When Gavin Meckler's light aircraft encounters a mysterious cloud and crashes to earth, he discovers that the eerily quiet landscape in which he has landed is 200 years older than the one from which he took off. In this gentle, peaceful, sustainable new world, it is possible to travel from one side of the globe to the other in a matter of minutes without burning fuel, and everyone is a gardener because that's how they can be sure to eat.

Inspired by William Morris's utopian novelNews from Nowhere, Robert Llewellyn shows us a future where we don't burn anything to make anything else and which isn't hovering on the brink of disaster; where aliens haven't invaded, meteors havent hit and zombies havent taken over. In short, a world where humanity eventually gets it right.

All the technology described in the novel has seen the light of day in reality. Llewellyn's future isn't perfect and may not be very likely, but it is entirely possible.

Robert Llewellyn is a novelist, actor, screenwriter, comedian and TV presenter. He wrote his first novel at the age of twelve and published his first grown-up work of fiction,The Man on Platform 5, only thirty years later. He has written stories, books, plays, sketches, and stand-up comedy routines.

He has appeared on British television regularly since 1987, including as Kryten inRed Dwarf, a presenter onScrapheap ChallengeandHow Do They Do It?, and on the popular video podcastsCarpoolandFully Charged.

He lives in Gloucestershire, where he drives an electric car and writes under a rack of solar panels.