Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban Q2: Inland

Apocryphal

The setting of this novel is Inland, which we understand (not least from the map) that this is a future version of Kent, or at least eastern Kent, maybe historic Kent. It's in the future, and after some kind of apocalypse (nuclear is hinted at). How far in the future, I'm not sure we know from the text. Was the setting convincing? Did he capture anything else apart from placenames and language? What about local topography and culture?

NeilNjae

It was believably Kent, and it was pretty clear to me that the 1 Big 1 was a nuclear war. Split the Addom, particles in the hart of the stone, and all that.

I thought the setting was pretty Kent-like. The country is tame and mild, with a few rolling hills in the South Downs, and some forests in the Weald. I've not done much in Kent, but I've walked over a lot of Sussex, quite a bit in the rain, and it was all familiar.

Two things about the setting were off slightly. One is that Riddley is a very fast walker: he was covering ground hugely faster than I could manage, even in my youth when I was training for fast, long distance hikes. The other is the timescale. About 2500 years after a nuclear war, I'd have expected the culture and language to move on more than it had. I could believe a few hundred years, but not a few thousand.

RichardAbbott

Agreed. The setting makes perfect sense but the speed of movement is extraordinary. Even though the roads still have their current naming conventions (eg the A26 really does go along the Kentish fringes between Maidstone and Newhaven https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A26_road), one would presume they are overgrown and slow to follow in RW's era - but he hurtles along them at a cracking pace.

There's a passage somewhere in the middle where RW is just as surprised by the slow progress "I said, ‘Dyou mean to tel me them befor us by the time they done 1997 years they had boats in the air and all them things and here we are weve done 2347 years and mor and stil slogging in the mud?’". So Hoban had clearly thought about this and made a choice to keep it that way

RichardAbbott

Back with speed of movement, I had an interesting contrast earlier this week when we did a long walk along the Helvellyn ridge, north to south. Basically we got a bus to the starting point and walked home - about 19 miles which we did in about 9 hours including stops for snacks. Now, all due respect to Kentishmen etc, but our terrain is more challenging than the successive chalk and clay ridges of the Kentish downs so we could - I think - easily have done 25 or maybe 30 miles in a day in Kent. One guy passed us who works in one of the local outdoor equipment shops and is super-fit was going about 50% faster than us, and a couple of fell runners were going at maybe twice the pace.

For contrast, the map at the start of RW is about 40 miles on each side - here's an overlay on top of the current outline of Kent showing how the seacoast in several places has been considerably eroded
http://www.errorbar.net/rw/Map_of_Inland

So I guess on reflection some of his journeys were borderline feasible - except that he had to keep slowing down for dog packs, potentially hostile settlements, conversations, hiding from enemies etc. It is very easy to forget in the book that he is supposed only to be 12 years old at the time. I'm not sure what impact that would have on walking pace but in contemporary terms a 12-year-old would be slower than say a 25-year-old over the same terrain.

So I now think that his journey could be done but are probably shortened for narrative effect - maybe all part of the "ideal folk tale" setting that @NeilNjae talked about elsewhere?