Chimera (Salt Modern Fiction)

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By writing down sensations, dreams and literary fragments floating in her consciousness, she is hoping to recover some of those experiences.

She is glad to be on this mission because she can trust that all the materials around her are real, unlike the ubiquitous fabricated scenarios of virtual realities on technology-obsessed Earth. Alice Thompson, one-time keyboard player for Eighties band The Woodentops, is now an established novelist, who has won praise from Ian Rankin and Stephen King.Her ship, the Chimera, has been sent to look for organisms that will help assuage Earth’s global warming, but it becomes clear on the journey that there are other disturbing reasons for the mission. Ostensibly, she’s on board Chimera because astronauts aren’t allowed to dream and she has to supervise their welfare. This is a simple yet clever tale, gently satirising literary ambition as it explores the darker sources of inspiration, and told with all the supernatural horror of the best Hammer stories. It’s a wise decision, as this prose style also matches better the sparse landscape of the island itself.

Whatever happened during her mission has left her with impaired memory, and lacking the resentments felt before she left. By a happy coincidence, this is similar ground to that covered by Alice Thompson’s latest book, a hauntingly cerebral science fiction novel that makes use of terms drawn from psychology and mysticism, but is arguably even more beholden to poetry.These adverts enable local businesses to get in front of their target audience – the local community. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.