This book surprises with its first six-century jump, from dirt-eating survivalism to rediscovery of electrical power, and then shocks with its second leap to a rebuilt world of interstellar travel. That the spectre of nuclear apocalypse hangs over this renaissance, neither forgotten nor properly respected, is only to be expected. But, again, this is not a story about governments or fallout victims. It’s a story about vultures and about the desperate unkillable thread of humanity that remembers itself.