Reviewed by CP in 1998. This article may be downloaded, but may not be uploaded or printed elsewhere.

A sense of familiarity sweeps over you as you read the opening pages: by heck, it's a good old British Disaster Novel! We haven't seen too many of these in recent years.

In 2035 the world is going to hell. Half of Europe has been irradiated by terrible old French reactors. The African population is on the move, threatening to nuke its way into Europe. The environment is in general bad nick. Politics aren't too hot: United Ireland is run by President Adams, what's left of the UK is run by Chair Booth. The richest Brits have retreated to 'enclaves' - security-fenced luxury compounds. Outside, what's left of British society makes the best of an increasingly bad job. All this is firmly grounded in the present fears of 1998, nothing of any cultural or social relevance apparently having happened in the author's imaginings in the thirty- seven years since. References abound to Princess Diana, Pulp Fiction, tapas bars, the 1998 World Cup, etc.

As things really start breaking down we follow events with Richard Somers, a former rock star, now sitting pretty in an enclave in the New Forest. He has the hots for nubile Sophie, jailbait daughter of (oops! Richard doesn't know this!) the head of MI5, who observes everything he does through CCTV. Meanwhile, his extended family are out there in Dorset doing the best they can and sensing that the answer to everything might lie in a 1998 word-processor document written by their long-dead father. When Richard finally tracks it down - stored on a 40-year-old Amstrad 286 laptop which (technological breakthrough) boots up first time - he finds it is a crude multimedia script about human evolution. This, it transpires, predicted everything. He celebrates with a sexy afternoon of skinny-dipping with Sophie, while events outside move from bad to beyond.

Although for the most part written effectively, with some humour and wit, Trajectories is a work of first-level-only imagination. We find out only 'what would happen if', not whether it matters. This blunts the satire, and without satirical bite extrapolative sociology is dull matter for a novel.