As Ian McEwan, author of Solar (2010) noted “ Fiction hates preachiness…nor does it much like facts and figures…nor do readers like to be hectored” (2007). Ben Smith’s powerful debut novel takes us offshore into a polluted future and to a singular seascape – a vast wind farm of more than 6,000 turbines somewhere out on Dogger Bank. They carry out their never-ending work, scoured by wind and salt, as the waves roll, dragging strange shoals of flotsam through the turbine fields. And, barely noticeable, somewhere in the middle of this cycle, plants and animals and people made this place their home. I heard of a phrase used in the American coast guard to upbraid people fretting over the relative minutiae of their everyday lives – it is “ The sea doesn’t care.

The dialogue elicits many a wry smile, as well as a few sympathetic clenched fists when the old man is being especially troublesome. Smith tells a good story and sets it in a frame that leaves it to the reader to pick up the peripheral context of climate, corporate and environmental catastrophe as well as the proven fragility in humanity’s stewardship of the world. The Pilot on his supply boat exists as a plot necessity so that our two main characters don’t starve to death, but it is never explained why they don’t try to take advantage of this singular lifeline. Set in what we can only assume to be a bleak, dystopian future, Doggerland charts the day to day life of toil and drudgery on a vast offshore wind farm. We know that the boy is on the rig because his father abandoned his post, reneging on his contract and dooming his son to take his place.Whether the absence of women is a deliberate feature of Smith’s fictional setting or coincidental, I couldn’t say. At times, Doggerland reminded me of Megan Hunter’s The End We Start From, which also describes a future marked by rising water levels. Phillips does a great job of showing the connections between the mythic megalithic culture we have dreamed about for many centuries and one we had long forgotten but which may be the true homeland of the British people. Reflecting on the perpetual noise of their environment as they take a lift up the shaft of a turbine.

I can't remember who to blame for The Infinite and the Divine, but I know I was talking to someone about it - speak up if you think it was you! If anything, it’s becoming even more prevalent – a symptom of our widespread anxiety about the future of the human race in a time of environmental crisis. Remembered in Celtic legends as Tu-lay, and referred to by geologists as Doggerland or Fairland, this civilization began at least as early as 4000 BC but was ultimately destroyed by rising sea levels, huge tsunamis, and a terrible viral epidemic released from melting permafrost during a cataclysmic period of global warming. As he tells the Boy, “If I gave everyone everything they needed, there’d be no need to trade anymore, would there? It took me a little while before I started to enjoy Doggerland – was the most exciting moment really going to be when the boy found a shoe in his fishing net?

It’s a significant observation, because much of the novel’s undeniable power derives from a skilful use of a deliberately limited palette. Ben Smith’s novel takes place on an offshore windfarm that stretches for thousands of acres – all that is visible from the main rig is row upon row of turbines as far as the eye can see. Like Smith’s Doggerland, Rym Kechacha’s Dark River (2020) draws links between the neolithic past and the climate changed and challenged near-future, although Smith’s interludes into the past are more brief observational notes unlike Kechacha’s protagonist driven narrative. In this ambition he is often thwarted by the Old Man’s desire to trade the best spare parts for different kinds of contraband with the pilot of the unreliable supply boat.