Such is our insatiable wonderment at the ever more extraordinary possibilities that science fiction can offer us that we forget that, if extra-terrestrial life exists, it may be not too dissimilar to our own. After all, if we are talking about other carbon-based life forms, it is not such a great leap to imagine that alien beings have developed along paths recognisable to humans, both physically and in terms of thought processes.

These are the sorts of beings that Peter Apps describes in his first novel, The Long Way Round. In the two alien worlds that his protagonists visit, the inhabitants, while very different from humans, share the same range of needs, motivations, fears, reasoning processes, shortcomings and strong points as their Earthling guests. In contrast to many intergalactic forays, these encounters involve mutual understanding, exchanging knowledge with one another, acceptance, respect and assistance.

And it is not only the aliens with whom we empathise. The space travellers in The Long Way Round could not be further removed from their Hollywood superhero counterparts. This is not to say, however, that they are not faced with daunting challenges. Even the detailed descriptions of coming to terms with a zero-gravity environment in the space station and how this affects their orientation when back on Earth indicates the enormity of the leap they have to make, giving a radically new perspective their mundane home lives.

The man behind the mission is Brian, a self-taught genius who dreams of finding humanoid life on other planets. He beavers away in his back garden in rural England until he finds a way of building a portal that gives him access to anywhere in the Universe. He takes as his assistant Stuart, a bright but academically under-achieving 18-year-old with a dead end job in a carpet shop. Stuart’s father, Richard, a mechanic, later joins the team.

Together they make it to Terzon, a planet in the Andromeda galaxy, where the inhabitants are welcoming, despite their obsessive reliance on logical reasoning, for fear that unbridled emotions may lead to conflict. The Terzons point the team in the direction of another planet, Baard’ Atcha, where civilisation is at risk of collapsing because of the power thirst of the society’s Elders and the fear that they impose upon the people there.

Parallels can easily be drawn between the situation in Baad’ Atcha and that found in many totalitarian and dictatorial states on Earth. Stuart’s solution provides a template for dealing with many of these problems, based on discreet empowerment of the inhabitants so that they can learn to improve their lot independently and with the support of the oppressed masses.

Running alongside this is another struggle of more human and personal proportions. Both Brian and Stuart are gay and have fallen in love with each other but are afraid to admit it. However, the message to be gleaned from The Long Way Round is that acceptance and tolerance is all and that when things are looked at in the right perspective, barriers based on false assumptions can often simply evaporate.

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