.
It’s not a bad book, per se, but it didn’t really blow me away. To quote Fallout, “war never changes” - Shanks seems to think that we’re destined just to continue blowing each other away. (And this is without knowledge of the Second World War soon to come.) There’s also a very telling and annoying aspect of this in that the future Britain’s leader is a sly and sneaky Jewish man. Not great. As a whole, an interesting time capsule, but not the most astounding sci-fi you’ve ever read.
It’s not a bad book, per se, but it didn’t really blow me away. To quote Fallout, “war never changes” - Shanks seems to think that we’re destined just to continue blowing each other away. (And this is without knowledge of the Second World War soon to come.) There’s also a very telling and annoying aspect of this in that the future Britain’s leader is a sly and sneaky Jewish man. Not great. As a whole, an interesting time capsule, but not the most astounding sci-fi you’ve ever read.
December 24, 2015
I silently went "uh, oh" when I read in one Tom Hodgkinson's introduction this somewhat back-handed compliment: "So, while not a masterpiece [emphasis mine], The People of the Ruins can be read with pleasure both as a curiosity item and for its own sake".
However, Shanks turns out to be more than a competent craftsman. The People of the Ruins is a fascinating look at what a 1920 Brit speculated our future might be. The ending is dramatic yet appropriate.
It all works for me.
However, Shanks turns out to be more than a competent craftsman. The People of the Ruins is a fascinating look at what a 1920 Brit speculated our future might be. The ending is dramatic yet appropriate.
It all works for me.
March 16, 2013
A good character-driven story published in 1920; a Radium Age scifi novel. A bit verbose, though, as was the writing of the time. Very light on the scifi elements, but worth it for the ending. The mood and tone of the story are thought-provoking because they are embedded in such a unique time in English history. Fans of Downton Abbey and scifi should check this out.
August 11, 2025
Part of MIT Press’s “Radium Age” series, The People of the Ruins was originally published in 1919, in the period before science fiction’s so-called “Golden Age.” This earlier period is often dismissed as void of decent writing, lacking any notion of plot or character development, and basically unworthy of serious consideration. The Radium Age series hopes to change that attitude, and this book is a good example of why it is worth taking another look at sci-fi from 1900-1930.
Author Edward Shanks transports a man from the 1920s to the year 2074, where he discovers that civilization has collapsed after a period known as the Troubles. Shanks is less interested in the specifics of thus transporting his character forward in time, and more interested in how humanity has dealt with the Troubles (poorly) and how it will respond to the promise of hope brought to them by a man with superior knowledge from the past (also poorly). The story is compelling, frightening, and ultimately quite moving. Even though the time travel involved here moves forward rather than backward, I was reminded of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Both novels show us that technology on its own cannot solve all our problems, as long as human nature itself is the biggest problem.
Author Edward Shanks transports a man from the 1920s to the year 2074, where he discovers that civilization has collapsed after a period known as the Troubles. Shanks is less interested in the specifics of thus transporting his character forward in time, and more interested in how humanity has dealt with the Troubles (poorly) and how it will respond to the promise of hope brought to them by a man with superior knowledge from the past (also poorly). The story is compelling, frightening, and ultimately quite moving. Even though the time travel involved here moves forward rather than backward, I was reminded of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Both novels show us that technology on its own cannot solve all our problems, as long as human nature itself is the biggest problem.
February 5, 2025
Won a nice paperback copy of this book via a Goodreads giveaway!
Struggled to get through this one, but ended up liking it. I initially started reading it without reading the introduction, as those often spoil books' content. But before long I found myself reading it as a way to help myself not merely continue reading, but to understand and appreciate the novel. I then read the novel and went back and read the introduction again, which was useful.
Part of my issue with this book might be that while I enjoy science fiction, I'm not an aficionado. I thought being a big Brit Lit fan would be enough, but it kinda wasn't. That said, this book gave me the chance to reconsider what I thought I knew about sci-fi broadly, and particularly its origins. Jeremy was a tough sell at times, as was the novel given its racist underpinnings. But I'm glad I read it as a way to understand Shanks and his contemporaries, the goal(s) of the Radium Age Series and as a way to expand my conception of what makes something a "classic".
Overall, I'd say folks should give it a try and, importantly, stick with it! This novel isn't a light, breezy read (far from it), but is enlightening in various ways.
Struggled to get through this one, but ended up liking it. I initially started reading it without reading the introduction, as those often spoil books' content. But before long I found myself reading it as a way to help myself not merely continue reading, but to understand and appreciate the novel. I then read the novel and went back and read the introduction again, which was useful.
