A BANGOR university literature student has taken inspiration from the North Wales landscape for her first foray into sci-fi.

First-time novelist Hannah Hopkins is the author of the lively and entertaining science-fiction novel Space Academy, published by The Conrad Press.

Hopkins, 25, from Canterbury, said: "The beautiful backdrop of Snowdonia inspired me endlessly during my time at university, and I set parts of my book Space Academy in Bangor.

"Although the book is set in the future, there are flashbacks to Earth before humanity leaves to find a new home, and most of them centre around Bangor.

"The university is featured under the name ‘College Snowdonia’, and the high street and beach are also settings in the novel.

"I tried to do the beauty of the landscape justice, but I’m not sure anything quite compares to the real thing."

In the novel, which is set in the year 2100, Earth is dying. A young woman, Elsie, has risked everything to get her new-born son, Will, aboard ‘The Mayflower’ – a spaceship that would transport a select number of people to a new planet they can call home.

Thirteen years later, and Will is ready to start school at the space academy, an institution specialising in subjects such as Avian Studies, Technology and Rocket Control. While a pupil there, Will starts to uncover secrets about his father’s death, becomes rapt in a mystery that he and his friends must solve if they are to have any hope of saving humanity from the threat that lies in wait.

While her time in North Wales between 2012 and 2014 has informed her depiction of humanity's past, the experience of motherhood motivated Hopkins to share her view of its future.

Hopkins added: "Seeing my son so helpless, I suddenly became acutely aware of all the frightening things in the world that I couldn’t protect him from.

"I was driven in my writing by the idea of hope the comforting thought that there would be something for us if ever the Earth is ruined.

"Soon, my work writing early drafts of Space Academy became an escape fantasy, protecting me from the difficulties I faced in reality as a young mother.’

"As a young mum, I sometimes felt I’d lost my identity and Space Academy provided an outlet to let myself be me again.

"But more importantly, it made me realise that may be a way ahead for us even if one day we succeed through our foolishness, in making our beloved planet uninhabitable."

To join Will on his quest, Space Academy is £9.99 and available now from Amazon, and can be ordered from all good bookshops with ISBN 978-1-911546-94-8.