Terrestrial History

In 2025, Hannah is a young fusion scientist on holiday in the Western Isles of Scotland. A disfigured young man turns up and tells her he was born in a Mars colony. He says he has come from the future to help her perfect fusion technology, because runaway climate change will otherwise leave Earth unfit to live on.

The novel then follows four generations of her family. Her son Andrew is a politician aiming to become Scotland's First Minister. Her granddaughter Kenzie eventually builds the first working fusion reactor, using knowledge handed down from Hannah.

The last thread belongs to Hannah's great-grandson Roban, who works on a mining ship and is grieving his mentor Vishay. He meets a phenomenon that lets him send himself back to 2025, where he hopes to head off a coming collapse.

This is science fiction in a literary register, spread across a family saga and several eras. The tone is quiet and reflective rather than action-driven. It turns on climate, on what one generation passes to the next, and on the moral weight of trying to repair the future by rewriting the past.