Part of my issue with this book might be that while I enjoy science fiction, I'm not an aficionado. I thought being a big Brit Lit fan would be enough, but it kinda wasn't. That said, this book gave me the chance to reconsider what I thought I knew about sci-fi broadly, and particularly its origins. Jeremy was a tough sell at times, as was the novel given its racist underpinnings. But I'm glad I read it as a way to understand Shanks and his contemporaries, the goal(s) of the Radium Age Series and as a way to expand my conception of what makes something a "classic".
Overall, I'd say folks should give it a try and, importantly, stick with it! This novel isn't a light, breezy read (far from it), but is enlightening in various ways.
August 17, 2024
A short novel set in the London area, Edward Shanks takes and introduces readers to Jeremy Tuft, an ex-artillery officer and physics instructor; who becomes trapped in the London laboratory during a worker's uprising in 1924. Tuft, wakes up 150 years into the future, a future not filled with advanced technology but rather a landscape reminiscent to that of a medieval society. The year 2074 is very different and yet seemingly simpler than 1924. Jeremy Tuft sets about living amongst his new group of countrymen, basking in the peaceful world until...the wheels of history, of mankind, turn once again, and Tuft faces a dilemma.
A truly interesting take on what the 'future' holds in 1924 (considering this work was written in 1920), and what the 'future' holds in 2074 with a dark turn of events. 4.5/5 Stars
A truly interesting take on what the 'future' holds in 1924 (considering this work was written in 1920), and what the 'future' holds in 2074 with a dark turn of events. 4.5/5 Stars
February 10, 2019
This book was classified as science fiction, but there was effectively no science in it. The main character gets transported about 150 years into the future, but technology and learning have declined, with only distant memories of 1920s technology. The book cannot even support a label of speculative fiction. (Why would human culture lose ability at art, too?) The book has some things to say as social commentary -- labor problems are big problems; a pastoral life is happier; war still comes -- but the only point held for more than a third of the book is that progress is not inevitable. The characters include several stereotypes. The characters which seemed the most interesting to me disappeared after the first chapter. The ending is bleak and leaves no useable lesson.
January 8, 2021
A very entertaining post-apocalyptic novel. Scientist gets knocked out and comes to hundreds of years later only to find that much of civilization is gone and people are living a medieval-like existence. It's a well-written book -- the author channels his inner critic when describing the people of the ruins, who really don't have much of a sense of style. The only thing that seemed off was that the author keeps mentioning that one of the characters looks Jewish (he is), and his being Jewish is a part of the plot, but it seems very strange today.
January 1, 2021
If Thomas Hardy had ever written a post-apocalyptic novel it probably would have been something like this. An arduous read but well worth it. Highly significant in its influence as well i.e. Tolkien. "The fellowship of those bright indifferent lights [stars] . . ." cum The Fellowship of the Ring?
May 4, 2025
Probably more of a 1.5. This book did not work for me. I could not buy into the underlying premise that, due to civil wars and unrest, large amounts of knowledge had been forgotten and people were living with decaying technology that they did not understand and that this had happened over a period of only 150 years.
February 10, 2021
I cannot figure out how this book ever got published. To say it's terrible is a compliment. I only finished it because I couldn’t take my eyes off the train wreck of this plot. I should have known something was wrong when the only review I could find was for the audiobook narrator.
September 30, 2024
*won this book through goodreads
DNF'd at page 102... just it felt dragging? I liked some things in it. I was starting to really loose focus though and skipped to the end to see if the struggle was worth it...nope. So much nope.
It had interesting parts but just not for me.
DNF'd at page 102... just it felt dragging? I liked some things in it. I was starting to really loose focus though and skipped to the end to see if the struggle was worth it...nope. So much nope.
It had interesting parts but just not for me.
September 22, 2024
it was ok
April 11, 2013
Read for a book discussion, and surprisingly I liked it better than most of the others in group. It certainly has its faults, a fairly non-existent story arc, weak characterisation and an unsatisfactory ending. I liked it, however for its illumination of the British sentiment immediately after the Great War, (this was written in 1920), and its overall anti-establishment, anti-war feeling, which I believe was strong in Europe at this time. Best read as a period piece.
September 9, 2016
This is a dark book. Writing around the time of HG Wells, the science is simple and misunderstood, but the story about being alive out of your time in a distopia is an interesting piece. It ends darkly. And this writer's own anti semitic point of view comes through quite a bit. But worth a read for a student of science fiction.
February 19, 2014
Not a stellar story on its own--more interesting as a peek at what historical SF used to read like. A utopian/dystopian story with lots of parallels to The Time Machine and other classic SF novels.
November 14, 2016
Almost 100 years old, but barely dated at all.
June 16, 2014
Horrible book. Don't waste your time.
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