THE HOPKINS MANUSCRIPT

An engaging blend of fancy and imagination for the more selective. The Hopkins Manuscript, the only record of England and western civilization before it was wiped away by the Cataclysm, is the day by day record of one Edgar Hopkins. Mr. Hopkins is a pompous, retiring codger of limited vision and piddling activity -- breeding hens and dabbling in astronomy. He is one of the first to learn that the moon, off its course, will catapult into the world seven months hence. How England prepares for the disaster, how Mr. Hopkins and his townsfolk in Beadle band together in the crisis, how he adopts two nice youngsters after almost the entire country is wiped out, make a lovable and original story. Fantasy and whimsy as it should be done, with a lovely sense of detail and an undercurrent of satirical spoofing. Sort of an H. G. Wells idea as Margery Sharp might have handled it.