Pavane

Pavane is a sequence of linked stories set in the 1960s in a world in which the Spanish Armada had succeeded, Catholicism had defeated Protestantism, and the Church ruled Britain in a way that limited all technology. Although there are signs of modern life, such as road trains and semaphore signal stations that criss-cross the country, there is still a form of feudalism in place. The different stories each provide a vignette of ordinary life that together build up into a powerful and impressive portrait of the world.A young man operating a road train is cheated by his best friend, who attempts highway robbery. A signalman at a remote station is injured and as he lies dying is visited by a fairy (who did not flit from Britain with the coming of Protestantism). A monk who witnesses the tortures of the Inquisition starts to tour the country as an itinerant preacher recounting visions that seem to bear a resemblance to our own world. A young woman from a depressed and blackened town, sees a white boat that she imagines will be her passport to a better life, but it turns out to be smuggling forbidden technology and she ends up betraying it to the authorities. A woman related to the family who run the road train in the first story marries into the aristocracy, but discontent at the rule of the Church grows and she ends up leading a rebellion that may be doomed to failure. Keith Roberts was one of the finest writers ever to produce science fiction in Britain, his work is moving and vivid, with a wonderful evocation of landscape and a detailed knowledge of small, everyday technologies. All of which comes out in what many consider to be his best work and which the Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction rates as the finest of all alternate histories.