| Sumario: | "Riddley Walker" is a very good mainstream novel that attempts and achieves marvelous things in language. Since it is set some to thousand years in the future, after a nuclear holocaust has wiped out civilization, it is also a science fiction novel. With respect to the language, the sf critic would not be satisfied simply with finding it an artistic success, but would want to know how systematic it is in its deviations from standard and nonstandard present-day usage in writing and speech. This article examines the constructed language ("grapholect") in which Riddley writes, using linguistic analysis to suggest that the extrapolation of language in the novel betrays many inconsistencies. Four comments by linguists follow this article, which was found among R. D. Mullen's papers following his death in 1998.
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