trying to remember the title of an old favorite

[miriamb]

Hi,

I'm trying to re-find a book I read years and years ago - I am hoping that someone here might have read it and might remember the author or the title - I can't remember either. I can remember that it had a yellow Gollancz cover... and I can remember a bit of the plot, but nothing else :-(

what I can remember of the plot went like this:
It is set in a post-catastrophe world that has become green and fertile again. People live in small scattered communities. Some of those people live simply, some of them try to scavenge from the past.
Our hero is a boy (my impression is around 10 or 12 but he may have been older or younger). He is from one of the 'live simply' communities. His house or family had a precious ancient object, of almost religious value to the house. The object was a helmet.

The boy goes on a journey with this helmet (I can't remember why).
I can't remember much of the journey itself, he does walk down a motor way for a while and comments on the strageness of it (he describes the motor-way as an outsider/alien would - its an intriguing description). He also stumbles accross some people who live as scavangers of the past - people why try to find and live off ancient tins rather than work the land anew.

In the end. He finds a spaceship (or they find him). We find out that his helmet was imprinted with the personality and memories of a cat (which is why it was so zen like to wear) and we find out that the person talking is the boy imprinted in another helmet on the spaceship (rather than the boy himself). - when they found him they asked if they could take a copy. this is the copy talking and its been telling and retelling this story for who knows how long. they are cultural decendents of the people who caused the catastrophe and are trying to refind their humanity. trying to understand the boy is part of their attempt.

and that's it. that's all i can remember.
Have any of you read it? Does anyone know what this book is called?
(and my apologies to anyone who has read it if I got even these sparse facts wrong!)

thank you

Miriam.

 

[Durandal]

Sounds a bit like Stephen Gould's "Helm." Though it was written in 1998, and thus might not be old enough to be the one you're looking for. And I think the plot's a good bit different from what you're remembering...

From the Amazon summary:
Faced with insufficient resources in their overcrowded shelters, the Moon-based survivors of a war that has rendered Earth uninhabitable send most of their population to establish a colony on a world in orbit around another star. Since these survivors can't spare any technology, they "imprint" the colonists with enough rudimentary knowledge to insure that hygiene and literacy will lead to an eventual rebirth of techno-culture. Flash forward a few hundred years, and the colony is a success, glowing with rustic charm. But there's an apple in this Eden -- one of the imprinting devices, which somehow survived transit and is reverently referred to as "the Helm." When teenaged Leland De Laal places it on his head, he unwittingly injects the lost wisdom of the ancients -- science, medicine, foreign languages -- into his mind. Although Leland's father, Dulan, the Steward of Laal, is then forced to raise his youngest son as his successor, the family's fortunes are overshadowed by the threat of war. Because his father is tough on him, Leland grows into a hard warrior prince, tender enough to fall for the pretty Marilyn de Noram but not shrewd enough to recognize how his enemies scheme to take over the family fortress.


Amazon.com: Helm: Steven Gould: Books

 

[j d worthington]

Moving to Book Search....

 

[Bibliophile]

I thought it was "Helm" also, but there wasn't a cat imprint. There was alot of aikido...

 

[miriamb]

hi. thanks
it wasn't Helm but that sounds like a great book and i'll have to give it a read...