Description
Book SynopsisWhen war breaks out in Europe -- modern, aerial war whose tactics include displacing entire populations -- British civilization collapses overnight. The ironically named Theodore Savage, an educated and idle civil servant, must learn to survive by his wits in a new Britain...one where science and technology swiftly come to be regarded with superstitious awe and terror. The book -- by a women's rights activist often remembered today for her polemical plays, tracts and treatises -- was first published in 1922.
Trade ReviewLike Colson Whitehead's Zone One without the zombie camp and idiom, Theodore Savage is a dark, strange, and cruelly contemporary tale of The Ruin and the post-apocalyptic condition that follows. The book makes a spirited argument against science and machines, disputing itself viciously to the last word. -- Alexis Madrigal, The Atlantic "Miss Hamilton always writes forcibly, and her present novel deals with the heart shaking effects of the next war. It might, indeed, be used as a tract to convey an awful warning." -- The Spectator (1922) "A particularly effective and chilling version of a theme that dominates British speculative fiction between the wars." -- Anatomy of Wonder, Neil Barron, ed. "Hamilton is one of the first -- and among the darkest -- of those UK novelists whose vision of things was shaped by WWI, which they saw as foretelling the end of civilization." The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Clute and Nicholls, eds.
