SCORCHED PLANET POLICY by Bob Fairbrother
(Scythe Books, £8.99)

RATING: ****

WHAT is the meaning of life? What are we here for? They’re the big unanswerables everyone on Earth has asked themselves at some point during our relatively short time on the planet.

But what if someone has cracked the biggest conundrum in creation? When a woman’s sleek spaceship crash-lands on Devon’s Dartmoor in the year 2054, it sets in motion a catastrophic chain of events.

Weakened by drug withdrawal, illness and amnesia, Captain Zail Jent has no idea who she is and, quite literally, what on Earth she’s here for. As her memory gradually returns, however, she faces a dilemma.

Bob Fairbrother’s sophomore sci-fi novel, his second set in a climate change-ravaged UK, follows Jent’s initially innocent child-like encounters with a cast of characters who face plenty of problems and human failings of their own.

Her progress across South Devon, an area the author knows well – he’s the founder of the South Devon Book Festival – brought to mind the travails of father and son in Cormac McCarthy’s classic The Road.

And while it’s not at that lofty literary level, Scorched Planet Policy asks important questions about human nature, and our reckless husbandry of the planet, whilst still being a rollicking rollercoaster of a read.

The plot is played out in two acts, the first grittily down to earth, albeit shot through with wry wit, as Jent comes to understand those she meets along a tidally flooded South Devon rail route, and their strange customs.

The second is set out among the stars as the terrible truth behind human existence begins to unfold. No spoilers here, though. Readers will have to discover what’s going on in real-time as Jent does.

Author Bob Fairbrother

The book isn’t without faults. Fairbrother plays fast and loose with past and present tense – one of my pet hates – and I’d have liked to linger longer on Earth with Max and his family, but it’s well worth the visit.

I loved Max’s knowing remark: “I suppose a diet of old sci-fi films has coloured my expectations, but there’s no weird lighting, no alien webbing or glutinous gel … or no naked symmetry of pipeworks.”

The familiar can be far more unsettling than the stereotype, something that the author clearly understands. I look forward to Fairbrother’s next novel.

I received a digital copy of Scorched Planet Policy in exchange for an independent and honest review as a member of the Love Books Tours team of influencers. Learn more about the programme here.