A Scientific Romance

It is 1999, in London, England. David Lambert, jilted lover, archeologist, and specialist in Victorian machinery, receives startling information about the return of H. G. Wells's time machine from the nineteenth century. Intrigued by who might attempt such an implausible hoax, he investigates, hurling himself deep into the next millennium to an England in ruins - an overgrown tropical jungle utterly abandoned by humanity. As David explores the luxuriant yet menacing new landscape, he also moves through the ruins of his life, a terrain of erotic obsession and remorse involving his old friend Bird - jazz musician, classicist, small-time crook - and Anita, the beautiful and eccentric Egyptologist they both loved, who has died mysteriously at 32.