peter young’s listopia

16) Mike Lancaster, 0.4, 2011
I confess I bought this partly because of its excellent cover, at a time (back in January) when I was in the mood for some fresh SF. I read it immediately yet despite my enthusiasm for it I've no idea why it's taken me so long to write it up. It's a y/a cosy catastrophe of the Wyndham variety, a variation on The Midwich Cuckoos, set in the present day in the fictional Cambridgeshire town of Millgrove (probably a riff on Grover's Mill, giving a hint of the general direction the novel will take). Kyle Straker undergoes his brother's hypnosis experiment and awakes to find a very different world in which almost everyone has been assimilated by something. It's structured retrospectively from the future, Kyle's narrative being transcribed from a series of audio cassettes, with footnotes added speculating on the possible meanings of strange words like 'Coldplay' and 'Teletubbies' – they're written deadpan, but there's much humour and cynicism in them too. The novel has flair with a slightly predictable ending, but thankfully it's creepy cover image does it justice and helped made this a ride worth taking. I'm looking forward to next January's sequel, 1.4.