Riddley Walker, as the name suggests, is a novel which courts obscurity. Perhaps twenty years as a successful children's writer has taught Russell Hoban that our capacity to respond to the bizarre does not atrophy with age. Here he tells the story of a twelve-year-old "connexion man" interpreting puppet shows in the year 2347 o.c. ("Our Count") while the topography remains (just) recognizably that of East Kent.

Hoban's confidence in our ability to accept the strange allows him to tackle a problem which most futuristic writers evade. This is the recognition that total change, whether it be to post-holocaust desolation, as here, or to Utopian socialism, must involve a modification of consciousness which will be reflected in, and then structured by, our use of language. His solution is to imagine how language would evolve—or rather decay—in a disrupted society. Only the showmen and their interpreters are literate, and since words are heard rather than read spelling follows pronunciation, multisyllabic forms are broken, and prose rhythms echo those of speech. The result is easy to follow once you can "hear" the language being spoken with a rural accent….

The significance of Hoban's bold experiment is that the concepts embedded in language reveal the history and ruling principles of a society and the way these are internalized by individuals. Here, grafted on to the earthy colloquialisms, is a corrupted computer jargon which provides the words for thought, "strapping the lates from what littl datter weve got we pirntow", while space imagery embodies religious yearning, and itinerant healers are described as "clinnicking and national healfing".

While the language expresses a nostalgia for an age of high technology, the roots of that language are lost to the people, who wrench a living from barren soil, hunting and gathering, farming, excavating old machinery for metal, shadowed by organized packs of killer dogs. Their existence is given a cultural as well as physical solidity. It has hereditary systems, "Big Men" and "telwomen", embryonic guilds of dyers and charcoal burners, formal transactions in "hash and rizlas", folk tales, rituals and children's games. In a horseless land where rumour precedes news, a remote government maintains control with the help of "hevvys" and the propaganda of touring puppet shows. It is Riddley's job, like that of his father before him, to interpret these "cow-shit shows" to his particular band.

Such a vividly created world cannot fail to capture the imagination. Unfortunately the setting is vastly more interesting than the feverish and portentous action which takes place there. Stung into revolt by the discovery of an ancient Punch figure (the original subversive, the old Adam), Riddley becomes caught up in a feud…. The struggle for power is synonymous with the search for Power, the old energy sources which were also the means of mass death. Eventually they discover only the "1 little 1" (gunpowder) and not the "I Big 1", but the cycle of destruction has started again.

The obscurity of plot, language, puppet-show symbolism, fable, rhyme and riddle is compounded towards the end of the novel by the hero's difficulties in interpreting the puzzles around him…. The riddles which he ponders are the central paradoxes of mystical religion…. [Although] a spiritual quest may involve wrestling with nuances of meaning, the repetitious circling becomes increasingly indulgent and out of control….

Most futuristic novelists provide allegories for today's society and some add metaphysics to their metaphors, presenting themselves as interpreters and prophets. Russell Hoban has such ambitions, projecting into the future a pessimistic contempt for the masses which is hardly balanced by the promise of mystic intuition for an artistic élite. The current taste for cabbalistic utterances combined with the novel's striking setting and ingenious language may win this prophet followers—perhaps we shall soon all be buying maps of Inland and exclaiming "Wel, scatter my datter!" But Riddley Walker is a far more effective and suggestive work when it depicts the plight of man in this world than when it attempts poetic restatements of eternal verities.