The Plato Papers A Prophecy Author:Peter Ackroyd At the turn of the thirty-eighth century, London's greatest orator, Plato, regularly delivers bravura public lectures on the long, tumultuous history of what is now a tranquil city. Plato focuses particularly on the obscured and confusing era that began in A.D. 1500, which he calls the Age of Mouldwarp. Basing his work on an incomplete archa... more »eological record, Plato pieces scraps of evidence together into a semicoherent whole. He lectures on the clown Sigmund Freud's comic masterpiece, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, and on the prolific author Charles D.'s greatest novel, The Origin of Species. And he explores the confusing rituals of Mouldwarp, including the cult of webs and nets that covered and enslaved the population.
In approximately A.D. 2300, when the sun went out and the planet fell into a thousand years of darkness, the Age of Mouldwarp came to a close, and the dark Age of Witspell began. But this epoch holds little interest for Plato, and in the midst of his public performances he begins a dialogue with his soul that leads him closer to the citizens of Mouldwarp than any strict historical inquiry might allow.« less