A Review of VOIDS by Tim Jeffreys and Martin Greaves, published by Omnium Gatherum.
Science fiction is not a genre I naturally gravitate towards for fear the text will be heavy with inventive but tedious descriptions of the technical or mechanical, and more than that— be set in that awful place called space. However, having read Voids, I now understand that just because a story is set in future time doesn’t mean it’s going to be emotionless and full of machines or even be called Science Fiction for that matter. Voids is set around the year 2050 when there are eleven billion humans on earth — set when, according to the main character Danny Seraphine, ‘one out of every six people …. goes to bed hungry….pollution’s endemic and all the resources are running out.’
Fatherhood is the central theme in the story, and there are little surprises that drift into the scenes that help the reader to keep focussed on this not too distant time in the future and that are also plausible enough that they don’t demand too much of a leap of faith, but instead allow the reader to easily imagine living there alongside Danny’s increasingly difficult life. He has a job, you see, that leaves this reader at least, both slightly shocked and grimly happy for him at first. However turmoil enters the story fairly quickly and Danny has an all too present-day tension in his relationship with his girlfriend, Emily.
I really did find this book quite riveting, and I very much appreciated the well positioned moments of delicious atmospheric detail such as:- ‘Broad collars of brown sludge hung from every window, advertising the place as a veritable guest house for all manner of slime moulds and damp spores that might care to take up residence.’
This is a gritty and tense story that draws you in relentlessly until you become very afraid for Danny Seraphine and what will become of him.
