I really enjoyed this book although it took a while for me to get used to the style of writing and to get into the story. It was a clever homage to the Wells story and an interesting commentary on the future of our world. ( )

'You were right about Dickens; in one phrase he had its creed : 'Every inch of the existence of mankind, from birth to death, was to be a bargain across a counter.'

A Scientific Romance est un livre ambitieux par son propos, son écriture et son intelligence. Il conte l'histoire de David Lambert, conservateur de musée, qui se retrouve projeté 500 ans dans le futur en embarquant dans la machine à voyager dans le temps de Wells, dans l'espoir de trouver un remède à la maladie qui le ronge.

Une chance que le livre soit très bien écrit (style enlevé et vocabulaire luxuriant; l'évocation de Londres vers 2500 est tout a fait saisissante) car l'histoire est proprement déprimante. Le passé est empreint de la nostalgie d'un amour perdu que le narrateur évoque à l'envi dans son journal, le passé est marqué par la maladie incurable du personnage principal tandis que l'avenir est englué dans une planète où règnent la destruction, les dégâts du réchauffement climatique, une humanité décimée et ensauvagée.

L'auteur livre une vision très pessimiste de l'évolution de la vie et de la société humaine, traçant la voie d'une civilisation qui se termine en cul-de-sac :

'Civilization is plumbing
Civilization requires slaves
Civilization is gunpowder, printing and the Protestant religion
Civilization is arranging the world so you needn't experience it
Civilization is the gradual replacement of men by things
Civilization is living beyond your means
Civilization results in deserts
Civilization dies as easily from irony as from debauchery'

Dystopie extrêmement descriptive, le roman de Ronald Wright m'a beaucoup moins intéressée que 1984 d'Orwell ou Brave New World de Wells. Car A scientific Romance, bien que fondé sur une réflexion solide et habile, est aussi et peut-être avant tout un roman d'aventure ponctué de rencontres (mention spéciale à Graham qui s'avère être une puma femelle) et d'événements. Un goût particulier pour le roman d'aventure est un plus certain pour savourer pleinement la lecture de ce livre.

Mon intérêt très modéré pour ce genre littéraire a clairement freiné mon enthousiasme. La machine à voyager dans le temps de Wells est monoplace; nul doute qu'elle m'a laissée sur place plus que je ne l'aurais souhaité.

Pourtant, le livre mérite pleinement 3*** pour ses qualités véritables. ( )

A nice tribute to HG Wells, but doesn't really add anything to the spec fic genre...better to read his non-fiction, Time Among the Maya or a A Short History of Progress to get many of the same ideas, more compellingly expressed. ( )

Literary science fiction. Time travel, post-apocalyptic. A young man travels to the future to look for a cure for the disease that killed his girlfriend, and is killing him. Boy, is he in for a surprise. Some of it I liked, some of it I didn't, and some of it went right over my head. I can see strong connections between this book and the author's pessimistic non-fiction work, A Short History of Progress. ( )

A mixture of time travel and post-apocalyptic fiction, this journal is written by David Lambert, an archaeologist who finds Wells' actual contraption 100 years after the events related in [The Time Machine]. Mourning his lost love Anita who has recently died at age 32 of BSE (mad cow disease), and himself diagnosed with early stages (they ate the same contaminated food while on various digs), he sets the machine for 500 years hence and takes off, hoping to find science that will allow himself to be cured and save her if he can reverse course to before she was infected. What he finds is retold in a series of letters which are part memoir of their times together and part travelogue of his adventures in 2501.

The story is dense with description and literary allusions, and a familiarity with London, England and Scotland is advised for full appreciation. David and Anita traveled around the UK together, and the time machine is found in, and subsequently arrives in, greater London. David's time in the future parallels much of the traveling they did together, and each new day brings both discoveries and memories, which entwine in the letters. It's tough going occasionally, especially for someone not familiar with the geography, and there were times I wasn't interested in his memories but just in finding out what happened next. Still, it's moving, although emotionally difficult to process, and hanging over all the proceedings is the specter of David's brain deterioration and the effect it may be having on what he is experiencing and writing. ( )