Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Amazon.co.uk Trade-In Store for more details. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Synopsis
John Seymour imagines a crash of the structure of Government in Britain and gives a chilling but realistic description of how a federation of East Anglia survives. The recent emergency procedures following the collapse of the South East Asian economies suggest that Seymour is fairly near the mark in his vivid description of life in such circumstances.
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Prescient! A 'peak oil' novel published in 1996,
By
This review is from: Retrieved from the Future (Paperback)
Most people had not thought about running out of cheap energy when John Seymour (yes, it's THE John Seymour) wrote this novel. People who have read James Kunstler's "World Made by Hand" (set in about 2025) will have wondered about just what happened between the present day (Kunstler's book was published in 2008) and Kunstler's 2025. John Seymour's book provides one view of the period of collapse which Kunstler largely skips.
Seymour is not a great novelist and the book is an odd mix of good and pedestrian plot, dialogue and description. However, Seymour has done a five-star job at giving a thinking reader a rich vein of ideas and scenarios with which to imagine the future and their place in it. Seymour provides detail of the fight put up by national authorities to hold on to power - brutally in the UK he depicts. Interestingly, both Kunstler and Seymour share a view of the future in which local, largely self-sufficient communities matter more than nations. Also like Kunstler, Seymour's world is largely a man's world with children, the aged and sick people playing little active role and being surprisingly unproblematic. I recommend this book highly to those who want help to imagine the future for which they need to begin planning now. Those who believe "they" (the powers that be) will come up with a solution to the end of cheap energy and want a cleverly written novel will be disappointed. I passed my copy on to my son - he shares my assessment.
3.0 out of 5 stars
what does the future hold?,
By
This review is from: Retrieved from the Future (Paperback)
I did feel for the characters in this book and it was a good read. It is a plausible scenario, however there are many groups not really represented. How did they intend to care for the elderly, injured and sick? Not to mention the usual justice problems of delinquents and worse, and legal spats - perhaps the author felt that full time work for all would solve such problems.
The printing had many flaws with sentences repeated on following pages and at least one instance where words were missing and I was left wondering if a page or two had been left out. Unlike other apocalypses this one will occur so which author comes closest to predicting the future some of us will unfortunately find out.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews) 2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting and prophetic,
By H.Hieronimi "HH" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Retrieved from the Future (Paperback)
I found this book rather interesting
in one of his last books, written during the nineties, John Seymour (a reference for back-to-the landers since the early seventies) gives a somewhat dark vision of the post petroleum future. Consider, that this book was written in a time, when nobody was really bothering about peak oil and a post petroleum future. Of course, Seymour is not a novelist. Nevertheless, this somewhat dark book seems to have come straight out of the heart of this sustainability pioneer. 2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Poorly Written Peak Oil Post-Apocalyptic Novel,
By M. Schneider-Mayerson - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Retrieved from the Future (Paperback)
As far as I can tell, this is the first "peak oil" post-apocalyptic novel ever written. So, that's something. Otherwise, this book's just not very good. The author made some odd decisions, like putting putting "CRASH" in caps throughout. It's about a man in rural England trying to get back to his family after the oil is cut off. Parts of it remind me of the novel Exodus, actually. If you're looking at this book and review, which I suppose you are -- hi there, by the way -- I would recommend Last Light (on the disaster spectrum) or World Made By Hand (on the settled post-peak world tip) instead.
|
|
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
