Allusions/references To Actual History, Geography and Current Science
The novel is a satire of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's government policies, which emphasised road traffic over rail or other public transportation.
Another major element in the novel revolves round a character with cerebral palsy – he is the inventor of a hydrogen-based power system for cars – green energy – that sinister forces, most likely representing the oil industry, seek to suppress. His disability is aggressive-sympathetically handled, for example he actively embraces the word 'spastic', claiming it back, taking it away from the term of abuse it had become (in the UK) at the time of publication.
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Read more about this topic: Gridlock (novel)
Famous quotes containing the words actual, geography, current and/or science:
“What a perpetual disappointment is actual society, even of the virtuous and gifted! After interviews have been compassed with long foresight, we must be tormented presently by baffled blows, by sudden, unseasonable apathies, by epilepsies of wit and of animal spirits, in the heyday of friendship and thought. Our faculties do not play us true, and both parties are relieved by solitude.”
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