"Binary star system, only inhabitable planet in the system. Heavy light-and-heat absorbing cloud layer means that the sunlight never gets through - but there's alternating warm seasons, where the sky is dark, and cold seasons, where the sky glows in just about every possible colour, of between five and fifty years," Atton says.

"Wildlife is either calorvorous or carnivorous - the human colonists are pretty much at the bottom of the food chain. But it's interesting wildlife, at least. We have monster crows, which can pick up a child's crying from ten kilometres away and snatch it away to feed its chicks; snow wraiths, which are telepathic swarms of calorvorous insects that suck the heat from people; Kazic wolves, er, huge wolves," Atton gestures with his hands, having to move a little to do so. He mimes out a length of about seven or eight feet, "with prehensile, razor-bladed tails - they were my clan's emblem. The Old Things, but unless you're a miner you're not likely to ever see one. They're all in hibernation at the moment, way, way beneath the ground.

"Territory is divided up between the clans. There are about twenty-six in total, but they're mostly indentured to the three biggest," he says. "Or they were. We were orbitally bombed about fifteen years ago, civilisation hasn't really built itself back up. I've not been back properly for a while."