Dexter Palmer’s debut novel is that most 21st century of concepts: a mash-up. Starting with a healthy slice of early 20th century science fiction, reminiscent of Jules Verne, with mechanical men and other technological wonders, he adds lashings of Shakespeare, in the form of numerous clear references and allusions to The Tempest, and wraps it all up in the form of the modern novel. It’s an intriguing fusion that largely succeeds in its mission of exploring the nature of love in an age of technology.

Harold Winslow is imprisoned in a zeppelin that is destined to endlessly circle the world, trapped with only the frozen corpse of Prospero Taligent, the disembodied presence of Prospero’s daughter Miranda and a crew of Prospero’s trademark mechanical men for company. Harold, by trade a writer of greetings cards, may not be the most reliable narrator, given the circumstances of his imprisonment and all that he has experienced, but The Dream of Perpetual Motion is his story.

Raised in a world (or more accurately a city, because there is no acknowledgement in the novel of life outside the city of Xeroville) dominated by the technological marvels of inventor and industrialist Prospero Taligent, Harold Winslow initially appears to be nothing more than a sappy middle-aged man – but as his tale unfolds, it becomes clear that his fate has been entwined with that of Prospero and his daughter Miranda from a young age. Prospero is not just Palmer’s reworking of Shakespeare’s magician for the age of technology – there are clear references to Shakespeare, and the implication is that Taligent has modelled himself on the original Prospero. By naming his daughter Miranda and confining her in the Taligent Tower with no human company but himself, he echoes Prospero’s overbearing love for his own daughter, and he has his very own Caliban too, whose origins owe more to Shelley’s Frankenstein than Shakespeare.

After being selected to attend one of Miranda’s childhood birthday parties, Harold’s fate becomes intertwined with Miranda’s, and they become childhood playmates and, eventually, lovers. When Prospero announces to Xeroville that he has discovered the secret of perpetual motion and is quitting the city forever, to live above the clouds in his zeppelin, Harold responds to Miranda’s cry of distress and plunges in to the chaos of the city, making his way to Taligent Tower to try and rescue her. His journey up the tower leads him to encounter the portraitmaker, a sculptor whose sole commission is to keep creating likenesses of Miranda, striving to capture her true essence, and who becomes gradually enmeshed in Prospero’s madness to the extent that they do some dreadful things. Harold also encounters Caliban, and together they try to prevent Prospero’s escape.

The Dream of Perpetual Motion is a compelling meditation on the forms that love may take in an age of technological marvels: both the love that poor Harold thinks he feels for Miranda, and the love that Prospero thinks he should feel for his adopted daughter, and which drives him to increasingly extreme acts. It’s a compelling tale, deftly weaving first- and third-person narrative in to a bleak but sometimes funny love story – and it’s got the trappings of dystopia too, with psychoanalyst cab drivers, tin men and clockwork everything evoking a mixture of Jules Verne and Woody Allen’s ‘Sleeper’, with a dash of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory thrown in for good measure. A confident and intriguing, if occasionally confusing, debut.

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