Product Description

David, jilted lover and reluctant museum curator, is about to discover the startling news of the return of H.G. Wells' time machine to London. Motivated by a host of unanswered questions and innate curiosity, he propels himself deep into he next millennium, exploring the ruins of his life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #732117 in Books
• Published on: 2002-07-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In London at the turn of the 20th century, H. G. Wells's time machine mysteriously appears--empty--in a squatter's flat. From where did it come, and for what purpose was it sent? The answers to these questions--though not to an even greater mystery connected with the machine's appearance--are contained in a letter written by Wells on May 2, 1946, which falls into the hands of one David Lambert on the eve of the millennium. Lambert, an industrial archeologist, reads the letter foretelling the arrival of the machine and, half convinced the whole thing is a hoax, goes to the address Wells provides, where, at the appointed hour, the time machine materializes. Thus begins Ronald Wright's fine and fantastical novel A Scientific Romance.

Romance can refer to an affair of the heart; it can also describe a heroic tale of extraordinary events. In A Scientific Romance, Wright plays on both possible meanings as he weaves a tragic story of betrayal and lost love into a larger narrative of time travel. Lambert, having lost the woman he loved, is reckless enough to test Wells's machine himself, catapulting 500 years into the future, where he finds London--indeed, all of England--a deserted, semitropical landscape. As David explores the future, he also sifts through his own past, creating in this Möbius strip of time and relationship a chilling cautionary tale about the limits of science and human ambition.

Julie Myerson, OBSERVER
Pure pleasure...Deeply seductive and brilliantly sustained...enthrallingly descriptive, fragile scary, easy to take seriously...A compelling cultural satire.

Tom Shakespeare, GUARDIAN
The most apocalyptic dystopia since Russell Hoban's RIDDLEY WALKER, achieving the same eerie fascination...In 100 years' time this book should be a classic.

Customer Reviews

Future perfect
This novel's attraction is summarised by its title: the notion of a 'scientific romance' is superficially perhaps oxymoronic, but invites exploration of the multiple meanings of both these words. Wright is hardly writing 'science fiction' as such; rather, the strange future landscape he creates serves as an arena in which David Lambert is forced to confront the role in his life of both 'scientia' and 'romance' - acquired knowledge, and the narratives of emotion. David's oddysey is moving, thought-provoking and often comic (such as in the incongruous notion that Scotland lives on only in Gaelic-speaking Episcopalians!). His journey of learning and reflection, however, is probably closer to Dante's than Odysseus's - albeit a mournful, aimless, secular Dante, if such a thing can be imagined. No ascent from an earthly to a true paradise here.

It is perhaps unfortunate that readers of SF may well be disappointed, while readers who think they dislike SF may well not bother picking it up. This book deserves a broad readership!

An Impressive Debut
Ronald Wright's literary debut is one of the most engrossing novels I've read recently, and lives up to the promise of its bold title. It is an adventure story, on one level, but on another level it is a thoughtful and insightful look at a very ordinary narrator flung into very extraordinary circumstances. What makes Wright's debut so impressive, however, is the power of its imagery. Wright has commented that he thinks smells - specifically, fictional descriptions of smells - are of great importance to novels, because they remind the reader of specific emotional moments. They are triggers for the imagination. In 'A Scientific Romance' Wright uses smells - and textures, colours, tastes, among other real, physical sensations - to create in the minds of the reader a future world that feels true and tangible. It is world containing history and futurity, memory and desire: Wright has created a world, and a narrator, to really believe in.

'A Scientific Romance' is also full of references to other books: the Time Machine used to transport the narrator into the future is the Time Machine that was 'actually' witnessed by H. G. Wells, inspiring him to write his infamous novel about time travel. Wright is happy to play these intertextual games: throughout the narrative the narrator refers to other works of apocalypse and abandoned English lands, using these references to better communicate vivid picture of the world the narrator sees before him. It is a novel about novels, a book about how our imaginations are built upon traditions of literature: and it is more besides. 'A Scientific Romance' is about science fiction, about history, the future, and our debt (both imaginative and emotional) to both the future and the past. It is an absorbing and beautiful book.

Excellent literary SF
I disliked A Scientific Romance when I reviewed an earlier edition, but it's grown on me as a clever stream-of-consciousness novel, rich with literary reference, that intercuts a vivid exploration of the deserted subtropical Britain of 2500AD with the bitter memories of the narrator, the time-travelling archaeologist Lambert. Parallel threads unfold as the book proceeds: Lambert's northward journey through this empty landscape; the tragic unwinding of his recalled personal life; and the progression of his own physical and mental breakdown (he is infected with CJD). An interesting angle is that Lambert, unlike Wells' Time Traveller, has the skills and technology to deduce the history that led to this future. However, I share another reviewer's exasperation that Lambert didn't pack a radio, the obvious accessory to check if civilisation existed somewhere; and there are other plot holes, notably a very handy feature of the Wells time machine that allows Lambert to encounter it empty. My only real problem with the book is finding the 1999AD characters fairly unsympathetic, and and this is probably what put me off on first reading. In particular, Lambert's lost love, the pipe-smoking Egyptologist Anita, is presumably intended to be incredibly witty and sexy, but simply comes across as insufferably pretentious. However, she's worth tolerating for Wright's remarkable description of London, ruined and colonised by jungle...