This book has a main story with a couple of chapters acting as flashbacks, and I enjoyed some parts more than others. I loved the concept and the world-building, but wish he'd focussed on and expanded a few of the key themes. Overall a good book and worth reading.

A true post-apocalyptic story, humans... screwed it up! An 'accident' (explained later in book) happened, rendering all larger mammals sterile. So, what happens to humanity when there's it's at an end? This is the story of Algy aka Greybeard, one of the 'young', aka a 60+ year old normal man and his wife as they live through the accident (they were kids), and beyond. Normal as in, he's not a super-genius (or supervillain!), he's just a good guy trying to get by as humanity comes to terms with extinction. As one can imagine, there are some who aren't so good, or doing bad because they think it's for the good. Yes, it's somewhat like Children of Men (movie and book (P.D. James)), but this book precedes it by a few decades (1964 v 1992). Some say Children of men ripped it off, but, having only seen the movie, I can't say for certain, other than they both about what happens if we go sterile, and both are set in England in the same time period.

Having lived through this pandemic and seen all the silly crap that a large fraction of the population has done/believed in, I'd say he's not too far off in his prediction on 'what if humanity becomes sterile'.

I only gave this a 3 star as I was expecting something completely different. The idea of the story is one so powerful that it could easily be one of the most thrilling and addictive stories ever written and presenting in infinite ways. I feel the Aldiss didn't make the most of this brilliant idea. Each of the 7 chapters were great little stories in themselves. However, whenever I put down the book I was always more dissatisfied than I was picking it up from the representation of how I thought the chapter was going to pan out in my head. As a positive to this, it was hugely inspirational and definitely spurred my creative mind into wanting to write a story in a similar end of the world fashion.

Set in the far future when it was written (1964) the tale for the most part goes from about 1981 to the current 2020s. The story is so much like Children of Men in it's take on the furture's woes that you could almost say it was copied but probably not, whereas Children of Men is more of a religious allegory and a tad dull, Greybeard sets a more realistic tone, where 'nearly faints' not everyone in the apocalyptic future is a murdering nutter who wants to kill everyone. It is very dated, particularly in attitudes and dialogue and Aldiss whilst thinking of the stupid things humans would and will do seemed to think by the 1990s we'd all still be behaving like we were all middle-class people from the late 50s.

The story definitely sags near the end and did start to get a bit bogged down but nevertheless it should be recommended just to see what a good author with a good imagination thought we could all be doing now.

Luckily, so far, he is wrong.

Humans can't have kids. This is a pretty good apocalyptic story. With a hopeful ending.

What a brilliant book. It was written in the mid sixties when people had a fear of nuclear war, but really, this could be a tale written under the fear of environmental armaggedon. I've even heard of people saying they're not going to have children for environmental reasons, and here is a tale of a world without children. It's also a tale about growing old, and the circumstances of the plot enhancing the fear and the isolation that growing old brings, even when you're not living in a post-apocalyptic world.

I love his method of story telling. The book goes through "now time" as Greybeard (Algy Timberland) and his wife Martha leave the place, Sparcot, where they've been existing for the last 12 years and travel down the Thames river to the sea. Interspersed with the story of this journey is the story of their life together told in episodes, starting with the most recent, and going backwards in time all the way back to when they were 7 years old and first met. That feels a bit like how our memories work and how the older we get, the further back we look, likewise as they continue on a river that's getting wider and slower as they approach the sea. Just so well planned. I particularly loved the last episode when they were kids, as there's a lot about their parents, and that the "Accident" only happened in the last couple of years and people are only starting to realise what global repercussions there will be (and the theory that the same effect from a big comet killed off the dinosaurs in the same way - not a big bang sudden death, but a slow and depressing fizzle). And depressingly, it's always money and commerce in the background that makes people panic and act - not the actual important things in life. The first companies to fail are the ones catering to children (Algy's father ran a toy factory, a popular product being a teddy bear), all this collapsing drives a global war as people search for surviving children. Then at the end there's Dr Jingadangelow who has turned himself into a fat old messiah with all his ancient followers on a steam boat paddling around an estury, stopping off at new islands demanding payment and tribute to see him, which people do because they're old and scared and need something to believe in.

This book has an interesting premise - because of a nuclear accident in the earth's atmosphere, radiation has rendered most men and women sterile. When it becomes apparent that no more children will be born, wars are fought over the remaining children and society begins to collapse. The story, set many years after the accident follows a small band of men and women, now in their senior years, who are traveling down a river looking for other civilized settlements. At a little over 200 pages, the book is very short and just as it starts to get interesting it comes to an end. The story does wander a bit, it's a type of 'road-trip' novel filled with small vignettes of the characters' travels and fleshed out with some flashbacks detailing the aftermath of the radiation accident, but all in all, not a whole lot happens. I enjoyed the book, but at the same time kept thinking how great it could have been, especially if someone like Robert Charles Wilson (Darwinia, Spin, Axis, Vortex, etc.) had written it.