The Overgrown City - often found in Twentieth Century Science Fiction - has most in common with the Romantic tradition of painting. An example of this in prose can be found in John Christopher's 'juvenile' novel, "The White Mountain":
It was the ruins of the great-city which lay ahead of us, a mile or two distant. I had never seen anything like it before. It stretched for miles, rising in hills and valleys. The forest had invaded it - there was the tossing green of trees everywhere - but everywhere also were the gray and white and yellow bones of buildings. The trees followed lines among them, like veins in some monstrous creature.
...
The nature of the veins became clear as we approached. The trees followed the old streets, sprouting out of the black stone of which they had been built, and thrusting their tops up above the canyons formed by the buildings on either side. We walked in their dark cool shade, at first in silence. I did not know about the others, but I needed all the courage I could summon up. Birds sang above our heads, emphasizing the quietness and gloom of the depths through which we made our way. Only gradually did we start taking an interest in our surroundings, and talking - at the beginning in whispers and then more naturally.
There were strange things to be seen. Signs of death, of course - the white gleam of bone that had once borne flesh. We had expected that. But one of the first skeletons we saw was slumped inside a rusted oblong, humped in the middle, which rested on metal wheels rimmed with a hard black substance. There were other similar contraptions, and Beanpole stooped by one and peered inside. He said, "Places for men to sit. And wheels. So, a carriage of some nature."
Henry said, "It can't be. There's nowhere to harness the horse. Unless the shafts have rusted away."
"No," Beanpole said. "They are all the same. Look."
I said, "Perhaps they were huts, for people to rest in when they were tired of walking."
"With wheels?" Beanpole asked. "No. They were carriages without horses. I am sure."
"Pushed by one of your big kettles, maybe!" Henry said.
Beanpole stared at it. He said, quite seriously, "Perhaps you are right."
John Christopher (1967, 74-6) The White Mountain, New York: Macmillan.
Note the main protagonists' lack of comprehension and the strange elusiveness of the past. However, in contrast to the humorous examples, one of our heroes is getting closer to the truth.
Set against this incomprehension is a deep sense of sympathy for the people of the past:
We ate the last of the food in the place where the trees were thick in front of us, unbroken by buildings. The reason lay in the slabs of stone, some upright but more leaning or fallen, which stretched away into the darkness of the wood. The words carved on the first one were:
CI-G‘T
MARIANNE LOUISE
VAUDRICOURT
13 ANS
DÉCÉDÉE 15 FÉVRIER 1966
The first two words, Beanpole explained, meant "here lies," ans was "years" and décédée was "died". She had died at my own age and been buried here at a time when the city was still throbbing with life. One day in the middle of winter. So many people. The wood stretched out, laced with the stones of the dead, across an area in which my village could have been set down several times over.
John Christopher (1967, 92) The White Mountain, New York: Macmillan.
Although the city is unnamed in the book, BBC TV's adaptation ("The Tripods") makes it clear that this city is Paris.
The shot of L'Arc de Triomphe clearly references the tradition of ruined classical architecture in painting. Another such representation of a ruined city can be found in the overgrown Washington of "Logan's Run", which again shows overgrown neo-classical monuments.
A second literary example of an overgrown modern city can be found in J.G. Ballard's 1962 novel, "The Drowned World". The description of London in this is distinguishable from that of Paris in "The White Mountain" as the city has only been abandoned in the last generation or so. Although none of the main characters lived there before it became uninhabitable, they are aware of people who did.
Sleeping Cities: Twentieth Century Versions
Posted at Nov 10/2005 05:32AM:
Ray Girvan: mentioned elsewhere on this site, Ronald Wright's 1997 literary/SF novel "A Scientific Romance" (ISBN 1-86230-019-4) provides a very memorable example of the overgrown city. Through the vehicle of encountering the HG Wells Time Machine, its archaeologist protagonist David Lambert is transported to Britain in the year 2500. Nearly a third of the book is devoted to Lambert's exploration of the deserted and ruined London, overgrown with tropical jungle following global warming.
Posted at Nov 29/2005 06:53PM:
David Platt: We both discussed this book a couple of years ago (I actually read it entirely at Ray's suggestion). One image I remember quite clearly is that of the M25 carpetted by a weird genetically-modified grass that seems to be a hostile environment for all life.
Not only does our future explorer have global waming to worry about, but there are also the relics of GM tech--plants and people--for him to contend with.
All of which makes this book a highly topical one for the mid-late '90s. ;)
On reading the (excellent) description of ruined London, 500-years in the future, I was struck by similarities with Laura Spinney's New Scientist article from a couple of years before, including, but not restricted to, a reference to a ruined Canary Wharf.
