There are more fantastical elements too, though also scientifically explained. Instead, we’re presented with an accessible level of realism, pitched just right in its balance between explaining its world and telling its story. The reader isn’t left flailing around in a sea of technobabble, waiting for a narrative to float by to grab hold of. And yet, this is no dry, techy, hard-scifi novel.

The deadness of the world, the uniqueness of its weather, the technology that would be needed to survive and the way we need to adapt when that technology started to fail.

Interchange is utterly convincing in its vision of life on Mars. However, it’s not so simple as that, for what Fincham has achieved here is something intensely visceral. The building blocks are all in place, then, for a standard science fiction adventure. Loyalties are not always what they seem, obstacles appear insurmountable, man’s reliance on technology has left him vulnerable and exposed on a planet he was never supposed to inhabit.

We follow Jude, daughter of the last great leader of The Clan, on a journey to try and find new hope for her people, ever pursued by forces determined to stop her, from Earth, and from within her own family. It’s been one hundred years since The Fall and the survivors of the human colonies are left to roam the surface, scratching out a living, scavenging what they can from the ruins of their civilisation.

Interchange by Garrick Fincham