By Stephen Lewis

PRESS columnist and York author Tim Murgatroyd has landed a three-book deal for a trilogy of 'speculative fiction' novels set in a dystopian future North Yorkshire.

Pilgrim Tale and its two sequels are set in a 22nd century in which the remnants of humanity are struggling to survive in a world ravaged by a new 'black death' a century before.

Mankind has become segregated. A small and wealthy elite, who think of themselves as the 'beautiful ones', live shut off from the rest of the world in enclosed, protected cities. Their technology is advanced - and they have developed cell regeneration techniques which mean they can effectively live forever.

The rest struggle to live as best they can in a world in which technology and living standards have reverted to a much earlier age. They farm and - in Yorkshire coastal villages such as Baytown (based on Robin Hood's Bay) - fish.

But their efforts to build decent communities are constantly hampered by the 'beautiful ones', who fear that if the people they refer to as 'primitives' manage to develop, they could pose a threat. So they use their technology and power to ensure other communities can never reach the point where they could be a danger.

Tim, The Press's Wednesday columnist and a York English teacher whose previous novels have included Taming Poison Dragons, set in medieval China, says his dystopian future world is an obvious metaphor for the divisions and inequalities in the world today.

He wanted to explore the psychology of the super-rich - people like Donald Trump and tech billionaires - and look at what might happen if they were able to exploit technology for their own use.

"Is technology going to be used for good or for ill, that's what I wanted to write about," he says. "It's a question we're going to have to tackle if we're to survive as a species."

His novels focus on Michael Pilgrim, a struggling 'primitive' with a tormented conscience who goes on an odyssey around a scarcely-recognisable North Yorkshire.

Scarborough is a hell-hole which has been overrun by feral dogs; York a ruinous, almost deserted city inhabited by just a few hundred people and a strange, humanoid creature known as 'the modified man'.

He got the idea for the novel while chatting to friends in the pub. "One friend said 'You know they're developing cell renewal techniques that would mean people can renew their organs and live for hundreds of years, if not longer?' And I thought 'What would the result of that be? Would it be desirable, or would it be something like hell?'"

He wrote Pilgrim Tale, the first book in the series, and sent it off, together with a synopsis for two further novels, to Cloud Lodge, a new London publisher which specialises in 'daring literary fiction'.

Cloud Lodge snapped it up. "The book really caught our attention because it was so well written, and because there was an exciting projected series," said Cloud Lodge's Orlando Ortega. The publisher expects to bring out Pilgrim Tale early next year, with the other two books (titles still not yet confirmed) to follow.

The science in the books is as accurate and as plausible as he could make it, Tim says - and all based on scientific discoveries that have already been made.

But while he found it liberating to write a novel set in a future, dystopian world, it is still human nature that really interests him - and that is the real theme of Pilgrim Tale.

"Dickens said 'All we need to do to improve as a species is to behave better'," he says. "That seems simple - but it is so utterly true!"