Aliens provide the missing link

THE SPACE BETWEEN US

WRITING crime thrillers doesn’t generally give an author much scope for spreading positive, optimistic vibes, so perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Doug Johnstone has thrown himself into his first science fiction novel with heartfelt passion.

The Space Between Us opens with Lennox Hunt, a mixed-race teenage skateboarder, nervously crossing Figgate Park, near the author’s home in Portobello, on a dark evening.

Lennox has never known his parents and lives in a children’s home, but at 16, he’ll soon have to leave and head out into the world. In the park, he’s set upon by other boys from his school, but they’re all knocked unconscious by a bluegreen light that streaks across the sky, trailing sparkles in its wake.

At the same moment in Longniddry, eight-monthspregnant Ava Cross is escaping her psychologically abusive husband, who is unconscious after eating the drugged casserole she prepared for him. She takes his Mercedes and makes a break for it, but the flash in the sky causes her to pass out at the wheel.

Meanwhile, Heather Banks from Dirleton is filling her pockets with stones, preparing to walk into the sea. Having lost a child to cancer and subsequently seen her marriage fall apart, she’s been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour and wants to end it all. As she sinks beneath the waves, her life is saved by what looks like a tangle of seaweed.

All three wake up in hospital to be told they’ve had a rare kind of stroke but have, inexplicably, fully recovered. When they hear news reports about a weird, unidentifiable cephalopod washed ashore in East Lothian, they instinctively realise that there is a connection between the creature, the lights in the sky and their stroke symptoms, and feel compelled to know more.

With vital assistance from jaded but sympathetic journalist Ewan McKinnon, they set out to smuggle this lost telepathic alien octopus, which they name “Sandy”, off the beach and keep it alive long enough to reconnect it (or rather “them”, pronouns being important in this story) with the rest of their species.

Science fiction may be a departure for Johnstone, but he’s approached it like the crime thrillers that made his name, prioritising pace, tension and high stakes. Time is always against our heroes as they play a cat-andmouse game across the Highlands, with a shadowy government department and Ava’s possessive husband in hot pursuit. Ava could give birth at any moment, and the pains in Heather’s head are sporadic reminders that she hasn’t got much time left.

As well as firmly making the point that Sandy is a refugee in a very hostile environment, the genre allows Johnstone to explore deeply and inventively the theme of belonging.

His protagonists all feel, in their own ways, isolated from the world around them, and the shared purpose they find in taking responsibility for Sandy binds them together, moulding them into a surrogate family. But their sense of becoming part of something bigger than themselves is taken to another level by the telepathic link with Sandy, felt most strongly by Lennox, which gives them visions of what it’s like to swim through an alien sea in a collective consciousness for whom “the human idea of being singular, apart, alone, was a ridiculous and lonely way of looking at life”.

A plea for empathy, compassion and perspective, Johnstone’s book celebrates our capacity to connect with one another, and is shot through with vivid characters and a sense of wonder.