the last day andrew hunter murray review

Our daily newsletter recommends the five best articles from across the web. One very easy decision is to get a free trial of The Browser: I’m always interested when sci-fi presents people with unpalatable, impossible decisions, to see which side characters will fall on, and that’s what I was trying to do here. I don’t think I had a set idea of what the ‘right’ course of action was in this book - because the countries which have faced The Stop have all faced genuinely appalling choices, and carried out genuinely appalling actions in response. I think I started only with the sense that human nature operates within certain set bands, but that those bands encompass an extraordinary range of altruism and cruelty. But it’s more complex here than in Triffids, because there are a range of sustainable responses, you don’t just have to let everyone die…ĭid you start with a firm sense of what would be right and wrong in the world you created? Do you have one now?Īndrew Hunter Murray: What an enormously flattering comparison - I think Wyndham is the absolute don of this kind of book, and there are still brilliant writers exploring these kinds of potential changes today (people like Naomi Alderman in The Power, for example). I was reminded of that horrendous scene in Day of the Triffids, when one determined philanthropist is chaining the few people who can still see to huge gangs of the newly-blinded. “The Stop”, as its known, creates a politics of scarcity - not everyone can live. Sylvia Bishop: Yes, I loved the ‘human nature’ aspect. And, as it’s a thriller, there is an extremely exciting plot about the story’s hero, a young scientist called Ellen Hopper who has discovered a few breadcrumbs leading towards an earth-shattering secret. That’s the big sci-fi idea behind it – but really it’s a story about human nature in a world which is starting to change dramatically, and where nations have retreated to look after only their own citizens rather than looking outwards. Life clings on in a narrow, sunlit ring - a kind of Goldilocks Zone - which takes in parts of Europe, including the United Kingdom, where the story is set.

The sunlit side of the earth is far too hot to inhabit in many places - the ‘Coldside’ is uninhabitable in just the opposite way. It’s set in 2059, and for thirty years now, after a heavenly body passed close by the earth and disrupted its orbit, the same side of the planet has faced in towards the sun, and the other side has faced outwards towards the cold, dead universe.Īs you can imagine, things have changed substantially.

Andrew, for readers who aren’t familiar with the book, could you give us a precis?Īndrew Hunter Murray: The Last Day is a story set a few decades from now in a world like our own but with one catastrophic and enormous difference - the world has stopped turning.

Sylvia Bishop: I’m delighted to be talking with Andrew Hunter Murray, author of Sunday Times best-seller The Last Day.

The last day andrew hunter murray review