All of humankind has been reduced to the height of a handspan. Most of us don't survive the shift in scale - those of us who were carrying a particularly heavy box of books at precisely the wrong moment, for example, or have fillings in our teeth, or implants that remained unchanged while our bodies contracted around them. Only one in nine of us live to tell the tale - but in those first hours, days and weeks, what that tale might be is entirely unclear. What has happened? Why? How will humanity adapt, no longer the dominant species? Does size matter? Pitting ourselves against the trauma of a dramatically changed world, we are about to find out.
Extremely funny and extremely ambitious, The Expanded Earth is a masterfully paced and plotted story of mad scientists, vengeful phytoplankton and improvised survival. Stunningly illustrated in scratchboard and ink, it is a book that immediately relocates us in our physical environment, and ultimately celebrates the capacity of small things to effect great change.
The Expanded Earth marks the arrival of a spellbinding new talent.
'The same thing but bigger, was not the same thing'
One sunny Sunday, without warning, humankind is reduced to the height of a handspan - an unsightly transformation as potentially fatal as it is inconvenient.
On a remote coastal path, Giles awakes in his new body to discover a world reshaped and magnified into a place of astounding abundance and deadly peril. Desperate to reconnect with his loved ones, he seeks the help of fellow survivors, and together they embark on a quest across the altered landscape. But as their journey unfolds, the more the question persists - are they still truly human, or has their reduction in size marked the beginning of a descent into savagery, an evolution into something other?
Elsewhere, one week earlier, Professor Elizabeth Goodwin makes a monumental discovery - God is alive and physically among us, but not in the form we've been taught to expect. As Goodwin prepares to make first contact with the omnipresent ocean-spanning creature, forces conspire in the wings, and the spectre of immanent catastrophe inches closer and closer still . . .
Dark, witty, and wildly ambitious, BAFTA award-winning filmmaker Mikey Please guides us into The Expanded Earth, high-stakes adventure packed with jeopardy and life-affirming beauty - a story that ultimately celebrates the capacity of small things to effect great change. The first in a spellbinding trilogy, this beautifully illustrated debut novel marks the arrival of a new talent and perhaps a new genre - the world of the micropocolypse.
