Clayton Graham and I share an interest in science fiction, and though we write for different audiences, we’ve decided to test the waters in each other’s sphere.

 

I'm hoping that Clayton’s grown-up readers have younger relatives and friends, or children of their own, who gobble up science fiction as well. Here on my site I’m introducing Clayton Graham to an audience of parents and grandparents scouting books for their younger charges, who also buy books for themselves and may well enjoy Milijun (which I adored) and subsequent novels.

The novel explores the relationship between a mother and her son. How far can it be stretched before the links break? How far would a mother go to save her son? Would she be prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice, or undertake actions she would never have deemed possible prior to the alien incursion?

 

Above all, Milijun explores the question – what would mankind do when faced with an intelligence it cannot understand? It's a good question, for it may happen someday. We are not currently prepared, of course, we are light years away from understanding how we should behave in such a circumstance. Milijun challenges our mindsets through the eyes of Laura and Jason, and as such is perhaps more powerful and meaningful than if that challenge was through the eyes of the United Nations or the President of the United States.

 

In the end, Milijun probably asks more questions than it answers. But it does raise the questions. Laura and Jason Sinclair are just ordinary people, caught in a web of mystery and intrigue with an invisible spider somewhere on the threads.

 

Writing Milijun was a labour of love. It was not easy, but neither was it hard. Science Fiction is a love of mine, has been since I was a teenager, escaping to new worlds in the back streets of Stockport, England, where I grew up as a child. Halcyon days, when education and school milk were free, and summers were real summers. My childhood was set in a background of cobbled streets, ration books, terraced housing [think Coronation Street], milkman's horses, coal dumped in the cellar, fish and chips [on good days], bread and dripping [on not good days], free school dinners [at lunchtime] and low paid footballers.