News from Gardenia

When Gavin Meckler's light aircraft encounters a mysterious cloud and crashes to earth, he discovers that the eerily quiet landscape in which he has landed is 200 years older than the one from which he took off. In this gentle, peaceful, sustainable new world, it is possible to travel from one side of the globe to the other in a matter of minutes without burning fuel, and everyone is a gardener because that's how they can be sure to eat. Inspired by William Morris's utopian novel News from Nowhere, Robert Llewellyn shows us a future where we don't burn anything to make anything else and which isn't hovering on the brink of disaster; where aliens haven't invaded, meteors haven’t hit, and zombies haven’t taken over. In short, a world where humanity eventually gets it right. All the technology described in the novel has seen the light of day in reality. Llewellyn's future isn't perfect and may not be very likely, but it is entirely possible.

Robert Llewellyn is a novelist, actor, screenwriter, comedian, and TV presenter. He is the author of The Man on Platform 5 and has written stories, books, plays, sketches, and stand-up comedy routines. He has appeared on British television regularly since 1987, including as Kryten in Red Dwarf, a presenter on Scrapheap Challenge and How Do They Do It?, and on the popular video podcasts Carpool and Fully Charged.