The first third of this book gives the setting– not the story –and elegantly describes the natural processes by which England becomes wild after “the fields were left to tend to themselves,” as well as the animals and people that inhabit the dense forests and bogs. Richard Jeffries was best known as a nature writer, and that shows here in this novel. It represents some of the earliest science fiction, and probably the first to address one of the common themes of science fiction, which is of course, the utter destruction of London. (But I’m not giving up.) And I think this book is an excellent choice. I went through it to glean out possibly promising authors in the I, J, Q, and X categories – perhaps not the best books, but at least books of note. So, I took up one of my good resources, John Clute’s Illustrated Science Fiction Dictionary. I didn’t like reading through an alphabet’s worth of famous science fiction writers and not including all the letters. Making my list, I could find any “I” or “J” books of note. As you can see, my “J’s” follow my “K’s.” There’s a good reason for this. I paid $22 for this 1980 paperback, since I didn’t want to pay the $900 for the an 1885 first edition. “The deserted and utterly extinct city of London was under his feet.”
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