"The Return of the Incredible Exploding Man"

Dave Hutchinson is a science fiction writer who was born in Sheffield in England and read American Studies at the University of Nottingham. He subsequently moved into journalism, writing for The Weekly News and the Dundee Courier for almost 25 years. He is best known for his Fractured Europe series, which has received multiple award nominations, with the third novel, Europe in Winter, winning the BSFA Award for Best Novel.

Hutchinson applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, The Return of the Incredible Exploding Man, and reported the following:

Ooh. Yes, this one. This is actually quite pivotal. Alex is dithering about taking a commission to write a book about a supercollider buried under a couple of counties in northern Iowa. He's a freelance journalist and not doing very well, and the commission would pay him a very large amount of money, but there's something not quite right about the setup in Rosewater County. He's kind of intrigued by it, but at the same time he has a sense it might be best to avoid it. And then he's approached one evening by a British intelligence officer called Kitson, who basically blackmails him into spying on the collider operation. So all of a sudden Alex has no choice; he has to stay and do the job. I tried to load the book with stuff that was absurd and off-kilter, and this is one of the most absurd incidents. Alex is walking into town for dinner and all of a sudden MI6 turns up out of nowhere, driving an Accord, in the middle of Middle America, and recruits him. It's the point where Alex's freewill is taken away; he's now stuck in Rosewater County and he has to stay and deal with everything that happens next.

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My Book, The Movie: The Return of the Incredible Exploding Man.

--Marshal Zeringue