Trapped in a laboratory during a worker uprising in 1924, ex-artillery officer Jeremy Tuft awakens 150 years later in a neo-medieval society which has forgotten how to operate machinery. When an army of fierce Welshmen threaten to invade London, Tuft is put to work reinventing weapons of mass destruction. Trapped in a London laboratory during a worker uprising in 1924, ex-artillery officer and physics instructor Jeremy Tuft awakens 150 years later - in a neo-medieval society whose inhabitants have forgotten how to build or operate machinery. Not only have his fellow Londoners forgotten most of what humankind used to know, before civilization collapsed, but they don't particularly care to re-learn any of it. Though he is at first disconcerted by the failure of his own era's smug doctrine of Progress, Tuft eventually decides that post-civilized life is simpler, more peaceful. That is, until northern English and Welsh tribes threaten London - at which point he sets about reinventing weapons of mass destruction. Shanks's post-apocalyptic novel, a pessimistic satire on Wellsian techno-utopian novels, was first published in 1920. | The People of the Ruins by Edward Shanks, Paperback | Indigo Chapters