Polygon, 2015, 299 p

In a near future authoritarian Britain surveilled by CivCon, Carl Shewan is an investigative journalist for a news organisation on its last legs. On a tip-off from his friend Howard Brindley he makes his way from Glasgow through several checkpoints to the north-west coast town of Inverlair. While he is there, a system known as SCOPE – short for Secure Communications Open Emergency – to be used for asset management and communications coverage in a national crisis but in reality designed to track and control people, is switched on. The people of the town find themselves cut off from the rest of the world which may well no longer exist in any meaningful sense as Howard believes an imperfection in the SCOPE protocol caused a standing harmonic in the same range as deep sleep. Anyone in its range has been put to sleep, not to wake up until the system fails, which may not be for years or even decades. Inverlair lies in a pocket outside the transmitters’ ranges and is cocooned in what the inhabitants come to call the redzone. When they approach its boundaries they experience a buzzing in their heads, and piercing headaches too painful to endure, so back away. The novel deals with the consequences of this isolation for the inhabitants – including Carl’s impending fatherhood which was occasioned by a mutual act of comfort he and Simone, Inverlair’s hotelier’s daughter, indulged in when the town’s plight became apparent.

The book is structured in seven sections relating to different months of the fateful year, not chronologically but more artfully in the order October, July, November, August, December, January-April, with the last section titled New Life.

As the old certainties break down new arrangements come into force. A town committee is formed to allocate food and resources according to relevant contributions, actual or potential. Social norms pertaining to legal observances become undermined. With the older incumbent no longer having access to his medication, Carl is taken on somewhat unwillingly as a trainee in the stalking, killing and gralloching of deer.

Despite its premise the book is more concerned with the dynamics of personal relationships than the working out of the technological quandary its characters inhabit. In this it more resembles a mainstream novel rather than a work of traditional Science Fiction. It is in effect a novel in the wider Scottish literary heritage of the small town tale and an exemplar of Scottish fiction in its vivid descriptions of landscape. And in that it is very good indeed.

Pedant’s corner:- telecoms (usually telecoms,) “‘He gestured towards vaguely towards the window” (remove one “towards”,) nosey (nosy,) sprung (sprang,) spinal chord (cord.) “‘One their way out’” (On,) “this time there had been no one eye in the sky” (doesn’t need the “one”.) “The committee had stepped into the breach and were now” (the committee was now; several instances of the committee were.) “There were a variety of responses” (there was a variety.) “There was no reason he couldn’t live like this way for years” (either, “There was no reason he couldn’t live like this for years”, or, “There was no reason he couldn’t live this way