Refugees from some apocalyptic threat – a natural disaster, say, or a killer plague or even zombies or aliens – secure themselves in some bolt-hole. There, they try desperately to call for help from the outside world. But the phone lines are down, the airwaves full of static. So it is that the survivors realise their fate is in their hands alone.

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It’s a familiar fictional scenario – but arguably the wrong way round. A massive communications failure would itself have catastrophic consequences, crippling everything from food deliveries to satellite navigation. That point is driven home in Infinite Detail, the debut novel from British author Tim Maughan. In the first of its two time-frames, ‘Before’, civic-minded hacktivist Rush has cut off access to the commercial internet in Stokes Croft, a counter-cultural enclave of Bristol, and replaced it with a strictly independent local network. In the other, ‘After’, the global internet has ceased to exist. The Croft has become a walled fiefdom and civilisation has been brought to its knees.