![]() ![]() Yet many of them specialise in oil and mining technology, and Usic is already building infrastructure to support a larger population. The base personnel describe themselves as “a community”, “in partnership” with the indigenous population – “we do not use the word ‘colony’ ”. His mission is financed by and carried out under the auspices of a shadowy corporate called Usic. The jump between worlds causes him to hallucinate. ![]() Peter, meanwhile, finds it hard to focus on anything but his situation. “Sometimes,” she tells him angrily, “I feel as though your leaving caused things to fall apart.” The awkwardness of this medium amplifies to screaming pitch our sense of the emotional space between them. The conversations of Bea and Peter, which scaffold Michel Faber’s astonishing and deeply affecting sixth novel, are held via a kind of interstellar email. It would be easier for Bea if she had her husband Peter’s support, but he can’t help: he’s trillions of miles away, on a planet called Oasis, with a mission to convert its alien inhabitants. She lives in a Britain perhaps not so far in our future, in which “institutions that have been around forever are going to the wall” and a collapsing economy and deteriorating climate have become indices for one another. B eatrice Leigh is a nurse, an evangelical Christian, a cat owner and “an independent and capable woman”, not necessarily in that order. ![]()
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