Annotation - Chapter 3, Page 18

• (18:33) "they wernt moving on the lan no mor they startit in to form it"

Here is an explicit parallel between Riddley's time and our own distant past: the transition from a hunter-gatherer society to an agricultural one. Riddley himself lives in a fents, a temporary settlement of hunters which cooperates with the nearby form (farm), but we will see signs that the farmers are gaining the upper hand, with encouragement from the powers that be. So it isn't surprising that Riddley regards farming as a corrupting influence. But the story makes a more specific point: technology and a technocratic mode of thought are part of a desire for security which can become desperate.