Overview
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.
Synopsis
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.
Publishers Weekly
English-born historian Wright, who lives in Canada, is the author of several celebrated works of nonfiction, including Time Among the Maya and Stolen Continents, but his first novel is such a triumph that it's a wonder he didn't get around to writing one earlier. The plot is something of a curiosity: English archeologist David Lambert stumbles upon a Victorian time machinethe very one, it turns out, that H.G. Wells described in his famous novel. When Lambert discovers that he may have the same disease that killed his lover, he lights out for the future: A.D. 2500, to be exact. There Wright creates for him a vivid, compelling world, a depopulated, tropical dream of what had once been England. The book's central drama is Lambert's struggle to excavate and uncover the exact nature of the calamity that erased London. At the same time, he sifts through the shards of his own unhappy personal historywhich he is, of course, tempted to touch up a little with the help of the time machine. The narrative bristles with fascinating characters, both fictional and historical, and Wright furnishes it with a rich store of enthralling scientific Victoriana. His writing is charming, unpretentious and wonderfully literate. J.G. Ballard explored this same territory in his disaster novels of the 1970s, but never with Wright's psychological insight or pathos. (Mar.)
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
Ronald Wright's A Scientific Romance looks even further into the past -- all the way back to H. G. Wells's The Time Machine and other futuristic romances from the Wells era. A museum curator named David Lambert learns from an old manuscript of Wells's that the machine was real, and is due to arrive in London at midnight at the turn of the millennium. Lambert waits for the machine -- which arrives empty -- and takes off for adventures in a future England reverted to jungles and barbaric tribes. There's a strong mainstream element to the novel as well, with Lambert interspersing his narrative with memories of an affair with a beautiful archaeologist who died prematurely. This is a first novel from a well-respected writer of nonfiction travel books, and it's a fitting tribute to Wells in this centennial year of The War of the Worlds.—Gary Wolfe
From the Publisher
Powerful . . . cunningly fashioned . . . The novel works on all levels . . . . its flair for description can be positively Dickensian."—John Vernon, The New York Times Book Review"Witty, ambitious and thoughtful . . . an original and memorable first novel."—San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle
"Wright's vision of a lushly catastrophic future is both mesmerizing and grimly plausible, establishing him as a distinguished new voice in speculative fiction."—Michael Upchurch, The Seattle Times