A scientific romance

It is 1999, and David Lambert, jilted lover and reluctant museum curator, is about to discover the startling news of the return of H. G. Well's time machine to London. Motivated by a host of unanswered questions and innate curiosity, he propels himself deep into the next millennium: an England ruined by mysterious civil war, now returned to wilderness. As he sets foot in a luxuriant but menacing new landscape, he also explores the ruins of his life, a labyrinth of erotic obsession and remorse involving his old friend Bird - jazz musician, classicist, and small-time crook - and Anita, the beautiful, eccentric Egyptologist they both loved, mysteriously dead at 32.