In and around the year 2065, 600 people embark on a 360 year journey to find another planet on which to set up a new civilisation. Whilst earth is still habitable it is in decline - deadlines have been missed for tackling climate change, the planet is polluted and greed/lethargy rule the roost as far as the population are concerned. This intrepid group of adventurers are given the opportunity to improve life for future generations and this book is the story of their journey. I should say from the outset that I am not a great fan of Sci-fi so my views may differ from most readers. I guess, if you are going to be pernickety, this book is strictly speaking dystopian, or at least earth is approaching a dystopian state. Whether dystopian literature is generally considered to be sci-fi I am not sure so please forgive me if I have used all the wrong terminology. Anyway, much to my surprise, I did find that there was a lot to like about this book. For a start there were no alien spaceships filled with little green men littering the skies and no ridiculous monsters inhabiting other planets and threatening mankind. Instead, life was remarkably normal. An entrepreneurial individual had meticulously designed a ship which could travel through space and sustain a large enough population to begin a new life on another planet. The human life span was pretty much like we are used to on earth now so the journey would be undertaken by many generations of humans who had to procreate and also be fed, watered, educated, trained to run the ship and encouraged to live a life which blended in with their environment rather than destroying it. The measures that were taken to make this work were meticulously designed and utterly fascinating – how credible they really were in scientific terms I have no idea. All sorts of interesting things were taken into account for the design of this “Shipworld” such as waste management, building a sustainable population from a small gene pool, providing food for this population, controlling access to external influences to try and avoid a repeat of the corruption on “Earthworld” etc. etc. Reality and plausibility are important to me and this book largely ticks those boxes. It struck me as the kind of project that Elon Musk might take on with a single-minded determination to succeed. It was almost like “life as we know it” (but not quite). In that sense I think it is fictional rather than fictitious if I have correctly understood the difference (apparently there is a third option – “fictive” but I’m not sure I have got my head round that one. Every day really is a schoolday). It is also a good story, well conceived and well written. However, the area in which it scores very highly indeed is memorability. It is now a couple of weeks since I finished the book and I can still remember it very vividly and in great detail - this must be a sign that it has had some impact on me. However, there were some negatives, mainly surrounding the execution .of the narrative. I did find that I got a bit bogged down in places and lost my enthusiasm for reading any further. This happened particularly in the middle section which I found to be slow and a little dull – it just wasn’t very gripping. This may just be a result of inexperience on the part of the author and would be relatively easy to fix for subsequent novels (and I hope he does persevere and write more). Overall I would recommend this book, even if this genre is not really your cup of tea. It has a lot of interesting observations and ideas and is definitely worth a read. I do have a sneaking and unsubstantiated suspicion that it may appeal more to “non sci-fi fans” than “sci-fi afficionados”.

I have to admit I requested this book on a bit of a whim (I read Martin MacInnes’ In Ascension earlier this year, so was primed for some more space-set sci-fi), but I was completely blindsided by how much I enjoyed it. The blurb doesn’t give much away beyond the central premise - an intergenerational deep-space voyage to a promised new home - and I was expecting the journey itself to take centre stage. Instead the focus rests much more on the ups and downs of the society aboard the ship, who consider themselves the last vestiges of humanity, and for me it proved to be an unexpectedly profound and absorbing read. 
The structure of the novel initially threw me slightly, comprised of non-chronological segments set during different eras in Shipworld’s multi-century history, by turns beset by uncertainty and buoyed by hope. However, I quickly started looking forward to each shift in perspective and voice: the author has a knack for vivid characterisation, and it was a pleasure to encounter pivotal figures and their legacies as they re-emerged in past and present. Various (often radically nonconformist) members of the Oort family frequently take centre stage and offer a thread to follow through the narrative, which is also anchored by impressively detailed and imaginative worldbuilding. Though some elements did feel like a bit of a reach for me, on the whole I was fascinated by Shipworld from the start and loved discovering more about it each time I turned the page. 
The themes and questions of Here and Beyond have never been more timely than at our present moment, and I hope this novel finds as broad an audience as possible outside of a science-fiction readership. Curious and compassionate, playful and perceptive, it’s not only a gripping story but also a fascinating reflection on what it means to be human, how we forge our pasts and our futures, and what we carry with us, even when we’d rather leave it behind. Thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing and NetGalley for the ARC.