Rating: 
Summary: a real page turner
Review: This is an enthralling read, beautifully written, and the story has stayed with me since I read it last year. A haunting story of an apocolyptical world that seems all too real and possible. The chill bump factor is very high. I could not put the book down.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, a rough guide to the future.
Review: This is an extraordinary book, combining past and present, love and loneliness and fact and fantasy into a gripping story. The reader is taken on a journey past recognisable landmarks in a new and savage but beautiful environment. With twenty/twenty vision on our generation's socio-ecological suicide, a frustrating romance and a new twist on time-travel, it is the perfect guidebook for the last year of the millennium.
Rating: 
Summary: Sloppy Plot Devices
Review: This is an interesting concept novel used to drive home a point about technology and scientific hubris run rampant that eventually chokes our planet and all but destroys the human race. In 1999 David Lambert, really a rather wandering soul, is a museum curator who has lost the love of his life to Mad Cow disease and his best friend in a falling out over a nasty love triangle involving the same woman. Unbelievably a letter falls into his hands that purports to be from H.G. Wells informing the reader of the return of the time machine to London-a fiction that turns out not to be fiction. So off he goes on his jaunt into the future. This is a poor attempt at using the time travel concept as a plot device. There are just way too many coincidences and way too many convenient plot devices to move the story along. And it drags on unrelentlessly in the middle with some very tedious slogging as the author gets carried away over describing the future he finds. At times, the novel is very good and it does have some merit. But frankly, the plot devices used, especially in the end, undermine the novel.
Rating:
Summary: Sloppy Plot Devices
Review: This is an interesting concept novel used to drive home a point about technology and scientific hubris run rampant that eventually chokes our planet and all but destroys the human race. In 1999 David Lambert, really a rather wandering soul, is a museum curator who has lost the love of his life to Mad Cow disease and his best friend in a falling out over a nasty love triangle involving the same woman. Unbelievably a letter falls into his hands that purports to be from H.G. Wells informing the reader of the return of the time machine to London-a fiction that turns out not to be fiction. So off he goes on his jaunt into the future. This is a poor attempt at using the time travel concept as a plot device. There are just way too many coincidences and way too many convenient plot devices to move the story along. And it drags on unrelentlessly in the middle with some very tedious slogging as the author gets carried away over describing the future he finds. At times, the novel is very good and it does have some merit. But frankly, the plot devices used, especially in the end, undermine the novel.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: This novel is one of the most evocative and gripping things I've read in a long time. Wright combines a vivid writing style with a great futuristic vision. Very hard to put down.
Rating:
Summary: Well written but poorly thought out
Review: Though I was impressed by Wright's prose, I thought the plot he devised from the premise was both disappointing and weak. He writes from the environmentalist- pessimist's point-of-view about the future; humanity has fallen victim to itself in what is a thinly-veiled analysis of the failings of Britain in the 1990s, yet the assumptions that he bases his future on contradict themselves. Moreover, the outcome is a predictable one. He paints himself into a corner that is fairly evident by the middle of the novel, which was sad to see given the inspiring potential of his premise.
Rating:
Summary: "Scientific Romance" has little of either.
Review: Truly a fascinating premise...I've always wanted a time machine of my own, but the protagonist wastes his opportunity. So does the author. The style is quite true to the characters, though, right down to the you-have-to-have-been-there-to-know England. Particularly fascinating were the fragmentary documents discovered along the way...mind-blowing concepts like a brochure for the Zooseum owned by Disney-Vatican; a final message by a desperate medico to her family recommending a particular METHOD of suicide (not if, just how), followed by the arrest report made by the military. If you're into postapocalyptic imagery (especially if you've been to England) and liked Shute's On The Beach, you'll enjoy this one. If not, just take the two incidental concepts I've spoiled for you and pen your own version of what could happen if the world doesn't realize that eight billion people can't all live the California dream; you'll probably have more fun, and you'll certainly save time!
Rating:
Summary: "Scientific Romance" has little of either.
Review: Truly a fascinating premise...I've always wanted a time machine of my own, but the protagonist wastes his opportunity. So does the author. The style is quite true to the characters, though, right down to the you-have-to-have-been-there-to-know England. Particularly fascinating were the fragmentary documents discovered along the way...mind-blowing concepts like a brochure for the Zooseum owned by Disney-Vatican; a final message by a desperate medico to her family recommending a particular METHOD of suicide (not if, just how), followed by the arrest report made by the military. If you're into postapocalyptic imagery (especially if you've been to England) and liked Shute's On The Beach, you'll enjoy this one. If not, just take the two incidental concepts I've spoiled for you and pen your own version of what could happen if the world doesn't realize that eight billion people can't all live the California dream; you'll probably have more fun, and you'll certainly save time!
Rating: 
Summary: What a waste
Review: What a waste of a great idea! The story doesn't really go anyhere, the science is vague yet still unbelievable, the romance is dull and the journal style used by the author falls apart on more than one occasion. For some reason it reminded me of the Planet of the Apes TV series. It is a book for adults with a plot that young children could find fault with. My advice is to read something else.
Rating: 
Summary: Great idea with a weak follow-through
Review: Yes, this book is definitely written by someone who knows how to write and write well. BUT, it starts off with an amazing idea (which, I hope, you've already read about). I, however, disagree with my fellow reviewers. The rest of this book comes nowhere near the promise of its premise. Once our hero arrives in future England and the general "look what we did to ourselves" realization is made clear, the rest of the book falls flat. He has a couple of very interesting charcters (particularly Lady Macbeath) but he gives then no real life. The whole thing reads like a literary experiment. I'd like someone to come along and give this great idea the treatment it deserves.
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