When choosing your summer holiday reads, consider bestselling author Roz Morris's new SciFi novel set in Ranmore and Dorking.
The Surrey Hills may seem an unusual setting for a science fiction novel, but its quirky blend of science fiction and fable is proving a hit with readers and provoking comparisons with science fiction greats such as Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut and Margaret Atwood.
The novel, Lifeform Three, is set in the future, where back-to-back cities have erased the countryside. Cars drive themselves while their human occupants sleep. One idyll of countryside remains in the sea of concrete – the remains of a country estate that belonged to a manor house called Harkaway Hall. Dubbed the Lost Lands, Harkaway Hall has become a tourist destination, tended by humanoid robots called bods. One of the bods begins to dream at night that he is riding a horse (known as lifeform three) – and this begins a great mystery. Why does he dream? Why is he having scattered flashbacks? Soon he is thrown into a nightly battle to reclaim his past and his soul.
The author, Roz Morris, says she was inspired by the landscape of Dorking and Ranmore.