Dedicated to my dad Ron. Always reading, thinking, educating, making stuff and smiling. I am also indebted to my wife Susan for her patience during the long and engrossing periods of writing involved in this novel, as she understood that any book involves steady perseverance and time.

This is a work of fiction. But the real solar and other science behind it is as accurate as I was able to get, within the realms of keeping the novel interesting. Solar pulse effects may seem somewhat alien and scary, but they do exist. My sincere thanks go to the many people who pointed me in the direction of public reference sources and conference papers on the impacts of severe space weather on a variety of industries. These documents helped explain how we, the public, would get to know about any severe space weather, and what we might be expected to do about it if something catastrophic really happened.

For help in the background scientific research I would like to thank Mike Hapgood at the Science and Technology Facilities Council, Professor Lucie Green at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, Dr Alex Hands at the Surrey Space Centre, Ciaran Beggan at the British Geological Survey and David Fort at Scottish Power. They provided valuable links to publically available technical papers, documents and publications. They also took time to help explain what we understand to be the many aspects of a solar pulse, CMEs, and geomagnetically induced conduction, and how each could affect critical infrastructure in power, transport, communications and navigation. It also goes without saying that Wikipedia is probably one of the best things ever created, giving a plethora of scientific data and source links.

If you’re only here for the novel, that’s great. But if you really need to know what a sigmoid is, want more about solar science, or even links to current solar science reports, then see the information in the Appendix and Reports and Links