"Nothing mankind had done in its short and bloody history had made the slightest bit of difference to this patient geographical realignment. Meanwhile the Earth, left to its own devices, had deployed a variety of healing mechanisms, physical, chemical, biological, and geological, to recover from the devastating interventions of its human inhabitants. Air pollutants had been broken up by sunlight and dispersed. Bog ore had absorbed much metallic waste. Vegetation had recolonized abandoned landscapes, roots breaking up concrete and asphalt, overgrowing ditches and canals. Erosion by wind and water had caused the final collapse of the last structures, washing it all into sand. Meanwhile the relentless processes of variation and selection had worked to fill an empty world."
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Novelists from EnglandShort story writers from EnglandEducators from EnglandScience fiction authors from the United KingdomPeople from Liverpool
Original Language: English
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Chapter 18 “The Kingdom of the Rats” section II (p. 579)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stephen_Baxter
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Stephen Baxter
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